7 29 2020 Ferndale Public Schools Special Board Meeting 1

001thank you thank you okay so um this is a ferndale public schools committee of the whole school board meeting uh being held on the open meet by open meetings the open meetings act on wednesday july 29th it's being held virtually via zoom which is granted by the governor because of the coveted pandemic it's called the order at 6 27 pm roll call miss shepherd dukey here heart here abraham here for mueller here latash yes here o'donnell here and president davidson yeah thank you thank you um item 1.2 the approval of the agenda like there's the one recommendation to move um the public comment to after the presentation uh due to the fact that people would probably want to hear kind of return to school planning and then have an opportunity to provide public comment based

002on what's shared [Music] any thoughts uh board of education any anybody opposed good idea i like that idea i want everybody to be able to comment on what we say instead of uh before yeah sounds good okay so uh item 1.3 of public comment will be uh moved to um will that be 2.3 whether that be um public comment will be its own agenda item number three and the next three agenda items will be bumped to four five and six and i would say uh also just so that the board has a chance to take into account uh the public comment also that you know we can continue our discussion on the uh presentation after uh the conclusion of public comment if that's uh uh if that's the will of the board that uh any

003any objections to uh following up with more discussion following public comments all right so um do we need to add an agenda item then for more discussion uh i don't think you would you just we can just hold that we could just suspend that item and then come back to it okay all right um item two informational items 2.1 uh designate two trustees to serve on the oakland county school board association dei committee [Music] this is an announcement that came to us on july 17th that the oakland county school board uh association board of directors is forming an ad hoc community committee on diversity equity and inclusion and they are inviting each district to designate two trustees to serve on the dei committee um and the dei committee will meet monthly for two years usually

004on the third wednesday of the month and the first meeting is being held on wednesday august 19th uh via zoom so i just asked uh this be added to the agenda um two two board members have have um expressed their interest in serving uh anna ibrahim and sandra dookey and um i wanted to find out if the you know i wanted just to uh present this to the board and uh find out if uh that's the will of the board and if anybody else is interested i'm fine with that i think those are two great uh choices and volunteers support it too we appreciate uh i think it's great the county's doing this and um uh i i'm sure that you know ferndale will be a good active contributor to that committee um so i

005will send those names on to the appropriate person um informational item 2.2 the ferndale public schools return to school planning options for the 2020 2021 school year all right thank you um we are um excited to share some options and looking at uh the start of the 2021 school year at ferndale public schools the entire team has been working extremely hard on on trying to figure out the best way to meet the needs of our our students and staff with going through really an unprecedented situation i don't think something that any of us ever thought that we would experience in our lifetime unfortunately there's been loss of lives there's been loss of access to quality education there's been people who've gotten sick and will unfortunately suffer the long-term effects of this yet i am really

006encouraged by the resolve of ferndale public schools and then that we will provide students with an educational experience that they are used to that they are accustomed to and we will do everything in our power to make meaningful uh strides as we go navigate through really in you know an uncertain year so i'm going to hand it off right now to johanna marekna our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction she's helped us develop the plan really looking at it through um really a teaching and learning lens and and how we can best meet the the the needs of our students so what i say to is we will give kind of our thoughts on each of the options but we wanted to give the board viable options that we believe we could we could accommodate uh

007within within reason at the end we'll look for you know board direction on how to solidify the plant because the next step in the process is to submit the work the return school plan um to oakland isd who then submits it to the state for approval you know what happened what we thought a week ago five days ago three days ago yesterday is much different than we what we think today uh the data continuously changes um school districts in the areas plans continue to change and so just please understand that as things change we you know we have to be able to respond uh to the new information and data as it comes so again we're gonna discuss kind of some viable options and then share where we you know share where we are leaning

008as an administrative staff and then open it to comment and then decide really um the direction so that we can complete the plan and then hopefully have it approved once completed by the board of education so again today there's no voting on a final plan it's for the board to say all right we understand the options which we've shared you know prior to this meeting but here are the options let's let's discuss it with the community and then let's have clear direction moving forward so johanna i'm gonna make you the host so that you're able to share your screen but you'll have to watch if if people come in to admit them okay so yeah yep you gotta do two things at once yep i understand all right um okay uh thank you everyone for

009being here tonight i see um this is a really well attended meeting which makes me happy because i think we can get the most input from the community which is important when we look at what we're going to be doing for our children our team has been working extremely hard to look at logistical options equitable outcomes and the best possible solutions for students for the upcoming school year we have um come up with some i'm gonna admit a few more people here there we go um we've come up with uh three options that we think are feasible um two of them we believe are stronger than the third one but we're still going to present that option uh because it's important that that we present all of the possibilities and we'll take a look at

010what those look like so um i'm gonna share um a presentation okay is everyone able to see that not yet not yet i think donya might have to do in addition to make you host might have to enable multiple screen sharing or dania can you share it yep i can share it great you know tell me next slide and yep nothing's coming up yet yeah it's it's not letting me share anymore okay johanna's the host now so it should be sharing underneath her um there could be a button when it comes the share screen comes up there's two buttons down on the lower left yep it should it should be sharing oh there now i don't have access anymore i handed it over yeah okay good we're all set then all right um so uh

011we have three options that we're going to present tonight um an in-school option a hybrid option and then a virtual option so those are the three that we've looked at um so i'm going to sort of do an overview um our first recommendation would be or option i should say um would be in seat five days a week plus a virtual asynchronous instruction for students whose families do not feel comfortable coming back to the school that would also include synchronous office hours for the virtual component our second option would be a virtual synchronous instructional model that included learning labs um and i'll get to what those learning labs would look like as well and we have some draft schedules um that we could look at those we have not worked with the union yet those

012are just ideas for us to discuss but we will work with our union members our teachers to make sure that we have a schedule that abides by our cda and that meets the needs of our students the third option is an b hybrid and that would also have a virtual asynchronous instruction model with synchronous office hours um so these are the three best options that we were able to uh come up with i do want to say i'm sorry somebody asked that you define synchronous and asynchronous yep um so synchronous means that the teacher is online with the student for a period of time sort of like a face-to-face um instructional model so you would log on like we're doing right now this is synchronous asynchronous is where a student works online and then the

013teacher may log in at different times to grade that work provide feedback etc um so what what we have right now is a synchronous experience um asynchronous would be uh where people are working perhaps at different times does that answer the question yeah thank you okay great all right so we'll move um we'll move on here um so first we'll go over our ideas for in-seat full-time with that asynchronous instruction with a synchronous office hours component um so you'll see on these slides some pluses and minuses and those are some of the things that we see as benefits and as detractors from the different plans so we try to include those as well i do want to say that this is an overview we've looked for example we looked at eight different hybrid options uh

014when we presented the best one um so if there are any questions please interrupt the slide deck could be a thousand slides long if we included all of the nuances but i'm happy to discuss them if anyone has questions um so uh we saw this as a benefit that students would have five days a week with their teacher those who were in school face to face a plus and a minus would be the ability to social distance and that would depend on how many students selected the in-school option and how many students selected distance learning and depending on how many students selected each type we could have issues with our lunch logistics feeding children making sure that those needs are met we may not if the numbers were low enough and that would depend on

015family selection um some of the problems that we know will be an issue if we have this in school considering this in-school component will be shared supplies so we will have to purchase additional supplies for students and we are concerned about the time that it will take to sanitize buildings particularly at the secondary level in between every class which is required by the executive order we are also concerned about mask wearing compliance at the secondary level teenagers are teenagers and we always want to have restorative reparative interactions with students and this is this is a concern that it could become confrontational between students with masquerading compliance the asynchronous component of this plan uh the virtual component with the synchronous office hours uh we love that it allows for choice students would have a large a

016selection of courses to choose from we also are encouraged by the idea that there would be no virus transmission at the school for those students who were in the asynchronous learning environment however we are deeply concerned about losing live instruction for those students with their teacher and we are extremely concerned about access equity for our students who are not in the building so those are our grave concerns i would say with the plan um are there any questions on on the model where some students are in the school with their teachers and some students are in an asynchronous online environment and just as a point of order these are questions that the board may have yeah because the public will be yeah questions from the board um yeah on the um on the uh in

017person uh well a couple of questions let me just start with uh the one that's right on the page here the um synchronous office hours so would that be only one-on-one or groups uh would that would be any extra help you know as similar to a student who might come in at lunchtime right so um the initial idea is that teachers would hold scheduled office hours for students to drop in and then would also have sign up times for individual students in addition to that sort of anyone can drop in we we have modeled the drop-in office hours during our previous closure so you know teachers know how to run those sessions how to be available to students but the teachers who would provide those office hours are the same teachers who would be teaching

018all day in the in-school program so the office hours would be limited because we don't have more than that uh more than that amount of teachers unless we hired a few teachers for the virtual positions uh and then another question would be in this option um with this could this or did any of the models you looked at possibly include uh synchronous virtual instruction with um the with the students who are on site receiving uh the same virtual instruction as the students who are remote yeah um i think you'll see i believe you'll see an answer to that in our uh 100 virtual model with an option for drop-in labs okay all right thanks are there any other questions from the board on this one before i continue okay um so the next option that

019we know that we can run with fidelity is the virtual synchronous instruction with learning labs option so i'll go through on this second option um when we talk about the virtual considerations we have a lot of positives for this there are negatives to all of these um but for this particular model the negatives um are different than for the first one so for this one we would have all of our teachers uh virtually instructing in a synchronous manner with their students so students would have times online face-to-face with their teacher through our platform in addition to that we can offer learning labs at the school and those learning labs would allow our most vulnerable population and our students who need a safe place to be who need access to the internet and our special education

020populations the opportunity to still utilize our facilities in a way that would improve the equity of the situation we would be able to provide lunches through this model particularly for our students who rely on that food we'd be able to provide equitable internet access because our buildings would be open for students who were struggling with access at home we would be able to offer small group individualized virtual options particularly at our elementary level we would be able to offer targeted in-person special ed options um but there are some some negatives to this uh screen time for our youngest learners in particular um excuse me i tried to click on letting someone in uh so screen time for our youngest learners is a concern um and the availability of computers at identical time blocks for parents

021who have students in multiple levels in our education system um the way that this would look potentially and these these plans will have to be developed in conjunction with our teaching staff this is a rough idea of what an elementary schedule may look like students would have their morning meeting um they would have time to gather their materials and this is our pre-k and k that i'll go over but all of them all the grade levels have um opportunities for for these different aspects um then our our teachers would teach in um small groups perhaps um and those would be um uh grouped by um the teacher so we'd still have our our master teacher's input on who should be grouped for what um skills um students would still have their specials they'd have specials

022multiple times during the day and we do know that with this entirely virtual plan one of the considerations is that social interaction our students will not be able to have the same kind of social interaction that they would in a normal classroom when they're with their peers um and i don't think that's on the slide but i think that that's an understanding that that we all all know will happen students would have time for lunch and then in the afternoon for example here um students would have reading time specials small group math instruction um creative uh time to uh perhaps have a special maybe they'd have an art project that would be up to the teacher and then wrap up every day so this would be an example of an elementary plan at the secondary

023level students would also have the opportunity to have face-to-face instruction with their teachers um for several hours a day for example again we will work with our teachers in order to create a plan that meets the needs of our students and also abides with our cba so students would have synchronous time with their teachers every week every day throughout the closure so this is a an example of what that might look like um are there questions on uh this portion before i move on i'm going to talk a little bit about what those learning labs the concept of the learning labs is as well maybe i'll do that is it better if i do that first and then take questions from the board sure i'd like to learn about the learning labs first yeah okay

024great so our learning labs concept um is that we would have our buildings open for our most vulnerable populations we would have critical coverage for families we would be able to provide safety lunch we have some some different staffing options for this while our teachers were online teaching virtually synchronously with our students we have included in our discussions for for these ideas we've included our ilts teachers uh principals to really look at instructionally what's best for our kids and how we can meet all of their needs while providing an equitable opportunity for those for those students in our in our community who we know um are relying on us for some of those additional services so these learning labs will allow for some flexibility and for some equity and some access for students who who

025truly need it so can i answer questions about the model where we have virtual synchronous instruction and the learning lab opportunity i guess uh my main question is is for the learning labs who can and you might have already mentioned this but there's a lot of information here who will be in the learning labs to help with the students so um we have our teachers will be online teaching so we have ancillary staff like our restorative practice coaches our liaisons our community liaisons our our student support coaches we have staff that will be available to provide the coverage for those learning labs how will those students be selected or determined that qualifier can apply for the learning labs so should we choose to move down this route we'll develop some criteria for that with the

026principles um with the teachers uh with community members as well the idea the idea behind the learning labs concept is that we want to meet the needs that our community has said 25 of our parents have said that they definitely want to send their students back to school um so we we want to hear that part of our community and respond to those needs so the the logistics of the learning labs should we choose this um we'll work on the the criteria for for entry into the learning labs um and and some of that will be dependent on the building level as well whether it's elementary or secondary um so i think that's kind of where we're at with the with the concept yeah i have another question oh sorry go ahead um so it

027wouldn't be necessarily some um a student coming in for an entire day it would be somebody who would be coming in maybe for um a lunch or for help with a class or correct or tech help we anticipate that there will be significant tech needs um where students may not know how to actually get on the computer and we would be able to help with those types of issues okay or for because some you know there's been talk about socialization needs and so this might provide that in some instances it might um you know there's lots of opportunities for us to develop the the learning labs to be by appointment um by day we can meet the needs of what our community says says they need um through development of if we choose this route

028right um through through you know large input from the community okay thank you but in this model all of the instruction of the instruction would be online and there would be a significant amount of synchronous instruction okay so i understand that there's a lot to flesh out here um would there be in this if this model was selected an opportunity for the kids that needed like let's say for example a first grade student whose parent had as a single parent who's working with the learning lab be an option for an all-day educational process where they would do the synchronous their synchronous education online virtually but in a more of a safe environment without as many kids in the space is that kind of could be that could be an option for our lower levels yes

029and someone would be there to help them log on and get to the synchronous instruction so my question is um concerning special ed and like as far as the adult that is in the learning lab i want to make sure that whoever if we were to go with this route that we'd have someone there that would have like that would have like asd training and de-escalation and like all the appropriate training to make sure that our kids felt safe and supported and that it wasn't escalated and trauma wouldn't ensue you know yep um natalie do you want to jump in um for the special ed component yes please natalie are you on you're muted natalie natalie you need to unmute nope on my screen though the um microphone is showing up red as if you're

030muted now it's open now talk nope i think she had this problem the other night too yeah um maybe there you go hannah sorry can you try and unmute her because you can you and unmute yeah i'm i'm trying to find her we have a lot of people um so i'm scrolling through but i think we have um definitely over 100 people so i will find her natalie um are you able to unclick i see he's near the top now on my screen [Music] i if she's going to address this later when she talks about special ed i'm willing to wait i just want to make sure that that question gets answered yeah um i'm going to continue to try to find her in my list and we will move on but she she does

031have um answers we talked about it today so she's prepared to to discuss that um nick schultz just said that if she pushes down the space bar and talks that might work so give it a call natalie it did not work okay never mind okay um so will oh here's natalie um natalie you should be unmuted now she's gonna log in and out and try it again okay all right we'll come back to natalie um it shows on my screen that she's not muted but um natalie if you're plugged into a docking station you may not be able to um you're not plugged into a docking station okay we'll come back to that um soon as soon as uh as soon as we can does that sound okay could this be a problem with virtual

032synchronous instruction um natalie has solutions um for um the special ed students with that model okay um so our third option and i i want to be honest um this is um for our team the the least best option um it's it's the best option that we could come up with of the hybrid uh models that we looked at of the eight hybrid models that we looked at um but it really incorporates a significant logistical issues and equity issues so um i'll still go through it because i think it's important that our community sees that we do have many options so this is called the ab hybrid plus virtual asynchronous instruction and synchronous office hours so this one what this would look like um a positive of this is that so students would come in

033on an a b a b schedule with wednesdays to clean the buildings so students would be coming in to the buildings two days a week alternatively we could do a a cleaning day bb cleaning day which does make the cleaning easier because it's the same cohort we like this option because it provides real face-to-face time with teachers we can offer synchronous instruction but only to those students who are in the building we can offer lunch delivery options which is important for many of our students some of the difficulties that we see with this is again screen time for young learners what do we do with students who attend on the incorrect cohort day um and there's less face-to-face time than our five day per week option and students are still incurring contact risk so um

034that was a concern for us and then finally again um equitable access is is a problem with this model from equitable internet access um so that's sort of the overview of of how this would work um so can i answer any questions from the board about the a b hybrid option so i have a question so you're saying that if there's cohorts you can't have um students who are in person also have students who are online watch the same instruction yeah that's a great question um so we got some legal guidance and it's a ferpa violation to stream a classroom where there are students in the classroom whose names etc might be streamed to an outside source where we we can't ensure who's watching from the outside because if that were if we didn't have

035to worry about that ferpa issue it would be the perfect solution but it's such a logistical hurdle that there's really no way around it even if we just train the camera on the teacher it is a ferpa violation if we pick up students um voices okay does that answer the question it does thank you okay so i also have a question or a comment so the a b hybrid is really about keeping cohorts together well yeah the a b hybrid is about further reducing the amount of kids in the building at the same time which if if all of the kids were planning on attending in person it would successfully do but we already know that 50 of our families are likely to select online no matter what so that's one of the reasons that

036that this option um isn't isn't our best option in our opinion so i'm just trying to clarify something so the the other the point of the a b hybrid is really to keep cohorts together right so they're coming to school two days off three days and you're keeping the same kids moving together yeah um so that you don't have as much mixing of the kids and virus transmission so i just want to i just want to also put out there that this it doesn't cause it it prevents mixing in the school building but then those three days that the kids are out we have no control over right so absolutely that is correct we only have control when they're in the building we have zero control once they leave the building and that's the same

037with our five-day face-to-face instruction and that and that's one of the reasons that if we're gonna have any face-to-face instruction let's just have all of it so we can give our kids as much as possible rather than have this um pseudo reduction in mixing where where we know we don't have control even once they walk across the street so then i have another question about the ab and not a question more of a clarification so the teacher is still teaching both the a cohort and the b cohort correct so the teacher would be teaching the kids who are at the building on a days and teaching the kids who are at the building on b days and so that's why the virtual instruction would need to be synchronous because the teacher is still teaching in

038person to those students who are in the room and so we can't have a teacher in two places at once they can't be doing the virtual instruction and the in-person instruction but then at the same time the kids who are not in school like at the a cohorts they're out of school on wednesday thursday friday so they're doing the virtual they would be on the asynchronous virtual platform correct okay which means a teacher will be doing the same lesson potentially twice in a week that's correct they'll do the lessons for their a cohort and then they'll redo the lessons for their b cohort could the lessons be recorded for the students to watch um so uh we we did ask for for legal on that and we got the same ferpa issue that once that

039um that recording goes out if there's any student voice um then we're not within those guidelines okay thank you what if would that be true across the border could there be uh waivers don't we have media waivers for most students we do have media waivers um but those media waivers don't cover student educational records and what happens in the classroom is um sometimes what happens in the classroom is part of a student educational record so there's no such thing as a ferpa waiver there may be a ferpa waiver it is we can look into that yeah it's even most schools that are are looking into options um kind of the distance learning that we're all familiar with um you know in college we've had distant learning where um i know at my high school i

040took biology it was at another school i sat in a room but there was there was no it was i was opting into something that only i could view as a student and then seeing the lecture but no one was actually with the professor so it was 30 students zooming into it's basically the virtual option and and that's what we've seen as distance learning like 30 students opt into like a zoom call and then are able to see the professor do the lecture so it looks like he's teaching or she's teaching a class but it's it's like baseball there's nobody in the room it's like baseball with no fans it's just there's nobody actually there [Music] we got lots of spinach in the house babe okay um we've we thoroughly explored the eight hybrid options

041and there are these types of issues with every one of them this is our our best hybrid option and i i hope you can see that um the issues are concerning um we also looked at an am pm cohort um there are concerns with cleaning between the two i'm going to interrupt you johnny can you mute everybody so that if we want to talk we can unmute ourselves yeah i sure can thanks jackpot is going to finish the job downstairs i'm going to let him finish it he's going to do a saturday morning what is that green up there okay again just a second okay all right um so next um we do have some data to provide um to the board to take a look at some of the data points that we use

042to make some of these uh plans so here's our first one we had a very high response rate compared to what we normally get which i think shows the level of concern of anxiety of worry that parents have for their students so we had 1571 responses which is approximately half of our families responding um our normal survey tape rates are are nowhere near this so um i think this is is pretty good data um so around 50 said that they want a virtual option 25 said that they wanted an in-person option and um 25 are not sure yet which is fair um these are hard decisions and i think those those 25 wanted to see what the options that we're going to offer are potentially what were the period that the survey was open i'm

043sorry what were the days the survey was open bill can you answer the question um how long was the survey open for well mostly i want to know when it ended yeah you know when it started and ended because things have been evolving so much that yeah we had it open until just a couple days ago okay um and it opened this is our most recent survey so it's it this is recent data within the past week and a half i'm not sure of the exact date that it opened and closed but bill can bill can tell us about a week and a half that's good enough good cross reference of um buildings ages communities yeah so um we definitely took that into concern um and we have another um data point for that um

044you can see uh we surveyed each building um so the buildings have um different response rates that you can see here we also um called principals and asked them to call families that typically may be non-represented in surveys and to enter the survey data for those families while they were on the phone with them so that we had a true representative sample of all of our communities portions so um we're fairly confident that this data is representative of of all of our families of all four communities that are within our larger community um and of different ages um and schools um tom do you want to talk a little bit about accelerate and why we think this is probably our best option what it offers and what students and families can expect from uh interaction

045with us sure thanks johanna so as johanna said we've examined several online providers so that in whatever plan we move forward with families will have an option to go 100 virtual or if we start in person and then we have to close for a period of time we can be much faster in terms of you know continuing with the students education so we looked at several different programs we had oakland schools brought in several vendors we took a close look at education edmentum and edge annuity which some of you might know as e 2020. we really tried to look at the the courses that were offered and the the experience that the students would get we've settled on accelerate as our preference so i just wanted to give you a couple of touch points with

046what accelerate will provide for students and then what teachers will be able to do with it so for kindergartners through fifth graders every student will have courses in english math science social studies health and pe and then an art class the middle school courses will be the four core english math science social studies they'll also have health and pe options as well as world languages and some some typical middle school elective options high school students in addition to the the four cores will also have health and pe additional world language options several typical high school electives including career electives and included in the english math science and social studies offerings are several honors and ap courses you know so the the honors in the ap were unique to accelerate which made it kind of uh

047you know one of the the reasons that we went with accelerate next slide please and then so as far as what advantages it gives to the teachers and the parents um teachers will be able to edit the content so even though we have content provided the ferndale curriculum will still be our standard default curriculum so we're not just saying okay students do this accelerate course teachers will still be able to to control the content the order of the content they'll be able to add links to seesaw or google classroom they can add envision and journeys links those of you that already have students in the district might recognize envision and journeys as our math and elementary reading resource as well as discovery education which we're purchasing this year as well and then also we can

048link in to the accelerate through canvas which is a learning management system we can provide links for the district provided online resources such as ixl yeah so there's a lot more detail that we could go into like you ana said earlier but we just wanted to kind of give you kind of a a quick overview with with a few touch points and highlights of why we went with accelerate a couple of screen shots to kind of show you what it will look like for a student so when a student logs in and all k12 students will have the same what they call a landing page so when when your kindergartner or your 12th grader logs into canvas they will have a dashboard with tiles for all of their courses you would click on a tile

049and then it would open up the course students can can work on the the lessons next slide please sorry so here's just again a very quick snippet one one ela course so students would get a mini lesson and then they'd have some independent practice to work on so again very quick snapshot but that's kind of accelerate in a nutshell any questions from the board for tom how would this work in an all virtual platform would there be in the would there be real real time with the teachers incorporated with this platform is that the idea right yeah so so this is like so in a classroom you might have a teacher who hands out um an assignment on paper the teacher in the virtual classroom is going to hand out the assignment virtually um hang

050on just a second let me mute here thank you okay um so the the teacher may um pass out this assignment while they're all together in the classroom when would the training for this when does this get purchased when does the training start for the teachers will it be enough so that everybody's comfortable with it um so dania can talk about the purchase i'll talk about the training a little bit um uh the purchase and the training are kind of tied together so we would like if we decide to go this route we're looking to purchase quickly but the training we do have um scheduled time for our we have three days of dppd this year with our teachers at the beginning of the year we have already blocked off a significant amount of time

051of that for tech training additionally buildings have title-funded pd earlier um it's optional but most of our teachers attend and we will be utilizing some of that time at the building level for the tech training for teachers as well additionally we've talked with our tech consultant from oakland schools about creating a teacher library for for user friendliness for explaining how to do different things creating some videos and all of our weekly tech and twos for the first several probably months of school will focus on um and the usability of the program for teachers um a second component of this of course is training students so that our students can access this and should we decide to go with any of these routes we will be offering some training sessions potentially outside under tents for for

052students to come be connected to our wi-fi system at school and learn um how to log in how to do the the course how to um contact their teacher um how to log in to their virtual their virtual synchronous sessions and we will provide um a booklet and a guide for students and families so if i can jump in real quick sorry um anna just accelerate with the canvas is actually a potential purchase through gen net which is part of genesee isd and as part of the purchase they are going to provide as much pd as we would like and that pd obviously it can't start until we have an mou in place but genesee isd is actually starting their pd august 4th and they will run their pd throughout the entire month of august

053so in addition to all of the pb that johanna mentioned for teachers who are interested in uh you know kind of getting a head start there will be an option for that as well and that would be where would that be it would be virtual okay so okay was there another question there nope i was just running it through my head okay is there also an option of having um a learning session for parents as well i know i had a terrible time navigating yeah now we have definitely talked about the student training really what i meant was family training and family training could be done through genesis genesee county also yes no no they they did say that they would work with us on whatever pd that we wanted um but the conversations that

054we've had this week have kind of focused around ferndale staff providing the the family trainings i see okay and and just to clarify that the training from gen net is is on teachers using the platform to upload to select to curate their courses so that um side of the interface uh families won't need to see what families are looking for is how do i log in how do i get to my classes and how do i find my teacher i think okay all right and and one thing is is we want to be clear is that we understand that it's going to take time and training so it's not that august 31st first day of school we expect everything to we're going to take i mean the first four days of school are usually for

055social emotional curriculum building relationships obviously this will be included um the the reality is we there's a three-week lead time for them to be able to set up the system for our district so that's why um we have another meeting tomorrow to consider the approval um since uh you know all the information is given this evening so would teachers be getting that same kind of leeway and yes i mean where exactly we're going to be providing uh the training in a way where it's clear of based on the timeline of when genesee gets the system you know outdated we'll have a professional development calendar that's clear so everyone knows when parents are being trained when students are being trained when staff is being trained so everyone knows kind of this is when we're um you

056know this is where we're at i think okay um and and part of if we decide to go with the fully virtual option with the learning labs that will be an option for our learning labs we know there's going to be continued access issues for some families with how do i get in you know people have different different levels of tech skills so that would be another opportunity for us to provide long-term ongoing training for families who need it okay um natalie uh can we can we hear you this time can you hear me now yes we can wonderful thank you great oh you sounded like a horizon commercial um yeah so i'm back to the question we'll just if it's okay with everyone we'll jump back to you discussing learning labs and the potential

057for special ed options yes absolutely so the learning lab is really a little bit of a different concept than the in-person special education instruction um you know we know that our students in special education were disproportionately negatively impacted um you know for this student population we really need that in person time to really be able to best meet their needs and and ensure that all of our students are making that educational you know really meaningful educational progress even you know and considering the complex circumstances that we have that is stellar obligation that's still our commitment so understanding what the needs of of our student group is we know that we need that in-person instruction component so it's different from learning labs in that these will be the building special education teachers who are teaching the

058students it will be targeted based on the level you know whether we're talking about early childhood or elementary or secondary and it will also be targeted and individualized based on the type of programming so our students with the most significant disabilities are our students who you know are in what we would call a self-contained type of special ed classroom or environment that's when students are spending most of their school day within that special ed setting for those students i i am really you know we're working johanna had mentioned um and working through details and working with the union and with the teacher group but i would really be looking for you know probably a good solid three or four days for those students to be in person so it's different in that it is still

059taught by the special education teachers and it's different because although students with ieps you know will to whatever extent the greatest extent possible participate within that accelerate k-12 content program you know these um the special education providers will help to make that accessible but in addition they will receive that specialized targeted instruction to address what those learning gaps or those learning needs are and that's what would be done in that in person component so that is the broad overview and then students with an iep may also choose parents may choose also to um you know as appropriate and as a team still is appropriate and parents you know based on their preference in their needs we can also look at students participating within those learning labs but that would not be instead of the special

060ed component that would be in addition to and i think the question had come up earlier how would we support our students with ieps within that learning lab um so that would be something that we would look at on an individual basis but if we needed to build in supports for a student who needed to be doing that um you know that that k through 12 accelerate curriculum within those learning lab days you know we would look at how to do that for each individual student so that gives i hope a overview of what we would be looking at for provision of special ed programs and services but again it is all individual based on a student's needs so our teachers our teams will be working with parents to really develop what that looks like

061so it's not a predetermined you know one kind of you know here's two options and um everyone needs to fit within those that is not at all what special education is about so we you know to the greatest extent possible i want to be able to maximize in a safe way that in-person instruction and also to be able to individualize supports all right thanks for that uh natalie i'll probably have more questions again later but that was good for like the learning lab thank you okay so i have a question about accelerate it's not just a learning management from what i'm understanding it's not just a learning management system it's also curriculum embedded into it correct sorry for not being more clear canvas is the learning management system accelerate is the curriculum content so that

062uh so if the board adopts passes pays for accelerate we're ultimately changing our curriculum no no no sorry the the the purpose of accelerate is to uh kind of lessen the burden on teachers so that they don't have to create online lessons every single day we would still be following ferndale curriculum but teachers would have the ability to pull lessons in from accelerate to to supplement what they're providing online so that instead of a teacher having to create an instructional video to you know talk about solving a quadratic equation they could pull in the lesson from accelerate and then have you know their own independent practice or or synchronous conversation with the students does that make any more sense yes but but the curriculum and accelerate is like the whole curriculum for a particular course

063though correct it and it is common core aligned for math and ela k-12 to further clarify the expectations for teachers would not be oh great here's my algebra one course let me just download the 50 assignments that are in here to my classroom and i'm good to go instead what we would expect is that they are still using the resources that they typically use but the resources that aren't electronic that they may use in a classroom they would be able to pull a version that is for that particular lesson from a bank that already exists so just playing devil's advocate but there's nothing stopping a teacher from using what's ever in the curriculum current launch already unless someone's actively monitoring and that's where we'll lean on the administrators yes your wonderful administrative team yeah you

064know that i would expect that johanna and i would be part of of all of these online classes and we'd have access through canvas so we can we can monitor and make sure and go ahead you know the same thing could happen in in a brick and mortar classroom you know a teacher could just hand out a workbook and say all right guys this is your lesson every day for the rest of the semester um so you know that would be sort of the electronic version of that happening so that's where our expectations our training our um you know our administrative team um our teacher leaders our coaches in our schools will will be able to uh mitigate that so i have one more i like to ask the hard questions so i haven't seen

065accelerate and we have this new um resolution that we just passed has someone looked at like is there a pop is there a way for higher ups like johanna and tom is there a way for you to restrict access to certain lessons like if there's something in there that we know we don't want teachers have access to period is there a way to do that not that i'm aware of but i can definitely ask genesee isd about that but on the flip side of that teachers will have access to to multiple levels of content so if i'm an algebra 2 teacher and i know my students didn't master factoring quadratics from algebra 1 teachers will be able to to reach into other courses to to make sure that students have the content that they need

066but as far as restricting i'll have to check on that you know i think um similar to a brick and mortar classroom like we have really great professionals we trust them um that's why we hired them um our staff works hard for our students um and and just like they would in a classroom they will be doing the same thing online this is just um a tool that already exists similar to teachers pay teachers you know sometimes it's the night before a quiz you don't have a great quiz written so you go on teachers pay teachers and you spend a dollar and you buy the quiz that you would have written yourself um this is this allows teachers to do that uh in a virtual environment i totally trust our teachers i just wanted to

067make sure that we were all that it was clear of what the product is that's being discussed yeah yeah i agree yeah and especially with the ability to bring in other um materials which of course they could always a teacher could always add to it uh especially in the you know in the areas of english or uh social studies or things like that where we want to make sure that we're providing access to diverse authors diverse perspectives and points of view yeah and um you know this isn't entirely different than particularly what our secondary students are used to we are a google district and google has what we like to call an lms lite um it's not a real learning management system but students have been in virtual environments with our teachers already and our

068teachers are used to linking different virtual content in in a virtual environment but canvas is definitely a step up and has a lot more capabilities because it is a real learning management system so that's one of the the real benefits of of this um this platform that we selected and um one more question for me is this platform uh canvas and accelerate uh applicable to the virtual synchronous option or the or is it only the uh in person with virtual asynchronous so the proposal that i'll be sharing tomorrow is that we purchase canvas and accelerate for every every student at ferndale lower ferndale upper ferndale middle ferndale high school and university high school so it won't matter every student will have access okay um and then what about uh um i think there was a

069slide on this but it went but uh i'm trying to absorb as much of information as possible so i apologize if this is redundant but um i remember world languages but what about uh in the in the all virtual option with the learning labs what what about uh since i had a student who was most interested in visual arts um what about arts and and uh music education what happens there uh we've had several discussions um at the district level about how to offer those virtually um there are some good models for um things like choir band um utilizing zoom platforms or other um connection platforms where schools have had some real success um but that that to be honest with you that's going to be part of the development plan once we pick what

070we're doing once we pick what we're doing that will be probably one of the very first things that we focus on is exactly how to do specific courses okay but the arts in ferndale are um one of our pride you know it's a pride and joy in ferndale so that's something that we've talked with um the um music department already we have um some some studies on if we're in person what does that mean do we need to bag instruments do we need to be outside those kinds of um discussions but then if we're if we're virtual what does that look like what are the expectations but with synchronous instruction students can still join together for a synchronous virtual choir class for example are there any more questions at this point from the board or

071should i move on is it okay to move on i think we have a lot of questions but go ahead and move on all right so yeah we're actually at the the final um end here i'm gonna turn it over to dania um to discuss what what our final recommendation is and then we can discuss and have questions and go from there if that is acceptable is that okay so johanna if you could just if you could put as in the backdrop i um to refresh the presentation i did add the uh iep data with with i think i have to go in and out because i added the slide um so yeah you'll have to yep okay uh if yeah if you could play it that's i'm sorry yeah i'm just uh my i

072gotta move some things around on my screen here we go there we go uh so this this shows you um we have about a 10 to 12 percent or no 12 special education population in in the district um this is this shows you the breakdown of how many people you know prefer um virtual versus in person it's it's interesting as as they get older you see it at the early childhood center there's there's more of a leaning towards in person but as you go up through the grade levels it's pretty consistent with that of um the students without an iep so that that's the data that was asked for we we had pulled it and and taken a look at it but um there it is uh for you also people have asked i've seen

073on the chat people have asked if we're going to be posting this presentation we certainly will post it to the website and make sure that you can take a deeper look at it on your own time uh so getting back to the um you know the decision to go to school or to to hybrid or virtual i can tell you this has been uh there's been a lot of discussion with staff administrators the board in terms of what's best for kids you know unfortunately in this situation i don't think there's a solution that answers all of our questions and meets the need of every student there's there's a cost um for each of the decisions that we might make and we don't take that lightly uh it's been again very difficult because i've been hearing

074from every side people who who would recommend hybrid people would recommend in person people would recommend 100 virtual all of them valid points and we could make the argument for any any model during this time ferndale schools has always committed that students and staff safety is is our number one priority we are in the midst of a pandemic that's been unpredictable uh that has taken the lives of of many people so it's just we're in a situation where this we cannot take this slightly obviously we believe that instruction is best done in person i think i think during the closure there was there was always an appreciation for teachers in ferndale public schools we're a very lucky community to have people who understand the importance of education but you know across the state i think

075there's a newfound um appreciation for teachers and we certainly appreciate ours so in making a recommendation to you you know we believe at this point where we're at with the data in terms of the capacity of the buildings the size of the buildings the safety of our students and staff we are we are recommending a full virtual plan to start the school year which you know is not easy to do a school is very lonely without students but we have to rethink our educational model during this time it's not to say that there's not hope will be back what i would recommend and the team what we would recommend to the board is to go virtual through october 31st with to you know with the decision to revisit on october 30th to see where the

076data is at and where we are at with the vaccine in terms of development product development in that area you know again we cannot risk the staff and students safety i don't know what i would do or the staff would do if somebody were to become ill or it would be spread you know i just just the other day kept going back and forth in my own mind of what's best for kids and then i hear the marlins baseball team 17 of 30 people were infected you know these are multi-billion dollar organizations who have the capability to create a bubble so to speak we we do not have that ability you know and we have to admit that we don't have the ability um to ensure that it will not spread so would we rather

077start the school year a week into a two weeks into and perhaps have a positive test and then create chaos to then flip to a virtual model that's where the difficulty comes in so again we have had long discussions uh about this uh we have talked johanna worked extensively with our principals and our instructional lead teachers to have these discussions we've surveyed the community you know it seems to be that that's the direction that everybody is leaning in so just to be uh and this is the virtual with the learning lab so virtual taught by homedale teachers with learning labs for the students that need it that is correct okay so i i have a question about that learning labs and it was touched on a little bit earlier but um previously we've had sac

078and for parents who are working outside of the home would learning labs have extended hours potentially for parents who need that child care opportunity um so there there actually is a potential that sat could run um in and of itself um we've been meeting with other districts in oakland county um and we're waiting for guidance from the isd on on providing sac potentially um there are there are some districts that are offering um some type of hybrid model or they're considering offering a hybrid model and then also offering sac um so you know i think that would be a discussion that would that we could have um and maybe some board direction the concerns with offering sac again are the the secondary mixing of groups uh you can't cohort the kids um the same way

079that that you can in a school um unless we had just a absolutely massive staff to do it with but for the learning labs we could look at at different options for hours for drop-in times for sign up options really based on what our parents are saying that they need we we want to be able to provide what our community needs and we know that there are disparate needs based on who's in our community and we have to listen to everybody um and don you're sorry jim before you go on can we end the screen time so we can see everybody again on the screen sure thanks sorry jim did me to interrupt you no that's helpful um what when you said october donya that's just to revisit yeah yeah yeah sorry i don't know

080not too many of the uh public health professionals expect october to be much different because it's that realistic expectations for everyone this is going to go on until next summer i i don't disagree with that i i'm just holding out hope so that october first we can we can assess the situation and then obviously if if we feel it's still not safe we continue as is and it might we you know evaluating where we're at it might work well to go through first semester anyways and maybe hold out the hope for second semester and we'd be open to that as well yeah my question along the lines of doing an october hope date is would that put too much pressure on the staff to try and formulate two different models or if we just said

081we're going to do one semester for sure virtual and allow everyone to really focus 100 on what that's going to look like and make sure that the core is met the teachers are up to speed we can get in the specials how we need to special education is where we need it to be i'm just worried about stretching everyone too thin it's already hard enough to do to work in this virtual world but to have everyone try and figure out two plans like if we came back to school the the students are still going to be assigned like a master schedule as they normally would so you transition back but with your devices and transition slowly from that online to inline world but i i agree with you and jim it's it's it's it's more

082probable that that it's not going to occur so okay yeah i i like i like the the hope of having kids in school um but i understand that the it's just you know the odds are again are not in our favor i don't think it's wise to put an october date out there what they're looking at as far as a um a spike a secondary spike would be november december and they're based on what if you look at um how people are reacting to any further shutdowns or masking or social distancing nobody's taking not nobody but there's a fair amount of people who are not taking that seriously i don't see that those numbers are going to be coming down i would anticipate that we're probably going to see increases in in this so to

083to give anybody the hope that maybe october would happen and i know i know dr bazi you wanna you would rather not have to do this i know and it breaks your heart i know but um i think that we do have to be i've been looking at this through the many lenses that i've had over my lifetime i've been a respiratory therapist so i've worked in critical care in hospitals i've been a teacher i've been a mom a grandma um i've i've worn a lot of hats and looking at this whole covered thing i don't see that there's any way to safely and um punch with in good conscious conscience bring kids back into a building right now i i just don't um unless it was you know the the mod the modifications that

084we could make with small groups of kids coming in but um it would be i've heard people call it immoral and i i feel that that strongly that we need to go virtual and assume that it will be for the first semester completely i understand i'm in agreement so i'm with you too anna this has been keeping me up at night yep and lots of tears so yeah i hear i hear you because um there are you know the the most we don't always hear and especially in the media um um or what gets passed around from other people on social media but we have heard from people in our district who readily acknowledged the the trade-offs here and the fact that uh like donya said every all the options have some kind of uh

085real human cost and um you know i worry about i worry about equity in terms of kids that don't have enough uh resources or the right spaces to learn online i also worry about kids that are at risk from more complications from the virus whether they have asthma or they live in large households and the virus is just going to spread around uh spread around the house more easily because they pick up something at school it's it's a difficult decision and the district has the job of figuring out what overall is best for kids what we can do to make sure that our our uh whole team the staff have you know the resources they need to do the best job that they can do for kids and also stay safe themselves now what i

086what i have and this is this dream in my head is that because the ferndale school district with its four cities um there is a lot of creativity and i think about how could we give those at-risk kids and by at risk i'm talking about the kids who need to be socialized who need to have um [Music] who need to have company how do we as the adults in our our community how do we make that happen for kids can we have playdates at parks um with small groups of kids everybody masking have four kids together is there a way that a community group could do that um it's not education but it's it's not book learning education but it's education um are there stop gaps that we can we can put together because this

087even though we feel like this pandemic is gonna go forever and ever it's not i have faith um so are there things that we can be thinking about doing to pick up the slack in the other areas so just thoughts out there i think we'll look at creative ways to connect with students um when it's safe to do so right i yeah i know i know families have been connecting in small groups uh but certainly there we will look to be uh innovative during this time and set up outlets for for students to have some interaction again in a safe and meaningful way so how does the district um the plans for we've seen a lot about what the plans are for teachers and students but additional staff whose families are going to be at

088home as well because their school will be teaching online and virtual what are the expectations for our staff do they also have the ability to work from home because their their children are home so johanna do you want to take that or you want me to no i can um so um our plan and um just to clarify the question do you mean for uh staff who would be potentially staffing are learning labs that that type of staff yes as well as like um supporting staff like in enrollment or administrative support some of the little ancillary positions that are aren't directly teachers but also work in our district yeah um so you know i i think our practice up until this point has been that if you can work from home then you can work

089from home um and that's that's that's what we've had um all along um certainly there are positions that that require um in-person um you know in an in-person mode such as our custodial staff they have to be at the building to clean it um but wherever possible we want to be flexible fair kind with our employees keep our employees safe you know employee safety is at the heart of making our district run if employees don't feel safe they leave and we can't have that because we have good teams so um you know in terms of of the staffing that we do need in in the buildings um we will look for those who who can't be and potentially see if there's a different job that that they may be able to do um but you

090know our intention is is to survey staff um to follow all of the um guidelines from um our hr department um to allow for staff to have the flexibility that they need where possible donna did you want to add it yeah one thing is we we really have to work we got to work through a lot of the logistics of that in terms of of some of that but i agreed that for those who can work at home you certainly will there will be cases whether we're busing students to learning labs and we need to provide you know to allow kids in a socially distant safe way to come to the learning labs we have to look into that obviously with food services we have to still be able to service you know our breakfast

091or i'm sorry our lunch program that so that kids can eat and again we want to connect that to our learning lab so that is coming to the building to go to the learning lab they have the opportunity to eat lunch so it's going to be dependent like we have to work with we have five bargaining units in the district and we have to have those like into the the specifics of that we have to work with each of the negotiating groups to come to an agreement um again i talk about things like at a building i we didn't have to tell our secretaries to come in check on the building clear out the mail send invoices because bills are still coming through the mail and things like this they they did those things so

092we will be explicit but we need to have conversations with them about the expectations and the parameter in terms of returning to work in a safe way for necessary tasks but if we do the all virtual and allow us greater flexibility in order to provide those safeguards for the staff the essential staff that needs to be in the buildings and then we can do temperature checks um there's not going to be groups of of people will be able to clean the the high touch point areas we'll have we'll have the ability yes to to make sure that things are much safe because a number of us for example in central office we've been coming to work all summer and there's there's about 15 to 20 of us but we're coming in at various times various

093days where i am i am usually always wearing a mask but i'm alone in my office uh but you know we've put in safeguards to ensure that we're safe and and i don't want to jinx us but you know not we've we've all been safe and responsible in terms of of keeping one another healthy i'm really to answer your question further it would there would be such a small amount of staff in the building that that we would be able to be a lot more flexible with with who that is people who are high risk we wouldn't select for those positions we could we could look at a volunteer basis for those positions rather than forcing our entire teaching staff to come in i'm uh i feel like um you know like like dr bezzy

094said there are downsides to each decision and i feel uh like those are really serious downsides and i just want to acknowledge that um [Music] i feel like there's there's as is as hard as as you know the learning labs sound great um and i'm sure a lot of work is going to go into that but i guess i can't i can't uh i feel like i can't say strongly enough how important it is to um make sure that our students uh who have serious who have all kinds of needs that are met through school um social needs really important adults in their lives um sustenance uh socially and through uh nutrition and everything that comes with school uh i just i i i want to implore the district implore the staff um to really

095identify um kids that would be falling through the cracks and really think creatively about um what can be done to engage engage all of our students i uh sounds like my father my fellow board members like that i like the idea of revisiting it in october i don't want to i i think we should i know the forecasts aren't good now but i think we should we should revisit it revisit it in october um those are some of my thoughts so i don't disagree with you mike i think we should revisit it in october but i think we should the plan should be that we commit to at least one complete card marking like whatever that is like quarter one we commit that we're gonna do this for quarter one and revisit in october so

096that at least if we are making a change it's at a it's at a decent break like it's not in the middle of the middle of something else right like it's not like week four which is halfway through order one sure so and just to clarify that i mean i'm not opposed either i think we should always keep all options on the table make sure that we're keeping tabs on things but if we revisit it in october would that mean that we're considering reopening at the second semester are we talking about we need to start considering whether or not we're going to reopen for a hybrid or for in person in october because it seems like that conversation should probably then start the day after we vote on a resolution on a proposal the recommendation

097was to to revisit it like october 1 and then to continue virtual through october 31st so then if the decision was made like october 1 evaluate and i again i'm picking october 1 it could be a week before a week after october 31st takes us through friday of halloween then that monday to make the whatever that monday is the third november third then you know at the beginning of october we determined we'd have a month to determine are we gonna head back in or not you know but we should all have a celebration hopefully on on november 4th right just throw that out there yes well our school buildings will be voting locations on november 4th oh yeah we don't have school that day i forgot so we advise us another day yeah i i

098like the idea of revisiting in october i think that there will be districts that are open for september so i mean on unfortunately or unfortunately i don't know there will be a lot of data that we can and that we'll we'll be able to see where other districts maybe have misstepped by opening up and maybe learn from their mistakes i mean that's a dire outlook interesting i mean it's it really is gonna it is gonna be interesting and uh i wish them success and and good health i really do but oh for sure yeah i'm also very worried at the same time yeah i just want to clarify one more time so yes we're all on board with revisiting in october but what are we committing to when we vote are we committing to just

099online until october are we committing to a card marking or are we committing to a semester because i think if we tell parents that yeah we're going to start online but in the middle of your like as you get used to being online we might flip the script and say come on into school like i think we need to give people a definitive this is what we're doing for semester one but we will continue to re-evaluate in the process yes i think that we need to go through like a a like a card marking have it be a specific chunk as well yeah i i don't think we we don't have mid-card markings and things like this i guess if we're willing to revisit it i would recommend the board approving going virtual through october

10031st and then at the september board meeting deciding because it's end of september you know having a meeting near the end of uh september then the board extending that or not beyond that point oh i'm gonna push back again because we're not committing to a sub a semester that makes our high schoolers and our middle schoolers like in this freakish point because you don't get credit if you only do 10 weeks of a semester and that you're you're put you're giving you're not we're not being clear to parents that yes this is what we're committing to so parents are going to be stressed already for the ones who are getting used to online and then saying that we now that you're used to it oh it's safe now come in like i think we need

101to give more of a secure like this this is where we are for semester one i don't think a quarter is enough especially when you're talking about secondary kids and credit involved all right that's fair it's okay again [Music] yeah i think we need to have a specific time period i mean things are always changing and fluid but we need to have some something that we can count on yeah then i recommend through first semester okay i'm more comfortable with that yeah that's good that works i will i will i will go along with the will of the board on that imagine we're going to be monitoring it every every time we get together yeah yes so at this point again i i know there was i'm looking at the chats a little bit there's

102a lot but there's some question of the is the plan being approved today the plan is not the the plan is to have the plan approved on august 6th we wanted to get you know we want to make sure that we had a chance to listen to everyone have the community town hall yesterday we have obviously we've mapped out kind of all three in a sense but now we can go into more of the detail i'll make sure that johanna saves you know the chat as well so we can go through a lot of the comments and make sure that we're answering a lot of those questions so that's that's the point of of today am i clear from the board in the sense of um that we should create a virtual plan that's robust

103that takes us through her first semester what you know what why don't we uh why don't we listen to public comment and um and then we said we were gonna come back uh anyway so um let's move to item three the public comment that was uh moved from earlier and then um and then we'll discuss that again so uh so this is the opportunity for public comment in our board meeting um it's the opportunity for members of the public to address the board um i imagine most of the comments will be about this but it could be about anything um related anything that the person wishes to say um please introduce yourself and um each person will have three minutes and i think uh i will uh did you want one to be the time

104keeper yeah uh who can do that okay sandra you be the time keeper um each person will have three minutes and uh sandra how are you gonna give some how are you gonna give a virtual high sign to somebody that they're uh close to being out um i i could put a hand up or i could just say i can interrupt them and say you have i think something like that 30 seconds or something um i'll interrupt them until they have 30 seconds which will actually be like okay thank you so um if you'd like to address the board please uh unmute yourself and uh introduce yourself and uh we'll listen to everybody so um [Music] go right ahead hi can you guys hear me yeah okay so my name is vail i'm a parent

105and i just i don't have um a completely formulated opinion on one side or the other i'm an advocate of being a contributing member of deciding um the best practice and the best way to develop as dr bazi said a robust plan to return um what i do just want to frame for this discussion is i find the judgment of either side to be um deafening and we truly are all in this together and if parents are leaning towards sending their child back or parents are leaning towards virtual or they're leaning towards hybrid please don't infuse the judgment and the term immoral was used earlier and i just find that to be um really we're dealing with this as parents with young children at home right now in real time and none of this is

106easy we have children with special needs we are parents working full time we are sharing dining room tables while kids are learning parents are trying to keep their jobs none of this is easy my biggest frustration with all of this is the parental judgment and the tone behind it i want to welcome parents to share and have ideas and be a community and stop fighting each other i avoid facebook at all costs because of this it's fine that we have differing opinions it's fine that we have differing circumstances that's what makes this community beautiful this could make us or this could break us so i don't have i'm not here to state an opinion of what i'm doing with my child i'm on here to say please let's just have a reasonable community-minded conversation and

107please leave the judgment at the door nobody has time or energy for that i love you all i love this community i'm invested and it's okay that we disagree that's all i want to say thank you bill hi i guess i will jump in my name is sylvia oatley and i am a parent at um ferndale upper elementary i first of all wanted to thank our administrative team for the q a session yesterday i sent a um a whole list of questions and they were very thoroughly answered so thank you very much for all of that um i came in to this just being ready to spew a whole bunch of stuff and stand up for our teachers and i am very thankful that i don't have to say what i had typed up because

108um i hear you doing what is i hear you trying to work with your staff as best as you can and i am appreciative of that so um we may not all agree with like val said we may not all agree with the the final decision of where things are going to go but i appreciate your flexibility and your desire to um find use both and thinking instead of either or thinking and so i love the idea of learning labs i think that that will really help our students who need extra support um i'm an educator in a different district and that's a very similar proposal that i worked on with our reopening committee so um very thank you sylvia like i uh i see that there's people using the raise hand feature and the

109chat oh i don't know anything about raising me look teach me um [Music] i don't see are there uh there are no raised hands at the at the moment there were raised hands cheryl you want to speak there are people in the chat who said they were signed up to go next so like there's a kenton mackey no so okay mr mackey uh sandra do you maybe want to call uh okay i apologize it was just my suggestion to use the chat as a forum to sign up but i didn't know there was a raised hand feature um i do want to say that i wasn't planning on speaking but since i've already embarrassed myself mr mickey can you introduce yourself yes a university high school teacher so i do want to commend the board

110because the words that i keep on hearing as you are speaking and as you were presenting are the words teachers students um i do uh support the october return i think our teachers are fantastic have time to prep their online curriculum and then reassess so thank you for thinking outside of the box as ferndale always does thank you kenton so i think shirl was next hi um i'm cheryl yepo i have a senior this year um as well as a incoming eighth grader so i i applaud both the board and administration it's it's not an easy task of what you are um faced with and i appreciate all the information um i appreciate the fact that i will be able to look at this later on and and really review it but um i did

111have a question i that wasn't clear i wasn't clear about grading i mean i have a senior so i'm not exactly sure how um we will move through his senior year i'm i'm interested in some of the more i mean i realize that senior year can be very fun and very very nervous whatever but i'm you know he's you know i'm not sure what he will face and and i need to plan for that so at some point i would like to hear some information about our our seniors and and how we're going to uh grade their work um and also give them you know the their their senior year experience understanding that our seniors um just in march uh and through june didn't have uh what we normally have but that's that's kind of

112me looking ahead for my son thank you um i can answer that question um so um part of that will be in in our further plan development there are several options on the table for grading when we talk about grading we want to make sure that we're not grading for compliance and we want to make sure that we're always looking through an equitable lens for student grading it's a really easy place to penalize students who don't have equitable access um so we want to definitely stay away from that because we see that ahead of time so some of the options that we're looking at and we will be working with our with our teachers to develop the full grading plan but is allowing for student choice um we know that some students they want those

113a's they're counting on them for scholarships they they need them we also know that other students have different circumstances and we want to be mindful of those circumstances as well so we may um look at opportunities for students to choose a grading path or track maybe even at the classroom level that will allow some equity for all of our students and it will also allow students and their families to choose really what's most important for them and what they need for their futures so the the plan will be coming but but that's kind of where thinking is headed right now hope that helps i appreciate that thank you i think that's it in the chat of people who said that they wanted to have a comment unless there's someone else um i do my name

114is erin molnar i'm not on video um my kiddos are little they are going into first fives and second grade this year um so my comment particularly pertains to their age group um [Music] i'm very concerned about a full virtual option for a five-year-old the just turning five-year-old in particular um they don't learn by sitting in front of a computer they learn by interacting and particularly learning social skills is so important at this age and i'm not faulting anybody for deciding that an of all virtual option is the way to go um but i think particular care and thought needs to be given to how we're going to make it work for our youngest learners because that's super unclear to me still after having seen the meeting yesterday and what you presented today i i

115just don't see how this is going to work for a five-year-old um in particular and then you know for the screen time thing i guess i wonder if particularly if we have synchronous um learning with a full virtual option is there any flexibility in that for parents who you know don't want their seven-year-old sitting in front of a computer for eight hours or you know mine has executive functioning issues he he can't stay attentive to to a screen for that long and his behavior is affected so um i guess what what might be some of the flexibility within the synchronous learning um even like a shorter school day or something for the young kids or just how are their social emotional and particular needs for their age range going to be met and i don't

116know that you have an answer to this right now but just an ask to think about it and then potentially inform parents of these aged children kind of more specifically what the plan will be for them um we do have um not a complete plan but we do have some answers and some research that we've looked at for our youngest learners what we know is that eight hours on a computer screen for any learner is not going to work so we've done some research on screen time guidance and converting a real life experience into a virtual experience and and the average for that is um that if you spend two hours doing something in person you should be spending only one hour doing that online um and so uh the the potential example schedules that

117we share there's lots of time offline for students to be exploring um playing having their recess time at home so for our youngest learners and for our oldest learners they will not be spending uh 7.2 hours a day staring at the screen they will be interacting on on those schedules and there will be breaks built in and for our youngest learners they will also have time to be a when they are synchronous with very small groups so there will maybe be six kids with the teacher um and and from our research we know that large online synchronous classrooms don't work well for our youngest learners so we've built in some of that modular time where the teacher will be online for an hour and a half but the students will only be in small groups

118for portions of that time for example i hope that that answers uh part of your question um the as i as i said earlier um we have not yet met with our with our teaching staff to fully develop what that calendar will look like but for our little bitties um our tiny ones that is a major concern for us as well so we will work to make a flexible schedule where they have time to be kids i think nick was next yes hello uh my name is nick schultz and this is my wife carrie randall we have uh a child going into upper elementary and a child that's going to be in kindergarten we actually both have questions so i'll try to squeeze them both in the three-minute time so did you want to start

119with yours yeah mine is um to piggyback on what erin said um so i really appreciate the the take that johanna has um in terms of breaking up the day and making sure younger kids have those different modes of um learning during the day the problem of course is that we tend to have meetings all day and so if that requires putting a child online pulling them off having them do something else putting them back on essentially being tech support um for that child on top of helping them learn i think that there may be um some kids sort of lost along the way and i know that's something you're considering um i just i want to kind of reiterate it because um you know we don't have special needs students we have um kids

120that are just regular kids that have a hard time focusing and um who don't understand technology that well at this age and actually i know that let me ask my question in there as well and then maybe you can answer both of those so just my question is just for upper elementary um i know that they i had thought that they started world languages excuse me world languages curriculum i think someone in the chat had said that they have spanish i just saw that in the accelerate slide for upper elementary i didn't see anything that said world languages so i just was curious if that was going to be offered forever so um those are both our questions thank you okay um so for world languages it is not offered through accelerate but there are

121multiple programs um that we will work with our foreign language staff to look at options um they're they're not big purchases um for for world languages for um that level so um that that is still part of our ongoing plan um and then in terms of of of tech support i think that's where the learning labs could be helpful um for um for for drop-in help for scheduled time in the learning labs we want to be flexible with parents i too was was working and had my kids next to me in what i called their cubicles and and it's difficult um and their cubicles of course had no walls really they were just right next to me so i understand the struggle of working parents and having kids at home and and them not not

122really understanding what they need to do and and how traumatic this has been for families so we definitely want to alleviate some of that um and and part of what our plan for our learning labs is is potentially to help with that um the the language issue is is not a huge concern because there's many options out there for us to look at we just haven't had time to look at which one yet i hope that's somewhat of an answer yes thank you and also i wanted to say that i know this is very difficult and i think you all are taking in many data points and doing the best yeah it's not it's not criticism it's just you know [Music] so many pros and cons to every option so thank you i'm glad that

123i'm not in your shoes thank you for all your mindfulness and deliberation thank you uh lucy p has a hand up i bet that's me this is actually kerry for my daughter lucy's ilya um hi everybody can you hear me okay um you're breaking up i'm having a difficult time hearing you oh am i here can you hear me now it's a little challenge it's a little challenging but we can hear you okay thank you everyone um this has been you know heartbreaking [Music] uh great meeting um i've been waiting for this movie today it's been a lot covered that's gonna be really helpful to spread the word i have two questions um a lot of the chat in the chat tonight was about why can't teachers elect to either teach totally in person or

124totally virtually so that when their classrooms and or pods are allowed to come back into school they've already their relationship um and also it's her outdoor class opportunities when the water allows and will teach to have santana needs to decide if they can meet up once a week for an hour um to the discretion of their classroom um i had some difficulty hearing so i i think i got them i'm just gonna reiterate the questions um the first question i think was why can't we split um teachers into online teachers and classroom teachers and the second question was about outdoor opportunities is that is that correct she said yes okay right okay so um we have looked into outdoor classrooms into purchasing tents looking for outdoor options for our students should we be in school

125and it works well until until it's michigan um and so um certainly for september and october it would it would function well um but come november december january um the weather becomes an issue but we we have looked into you know we have a large football field we have outdoor spaces that teachers will be able to utilize if we are in session um but then uh the second question is is a little bit more lengthy um of a logistical answer but i think i can do it justice um which is why can't we split teachers who want to teach in person and teachers who want to teach um online um so so we operate with our teachers um under our collective bargaining agreement which has class size limits um so uh what what in effect

126would end up happening is the teachers who were at school would still need to have potentially 30 students in their classroom um because we can't give those kids to the online teacher because then they have too many kids in their room um so then we wouldn't be able to meet the social distancing guidelines at all for the students who were in classrooms because they'd have the same number of kids as they would anytime if we reduce the amount of kids in the classroom by half then we need another teacher for that for that half of the kids uh because our online teachers would be online with this with the students who were who were scheduled um with them um we're uh very precise with our staffing levels um and we work um you know within

127within a bargaining agreement with our our teachers so um that one's um a logistical issue i hope that answers the question johnny did you want to add anything to that yeah i just wanted to add you know that a lot of people are asking for teacher perspective and i love teachers i know they're trying to to stay neutral and and support what the district is doing but the overall feel in terms of talking to the the ferndale education association president and looking at you know surveys that we've done internally you know the majority of the staff would feel safer uh starting the year online again that's not to say they don't want to be in the classroom they do and as i said they're not i can't speak to exactly why they're not speaking up

128you know they're not saying anything right now but you know they're the staff we have are the type that say okay what do we have to do to ensure student success and safety and let's go so um i'm kind of speaking for them but not really but all the data that we've um gathered has been consistent with the discussions with the board of education and the community everyone seems to be again there's not everyone agrees a hundred percent um but there there is that is the overwhelming majority based on the data we've collected i think she had one more question if we're doing and she can correct me if i'm wrong in the chat if we were if we're doing a hundred percent virtual continue like to do uh a meet up a week or

129something oh yeah i i i'm cut out for that um that's not something that uh we have disc we have discussed it but we haven't come to any consensus um uh part of what we've looked at is the uh executive order from the governor um what phasing we're in we look at the cases every day in in michigan and specifically in the tri-county area so those discussions will be part of our planning once we decide which way we want to go allison alexander uh is next with a comment uh we're signed in under under my wife's account but it's actually me uh ben moy uh orchestra teacher at front of high school frontier middle school and at frontier upper um i guess my wife asked me to chime in uh because you know i guess

130she saw a lot of comments saying that uh you know where are the teachers speaking up and where do they stand you know and so here i am uh i i just wanted to say that you know for me personally and a lot of my colleagues that i've talked to it is you know we do want to be in the classroom we do want to be with the kids but we also you know we want to be safe um you know and speaking personally for me like i have other underlying health conditions that make it where you know no matter how much we want to be with our kids it's it's just not safe right now and and you know i personally have had it's been hard you know over the summer just with everything

131not locally but you know like everywhere just you see it everywhere the debate and being put in a position as as a teacher where you feel like you know you're choosing between your livelihood and your health and your life and your own family and you're due to your kids um and your duty to get back in the in the class and so um you know it's it's been it's been hard but like you know i i will say that i personally i appreciate um you know the board and and and administration you know being there for us and saying that you know the the safety of not only the students but also the staff is is an important factor and so you know you were asking for where are the teachers speaking up i just

132wanted to come in and and you know be at least one voice so there's another teacher nicole morelle yes sorry um to piggyback off that i'm a teacher at fuel i teach fourth grade um i agree with a lot of what was said and i'm very grateful for the board's position i'm wanting to start this virtual um especially with you know august creeping in a lot of teachers really just want to know how to plan and what to think about and how to set it up so hearing that there is such a strong position to start virtual will start to give teachers an idea of how to start thinking about it and planning for it and needing education with equity so i really appreciate um your willingness to put our health and as a priority

133as well as the students health and the family's health um you know it's unprecedented like dr bazi said and um i think that that's that's vital so i'm very i'm looking forward to this i'm excited about it i also really appreciate um coming back and looking at it in october but from a planning perspective i think it would make more sense as a lot of board members stated to fully commit to something for one semester and then change it if necessary so it's not uprooting students and teachers too much that is all thank you thank you nicole and rachel e says she has her handwriting hi everyone i'm rachel i'm a parent in the district i just i first of all want to thank everyone for being here um the board everyone the school staff

134for putting this all together you can tell that you guys really obviously have the kids in mind um i also want to thank the parents and teachers being on the call just when i think um you know i've thought of it all or researched it all i really appreciate my community for getting me to think even further than what i can do myself so these things are all really good whether i agree or disagree it's always it's always good to expand because there's just a lot to to know right now so i do want to clarify i think someone mentioned it in the chat so i have a few questions um with the survey results the most recent survey results can you confirm the response of how many people out of the district actually turned

135in that survey so that is one question and then also my question was if we do all virtual to start that does include the learning pod so i was a little unclear on that so can you answer those for me and then i have just a comment yeah i could actually answer the survey response we had over 1600 respondents in you know for individual students in the district we have roughly 2 400 households that we serve out of the 3 100 students that we serve being inclusive of our adult and alternative program if you count ferndale k-12 including university high school it's about 2 000 families so 1600 is is an extremely high uh response rate and as um johanna explained for underrepresented groups that that were not responding to the resident to the survey

136we had principals in it um administrative assistants called 20 from each grade level asked them the survey over the phone and then entered them into the survey so uh over 1600 for roughly 2 000 2 400 households and i say that because tcec is predominantly already a virtual program so that's why we saw um a little bit less of a response rate from them because they're they're already they're already a virtual program and then um i'm sorry remind me on the second question in a second i remembered i'm sorry okay yes that would that would be in conjunction with um with the virtual option okay okay someone had mentioned the 50 survey results and um the way you quoted it just now um was a much better turnout so that is kind of a nice

137relief and it's great to know that you all were personally trying to reach out to the people that didn't respond especially with all those you know with remind rolling out and some of the communication hiccups that we had it is nice that the results were that strong so thank you so much for your efforts on that um so other than that my last comment is um jim if you could just please um like go with your heart i love i love where you were going um you know with wanting to revisit it sooner i totally get for the grading purposes i i much prefer the october 31st date um but if that makes it too complicated i feel like we could work around any any potential grading issues that we might have um rather than

138having to commit at this time to hold out to january um but really that's all i have i think being open um to returning sooner if it's safe should definitely be a goal so i just thank you all and that's all i have thank you so much thank you rachel and there's judy uh randall in the chat also and also also um after that monica's ipad has had their hand up for a while okay so do you want me to go first then johanna yeah yeah and then we'll get to monica's ipad okay i am a second grade teacher at lower i see my principal there down in the corner um i just wanted to give a perspective as a um an early childhood educator and although i'm a leader in uh the union um

139i was anxious to talk from the first time i heard about um comment or reread the chat that they want to hear teachers um i want to assure you that just like parents we are all you know scratching our heads and trying to figure out what's best and just like parents there are people on every side of the argument people that i have great respect for that want to go back face to face people that i have great respect for that are scared to death to do that and so um i count on the leadership of our district the leadership of the board i have complete faith in our families and our community to support the students in the best possible way during an an incredibly crazy time we're also as teachers concerned for our

140colleagues the parapros the secretaries the custodial staff um so when i hear people quote statistics about how children are not as susceptible to um you know the dire consequences of covet i would just ask that you know that they don't work in isolation we're not sending 500 kids into ferndale lower without an adult staff there that has all of those concerns so um we need to always remember that and i know the board is doing a great job of that and and so is our central admin whatever happens i just want to assure people we're going to make it work we're going to support each other we are going to be positive about it um the teachers that are struggling we're going to build them up we're going to hold them up and i would

141just ask parents to do the same to please please please in front of your student in front of your child always keep a positive mindset you may have your own doubts don't saddle your child with those dope with those doubts they have enough kid stuff to think about i would just approach this as what an incredible and strange opportunities to be a kid during this time and that they'll always remember this year and these these days that they spent virtually in class and how different it is than anything that any of us have ever gone through but we will get through it and um we'll get the kids where they need to be i guess that's about it thanks judy and monica's ipad hi yes i'm a parent of a incoming 11th grader at universal

142high school and university high school and um i'm also a parent for some children that go to detroit public school and a charter school so i have a lot on my plate like i'm sure a lot of other parents do i would appreciate if the school could keep in mind those parents who's juggling more than one kid at one time and that's the as the young lady in the i think it's lavender shirt with a little braids uh if we can have a concrete plan at least through the first semester um my family is not returning back to school for the whole year 2020 2021 so i would think it would be difficult if you change the plan come october and want all the kids to return back to school now i'm scrambling to find

143other options we're not coming so i'm hoping that maybe you will continue with a virtual option throughout the school year if that's not an option i will hope that you let the parents know a little early so they can alter their plans as well thank you monica one thing to to clarify and i it's a great point and i i appreciate it is that we we would plan to allow people to continue virtually all all for this year i mean we can't see a situation where we we want you to stay a ferndale eagle so we would we would still facilitate that and then hopefully welcome you back in when you feel comfortable for your children to come back to school in person to come back the following year so we're not going to leave

144you hanging we're going to make sure that you can continue in a manner that you feel is safe thank you i really appreciate that it's really hard to find you know i have to juggle what your new program is and monitor my 11th grader to make sure he's doing he's supposed to do i have kids that's in cognitive impaired classrooms i have a first grader a third grader two fifth graders my hands are full and everybody's using zoom or google classroom or canvas and by the time you figure out what to do they're changing up the programs so right yeah i mean i'm anxious about returning back to school because i'm a full-time teacher i need a lunch aide over here to help me i need to maintain this person i need a nurse over

145here to help me out so yeah if you can just keep that in mind for those of us who's juggling more than one school district or more than one student that would be great we will thank you thank you emily murray hi can i wait okay um i have an incoming third grader and an incoming sixth grader um we love ferndale um thank you to the board and the administrators you have a lot on your plate we appreciate everything you're doing and all of your what you're doing here my concern is that the teachers are going to have to do um have in-person if we do in-person and virtual that the teachers have in-person students and virtual students that the virtual students are going to take a back seat because they have their kids in

146the school right there with them all day so i'm just kind of wondering how that's going to happen my kids are going to be virtual for the you know time being and um i want them to have a relationship with a ferndale teacher just like they would if they were in a classroom and i'm a little concerned about the boxed curriculum or if they're actually going to get direct instruction from a teacher um and have interaction like they would normally i guess and well my sixth grader i don't really know a lot about sixth grade uh middle school yet but will he have the same number of teachers that he would if he was in school you know i'm just kind of wondering about that i just um i'm just concerned about the relationship with

147an actual ferndale teacher because we love everybody that we've had so far i i think if if johanna if you want to take it doesn't matter but i think it's i think emily we understand concern and i think again we're leaning towards a full virtual model so they would not have the complexity of doing of doing both right right right yeah but with our full virtual model all of our students will have that synchronous face to face but virtually time with their teacher so they'll be face to face through the screen um and your question about middle school our middle schoolers will receive a regular um rotating schedule so um they have six classes and an impact hour and they will still get six classes in an impact hour can i ask one more thing

148um i'm not sure if this has been addressed but will the virtual students have band and orchestra um yeah we touched on that um briefly um we're gonna work up until this point um i think our direction of where we were going as a district wasn't as clear as it's become tonight um it really we're heading towards fully virtual so now we can put all of our effort into planning what that will look like um our goal is that students will have the same options that they would have had if they had been in person the teaching of that will be a little different and that's what we'll rely on our teachers and our our um our fine arts department to develop what that will look like for students thank you okay thank you and

149i knew that you were leaning towards full virtual i was just um in case there is an in person i was just kind of worried about that so thank you thank you emily i think this stacy has her hand up stacy is stacy available for public comment i see you have your hand up this is a quick question we talked earlier about the ferpa regulations and restrictions um with if if students were i guess i'll just frame the question this way if we're completely virtual um would teachers have the ability to do synchronous teaching and not violate ferpa because there's not other students being recorded that's my biggest concern like it's not so much i i guess i would prefer in person more because i want my child who also has an iep to be

150getting the guidance and the direction and the redirection from the in-person relationship and if that happens virtually i'm completely okay with that i'm just more concerned about the non-direct real-time guidance from the teaching faculty so if it were all virtual would synchronous be able to happen in real time and not violate ferpa yeah so so the difference between um between videoing a classroom with a teacher where students are in the classroom is that the students are not opting into that um environment right um what we'll be having is a different situation where the teacher is by themselves physically and families are opting their kids into the sign-in so that doesn't that doesn't violate ferpa okay it makes me feel a lot better about the virtual option okay yeah i'm sensing that it's all like go

151big or go home here like we have to go all in one way or the spreading out is not gonna it's just not it doesn't seem to be working very well um so i am less about the opinions of in person or online and more about like how can we get behind an option that is the most robust and the most effective for our students and juggling the needs of parents i'm not going to ignore that fact you know parents got to work and this is not easy at all um and it doesn't make me a selfish or an unsafe or a what was i called the other day a lazy parent on facebook because i talked about considering sending my child home to back to school so these are tough decisions so thank you

152thank you before before we get to the next question there's a question that that i think somebody actually this is why these meetings are great i think you brought up a great point in terms of the question was if we came back in october would that then take the synchronous option away from virtual families which i think is a is a valid point and and to some extent it probably would because of staffing so that's why now you guys have have kind of leaned me towards saying we have to make a commitment first semester because you're right in terms of of staffing it would be difficult to provide the synchronous virtual learning as well as in person so that you know the the question is yes to some extent it's why why we don't you

153know that's one of the negatives to a virtual and an in-person option as was described in the presentation sarah alter has a question hey everybody i just wanted to first say thank you to the board for putting up with all of our questions and having to vote on all this um because i know it's a tough decision i want to thank all of the school administration for all their hard work because i know it's not easy having to make decisions like this that obviously everybody has opinions on my question was i still have one last kid who is through the early childhood center and obviously with our earliest earliest learners the in person is the biggest part the play and that type of stuff and just want to know how or what we think might

154be happening from that standpoint with how those children will be taught or what would virtually be expected of the kids that are from the early childhood um and then kind of a second follow-up which would be in regards to um if the virtual and if we go back how that's going to work for um if children choose to do the online so while school goes back will they still be able to have in teachers like teachers that they will be in person zooming or calling with i'll let you handle the early childhood part the part of could we do synchronous if we're back and that that would be a challenge we'd have to move to like the office hour type schedule so they would still have interaction with with the ferndale teacher um we might

155have to consider the board and i would have to consider hiring additional staff to support the online uh which which can be done because again we're not going to continue in this format forever so it might be a one-time expenditure that we have to consider regarding early childhood we don't have a final guidance yet from oakland schools but our director of the early childhood program is in constant um in a constant state of planning so i think in in the upcoming weeks we'll have um in really the upcoming week there we'll have a lot more information on exactly how we're going to do our early childhood it is a sticky spot because the goal of early childhood education is that kids play together so we're looking more into that it is on our radar and

156we will have answers soon so is there looks like was there anyone else in line one more question one more from deanna bowman hello um i have a child that's going into third grade i'm just kind of piggybacking off what was said um let's say we saw our virtual and then we have the option to go in person you know come january um for the virtual learners would they then use the accelerate program and then see the teachers during those office hours is that how that would look yes [Music] so the so four days a week it's just them using the platform and then on that friday or whenever the office hours is that's when they only see get a chance to see the teacher and interact again we'd have to work out the logistics

157of the time and we'd hope for more than one day a week for a connection uh with with the teacher but yeah it would not be as robust as the full virtual option okay yeah looks like adrian had the question about chromebooks i wish jeff sharp was here our director of technology but i believe most um i'm gonna go check but most of our chromebooks do have a web camera um so if there's some that don't work we're purchasing the board just authorized us to make an extremely large purchase of chromebooks at our at our previous special meeting so we will make sure that the the new purchases will have that if not we'll purchase a usb connected webcam that will be able to be used with the chromebook if there's not one uh thank

158you and it looks like michelle ewart wren uh had a question about uh parents and students being trained effectively to use the online programs especially for younger students who struggle with technology yeah there will be a pd plan that will include extensive training for parents staff and students and families so somebody just asked the timeline we are going to work frantically in this next week and and provide the the state plan that we have to turn in um doesn't really it doesn't require all of the specific specific things that the community is asking for like ratings and pb plan and things of that nature we plan to have that plan completed and we will ask the board for approval on august 6th at 6 pm for approval on that plan so that's the timeline will

159continue to develop in the first two to three weeks of august all of the particulars grading fecc learning labs all of the logistical aspects of those things will be further developed johanna anything to add to that uh nope that that's definitely where we're at um having a better direction after you know tonight's meeting although there's been no vote yet i think allows us to concentrate our efforts better um than on on three possible modes danya is there a way to grab the chat and maybe put out an faq around august 6 when the plan goes up because i think a lot of questions that will probably be answered when the finalized plan is done yes i think i can yes i'm doing it right now yeah i got it there's a question from amy lerman

160about uh a little eagle will little eagles follow the same protocol as the other schools or could they do something different can you can you repeat that i had trouble hearing sure there's a question from amy lerman does does that mean little legals will follow the same protocol as the other schools or could they do something different um yeah in our discussions um we we don't have um a finalized plan for little eagles because we are looking for guidance looking for guidance from oakland schools on what the requirements are health-wise um and what the requirements are educationally the the requirements at a preschool level are different than they are for k-12 programs so we are still in the data collection phase for our little eagles program but we should have most of our decision making

161done very soon i just wanted to take a second and thank our community everyone has been great everyone has been super mindful and very kind throughout this whole entire process i appreciate everybody recognizing like what a tough thing that we're doing and that we're all in this together i am super proud to be a part of this community and i just wanted to pop in and say bye real fast i'll just say ditto to an answer you know times two agreed is there any other public comment oh one last question yeah yes they they will have time um johanna and the team we are working on like we said a schedule that will allow students flexible time during the school day so for example a high school schedule is not going to be first hour

162second hour third hour you know like a typical school schedule but it will use the recommendations of screen time by age and those things so you know we are we are going to ensure that recess time is accounted for in the elementary plan and things of that nature we're going to do our best to schedule things so that things are staggered and that things don't cross over there's going to be a lot of intentionality in creating that that plan will that include mr francis's friendly but stern voice encouraging students to come back from lunch yes and to get off of the counter at the entryway of ferndale middle school oh last thing rebecca yes we're working on creating learning labs um that will give kids a safe place to to have access to high quality

163internet and and to be able to work eat lunch so yes we will be working on that all right uh last thing and i do have to say i i johanna's getting a lot of shoutouts she started working on these plans um two weeks before she was her start date and and hasn't stopped working um on creating a plan and working with all stakeholders and uh managing all of our thoughts and and going back and forth and saying let's try this i really appreciate all your efforts in such a quick time you really did hit the ground running and uh we are very thankful well my my commitment to ferndale is uh rock solid so that's where i'm at thank you all right uh we have a close public comment um is there further we

164uh further discussion from the board things left unsaid although i do have to point out one of the comments that says can we have mr francis virtually greet all the kids each morning like i would want to sign up for that i want to be virtually greeted every morning by mr princess we might be able to set something like that for everybody for everybody that's watching uh mr france and doesn't know he's the assistant principal in the middle school and he's he's a um he's a pillar of ferndale he stands outside rain shine snow no matter what out in and greets every single kid who walks into the building he's a joy all right if there's no uh further discussion um from the board our next regular board meeting is scheduled for monday august 17th

165uh 2020 and our next special special meeting will be thursday august 6th august 6th 2020 to uh at which point we will vote formally on the back to school plan thank you to the community and to the board um very grateful to the staff the board and the community for your support your guidance your being a thought partner with one another to to deal with a really difficult situation but i agree with judy we will we will work with one another we'll lift up our students and staff and we will get through this mike we have a special meeting tomorrow don't we yes oh yeah to purchase the lms we'll have a special meeting tomorrow to to approve the purchase of the the learning management system at 5 30 that was discussed tonight yes 5

16630 p.m so y'all can come back tomorrow i hope to see another 142 people tomorrow for that all right so this meeting is adjourned at 9 11 p.m all right good night everyone thank you thank you everyone thank you