Livonia Public Schools Regular Meeting August 23, 2021

001good evening welcome to the livonia public schools board of education meeting regular meeting of august 23 mrs bonfield would you please take the roll oh sure sorry mrs acosta here costa i'm so sorry mrs bonefield is here mr centers mrs jarvis here mr johnson here mrs bradford is absent president burton here we have a quorum mrs bradford asked me to pass along to folks that she is not trying to get out of tonight's meeting as exciting as it may be nor does she have covet but she is ill and unable to be with us this evening she said it will be irresponsible of me in light of the world we live in to show up at a meeting ill so we do wish her well and look forward to seeing her again shortly the flag

002is located behind mr centers to my right and uh mrs acosta can you please lead us in the pledge please stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening folks welcome to our meeting this evening we have a very full agenda this evening if you are present with us and you'd like to have a paper copy of the agenda it can be found to my left near the doorway on the table if you are at home and you're following and you'd like to follow along with an agenda you can find it on our website that is at livoniapublicschools.org if you hover over the board tab and drop down to board

003meeting information you can find our agenda that's also the area of our website where you can find any of our previous meetings that are recorded and left for folks to go back and watch at their leisure this evening's meeting is a what we call a regular meeting or what some folks refer to as a voting meeting uh generally you may or may not see the level of discussion about items that you might expect please understand that that is not because we don't take any of these items lightly but rather that we have discussed these items at typically at least two if not more meetings before they come to us this evening so we basically have talked on most items we've talked out just about everything that we can think of and it's ready for a

004vote so it comes to this evening's meeting for that some items will have longer discussion this evening but for those that have shorter discussion just so you understand that's why we do insist on respect at our meetings in with our climate and culture with our students we certainly teach our students to respect one another so we expect that respect to go between students between adults and between adults and students this board of education takes that very very seriously you will see this board we are we are committed to modeling respect amongst one another and to everybody is who is present this evening and we ask uh that everybody return that respect to everybody else who is present this evening uh we will have a i anticipate a healthy exchange of ideas and concepts we may

005agree with one another we may disagree with one another but i'm very very proud of livonia public schools especially in the climate that we're in over these last few months and what we see of other school board meetings around our communities and even across the nation i am so proud of livonia public schools that we may agree we may disagree we may do it fervently but we do it respectfully and i commend our community and i am looking forward to this evening that that will continue the next item on our agenda this evening is item three communications and item three a is our district update from the superintendent and i will turn it over to mrs andrea opus at this time thank you so much president burton so as we do each month we share

006district updates and highlights and so today is no exception to that you may recall that last meeting we had the pleasure bringing to recommendations for a number of administrative positions we did have one of our team who was not able to be here and so i'd like to ask mrs keats to reintroduce dr katie dodge and then we would like to bring dr dodge up to celebrate in her new role and share a little bit about her prior to my sharing the district update good evening good evening i'm so lucky i get to do this twice for my dear friend katie dodge so katie if you recall i shared that she has a long-standing history in lps she started here in second grade and as a graduate of churchill high school she earned her bachelor's

007and master's both from madonna and her phd and higher ed from the university of toledo she also holds a special education admin certificate from grand valley she has a background in both gen ed and special ed and has taught both she was a tc with student services and most recently she has been a student services coordinator for the last five years last year she was deep in our covid mitigation and helped a lot with contact tracing as well all who know katie adore katie katie is her energy is contagious and her love for the little students is also contagious you will be wowed by the things that she will do at jackson um she has already dressed for the part this evening so we're so excited to see what she does with our youngest learners

008and i'm so excited to bring forth katie this evening so as dr dodge is joining us and we're so pleased to have her with us this evening i just wanted to share a few words it is no surprise that since her approval last week she has already begun to immerse herself in that role and out to parents today came an invitation for multiple tours at jackson early childhood center opportunities to come and meet dr dodge to hear about what will be happening this year and as you know jackson early childhood center really is the gateway for livonia public schools we welcome our families in for their first experience and we are just thrilled to have someone with the knowledge the passion and the commitment that dr dodge has to our youngest learners in readying them

009to then join us for their future career so katie we're so thrilled about your appointment last week and thank you for coming back and being with us here this evening thank you so much i appreciate you guys letting me come back this week i'm sorry i wasn't able to be here last week um thank you superintendent oh quest for this appointment thank you cabinet i am thrilled so excited like uh jen said i'm wearing the part right i promised superintendent oh quest that i'd be wearing a dinosaur dress so dreams become reality position and clothing so so thrilled i have had the opportunity to be at jackson for about five days now this staff is warm and inviting the families are the same i went down and talked to a little kiddo and he was

010telling me all about the dinosaurs and i just welled up with tears i'm like this is where i want to be i'm so happy to be back with kids and still serving in this amazing district with phenomenal leadership i owe dr jennifer terry all a lot she has been an amazing mentor and friend so i'm grateful for all that she has done along with my department thank you for the support tonight and my parents and of course my littlest favorite human in the world is my crosby so he is excited to be able to tell people that his mom is a principal he thinks it's the coolest thing in the whole world so thank you for this opportunity and i can't wait to shine in the role you definitely will thank you so much [Applause]

011thank you mrs keats are we uh are we going to head it this way we're going to spin it yeah yes so i'm going to fill a little bit of time just as mr francis and mrs jenkins um so normally if you've not joined us before for one of our board meetings um what i have the pleasure of doing each month is highlighting some points of pride across our district um and so really this evening i wanted to focus on the opening of niji ero elementary they began about a week and a half ago share with you some of the new team members we have added to our administrative team and then as promised uh some highlights from uh learning in l town in our summer camp and family fun friday so in just a

012moment um that will come up and here we are that was excellent timing mr francis so here we go and you're advancing mrs jenkins you're yes that would be great okay so here we are um we'll share a little bit first about uh the opening of niji arrow andrea hold on we need to get a microphone there you go okay all righty so we had our youngest ones coming back to nijiro last about a week and a half ago so we had we've had a great start there they had their traditional opening ceremonies and we have pictures of some students in the classroom as well so they have had a great start and they are already well underway as you know they have an extended school year and so uh they began i believe on

013was it august 13th mr green i believe they got started i will go ahead and will that advance all righty and as you know we have been really fortunate to add some outstanding leadership to our current administrative leadership team in livonia so i just wanted to highlight for those who may not have followed the past few meetings we have recently just welcomed dr dodge at jackson early childhood center so she has already gotten started in that position and has just dove right in we have mr english mr english you may recall was our assistant principal at frost middle school who is now principal i'm at emerson middle school since mrs owen's retirement last june and you probably see a couple familiar faces there mrs sherry mazzoni was prin assistant principal here at riley and was

014um recently appointed principal at grant elementary she is next to her husband mr mazzoni who many of you recognize as the principal of stevenson high school and you see mrs okus accompanied a lot of these pictures because they are taken at the board meeting but here is mr trobe mr traub i'm is the proud principal of johnson upper elementary school and we have mr todd kombach who recently joined us as one of our newest student services coordinators and last week we had allie gray here joining us here at riley and she has already dug in as has our as have our other administrators and is going to serve as the ap along with mrs cousino to make the administrative team at riley and you see mrs pearson mrs pearson is a very familiar face in

015livonia public schools was previously a coordinator i'm in the academic services department and is now joining mr traub as his partner at johnson and i thank mr green for helping welcome her to that role and we have our two newest media technology coordinators mrs bolling and mr casada who have already been asked to dive in and begin touring media centers with us and already preparing for distribution of technology for this fall and preparing to um begin work on our bond so again just welcome to each of those leaders i feel like i'm a bit in the way of the screen and here can you see okay all right so as you know we had learning in l town this summer and i think we've shared we are we have serviced almost 4 000 students we

016had traditional summer school at the high school we had credit recovery we also had family fun fridays and we had summer camps with three different summer camps at cooper frost and homes for grades two through eight and then we had k-1 camps at every single one of our lower elementary schools and i'm going to just have us enjoy as mrs jenkins flips through some wonderful pictures i have to tell you they just uh really dug into project-based learning focused on stem in robotics and problem solving um and had a truly tremendous time and i want to just give a shout out to our chief academic officer mrs o'brien who worked tirelessly to bring all of this programming together we have never done anything on this scale to service that many students in these different programs

017but i'd also like to just give a huge shout out to our principals and leaders who helped coordinate each of these separate programs whether that was tutoring or book clubs or family fun fridays and then the over 200 staff who worked in these camps so we are so appreciative that our families took advantage of them and i have to tell you as i've talked with families throughout the summer one thing i've heard over and over again is i hope you do something of this nature next year so maybe not on the same scale but at least offer some of these so i'll sit back while mrs jenkins shares some summer day camp fun with us you so just a round of applause for everyone who took took part in those that summer programming although for

018many of them we had either dozens and dozens of spots or in some cases hundreds of spots um those would generally go out on tuesday at about five o'clock and about 5 30 those sign up geniuses were uh were flying and very full but we were we were thrilled to see that kind of participation and now we just want to share with you a little bit about this time of year one of the things that we are engaged in is professional learning learning never stops for the adults and as you can imagine throughout the summer that is a prime time for our teachers our paraprofessionals our bus drivers were together today mr francis and i had a great opportunity to go over and and meet with them as they're preparing and doing their professional learning

019for this year so we recently just completed a two and a half day professional learning communities conference with half of our district teams and wednesday we're going to embark on our second one and these professional development opportunities both in our plc and then the next picture is of our administrative leadership team is really focused on our four district priorities of focusing on student achievement our climate and culture fiscal responsibility and it really enhancing employee capacity so we take advantage of these opportunities and we are also preparing next week to welcome back our staff and we kick off with both building-based professional development and district-based pd so there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and just really giving a shout out to each one of our individuals throughout the summer who participate in that

020professional learning and growth and we are if you can believe it just 15 days away until we learn and grow together again and so in just a little bit we're going to be sharing some more information about our plans for this upcoming school year but it was great to share a few highlights with our community this evening thank you mrs oquist i had the opportunity uh to visit randolph at one point uh with some of our littlest learners and talking with one of the teachers there it was very exciting to see that not only is there was there academic learning going on but what we've been talking so much about also just play-based learning and just getting socialized with one another again for so much time last year it was we discussed the fact that

021we had to have kids playing separately in order to try to keep space amongst one another that learning how to share again and just the joy of having kids playing together with toys with the items on the playground it was just it was just a joy to see again with some of our youngest learners uh the next item on our agenda right now is item 3b audience rather written communications do any members of the board have any written communications that they need to share seeing none the next item on our agenda is item 3c audience communications audience communications is a time set aside for the board of education to listen to our community it is very intentionally not a question and answer session but rather a listening session each person is given three minutes to

022speak the reason for that is that we want to make certain that we are fair to everybody and we give the same opportunity to everyone we will have someone timing in three minutes on their phone so if you are speaking and you hear a tone going off uh you'll know that it's time for you to wrap up your comments we have found that's just a little bit more polite way rather than interrupting a speaker typically we have audience communications for 15 minutes at the beginning of our meeting and then if there is any remainder which is is not common but if there is any remainder it comes at the end of the business of our evening however seeing as most if not all of the people who are speaking at audience communications are addressing one

023of the items which is our back to school plan we want to make certain that we hear from all of our members of our audience before we come to conclusions because we are hoping to reach consensus on that item this evening so we will be hearing all of audience communications at the beginning of our meeting starting just momentarily uh just as a matter of clarification uh the board does not take an official vote on the item of the daily mitigation measures because those are daily operational issues and those are up to our superintendent and administrative team however an issue of this magnitude that affects so much of the district we will be coming to consensus that is not in a formal not a formal vote but a board and cabinet team coming to consensus or

024basically agreeing upon the measures that are coming before us so you will see that as opposed to a formal yes and no type of a vote this evening uh what i will do is call our first speaker for audience communications i was also suggested that we call or that we let the person who's on deck for lack of a better term know so that they can kind of be near the uh near the microphone so we can not waste quite so much time just waiting for folks to move back and forth so our first speaker this evening will be christine vitkay our second will be uh keith haven it looks like so if we could have christine and then keith can be making his way toward the microphone also when you come up to the

025microphone if you're participating in audience communications if you could state your name and uh your just your street or your city or your school you do not need to give your house address we don't want you to have that kind of identification on folks but we would like to have your name and some kind of information along that line for the record while maintaining safety for folks good evening hi good evening my name is christine my children go to lavona school i'm a resident randolph roadrunners um i wanted to address the board again before the final decisions were coming out regarding uh the back to school masks required not required optional with mrs bonafield bonnefield not being here i'm assuming that everyone's going to have consensus for including i'm sorry it's just a point of

026clarification mrs bonifield is here it's mrs bradford absolutely that's okay apologies thank you um you know the multiple times that i've come here to speak it's always been um respectful and we all have agreed to disagree on things again i'm here to voice my support for parent choice on preventative procedures and mitigation strategies that we can take at home and send our children to go back to a modified normal a modified normal letting parents choose what is best for their children we get to choose whether our children wear sunscreen on field day they're outside all day we get to choose whether our children wear bug spray you know west nile still a thing mask should be optional we're not saying no masks if you want to wear a mask by all means please whatever it

027is that makes you feel safe that you believe in that you support i do not want my child in a mask he is in third grade he needs to go back to school he needs to see his friends see their smiles interact be rambunctious outside on recess and have a great time without the mask we can do it it's a personal choice it's that's all it is just a choice we believe one thing someone else might believe something else and that's okay livonia um you know again this this illness does is very real however it focuses on a different age group 60 plus not k through the community is divided let us always default to parents choice we are a diverse community livonia is full of kindness we are full of free choice i trust

028my neighbors i trust my community to make the right choice let us be leaders in personal responsibility and let it be an option thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] our next speaker will be kevin haven and on deck will be janet bender mini and i apologize in advance if i mispronounce anyone's name this evening thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you and i apologize for my terrible handwriting not a problem um well so thank you very much i appreciate it dr fauci has been an infectious disease expert for more than 50 years and i think we all know who that guy is uh in a series of emails in early 2020 mr fauci was quoted as saying that the coronavirus quote isn't something that the american public needs to worry about

029also quoting it is a very very low risk to the united states it isn't something that the american public needs to worry about or be frightened about also quoting in the united states there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask if you look at the masks that you buy in a drugstore the leakage around that doesn't really do much to protect you fauci also discouraged people from worrying about the coronavirus saying the danger was just minuscule now science has evolved their understanding has evolved granted so in july of 2021 on the 21st actually which was just about a month ago the journal physics of fluids researchers from the university of waterloo simulated a person breathing in a large room with a cloth face mask on despite wearing a mask the study finds a large

030buildup of aerosol droplets suspended in the air besides raising awareness on the vulnerability of certain face masks these findings also emphasize the need for proper ventilation indoors more ventilation means a less chance of for a potentially viral aerosol to linger around also quoting from the study it shows that aerosols exhaled by affect infected pardon me individuals can indeed infect others with a covet 19 even if someone is standing more than six feet away researchers theorize that many people wear masks who wear masks don't fit their face properly especially mine as a result many cloth and surgical masks only filter about ten percent of exhaled exhaled aerosols the rest can make their way past the mask through the top and spread to the surrounding environment so talking about the cdc's own survival rates tough to talk

031about but ages 0 to 19 99.997 percent or if i know how to do my math right .0003 mortality rate our children are statistically more likely to die or i shouldn't say they were perish in a car accident or crossing the street or heaven forbid riding a bicycle what precautions are we taking to protect our students who have to walk or be driven to school the result the risks are the same we have to admit and i guess just to close it out we are praying for all of you to make the right decision thank you thank you our next speaker will be janet vendramini and on deck we would have laura rhoden good evening my name is janet i live on pollyanna my husband and i've been residents for 46 years all of our

032children went through the schools graduated from here i also wanted to quote dr anthony fauci it was a radio it was a video interview on may the 9th 2020. he said people should not be walking around wearing a mask he goes on to say that there are unintended consequences to wearing a mask that's what we found to be true pediatricians have made lists of all the unintended consequences anxiety irritability restlessness headaches dizziness sleeplessness nighttime terror all of this because we think that we're going to keep each other safe well i have a question has anyone anywhere done safety tests or trials on children in masks and i would go on to say that this is the big experiment we are experimenting on our children and it's not doing very well all the facial rashes the

033dental problems throat infections and it can it goes on and on this has got to end our children are not to be an experiment this is how we love our children and i know we all love the children you've said it here we're proud of livonia i'm proud of livonia but our children are so important and i will reiterate what the previous gentleman said 99.999 of children will survive the virus it's survivable so i think we should think very carefully about how psychologically we are affecting our children i find it to be grossly important as a mom and a grandma and i think about it all the time i want to see faces smiling i want to see emotion i think we get energized from being around each other in close contact let the children

034be together that's what they're meant to be it's vitally important so i'm going to end with that question again show me the trials where they have tested the masks on children and what the effects are because i would say there isn't any there's no trials for safety of these masks and that's it thank you thank you our next speaker is laura rodin and our on-deck speaker is i believe it is kristen um having trouble type with the last name vaughn and i'd like to remind our audience that while the speaker is speaking we are requesting that no one shout out you may save your applause for after a speaker is finished but it is the most respectful way that we to ensure that we are paying attention to our speaker and not taking away from

035their time at the mo at the podium i'm sorry they can't hear the mic can it be turned up it's i believe it's on if you can speak a little bit closer to it if you're within about six inches of the microphone that should work well for you okay can you tip it up is that better okay good can our folks in the back here thank you hi my name is laura rhoden i have two boys in lps one at franklin and one at frost and i'm also a pulmonary nurse practitioner i work in critical care and pulmonary medicine at the university of michigan and um i've been a nurse for 20 years and advanced practice provider for the last eight years and i'm part of the covid response at the at michigan medicine and

036i've taken care of countless people who have both died from covet disease and people who are critically injured with kidney disease brain disease and lung disease needing lung transplants even eventually i've also taken care of several pregnant women who were forced to deliver their children early as a result of severe covet disease and one ended up needing a lung transplant this disease is very serious it's very real and the delta variant is seeming to be more virulent and easier passed even to the vaccinated and it's also infecting children and we're seeing that in some areas where a lot of the pediatric icus are filling up and i can tell you as a healthcare provider we're all pretty exhausted it's been it's been quite a time i'm here to say that masks work they help prevent

037the spread of this terrible disease and it's not really a personal choice at this point it's a community choice and it's a choice to protect everyone else just like i told my child when he got a flu shot when he was young that he was projecting his classmate who had cancer at the time from becoming critically ill i tell them that the masks and the shots have helped them prevent spreading that disease to somebody who might end up in mom's icu um universal masking is important it's important to our community it's important to our children for sure but yeah most of them will be fine but not everybody is and wearing a small piece of cloth like i wear every day 12 hours a day when i'm at work i think most of our children

038are smart and kind and respectful and they understand it is important our teachers are kind and respectful and give kids the time to have masks break and that and honestly i really want my kids to stay in school they've had a tough year too and i don't want that i don't want you guys to have to shut down school because it's bad in livonia again i don't want to do any more zoom meetings or google classroom i just want my kids in school so i just wanted to say that in a terrible situation you know the quote mr rogers says is look to the helpers and we have to look to the experts and the helpers the american academy of pediatrics including the michigan chapter of 1500 pediatricians in the in michigan are recommending a

039universal mask masking in our schools for our children my children are vaccinated they'll still wear a mask they're a little concerned that they're going to be bullied if they do but they're good kids and they'll do it anyway michigan medicine use sports universal masking and you have to wear it when you come to my hospital beaumont henry ford all of your local hospitals support universal masking for children in schools specifically and and i think it's important that in these times when things are scary and things are unsure that we look to the experts and uh those are the most important people for to tell us all what's important to do thank you thank you [Applause] our next speaker is i believe it's kristin braun okay okay great and on deck i have i believe it's

040kristin bachero b-i-c-h is the beginning of the last name if that sounded correct okay sorry i was writing so fast that's okay thank you good evening my name is kristen um my daughter is going to be starting kindergarten this this fall so we're really looking forward to being a part of the school district um i wanted to thank you so much for the opportunity to let me speak in front of you tonight i'm here to advocate for universal mask wearing for k through 12. last week i heard a lot of concerns about taking care of the well-being of the whole child and i believe that if we care about their physical health we need to require masks if we care about their mental health we need to require masks we can't risk a large outbreak

041and have to rely on virtual learning like the previous speaker was referring to if we care about their social well-being and being around each other we need to require masks if we care about their intellectual well-being we need to require masks um it's simple if the goal is to be in person and to not risk an outbreak and to go virtual then then we need we need to have this in place um and and it's a you know temporary inconvenience and and i know our children can get through it i know they got through it last year my daughter is leaving a daycare a rather large one here in livonia and they have just implemented universal mask wearing as well they've done it a lot throughout this last year too the children have handled it

042really wonderfully as i imagined livonia had seen too [Music] and and you know i i don't want masks i don't want them forever um but i just want to allow for our children um to all have that opportunity to be vaccinated and to feel safe and for us to feel safe um and um and yeah and i realize you're in a really tough position and you can't please everyone's preference um but please think about the overall well-being of our children and require masks in our schools and please don't buy into any misinformation or bullying just please believe in our top medical experts in our community thank you so much i appreciate your time thank you [Applause] our next speaker will be kristen okay and on that on deck we have kathy sante and if everyone

043could remember to speak pretty closely to the microphone that would be helpful for everyone thank you wow okay that's great that should work thank you i will keep my mask on but thank you for saying everyone's masks are their own choice this evening i spoke at the board meeting last week about being in favor for masks being required for the start of the school year and i wanted to respond to some of the points made during the discussion last week superintendent oak west i fully agree with your comments last week that masking is only one of the mitigation measures that can be put into place and actually i'm looking forward to hearing what those other measures are today i emailed everyone in this room back on august 6 and never received this response from anyone

044in the room but in that message i actually spent time outlining several questions i had in regards to non-mask mitigation measures i understand your email volume was likely out of control after your note went out so i take no personal offense to that but perhaps when things are finalized putting together some sort of faq or some form of q a would be really helpful to parents as i mentioned last me last week my son's entering first grade and did virtual kindergarten last year so i don't even know what a normal school year should look like let alone one with in-person learning during covid i feel your frustration with wayne county health department of course from my viewpoint a masked mandate would have made things a lot easier but why a mandate hasn't been put into

045place they've come up with an advisory and very strongly worded recommendations the information is there for the board to fall back on and justify a decision to require masks in all honesty i personally believe this decision feels difficult for some of you because the recommendations expressed do not align with your personal viewpoints or preferences to those of you who are already discussing an exit strategy for the mask mandate i also want to remind you that we didn't even implement one so no one in this room right now wants their children wearing mass indefinitely however i think we and the rest of the country have learned what happens when you start to pull back too soon i know last week that was expressed with a vaccine coming from children under 12. so i just want to

046state it's been widely publicized that data will be coming for that in september and we hope to have approval early this fall for 5 to 11. lastly i know the board and other administrators are looking at the coveted cases in livonia but i urge you to hold the same level of interest in the county as another parent mentioned last week we aren't all staying in livonia i work in southfield my husband works in milford my parents are in dearborn heights who watch my children people who live in livonia are not the only ones who can spread it to other livonia residents in regards to mass on children i think we see what the future looks like when mass aren't required there's plenty of other states and counties we can look at to see what happens

047so hopefully livonia can make the right call from the start and be proactive rather than reactive thank you our next speaker is kathy sante and on deck i have it looks like emily stephens good evening good evening hello my name is kathy sante i'm a livonia resident and i'm here today in a three-fold capacity as a parent of a 12-year-old lps student as a wife of an lps teacher and i myself am a 5th grade teacher for lps i want to express my concern over the lack of a mass mandate for all livonia public school students grades k through 12 for the start of the upcoming school year like everyone i was hoping for that the start of the school year would be more normal however covet and the new delta variant have changed the

048situation science has proven that even those that are fully vaccinated not only can contract the new delta variant but can also transmit it to others often without showing any symptoms as a parent of a 12 year old that is fully vaccinated and starting middle school this fall i am concerned that the district is considering the idea that everyone that is 12 and older does not have to wear a mask and that it will be optional how is this safe for not only the students but for the teachers and staff that work for these students the delta variant doesn't know the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated currently i'm not comfortable sending my son to school without a mask and unfortunately i also have the concern that if he does wear a mask that he might

049be ridiculed for it especially knowing how cruel some kids can be at the middle school level another more pressing concern that i have is i don't know exactly how many students at my son's school have been vaccinated we are assuming quite a bit that just because a student is 12 and older that he or she is vaccinated children of all ages especially preteens and teens are not exempt from transmitting and catching the delta variant i know that some parents might argue that they should have the freedom to choose whether or not their children should have to wear a mask but this isn't about freedom this is about safety as an lps teacher starting my 24th year i'm sorry excuse me mrs santi i must insist that we have quiet while we have a speaker every

050single person who wishes to be heard in this room will be heard and will be given the same respect but i must insist that we not have chatter or other background noise while we have a speaker speaking thank you very much for respecting one another you may continue mrs sandy thank you as an lps teacher starting my 24th year with the district i know that our number one concern is student safety from what i experienced last year in the front lines i can confidently say that the students were completely fine wearing masks let me repeat that statement one more time the students were completely fine wearing their masks yes it was uncomfortable at times especially when it was hot but i can assure parents that the parent the students were fine and were not harmed

051by wearing masks if anything i found that there were some health benefits to wearing masks in the classroom i found that i barely had any students who were absent due to the flu strep throat or other illnesses last school year while wearing the masks i want to be in person for the entire school year without having to go remote due to the outbreaks that may occur students and teachers are not properly protected this upcoming year remote learning is not ideal for anyone even worse i would hate to see any of my 5th grade students or others that are not vaccinated having to quarantine due to an exposure unfortunately despite our best efforts students who have to quarantine do not receive the same level of instruction as those who are in the classroom which impacts their

052learning as i watch what is happening in the world right now i'm sad to see that something as simple as wearing a mask which is for the common good safety of all has become so political wearing a mask is not child abuse and should not be about having a choice is for the safety and protection of everyone i hope that the school board considers the safety of all the students and the teachers by mandating mass for the start of the 2021-22 school year regardless of vaccination status for all students it is santa you'll need to wrap up your game it is better to be proactive and act on the side of caution than to be reactive after the fact my son my husband my fellow lps teachers and other staff members all lps students and

053myself deserve to be safe when we step foot into any one of our schools thank you thank you our next speaker is emily stephens and after that we have lynn mills hi hello good evening good evening does that work yes it's better thank you never done one of these as a parent only as a teacher so this is a weird feeling right now um i am uh my child does not attend livonia public schools we live in livonia i'm what's called an og homeschooler we've been homeschooling since before covid and i just wanted to offer a different perspective everything seems to be pro mask or anti-mask you're either four masks or you're against masks and from my perspective what i see is it's not about masks everything that has been said i can refute with

054different scientific articles and different back different background information it's about control you've got the people that are looked at as being anti-mass they're not anti-mass they want to control their kids health their kids safety they want to be able to make that choice for themselves you've got the other group that is pro mask they want to their kids to wear masks which is fantastic and wonderful and i think that they should if they want but they don't stop there they want everybody else's kids to wear masks as well they want every other family member to put masks on as well if we know that kids don't have major issues with covid then if it's a concern with teachers wearing getting covered then that's something for the teachers to decide i had to quit my job

055because i couldn't wear a mask it was causing migraines and blood pressure issues so i left i didn't require any other accommodations i just left because it wasn't going to work for me anymore i know that's a big decision for people to make but it's not about masks it's about control and it it it frustrates me when we're subjected to scare tactics and statistics and horrible stories about things happening i had covet i understand it and i still think that people should be able to choose if they want to wear a mask or not it doesn't concern me that if somebody's not wearing it and it's not because i had antibodies i had coveted in february 2020 before anybody knew about covet it was just a really bad flu that i had come to find

056out it was coping but now we're everyone's scared there's all this information flying around and it just it's very overwhelming i would hope that you can leave the control in the parents hands putting into effect six feet distancing whatever you need to do other things that you can do other mitigation efforts that aren't so intrusive it is about freedom you're going to hear its freedom or safety it's both there's ways to meet in the middle i wouldn't want to touch taking away control from parents with a 10-foot pole i just think it's not going to work well to be honest i now teach homeschool classes on the side so y'all doing mask mandates makes my business skyrocket but i'm still here saying that i don't think you should do it excuse me i'm i'm sorry

057to interrupt you i know please hold your applause your noise your whatever until after a speaker is speaking we do insist on respect for every speaker and we will hear everybody who wishes to be heard i read things on local social media of people that want everybody to wear masks saying that if the livonia school board decides that it's optional that what you're saying is that kova doesn't exist and that's not true it 100 exists it 100 affects some people horribly it does cause death it does cause long-haul symptoms it completely does but you take the science out of it which i know is asking a lot and you just keep it back to control and who's gonna get the control you've heard a lot about how until people are vaccinated i'll bet you a

058million dollars right now you're still going to have people wanting masks on if they get vaccinated the last thing i'll say is to mr centers i'm not usually snarky but you should wear your mask all the time because when you came in you didn't have it on and then you put it on when the meeting started thank you because that's a lot of what we see where i work that's what we see it's hit and miss it's camera coping the next speaker is lynn mills our next speaker is lynn mills and on deck i have jennifer patosky i just did want to clarify that i was wearing a mask but the strap broke when i walked in so mr green was kind enough to provide me with another one thank you thank you mr centers

059good evening ms mills hi thank you for hearing me you're very welcome welcome homeschooling mother was put some children into livonia public schools i'm a class of well churchill graduate and public school i mean catholic school and i'd like to ask is there are you getting anything the livonia public schools is there money involved in this are you going to get something for mask mandating is somebody threatening to withhold funding for mask mandating you don't have to answer but i'm throwing that out there and i want to tell the parents you have the freedom and you have the power you don't have to send your children to livonia public schools or any schools since i home educated my son who graduated catholic central in 2013 there are so many alternatives and so many people have

060learned so many things there's so many avenues out there now you have the power you have the freedom and it is about freedom it is about safety and god bless all of you you dear lady it sounded so exciting what livonia public schools is doing it's been a long time since dr watson was in your position he was my school teacher way back when but parents you have the power and bucks dollars mean something and you can walk away and you don't have to be forced to put masks on your children walk with your feet walk with your money and especially during counting season what is that november 30 days don't show up be proactive be powerful be strong and do the right thing for your family for you thank you very much [Applause] as

061a matter of clarification there is no dollars associated with masking or not masking that is just a point of clarification we are now going to hear from jennifer potoski and looks like i have lynn mills mrs mills you just spoke correct okay i'm sorry i had two there uh and then our next speaker on deck will be reina good evening yes so i'm jenny patoski i live on minton street in livonia michigan and i just want to say thank you all of you for being here this is a hard job and i appreciate your time and your energy my son is going into uh his 12th year at franklin i work for the city of ann arbor and my husband works for blue cross and blue shield and so back in march we all became

062virtual 100 virtual and my son really suffered that whole year we kept him home because we wanted to be safe and he lost friendships his mental health declined um and he actually feels like really behind and i don't want to see that happen again i want him to be able to come to school and for him to be safe and the way that that can happen is all the mitigation measures that i'm sure you're going to communicate which are wonderful and thank you and then also the mask mandate it's a pretty simple thing i have a mask on now if you're required to come back to a city of ann arbor because you're essential staff you're required to wear a mask as well janae caldoon said we need to wear a mask she'd like to

063see it in all the schools in all internal gatherings so thank you [Applause] our next speaker will be reyna and on deck i have laura edney good evening good evening craina ventramini live apparently live in livonia um again about the masks it doesn't matter who says that we need masks it doesn't matter who says that we need to do this to keep someone safe it doesn't matter what they say because they have no facts the cdc doesn't have those facts mdhhs does not have those facts the only study that was done on children that i'm aware of was done in germany and they found that 68 percent of children did indeed report negative effects starting with headaches anxiety increased dental caries increased amounts of strep throat so on and so on when it comes to

064cova though children especially our youngest are the least affected by coven 19 nor are they transmitters of the disease i have not heard of one single case of a child transmitting covid to a teacher in a classroom not in our country not around the world and if there was one i'm sure we would have all heard it i checked on michigan's i think it's michigan.gov or is it michigan.org anyways i looked up on august 20th how many pediatric hospitalizations confirmed covid do we have in our state ready eight in the entire state of michigan on august 20th three in wayne county three that's the most populous county over 2.2 million people and honestly we don't know if those are really coveted because they could be hospitalized with covid not because of covid they don't make

065that distinction how about the flu in the 2018 to 2019 flu season not the entire year more than 480 children died perished from the flu but we have about 322 pediatric deaths from covid in the past entire year and a half the flu is much more deadly for children than covid why did no one suggest masking them back then or now for the flu what's going on speaking of masks i talked last week about stephen petty industrial hygienist mask expert he says if your mask has a three percent leakage around the edge just like all of these medical masks do or any of the cloth masks the efficacy rate goes down to zero because this is transmitted via aerosols i have a lot more to say but if you're talking about using science you need

066to follow what the real experts are saying and have studied and this is about freedom we can choose and we can choose to listen to people that we believe have the right facts into our own hearts and consciences thank you thank you our next speaker is laura adney followed by melanie stevens good evening hi my name is laura edney and i'm a resident of livonia i am a livonia stevenson graduate i have three kids that are in livonia public schools and i'm also a director of rehab in a skilled nursing facility so i've worked front line this whole last year and a half with covid patients i've seen patients pass i've seen patients survive i've been there through it all we are targeting the wrong population these kids do not need to wear masks as

067i heard you say the pledge of allegiance you said for liberty and justice you are taking away our liberties and our justice as parents when you're telling our kids that they have to wear masks and not let us make that decision mr green your father was my sixth grade teacher and he taught us the pledge of allegiance and how much how important your liberty is to you so when you are asking the kids to wear a mask a mask is actually a restraint okay so you're take and you're taking away our rights and our freedoms if we choose to mask our kids that's one thing if we don't want to mask our kids that's our decision also i heard the teacher stand up here and say it didn't affect any kids you you didn't teach

068my child my child would come home and my children were lethargic they had headaches they didn't feel good i was forced to have my children play sports with masks on when it was 90 degrees last summer outside with the mask on coming home feeling like they're going to pass out it's not healthy for them i had to put kids through strenuous testing to play lacrosse this spring so that they could not one kid ever tested positive not one kid wearing a mask doll's kid's senses have you ever noticed when you wear a mask all of a sudden you can't hear other people and it's not always because their mouth is covered it dulls your senses so we're expecting these children to sit in the classroom and listen and pay attention and be able to absorb

069information when they have a mask covering their face it also causes increased agitation and as i as i mentioned earlier lethargy i urge you to make the right decision and let the parents make the decision whether or not to master children thank you thank you our next speaker will be melanie stevens and his stevens will be followed by smitha joshi good evening good evening thank you for your time i have two children who graduated from livonia at stevenson and i have two children who are currently enrolled at hoover um i have an associates in science i have a bachelor in science and i have a master in education i teach at lincoln park public schools down river and i am so excited that they are making math optional i was also so excited when i

070saw that livonia public schools was making masks optional for their summer program and then on august 2nd i believe when they introduced the plan for the fall that mass would be optional as well i was saddened to hear that last week they might be flip-flopping i'm standing because as a parent i believe that my decision is what's best for my children i believe if i decide to mask them it's up to me it should not be mandated as a teacher it was very very challenging in the classroom this year it was challenging to deal with the mass coming off and the germs that would be spreading when they came off but it was also most challenging to recognize the learning i could not see or gauge my students understanding when i could not read their

071facial expressions especially the children who wore glasses because of the glasses fogging up they had to wear the masks all the way up here it really made it difficult to know and hear and understand them and to gauge that learning it was also a challenge when i would be up here teaching in the front of the classroom and they would be back and they would call and call on them and they wanted to share their response what'd you say what'd you say it was so challenging to hear them i felt like i wasn't effective because they probably thought that i wasn't listening to them so i ask you please leave it up to the children i'm sorry the parents whether they mask their children or not match their children it is not my child or

072anybody else's child's responsibility to worry about the health of another only the health of themselves and our families thank you thank you [Applause] uh our next speaker is mid is smita joshi and the next one uh signed in is d first let our last name starts with an l looks like l-o-c-k-i maybe but i'm not certain i'm reading that at all correctly email address ends in hotmail.com if that helps good evening hello my name is smita joshi good evening that's okay i've been a math teacher in livonia public schools i'm gonna put on my glasses because i can't see a darn thing this is lovely getting old um i've been a math teacher in livonia public schools for 21 years i was at emerson middle school for six years and i have been at churchill

073high school for 16 years as a math teacher i figured i would use numbers to explain my concerns and views and not the numbers that a lot of you have been putting out not numbers on covid not numbers on because i'm telling you as a mathematician numbers can be changed you can get any number that you want to reflect whatever view you have so i'm going to give you some other numbers the number one is a powerful number in a race it means you have one the number one is the beginning of everything being number one means being the best but let me tell you what the number one means to me one person not wearing a mask was all it took for my husband to get infected with covid one month was the amount

074of time my husband was in the hospital with covet struggling to breathe first on a bipap machine then on a ventilator one phone call telling me my husband was dead was all it took for my world to change from bad to worse now that he is gone my daughters have lost the one dad that they had i struggle to every day to live and breathe taking it one day at a time one moment at a time do you know what could have prevented this one mask he went up on a trip and the one lady who did not wear a mask she ended up she had coveted didn't know it served food to him and that's where he caught it one person one mask saying even if i don't worry about myself even if i'm

075healthy i would never endanger others i find it funny how people argue against a masked mandate saying it's not god's will it's my body my choice if someone asked me to do something that would possibly save even one person's life in my eyes that is what god would be proud of people also say that 99 percent of people survive covet even if that's true and it's possible it is true do you want your kid your husband your neighbor your teacher your kids teacher anyone your sister your brother to be in the one percent that doesn't survive my husband was in that one percent you have one body one choice and you have one vote so choose correctly and let's make the number one a priority that will save lives not lose them please vote for

076a mass mandate to sure that nobody's family has to experience what my family and i have thank you thank you we'll have our next speaker if you could state your name for me because i'm certain i'm not pronouncing it at all correctly and on deck we have david maloney hi you've heard me before i was the infamous d lock during the online sessions making you pronounce words like miasma i have a bachelor's degree in biochemistry i have a master's degree in physician assistant studies i'm one of the dinosaurs here that went to livonia public schools back in the 70s and 80s and i i'm sad i moved back to livonia back in 2000 because i knew i wanted my child to go here and i have kept to that and i thought about moving to

077nova for a while and hearing that there's going to be apparently a much larger contingent of people that are against masks i am concerned i am concerned i hear contempt for masks i hear people wanting to discredit mass use by talking about studies that actually have been retracted the german study was retracted two weeks after it was published the somebody last week was talking about making sort of fun of people cutting up vacuum bags i'd like to tell you from a health care provider standpoint why people were cutting out vacuum bags and furnace filters at one point too and drying out stacks of baby wipes so we would have non-open fibers because we ran out of chem wipes which are a non-woven shop towel for scientific equipment we needed something this mess i'm wearing right

078now i have an earloop mask underneath it there's a filter pocket i can put in here it is not perfect please do not let perfect be the enemy of good please i am heartbroken for the teacher who just came up here and lost her husband i am heartbroken from my nurse practitioner colleague who i know can explain to people that if you do become a little bit hypercapnic like that one german study said if your kidneys are functioning guess what you're taken care of the body can take care of that you just throw in some bicarb you're fine okay oh boy i'm just so so disappointed disappointed the people who were putting the nylons around their face the people who were cutting up the vacuum bags we didn't have appropriate ppe in the beginning of

079the pandemic people were being macgyver they were doing anything they could to make up for the fact that they could not protect themselves on the inpatient side i'm fortunate to be on the outpatient side i have to take my patient's mask off all the times i have to do surgery on their face i wear an n95 with an ear loop over it and sometimes goggles on a splash shield all day i'm fine it's not fun but i'm fine this is easy compared to what i have to wear all day long the kids will do fine too i'm more concerned that when i send my child back because you've gotten rid of livonia virtual which was such a godsend i was so happy and i know that not all kids do good with the ritual i

080understand it you had a i think you still do have a visually impaired program at kennedy talk to the vi teachers ask them do the seeing children and the blind children gain language at the same rate pretty much seeing your lips move is not actually that important for language acquisition i'm worried that the parents that are very militant about this are going to transfer that attitude to their children and that the kids who are going to wear masks because they might go home to somebody who's immunocompromised they their parents might have to take care of him you don't compromise people like i do i've been very careful to be protecting other people my mask does not protect me my mass protects all of you and that's why we need universal masking we've had universal precautions

081for hiv since the 80s hiv you don't just pick up walking by somebody there's a behavioral aspect to that you can be asymptomatically infected and shedding virus even after you are vaccinated unfortunately the variant strains are escaping the antibodies you cannot say just because you feel okay that you are not typhoid mary please i don't want to have to pull my son out and do an online program i want them to go back to school i want the schools to stay open i don't want them to shut down like they're doing right now down south michigan has actually dropped below florida at vaccine rate and the vaccines aren't perfect just like the mass around perfect we need all of this with everybody going back you can't space them out and i'm sorry you've reached your

082three minutes if you could wrap up your comments thank you okay thank you thank you [Applause] if you could hold on for just a moment we're having a little technical issue and david maloney will be our next speaker and on deck i'm going to have uh kelly dobson good evening good evening um hi everyone thank you for having me feel free to tilt that microphone up if you need to sure um first of all i'd like to congratulate everyone here this is democracy the civil sharing of ideas and collective decision making so if you're here you should be proud of yourself um i was asked to come as a subject matter expert on zoonotic pathogens and respirator efficacy i'm the chief operating officer for a wildlife removal company we have 35 technicians in michigan it

083was my job to compose all of the standard operating procedures for our technicians long before all of this got politicized these masks are under no circumstances to be used by any of our technicians as well as n95 masks specifically because they don't work whatsoever in regard to preventing a zoonotic pathogens especially those of a viral nature the micron size is nowhere near close enough to do anything that could be found out pretty easily by reading the package that these come in i'll read it now it says this product is an ear loop mask this product is not a respirator and will not provide any protection against covet 19. that's all i have to say thank you our next speaker is kelly dobson and on deck we have renee reed good evening hi good evening feel

084free to address that microphone as you need to okay thank you thank you um i have three adult children that went through livonia public schools that have gone on to college and great lives i have a grandson now that's attending livonia public my grandson had a very profound speech delay and we've been trying to help him overcome that for the last couple years a recent study found that masks will create challenges for children like my grandson was speech with a speech issue he did not start talking until he was four years old and is working hard to catch up last year was horrible for him with his speech and the resulting frustrations with trying to keep up with the class he needs to see how words are formed by looking at people's faces i often

085tell him to look at my mouth to show him how to form words in fact the phrase that we both most often say to one another is look at my face young children with speech issues rely on our mouths to provide clear models for movement to help them learn how to speak clearly this can be done how can this be done when everybody's face is covered all day long i looked up a study by kangli a professor of applied psychology and human development at the university of toronto who [Music] talked about children and how they uh develop develop communication children under the age of 12 may have difficulty recognizing people because they often focus on individual features masks will create a problem because of that we display emotional information through movement of our facial muscle

086muscles faces obscured by masks will create emotional i'm sorry faces obscured by masks will create issues with emotional recognition as well as facial interaction and finally dr lee said that children may have problems with speech recognition because a great deal of information is communicated visually a recent study also found that masks act as a filter for sound lowering higher frequencies of volume and making it harder to understand what the teacher is saying especially in a typical classroom with a lot of background noise and we've had a lot of background noise here so and we're sitting over there and people with the masks on it's hard for us to hear even with the microphone um i'd also like to address a few things that i noticed last year when i picked up my grandson from kindergarten

087when i would pick him up his mask would be soaking wet with spit because he's six and that's what they do they suck on them all day they're dirty and they're spitty so i want to know how is that sanitary for him or for anybody around him teachers other kids they all the kids would come out and they'd have a big old wet spot on their mask um the cdc has changed its stance on mask wearing several times during this outbreak at first we were told they weren't effective not to bother then this all became some political nightmare and the science was weaponized people have been told the vaccines work but then told that those who are vaccinated still must wear a mask so none of this makes any sense mrs dobson you've come to

088your three minutes so if you could wrap up your comments i would appreciate it um i'll just wrap it up with this it is our god-given right to decide what happens to our bodies my body my choice it's the same with my children i get to choose what's best for them um it is art it's our business to decide what goes in and on our child on our children's bodies it is that is not your job that's our job and i'll just end with it thank you [Applause] our next speaker is renee reed and our next following will be chris reid if you'd like to switch your order you may feel free good evening good evening thank you i'm here because i'm concerned with the boards considering mandating masks when just a couple of weeks

089ago it was told that there would be a choice since michigan is no longer under emergency status and there are no mass mandates issued at the state or local levels health department or even michigan school board excuse me level i feel that is not justified to mandate a mask into into rule at this time since there is a slight uptick in livonia in cases i still don't feel like it is enough to justify masks at this time and although there are strong recommendations by the michigan health department and cdc without a state level mandate those recommendations should be left up to parents and individuals to consider making their own decisions based on their own conclusions of risk level in the june 14th board meeting mrs burton's response to audience communications on the topics of masks

090and vaccines included this statement as quoted from the meeting minutes the board respects the right of any individ every individual to have their opinion regarding vaccinations and masks but in this case the mass mandate was not the board's decision to make it was a requirement for schools to follow in order to return to school in person well it's no longer a requirement just as mask mandate requirement was not the board's decision last year the decision to create a mask mandate should also not be this board's decision i ask that you continue respecting the right of every individual and parent to have their opinion and make the choice that they consider best do not create a mandate requirement for masks and leave laws and mandate creations up to our michigan legislature your original decision to leave

091masking the choice as a choice is the right one that i my children and many fully support i ask you to vote no at this time for mask mandates and focus instead on creating a clear criteria for when masks might be requested for all and when they would no longer be requested continue all of the cleaning regime the hand washing practices the healthy hygiene practices from last year those were definite helping factors take the classroom outside for lessons as much as possible and above all continue trusting and the partnership with the community we all want to work towards getting back to normal and stop the developing precedence of an unacceptable new normal we won't let each other down and we will all be okay thank you [Applause] our next speaker will be chris reed and

092on deck we will have bill kanarski and chris feel free to move that microphone down if you need to hi my name is chris reed and i'm i was i'm like 11 years old i'm a kid and as a kid i feel like i should be free without a mask and last last year i had to wear a mask in school and i have adhd so it's kind of hard especially when the mask masks kind of make the teacher have to make us listen again and it's kind of it kind of makes the children feel like they're not listening so it fixed the teachers as well also the masks makes our hearing a little weird too so like one day we were just like walking outside we were like like the tear was like well

093we had our mask off and then we had our masks on so the teacher was like talking and then we were like we can't hear you and then that we figured out that it affects our hearing also my sister that doesn't have an issue but still understands because i do she doesn't feel like that she wants wants to wear a mask either thank you [Applause] thank you chris it's hard for a lot of adults to speak chris you did a nice job it's even harder when you're a kid our next speaker will be bill kanarski and on deck i have nick palazzo i'm sorry paulo zolo is bill canarski here with us this evening i don't believe he's here any longer can you mark that as such thank you our next our next speaker will

094be nick palazzolo and let's see here okay our next speaker will be jeff everett followed by renee warren mr everett um yeah i'll just stick it right here good evening mr everett thank you my name is jeff everett my daughters attend livonia public schools at frost and webster i'd like to thank the board for the opportunity to speak tonight i believe that lps should at a minimum retain the covid mitigation plan including masking that was in place last school year this proved to be effective at minimizing classroom spread and keeping the schools open for as much of the year as possible well for much of the summer the average number of cases in michigan and wayne county dropped to the lowest level since the early onset of covid the higher susceptibility of residents to the

095delta variant has caused a rapid rise in cases in the past month to a level that matches that of early last fall additionally the rate of spread is now comparable the last year despite far fewer number of unvaccinated individuals who based on the cdc data are more likely to contract the virus than those who have received at least one dose of the vaccine everyone who is referencing current or state county mandates is ignoring the changing trends in this past month and the differences that delta poses to both people in general and children the fact that children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine means that in-person schooling will present a significant risk of spread unless appropriate protections are in place and while a significant percentage of staff members in students 12 and older

096have received the vaccine there have also been numerous examples of vaccinated individuals contracting the virus and spreading it to others regardless of whether they themselves end up becoming seriously ill no one should consider the vaccine to be a panacea against the virus only an additional means of increasing protection of oneself and others it frustrates me that the wearing of masks have been has been made a political wedge issue when there is clear evidence from both during and long before covid that they are an effective tool to reduce disease spread and frankly given the numerous unknowns that we're still working to understand about covid and delta and everything related to them i'd rather risk being overly cautious about protecting myself my family and others in our community than to issue this caution in favor of a

097measure of increased personal freedom particularly if it meant potentially risking the health and safety of my daughters and those around them in my job as an engineer i often perform work at job sites that requires personal protective equipment i'm also the safety manager for my company the most basic safety rule out there in industry is safety first and when assessing safety risks one is taught to never underestimate the potential hazards they may encounter when performing work so that they can go home at the end of the day to their family a good safety policy should be proactive and anticipate risks before they can occur i present these observations as evidence for why the board should ensure that covert precautions for this coming school year include a mass requirement for all students and staff until such

098time that the number of cases in wayne county and the data associated with that drops to an acceptable level to permit relaxation of these precautions per state and county health guidelines as was the case last year i would like to see lps take a proactive stance and adopt a policy that mitigates coveted risks to the greatest extent possible thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is renee warren and on deck will be audrey rogers is renee with us this evening oh sorry good evening hi i was here a couple of weeks ago i think it was and it would have been here last week but we had a loss in the family i'm sorry about that i i want to tell all of you i'd love to know who the brave woman

099who ms ward if you if you could direct your comments to the board and make sure you're taking it to the parents that we we have we can speak with our dollars we can walk and that's what we need to do because masks are not the only thing our medical rights are not the only rights being taken away if you look at michigan's department of education policy and i have it right here the responsibility for determining a student's gender identity rests with the student not the parent trust me when i say that it is and i i am i i support the lgbtq community but i support the fact that a parent should be the person who is interacting with the child making sure they get the proper care and making sure that they get

100the proper information that's age appropriate that's maturation appropriate and that they get the proper counseling the schools are making decisions allowing our children to change their names and their identity genders on their school records without notifying us without consulting with us trust me i know and without explaining to the students the possible repercussions of of such a decision they're allowing them to make these decisions without notifying the parents when in fact these children probably need counseling but they're being denied that counseling because the school is making the decision it and it says right in the michigan department of education that parents should be notified and it should be considered on a case-by-case basis so there's there are there are no guidelines they don't have to tell you i don't want to personalize it because i

101don't want to uh i know this is all going to be on youtube when i ask the director of secondary education how i should explain to my granddaughter why she can't get a driver's license or a social security card because her school id is considered a legal identification but her legal name isn't on it he told me that i should tell her she can't have a driver's license and maybe next time she would think twice about the decision she made wow a decision you helped her make and you didn't explain the repercussions to her or even consult me as a parent i found out by calling the school to excuse her absence i left a voicemail at the onset of coven three times and i they kept going on unanswered i'm answered i kept getting

102emails i'm sorry you know this absence is unexcused when i finally got a whole person at the school they told me that my granddaughter didn't attend livonia public schools we don't have a person by that name here and they put me on hold ten minutes later they came back to the phone and informed me that he the name the school allowed her to change her name to and gender would be excused and that they were sorry that's how i found out this is pathetic and if you think your rights are being taken away your rights to make medical decisions your rights to make social decisions your rights to make a lot of decisions for your kids are being taken away you need to stay out of our medical clinics you need to stay out of

103our bedrooms and you need to teach our kids reading writing and math get out of the social business you're not their psychiatrists you're not their psychologists these policies are not appropriate for every child in many instances you're asking a giraffe to climb a tree and that's never going to happen so i want you all to consider homeschooling i want you all to look up the young lady who has resources available to you because they're not going to listen with their votes thank you our next speaker is audrey denton followed by rosemarie denton good evening um there's something i wanted to bring up first um there was an interview recently with dr um with i don't know if he's a doctor francis collins the director of the nih and in this interview this statement was posed

104to him i think we've created a concern about panic with the outbreaks among children when children do not demonstrate any significant symptoms i don't think you have any data showing that there is a significant greater risk of being sent home than lifelong learning deficits here's how the director of the ni and ih responded this was recently i don't think we have the data on either side of it hugh i think right now we are all trying to do the best we can the cdc really hates to have to make recommendations based on anecdotes but sometimes it's what you've got at the time my child should not be required to do something based on an anecdote my child is not a guinea pig our children aren't guinea pigs put the remember we actually like people are

105saying we the control is in our hands it all depends on what we're going to do what will we do um something's been sitting on my mind the last week mrs burton you talked about being frustrated because you had made a decision you had come to a decision about mass being optional but the health department was vilifying you i have a quote that i think we've probably all heard when a government fears the people there is liberty when the people fear the government there is tyranny that's from thomas jefferson i wonder what is it called when the government fears the government it's a concern to me so i appreciate your time i appreciate when we discover that parents can make the decision that we can keep sending our kids to school with the ability to

106breathe freely based on our decision and how to care for our child because it's your role as a district to leave the care up to us and you support us as parents thanks thank you [Applause] our next brief speaker is rosemary denton and on deck i have i have surrey bernard hi my name is rosemary dunton thank you for your time this evening i have two quick points i don't live in livonia but i have subbed in livonia with edustath and having said that last year because of the mask mandate and the situation i would not go into a classroom i renew my license to sub the all school districts are in need of subs and was gearing up to do that this year and then as this masked nonsense is coming on again i

107will not go into a classroom and look at a classroom full of beautiful little faces of little children i primarily will stick in the elementary grades when i sub i'm not going in and looking at kids with their faces their god-given faces covered it is wrong it is unjust for these kids they can't see you know emotionally you know this i'm not telling you any rocket science here so that's my first point my second point is i was in costco and i took a picture and i'm kind of following up on what the other gentleman said the toxicologist i took a picture of the mask box now my original cap that i wore was dental hygiene and i was a pediatric dental hygienist at ford hospital for years before we had mass then we did

108get mass and that was primarily for splatter and so forth so but i've been away from that and i did go in as i mentioned to costco and i took a picture of the mask box you saw the gentleman had it here and the first thing it says on the box is made in china the second thing it says on the box is not for medical use intended for single use only discard after use this general use mass cannot eliminate the risk of contracting an infectious disease and all these people are telling us how great they are you know if the box says it right there so thank you for your time thank you [Applause] [Music] our next speaker is sheree bernard and then i have on deck bill kanarski good evening good evening i

109am a parent of four count them four children right over there who went to lps in person last year i'd like to give you two important observations that are part of the scientific method some folks supporting universal masking in schools do not understand that school is not a hospital a grocery store or a restaurant therefore they don't understand what happens with the child's mask in school after all children do not follow the same strict protocols as a nurse or a doctor involving a mask which usually involves changing a mask every 45 minutes or in between patients my children have witnessed children dropping their masks in the halls playgrounds and even in the bathroom near toilets and urinals and putting the mask back on a mask worn by children all day at school ends up looking

110worse than a rag used in a house of ill-repute that is not a mask for a disease prevention that is a mask for disease perpetuation my second point of observation is i have also seen this summer that lps staff who have spoken for universal masking of our children have no problem going out to restaurants with strangers where people are free to expose their faces but they're afraid of my child's smiling faces so far using the observation part of the scientific method my hypothesis is being proven that this has nothing to do with disease prevention it is up to you to prove to parents and children that the end results have nothing to do with observing parental authority or else i take my four children out of your school district [Applause] our next speaker will be

111nick panarski followed by nick palazzolo is is mr kanawski present nope seeing that uh you can mark it as such our next speaker is nick palazzolo good evening feel free to adjust it i'm a resident of livonia and i'm also the president of the united parents of livonia and i just wanted to speak pretty briefly tonight there's a a couple points that i wanted to touch on real quick i haven't heard people talk about how many kids are dying or have died since the onset of covid and especially within livonia so um one of the things that was mentioned is that we're watching livonia's numbers to base some of this decision making on and and i think that a lot of people are are looking at the contagious rate or how much it spreads and

112everybody keeps leaving out the fact about the mortality rate so i think that's a really big piece because in in my whole life result we've always dealt with strep throat and head lice and and colds and flus and whatever else and and we've never done this so i just wanted to to offer that piece because if little kids aren't dying and if if we go back to the beginning of covid when we were all first trying to figure this out the whole point of everything we were doing was protect the elderly group and it's just kind of been kicked forward and forward and forward and now it's like people have the ability to have control over our kids so they're being used as kind of a pawn in that situation and i think that's really

113unfortunate because at the same time all of us adults are allowed to go out in public into the bars and and everywhere else now and it was supposed to be about protecting older people to begin with so if adults don't have to do it and they go to work every day and and live their lives why are we making our kids do it and mark mentioned last meeting you know i think part of the the hard thing with all this is is everybody has data from credible sources and it's kind of like you know everybody's coming up here with with something that's factual for the most part and so how we come to some kind of decision making is we have to use logic and common sense we have to you know look at how

114contagious it is and all those things but we also have to look at you know how many kids have died and then we have to compare that stuff against things that we know and then we have a base line floor like the flu so i've heard a couple teachers mention so far tonight that that they want to make sure that we stay in school and that seems to be a big concern it is of of mine as well but i also understand that a lot of school districts and i think livonia does too have a policy even for the flu season to where if a certain percentage of the school gets the flu then we're going to take a couple weeks off or whatever that case may be so i think that there's other things

115that we can do other than putting a mask on our kids and lastly i just want to maybe extend an owl branch to the folks that feel like they they want to have universal masking and and that is if if all of our groups can come together and agree on a set of numbers so that way we have a baseline because i think in general everybody wants the same thing for their kids nobody wants to see their kids sick nobody wants to see their kid die but at the same time we have to be rational about the information that's out there and i totally get there's going to be people on both sides that aren't happy regardless but if we don't have a baseline we're just going to keep arguing back and forth and tearing

116our community up and it's going to cause animosity between our kids and the whole nine so you know i guess i'm asking as a community can we agree on a set of numbers that we can look at and and make decisions off of and not take you know a little bit from mdhhs and they strongly recommend masks but then nobody wants to look at how many kids have been hospitalized and so on and so forth so um and mr pelosi you're you're through mister wind up all right i appreciate the time thank you guys thank you our next speaker is crystal fulton good evening hi hello i'm crystal fulton um i'm here just to explain a couple different things um i mean i do want to make it obvious that no one suggested children wear

117a mask for flu which is much more dangerous and that this is child abuse because there is um there's something called munchausen syndrome by proxy msbp it's a mental health problem in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care such as a child an elderly adult or a person who has a disability because vulnerable people are the victims msbp is a form of child abuse or elder abuse victims are most often small children and they may get painful medical tests they don't need they may even become seriously ill or injured or may die because of the actions of the caregiver children who are victims of msbp can have lifelong physical and emotional problems and may have munchausen syndrome as adults and this is a

118disorder in which a person causes or falsely reports his or her own symptoms we wouldn't let parents put football helmets on kids because of fear of meteor falling from the sky children are most likely to die of a rock from the sky than coped this is very delusional psychotic and it seems like hypochondria we do have effective treatments a child is sixty six six six hundred and sixty six thousand six hundred six sorry sixty six thousand six 667 times more likely to be sold to human traffic than die from cover 19. in addition masks assist them in being kidnapped and transported undetected and un identified to anyone in addition masks create a barrier to learning that would be verbal and non-verbal communication facial expressions learning to speak and to read if they're if they're hot

119and dizzy they get a headache there's emotional abuse teaching the air is toxic is what's happening and young children do not regulate their temperature well they do not sweat efficiency like really young children the preschool kindergarten first grade just to reduce their temperature nor are they aware enough of their physical needs to know when they are in danger they regulate their temperature through their exhalation the students were not fine last year with masks they were breathing they were rebreathing toxic levels of co2 they suffered from migraines headaches increased cavities lightheadedness increased levels of strep throat bacterial pneumonia increased anxiety blacking out and throwing up so i just wanted to make that clear tonight and please do not mandate masks for us for the fall thank you thank you the next item on our agenda is

120item 3d response to prior audience communications i do not have response at this time because we will be addressing most of the topics of of prior audience communications in our meeting later on this evening the next item on our agenda is item 4 consent agenda and may i have a motion please president burton mr johnson move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the following consent agenda items as recommended by the superintendent five a minutes of the organizational meeting of july 26 2021 5b minutes of the regular meeting of july 26 2021 5c minutes of the special meeting of august 16th 2021 6a approval of 2021 2022 tuition rate support we have a promotion by mr johnson supported by mrs jarvis is are there any questions on the consent

121agenda seeing none mrs bonfield would you please take the rule mr johnson yes mrs jarvis yes mr centers yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonifield says yes president johnson up geez that's okay president burton yes and that motion passes thank you uh the next item on our agenda is item 6b approval of construction manager for the 20 2021 bond may i have a motion please yes president burton mr centers move that the board of education of the livonia public school school district approved the recommendation from the owner's representative plant marine cressa to appoint clark construction company auburn hills michigan as construction manager for project number one and project number two of the 2021 bond projects in the amount of 4 million 682 i'm sorry 4 million 682 and authorized the superintendent or her designee to negotiate

122and execute final contracts on behalf of the board of education support we have a motion by mr center support supported by mr johnson and mr francis good evening good evening uh just shut down my page they had all the board books now open so bear with me well the construction manager i spoke on this portion at the committee last week thank you and um just a another very quick synopsis of we had a team from lps uh district attorney plant rank crosshail owners rep then part of that team also included board members so we did a thorough interview of the bidders in a closed bid process for the construction manager for 2021 bond we also then narrowed that that pool down from the original bidders to the interview pool interviewed interviewed the three different uh

123companies and narrowed again down to the the final clark construction we were very excited by the interview and the complete package and their forethought and insight into the construction market as well as the thought that they gave lps's bond program thank you so we are recommending cloud construction as the construction manager for both projects one and two that means for the full bond for the 2021 bond projects to the board thank you are there comments or questions from members of the board or the superintendent mr centers i would just again like to thank all the turn the firms who came out um gave really impressive presentations uh they it was clear everyone wanted to work with lps and uh work on this project um clark really did a phenomenal job just with the team they

124brought out the thought they put into long-term facilities so this will be a very exciting project and we i think everyone's looking forward to working with them so thank you absolutely thank you uh other comments or questions mr johnson thank you president burton uh mr francis just to clarify this is just for projects one and two and there will be other projects coming down projects one two uh we just delineated uh the the two or the entirety of the bond into two different projects so if we go backwards for a moment just to refresh uh everyone's memory for example with the architect and engineering firms engineering firms we had broken in between the general renovations within the buildings which would include things like the air conditioning the media center renovations the kitchens the serving lines

125etc we were calling that project one and then project two was the new builds of the robotic center as well as um the early childhood center so we're calling those project one and project two combined that is the entirety of of the uh of the bond so we always we broke it in two projects for to for the district to have the ability if we thought it was in the best interest of the district to break up uh i'm sorry to hire multiple firms within the course of the bond so we did do that under architectural firms by hiring both tmp for project two and french for project one we kept that same option open for construction managers looking through their bids having conversations with them in the interview process we really landed on on

126the idea that we didn't we wanted to have clark for all of it so when we say one and two that means the entirety of the bond thank you for the clarification i appreciate welcome mrs opus thank you president burton i'll just add that one of the things whereas we interviewed each of the firms and the construction manager role as you know is a is a really important one and because we're selecting one firm to work with us over the next six years for all of those bond projects i throw a pen to you mr johnson um that it really as we take a look at large-scale projects like the new builds as well as just really the day-to-day renovations that we're looking at each school one of the things that is essential after we're

127doing a a condensed project during the summer is that close out process and clark has really refined their closeout process and you know you'll often hear us refer during the bond to what we call a punch list and that comes at the end of the project and usually in the next you know up to 90 days of follow-up and what happens is obviously we have our certificate of occupancy we're back into the schools um but there are you know little objects and little areas remaining for work and the sooner that we can get that wrapped up the sooner the ongoing um you know events of the school the day-to-day operations can take place more smoothly and they really have an established process that has condensed that the primary bulk of that list down to 30

128days and at the very outset 60. and so that really was another important element it's certainly one important piece to oversee the work during the summer but i can tell you having worked through a six-year implementation of our prior bond um that work that we get done and to do so expeditiously as well as thoroughly in the fall is also extremely important um and clark has really focused on that they've done a lot of action research as a corporation and we felt had the best process for doing so efficiently and effectively so that was another important element for us with clark thank you are there other comments or questions from board members no seeing none we have a motion from mr centers uh supported by mr johnson for the approval of construction manager for the

1292020 2021 bond may i have a vote please mrs bondview mr centers yes mr johnson yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonifield says yes mrs jarvis yes and president burton yes and that motion passes our next item on the agenda is item 6c approval of technology designer 2021 bond i'm sorry 2000 2021 bond may i have a motion please president burton mrs bonfield move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the recommendation from the owner's representative plant marianne cressa to appoint integrated design solutions ids as the technology designer for the 21 bond projects in the amount of 920 thousand dollars and authorize the superintendent or her designee to negotiate and execute final contracts on behalf of the board of education support i have a motion by mrs bonnefield supported by

130mr centers mr francis thank you very much uh once again with regard to procuring these these firms for the 2021 bond projects ids was the the unanimous choice of the bond team we had run a again a invite only bid process we had three firms that we brought in three very reputable and and very well-known firms come came in did the interview process uh with us talked through their ideas their thoughts the folks who might be working with lps specifically and and integrated design solutions that more formally are more informally known as ids really stood out amongst the groups our our team was very impressed with the the ideas that they had uh with the help they could provide their knowledge in the industry and all of our reference checks to other districts around the

131metro detroit area all came out very well they're a large firm that does a lot of k-12 work in metro detroit and we're they're they're going to be new to us but we're very excited to be working with them so we do recommend uh integrated design solutions as the technology designer for the 2021 bond and generally speaking what they'll be doing is working directly with our i.t department as as well as in conjunction with construction manager architects and and building that full design plan for for our schools as we do our renovations excellent thank you do we have comments or questions by the superintendent or members of the board and again uh for the benefit of the public this is one of these items that we've discussed at least a few times while throughout the

132whole process which is why there are not as many comments or as many questions and answers this evening we have a motion for the approval of technology designer for the 2020-21 bond by mrs bonnefield supported by mr centers and mrs bonifield would you please take the role mrs bonafield says yes mr centers yes mrs jarvis yes mrs acosta yes mr johnson yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you uh item 7d is the approval of furniture consultant for the 2021 bond may i have a motion please president burton mrs jarvis move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the recommendation from the owner's representative plant moran cressa to appoint french associates incorporated rochester michigan for project one staff furniture and library media centers in the amount of

133two hundred six thousand dollars and tmp architecture incorporated bloomfield hills michigan for project number two robotics and early childhood centers in the amount of fifty two thousand dollars and authorized the superintendent or her designee to negotiate and execute final contracts on behalf of the board of education may i um okay we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr johnson mr centers i mean mr sorry mr francis mr sanders is down there um these are two familiar names i just mentioned a few minutes ago because they are our current 2021 bond architectural and engineering firms both tmp and french associates in the original bid for a e services for the bond we had added an alternate portion and we asked for bids on furniture design at the time we had just put that on

134pause we went forward with the the formal bid process brought on board tmp brought on board uh french associates and as we started our our meetings we have weekly every other week we meet with them and and every week we we meet internally about the bond and as the conversations came around to what makes the most sense with regard to furniture design it made the most sense both from a design aspect a functionality aspect and really a fiscal aspect to have accept the alternate bids from both companies and have our french french associates do furniture design for the spaces that they were going to be designing because many of the spaces and as is the best example is they're going to be doing our media centers over the next several years in all of our

135buildings they weren't going to design the space for the furniture and the use of the furniture within it same with our early childhood center and robotics centers and tmp is going to now do the furniture design for those spaces that they're designing for the robotics and for early childhood it just made the most sense we only waited just to be able to talk through the process as opposed to getting a third party designer so we we uh recommend both of these firms for furniture design thank you are there comments or questions from the board or superintendent we saw a lot of examples of this in in a lot of the proposals that came through clearly a lot of the excitement that can go into renovations such as this when we're looking at at robotics at

136early childhood and a lot of the other pieces but some of the some of the flashier ones the ones that catch your eye even more um that would you realize that so much of that is the interior furnishings so it is crucial and i'm glad we're getting those folks on board from the very beginning right yeah especially the media centers which are going to really be the use of the media center is going to be the furniture that that's within them so we're very excited about that project not that we're not excited about all of the projects some of them are just more visual than others mrs zoequest yeah and i'll just add on that i really think um one that's one of the things that struck us as we've done these tours and begun

137tours of recently renovated media centers robotics areas um early childhood centers one of the things especially in those in those learning collaboration spaces is what an impact furniture makes on those spaces and how our students will utilize them and i don't know that we really realize the extent of that or the possibilities that exist and how much of that really is the focus even more so to some extent than the architectural design because we're generally working within schools that are 50 to 60 years old and while we may be moving you know some walls and doing you know some modifications there for the most part the shell is going to remain the same and so where you really begin to take a look at how we utilize that space differently and how we reimagine it

138our students accessing it it really does focus around furniture so it certainly made sense that each of the firms who have the architects designing it are the ones who are also then guiding us on that furniture piece so we really think that's going to be one of the key points as we think about transforming these areas for our students and how they're going to use them that that both are both sets of architects will be appropriate guides for us in that process terrific thank you any other comments or questions from the board seeing them we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr johnson and mrs bonifiel can you please take the rule mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mr centers yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonafield says yes and president burton yes and

139that motion passes at this point we have been at our meeting for a little over two hours we are going to take about a five minute restroom break and then we will reconvene we are now at recess just momentarily thank you welcome to the continuation of the livonia public schools board of education regular meeting of tooth of august 23 2021 our next item on our agenda is item 6e approval of tennis court designer sinking fund may i have a motion please president burton mrs acosta move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the recommendation from the owner's representative plant moran cressa to approve foresight design incorporated berkeley michigan to provide design services for the franklin high school and stevenson high school tennis court updates in the amount of seventy

140one thousand two hundred dollars and authorize the superintendent or her designee to negotiate and execute final contracts support we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr centers mr francis president burden we have a lot of designers this evening that we're having approved and this one is for tennis court design foresight foresight has worked with the district for many years and most recently starting in 2017 on the three high schools different athletic field renovations in that time and coming up we've had good success with foresight as both designer as well as being the district representative on site so that they they come just like any other construction project they ensure that the job is being done to the specifications and they keep the job moving along so we're presenting today not construction of anything

141at this point this is simply for foresight to come on board to design the tennis court renovations at stevenson high school in franklin high school we are interested and in need frankly not just interested of doing those tennis courts so we want to get the ball rolling with the guard with regard to to design i think it's worth repeating what i'd stated last week with the board when we discussed this before which was that we know the construction market's a little crazy right now and the idea here is to get foresight doing the design and then when we come to the time to bid we can always we can have options we can do both of these in the summer of 22 we could send one to the summer of 23 and do one in

14222 we can work out a fall schedule if we believe that the construction dollars will come down when it's off peak which is summer time for schools so we want to keep our options open but what's important right now is to get drawing and have that work done and have the design in hand so we can send the bids out when we want to as a district excellent thank you mr centers so we would have liked to have done these projects but you know we have to be thoughtful about the market and what makes financial sense so these courts though are playable and you've done some work on them this summer that crack them even more so correct we've done some crack filling and and work on them because uh we we do want to

143make sure that they're playable they will be much much nicer once they're done obviously but we we want to keep them safe and playable and and we've worked over the worked on that over the summer thank you thank you mr senators other comments mr johnson thank you president burton uh mr france i just want to make the distinction that uh the other items that we've been dealing with tonight are the 2021 bond this is a sinking fund price the sinking fund project thank you very much for for delineating that yes the other items were all through bond uh this is specifically a sinking of sinking fund projects and that is the the fund that would this would be paid for both design and construction thank you other comments or questions from the board of superintendent

144and just uh for the public the reason churchill is not on this is because we completed churchill a couple of years ago okay franklin churchill franklin and stevenson are yet to be done correct thank you uh any other comments or questions seeing none we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr centers for the approval of tennis court designer from the sinking fund and mrs bonfield will you take the role please mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mrs bonifield says yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you folks and the next item on our agenda is the approve the uh the item 6e i'm sorry 6f approval to purchase bulk salt for the 2021-2022 school year the ever-exciting bulk salt purchase mr francis i'm sorry no

145not yet uh may have a motion please i'll read it for you president burton i'll take on salty thank you mr johnson move that the board of education of the livonia public school school district approved the bulk the purchase of bulk road salt from the detroit salt company detroit michigan through the state of michigan my deal extended purchasing program for a total cost of fifty six thousand six hundred and fifty four dollars support we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mrs jarvis and now you're up mr mr francis thank you this is a an annual purchase this is a necessary purchase for our parking lots and to be prepared for the winter season uh the my deal is the pricing comes through through my deals contract which does fulfill the board's obligation to

146bid so i recommend this purchase for tons of bulks out and i explained to the board last week how there is a floating scale that we can hold that contract price a little less and a little more as needed okay great comments or questions from the board or superintendent seeing none we have a motion by mr mr johnson supported by mrs jarvis for the approval to purchase bulk salt for the 2021-2022 school year and mrs bonfield will you take the role mr johnson yes mrs jarvis yes mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mrs bonifield says yes president johnson yep jeez that's okay uh president burton yes uh yes and that motion passes thank you that's okay uh wasn't that long ago uh the next item on our agenda and thank you mr francis the uh

147the next item agenda on our agenda is item 6g approval to purchase pizza for the school lunch program may i have a motion please president burton mr centers move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the submitted bid by domino's pizza for delivery of pizza in the amount of eight dollars per pizza for this the district school lunch program starting for the 21 21 20 2021 2022 school year through the 2023-24 school year support we have a motion by mr centers supported by mrs acosta mr francis thank you president burton this was a an open bid for school lunch pizzas it is a specific type of pizza that that the company must run a program that is has been approved through the federal government's food program for school lunches

148and domino's was actually the only bidder on this on this but we are bringing them forward because um we we do know that while the price has increased and we talked a little bit about this last week it is a necessary item for the menu and based upon the the man hours and the work and within lps food service department we we want to make sure that we have an outside vendor at this time to be doing it for the 2021-22 school year it is a three-year contract and i'm asking the board to approve all three years of this contract but know that we as a district can cancel it not only between years but at any point during a year so we do have quite a bit of flexibility uh on this on this

149contract so you do recommend the approval oh you're out of battery can you talk too long it just went out we do recommend that the board approves this bid thank you are there comments or questions from the superintendent or the board and again they just so the public realizes what we do have to do it's different than picking up pizza wherever you may run to the corner to get it there are higher nutrition standards for pizza that we serve in the school lunch program including if i'm not mistaken it's whole wheat crust uh it's a lower fat cheese trees and salads everything correct okay that's why they have to qualify as an approved lunch lunch school program which is healthier pizza we should all be eating probably but uh but it does cost a little

150bit more but i just want to state our prices while we're being the same yes we're not passing along that correct cost correct the students correct and this this gets paid for out of the food nutrition services fund it's not a general fund item our food and nutrition services is generally speaking a self-funded department okay any other comments or questions mrs acosta thank you president burton i was going to add that the first slice students will have free if they want because this year we're doing the um all students have lunch for free the federal waiver and then for the waiver and so if they want the additional slice then that's when there's a payment yes yes and and we don't think like uh um mrs zoequest mentioned we're not intending to raise prices on

151something it's just a matter of the cost was raised for us on the supply side thank you you're welcome okay and that's the federally root uh reimbursed breakfast and lunch program that we're talking about that this qualifies for yes thank you any other comments or questions from the board or superintendent seeing them we have a motion by mr centers supported by mrs acosta for the approval to purchase pizza for the school lunch program uh mrs mountainfield will you take the rule mr centers yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonifield says yes mrs jarvis yes johnson yes and president burton yes and that motion passes thank you the next item on our agenda is item seven instruction matters and and seven a is approval to purchase i ready diagnostic and instructional licenses may i have a motion

152please president burton mrs bonfield move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the purchase of the i-ready online adaptive diagnostic assessment and targeted instructional licenses from curriculum associates for a total of one hundred and twelve thousand three hundred two dollars and sixty cents this total includes reduced cost per license for a savings of thirty two thousand four hundred and five dollars and forty cents support we have a motion by mrs bonnefield supported by mrs jarvis and good evening good evening o'brien how are you i'm wonderful thank you i am happy to bring this purchase it is a yearly renewal of our i-ready diagnostic licenses as you know last year we bought instructional licenses for all of our students this year we are going back to using them in a

153targeted way for certain classes for certain students instead of buying them for all of our students but we are providing all of our students kindergarten through 8th grade the assessment the diagnostic assessment so that we can use that information to help guide our interventions and to determine how students are doing on grade level standards so we're looking to ask you for your approval for this purchase they gave us a discount per license this year so they broke it out and gave us a reduction on each individual license and the funds will come from the academic services budget which has been supported by the wayne county enhancement millage monies and as always i will apply for any grants that the state has so over the last several years there have been grants for online assessments and

154so i will apply for that when it comes up if it comes up thank you you're welcome are there comments or questions from the superintendent or board members and mrs uh o'brien you said we're getting the diagnostic for k-8 so all children will we'll be able to utilize this for testing for all children and then those that have demonstrated need then we will get the uh the lessons that go with those areas yep so those classes like our student support classes they use the instructional licenses um our lv students for in grades two through six will have access to the instructional licenses so schools will reach out and say so i have a couple kids who could use this but mostly it's in our student success classes and then our um lv students this year

155okay and this is the program too that those lessons are targeted specifically exactly to the to the test questions that a student may yeah it's it's an answer it's totally based on the assessment they take and then gives them lessons to improve the areas of weakness okay terrific thank you any other comments or questions uh seeing none we have a motion by mrs bonafield supported by mrs jarvis uh for the approval to purchase i-ready diagnostics and instructional licenses and mrs bonfield will you please take the rule mrs bonafield says yes mrs jarvis yes mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mr johnson yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you very much thank you the next item on our agenda is item 7b approval of act 18 capital outlay technology may i have a

156motion please president burton mrs jarvis move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approve the act 18 capital outlay technology purchases for the asd wkskl and moci programs for 2021-2022 school year support we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr johnson and dr teriel good evening good evening president burton for the opportunity to once again provide you with our student services act 18 recommendations for technology purchases that we previously discussed last week at our study session as well as at our special meeting our livonia public schools i.t department has vetted our recommendations for new technology prior to being placed on our wayne county risa moderately cognitively impaired program work skills program and autism program budget plans the budgets i am bringing forward to you this evening have been

157approved in april through the act 18 committee process through wayne county resa and all of our recommendations are risa approved and will come out of our act 18 budget our technology plan is consistent across all of our all three of our programs of which we have 20 asd classrooms 10 mokai classrooms and 9 work skills classrooms our recommendation is for promethean boards which are interactive white boards that allows for added accessibility and interaction for our students these boards can be standalone computers or connect to our teacher workstations we are adding web cameras and document cameras as well for our teachers to be able to present printed materials as well as web-based materials teachers will also be receiving new laptops to replace old computers so i'm asking for your approval for our moderately cognitively impaired technology

158budget which totals thirty eight thousand two hundred and eighty nine dollars our work skills technology budget which totals thirty five thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars and our autism technology budget which totals forty five thousand ninety three dollars for a total recommended purchase of one hundred and nineteen thousand ninety seven dollars from our approved act 18 budget comments or questions from the superintendent or board members dr terrell when you're talking about the act 18 budget that means this has been specifically funded by wayne risa as part of the program of support for our special education students that are affected not only livonia public schools students but our western wayne county students that we service in livonia public schools and that's why risa funds this is that correct that is correct we service 13 other school

159districts that we provide services for in our moderately cognitively impaired program are a program for students with autism as well as our work skills program which is our 18 to 26 year old program okay thank you other comments or questions from the superintendent or board members seeing them we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr johnson for the approval of act 18 capital outlay technology and mrs bonfield will you take the role mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mr centers yes mrs bonafield says yes mrs acosta yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you thank you thank you dr dehariel uh the next item on our agenda is item 7 c update on plans and preparation for the 2021-2022 school year this item does not require a motion because it is

160not an official vote however it will be a consensus item uh but with the board of education and the cabinet members by consensus what we mean is uh meeting together and discussing the details of this plan and coming to a conclusion that we can live with it it is not necessarily that we all love any one portion or another but rather consensus means it we have come together to put together the best plan possible and that we can support and live with that plan uh this is opus i'm going to turn this over to you at this time thank you president burton and thank you to everyone who has really spent a great deal of time sharing thoughts and feedback with us over the past several weeks we are bringing to you uh some recommendations

161this evening for your consideration um that have been uh talked about each day for several days um over several weeks um we've garnered input from a significant number of members of our community members of our staff who have reached out we've had an opportunity to meet with our entire administrative leadership team and as well as our district leadership we also appreciated the time last week for our board of education to really spend some time on some of the the key mitigation measures and give us some feedback on that additionally i know a number of us have also participated in community-based meetings with medical professionals with members with other community leaders and other wayne county superintendents as well as connected with members from the wayne county health department and the michigan department of health and human

162services so it really is a broad ranging set of mitigation measures and so we'd like to go through those with you this evening and i have with me members of our cabinet team um to really uh touch on a few pieces that are more specific to their programming um so we'd like to go through the the this in its entirety um and then really us pause and garner feedback from you on the recommendations and have some dialogue prior to us sharing this with our school community staff and parents so i'm going to read the portion of the mitigation measures so we shared that with you this evening you should have a paper copy in front of you and so i'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the background so we start

163with we recommend a set of mitigation measures for our district which first and foremost allow for our students to participate in in-person learning for the 2021-22 school year these measures are intended to provide an environment for our students and staff which balances health and safety considerations along with social emotional well-being while remaining respectful and reflective of the guidance provided by health agencies and the feedback shared with us by our school community a layered approach to these measures will be based on factors for consideration listed below and mr francis and i are going to spend some time on those factors for consideration because one of the things i know that the board had asked about and community members had asked about uh were you know what data are you looking at what information are you gathering

164what are you monitoring why have things changed even since june and so i think it's really important we spend some time on those factors for consideration so i want to share again a piece from the michigan department of health and human services and we take on the mental responsibility to make these decisions for our district and so one of the things and i'll quote their document together with local public health officials school administrators should consider multiple factors when they make decisions about implementing layered prevention strategies against covet 19. since schools typically serve their surrounding communities decisions can be based on the school population families and students served as well as their communities robust layering strategies will consider primary factors the factors for consideration this is now our documentation so the reason i wanted to share

165that piece is because we talked about that a little bit last week and prior to that we talked about the importance of if we were going to be charged with the responsibility of making this decision then we were going to look specifically at a number of factors including local data for our community regional data as well as the age and the population of the students that we serve so we share with you these factors for consideration which were developed based on guidance from local state and federal health agencies and they will be continuously monitored by district administration updates may be made to any of the aforementioned mitigation strategies based on changes in the key factors those updates may be made district-wide or at a particular school or level based on necessity and we would certainly

166communicate those changes so one of the factors for consideration that mr francis and i are going to share are something that we monitor on a regular basis and by a regular basis we generally mean daily for most of these factors um in some cases they are weekly factors or as as different factors arise so those five pieces are the first is local case data we heard from the board clearly that a focus for the data should be on what is happening within our school community so we will do a daily review or we do a daily review of the following livonia number of daily positive covid cases livonia seven day cumulative livonia per 100 000 average and trend lines of the data collected and then we share and this will certainly all be part of

167the information that goes out to our school community the data sources for that information and i'll have mr francis speak to those in a moment the second is school specific or level specific case data and that would include identifying any clusters of cases in a particular program or activity school or level monitoring for signs of spread you may recall last year that was one of the things that we did when we looked at whether or not a school or a level needed to pivot to remote learning while we were in person we looked at very school specific or level specific data and so we keep a close eye on that piece in addition to what's happening in the community we want to know what's happening with our own students the third is the age of

168students taking into consideration access and accessibility to vaccinations for each age group this is one of the factors also shared by the local health agencies and our state health agency so again looking at local case data those four factors school specific or level specific case data age of students and then moving to the greater region and we've also had conversation about we don't just live in a bubble we do have a greater region and so we look at our county case data when we look at that we're really monitoring trends and so we're looking at positivity rate by week within our region as well as trends of cases by week and again i'll have mr francis speak to that in a moment and finally recently cdc has come out with transmission levels they rate from

169low to moderate to substantial to high thank you and they're color coded and again in reflecting the feedback that we had received from the board we are monitoring what we refer to as local cdc transmission levels so although we will not be tying our recommendation directly to these levels we will review where we are and we'll share that with you this evening a review of local transmission levels will serve as one data point in our decision making and allow us to see those clear trend lines so again local case data school specific or level data age of students wayne county and then local cdc transmission levels mr francis do you want to spend a few minutes just taking us through and really we've been monitoring this since spring of 2020 many of these factors correct

170and uh i'd be happy to to walk through uh the the document um that we keep track of the items and the board has has seen this of course and what we do is we we have different tabs for livonia wayne county state of michigan and then a positivity rate the positivity rate is for wayne county and that is wayne county excluding detroit so that is how it is reported out because detroit the city of detroit has its own health department they track their own numbers so we remove uh the data that were that is out there for wayne county is excluding detroit but going off of what mrs oak was talked about with regard to trying to translate we can track the numbers and we can look at the graph and we can see

171it going up and down throughout the last year and a half but the question would become what what is high what is what is not high those types of decisions really aren't for for us we aren't the medical community so cdc did come out with with the item that had their their data does track and it does lay out for low moderate substantial and high like mrs locust mentioned when you take a rolling seven day total so you add up the most recent seven days and then you need to hold that factor steady to get per 100k so you need the population that you're looking at for the city of livonia we use that population of course wayne county excluding detroit and then the state of michigan so you can look at a bit of

172an apples to apples whether a community has 17 000 people living in it or if it's the entire state with nearly 10 million people living in it so going through that we we daily get the new cases for the city of lilonia right from the city's covet tracker website so they they put the cases down uh each day they're quite diligent about it and and they post it each evening so we've been running that that model and it looks exactly the same then for the next two so wayne county the same item there is a wayne county copen dashboard you can go to that as they post the numbers it's a daily new number so there's a way to look at it the total numbers but that's not what we looked at we look at

173it each day so we can see the ups and downs as they go through same with the state of michigan um the the reports from michigan have fluctuated it used to be daily for most of the time for a while it went to two times a day and recently they actually went to monday wednesdays and fridays so it's something that we michigan being the totality of the state i think as we described um in in what mrs ocus was discussing a few minutes ago the larger our population we look at a little bit less it seems to be you know if if the northern portion or the u.p is driving the spread that that's not necessarily affecting livonia so we're looking at livonia first and then also wayne county because as we know they're our

174neighbors we travel the area etc so anyway the just to give an example looking at the city of livonia with regard to using the low moderate substantial and high if i back up into the area where say we got out of school in mid-june we were really in a low area we were in the fours and fives and sixes with which would be the seven day rolling average each day dropping off that eighth day and adding in the new one and as we got into mid-july and started having conversations uh the the last meeting the board had for july was on the 26th and we when we look at late july we actually had started to move into what is the yellow band which yellow would then be moderate so we went from a low

175in in the early parts of the summer when we got out of school and using again the cdc numbers which just to be very clear so we're on the same page less than 10 is low between 10 and 49 really 49.99 if you want to get down to the decimal is is the yellow which is moderate transmission and then the orange is substantial transmission which is 50 up through 99.99 cases and that's again the total for the week and then high transmit transmission is 100 or more and that's the red so as we were working through the last the last board meeting in the last portion of july the city of livonia moved from those single digits up into double digits and then by the time they got to the end of july was in

176the 40s and that was their their one week total as health for per 100k so that we're looking at apples to apples with populations and then as we continue to move through the month of august it has been rising through the month of august we are still in orange which is substantial but right now we are knocking on the ceiling of that substantial number in the mid 90s and the cdc's number at 100 or higher as i just mentioned would be considered high and that's the the color matches in the color coding system so that's that's the city of livoni numbers and no matter how you hold it whether you want to take a daily average weekly average the the graph always looks the same it's just a matter of the scale on your on

177your x-axis so so um it's really a matter of looking at that trend are are we moving into higher transmission or are we lowering down through our transmission it's really that that trend line and we do the same thing for for wayne county and for the state of michigan both of which are actually in the high transmission over a hundred the state has been over a hundred only for the past handful of days they were insubstantial and again their trend data was showing in the 50s in the beginning of august then into the 70s and then 80s and 90s and then recently uh in the middle of last week or late last week they went into the what would be considered high they broke the 100 barrier in wayne county similarly you see the same

178trend but a little quicker more a week into august actually broke the 100 barrier so looking at our neighbors in in the county looking at the state that's sort of what the overall feel of it is just getting that data setting it steady for per 100k using the population of that data and having the information we're also able to track the positivity rate again for wayne county excluding detroit so we get that data when it's posted through the state's website and we go saturday to saturday to saturday to saturday so from from a sunday to a saturday you get the number of folks who got tested in wayne county that's reported to the county health department and then you get the number of positives out of all the people being tested that's where a positivity

179rate comes from you know if if there's x number of thousand people tested how many came out as a positive test divide in and get the percentage on that so that's been rising up through through the summer it's rising slower than what the transmission rate is it is at this point at the very top portion of moderate uh and if it goes just four tenths of a percent higher it would be technically in the orange substantial but i like to you know you can bounce between a decimal here and a decimal there i think it's more important to look at the trend line that things go which way is something moving is something moving up is it moving down is it moving up very fast or very very slowly is it crashing down very fast

180so all that that story matters when we look at these things thank you mr francis and so some of the data that we have now are those the first and last the local case data and the local cdc transmission level we have we certainly know the age of the students as we talk about each of these separate mitigation measures and then we have the wayne county case data what we don't have yet is the school specific or level specific case data and so one of the things that you had asked about was how would we make those determinations on either when any of the mitigation measures that are in place may shift either to be lifted or to perhaps become more stringent and generally as we take a look at this at when you look

181at the trend lines the recommendation is to look at a two week a minimum of a two week trend line if you are looking to lift mitigation measures so um while we would be looking at this daily and certainly reviewing it more comprehensively each week um as you take a look at lifting uh mitigation measures we would want to see those trend lines declining at a minimum of a two week period because what you'll see and and i know you've seen it because we've we've certainly shared it with you uh for the past uh 17 months is we we will see those fluctuations maybe within a week or even within a few days and so what you really want to see is that general trend line that may not be the same case if we

182decide to add a layer of mitigation and so if we have perhaps saw an increase in a particular school at a particular grade in a particular club or activity we may say we need to shift our mitigation measures we would not wait two weeks to do so and so i want i wanted to be certain that one of the things you had asked about was what would that timeline be what would we what would we look at well i could tell you we look at this very very regularly as you know as a board we share this information with you regularly um we would certainly want to do another deep check-in at the end of september which would give us three weeks of data that would be in category two school specific or level specific

183data that is one piece we do not have because our our kiddos aren't in um we certainly could have looked at the summer programming again we had high school students in for heist for summer school we had elementary students in but we did not have a school full day we did not necessarily have lunch running as it normally would or the same numbers of students but we did have programming including summer sat going on but we did not think it was appropriate to include that as level specific data for this purpose so i'm going to just pause there and see if you have any clarifying questions about our our factors for consideration because that those are um not new elements those are new elements in that we have put those together as our set of

184metrics that we're following are there comments or questions from members of the board or the cabinet mrs acosta um i know that you said that we don't have specific data because they're all the majority of our students aren't in session but we do have students in session since last week is that data being used to as part of this i don't know if i'm explaining myself so we have had a very successful start at niji ero that is really our only school program programming that is in session um and so if we have not had any reported cases other board members or cabinet members mrs this is oakwest uh just again for clarification for the community because this is we've been reviewing this type of information for like as you said for months but um

185again just as a clarification when we're looking at the local livonia data that data is available on the city of livonia website so anybody in the community who wishes to follow that and and many of us do on a daily basis mr francis does a phenomenal job of providing very detailed charts for us and updating those every day every other day but some of us are monitoring it on our own even from other on our own charts whatever uh but if anybody in the public wants to get that specific information it is available on the city of livonia website i'll tell you it will take uh 20 or 30 seconds or so to upload onto your screen um it is so be patient you're on the right screen um but uh that information is is

186available to anybody and again mr francis just to confirm uh when we're used when we're utilizing the cdc uh definitions of low uh moderate substantial and high the thresholds again are 10 or fewer cases or under 10 cases is considered low 10 to 49 is considered moderate 50 to 99.9 is considered substantial and 100 or above is considered high so we just took their definitions and we apply them to our livonia data correct so when we say livonia or when we say cdc standards with with livonia that's what we're talking about we take their our information right off the livonia website and we use the uh cdc's definitions for how to uh how to categorize correct the cdc actually has a map that you can look at that the countries the states and break it

187down and narrow it down to even by county i don't see where they have municipalities so it's easy to do though is look at the you know just look at the cities and uh being just a little bit under 100 000 in population it's not too hard to even just look at the raw numbers add up the last seven it is a touch higher than one of that what that is because we're under a hundred thousand but if you get the population you can get the the closer but it's pretty much that and that's a significant piece because for a while we were looking at uh at a seven day rolling average but what this what this is utilizing is a cumulative seven day so we take the last seven days and rather than averaging

188those we were taking the last seven days and adding them together um but it's quite literally just dividing by seven or or multiplying by seven right number right okay um again mrs opus when you're talking about school specific uh an example of that was was last year when we had uh high numbers that might have spiked in one of our high schools that caused us to take action in that specific school we didn't do district-wide action we just spotted in on the one area that was having uh having an issue and i assume that's what we're talking about too we're looking at school specific information um we're not going to enact action necessarily district wide if we find it on one sports team or in one specific middle school for example is that correct well

189we do have district-wide mitigation measures that we are recommending for everyone and then if there are additional layers that would be based partially on school specific or level specific yes that's what i meant thank you for clarifying that any other comments from board members no okay alrighty so we'll keep going and some of the other considerations for mitigation measures would be taking a look at individual large scale events that may have additional layered mitigation measures based on the following factors density of people in the space whether or not the activity is taking place indoor or outdoor the length of the event and the nature of the activity and again we will continue to monitor any mandates that may come from health agencies or from the michigan high school athletic association which may necessitate a review

190of our current measures so those are our factors for consideration in the recommendations we're bringing to this evening and those will also be what we will utilize to make any modifications either of lifting restrictions in the future or if needed adding additional layers so we're going to take you through we are not we will let you home at some point this evening we are not going to take you through every piece what we want to talk about is self monitoring and daily screeners self quarantine in a school setting cleaning protocols mask wearing vaccinations ventilation and again we just spoke about large gatherings and then mr green and mr willenberg are going to speak in broad terms about the myriad measures that we have at the elementary and secondary level again we're not going to go

191into every detail that exists about a rival dismissal and lunch suffice to say there are measures for for that we're considering for the entire school day what we're really sharing with you this evening are our recommendations for the district-wide measures that would apply to all grade levels so i'm going to turn it over to mr francis who's going to talk about the self-monitoring and daily screeners thank you very much it is still a requirement to monitor whether it is for a an employee of illinois public schools a visitor to the illinois public schools visitor is a general term could be a vendor coming in it could be a parent coming in it could be generally speaking in other words a non-employee coming into the building as well as we still have the student daily screener

192put out from wayne county health department and that is something that we sent out to families last year it is just a pdf document the first two the staff web screener and the visitor web screener are live forms and so employees each morning and when i'm getting ready i pop open my phone and i open up the browser that i have it just sitting on and and i i tap through and and i leave for work and i answer those questions that are required so we can gather that that information and it goes straight to the human resources department if somebody answers a question that says yes i do have a fever or they something that that it triggers an email to hr the visitor web screener is very similar and when folks come to

193the to the building they'll continue to have to to to fill that out again it is a web-based item we have qr codes you can take a picture with your phone and get to it you can just we have a tiny url it's easy to remember i've memorized it over the last months um and and you just fill that out again you're asked it's the same questions all three of these documents are basically the same questions it's just the formatting that we're able to use them the third one being the student daily screener that was a pdf that we had sent out to families we we just said you know print it out magnet to the to the refrigerator and and make sure you're looking for these these signs from your from your child if

194someone's not feeling well whether it be an employee or a student you stay home and if you don't feel well don't come in until your whatever that that particular symptom or symptoms were subside that's basically the plan and it is something though from an hr perspective with regard to our employees we are still required to gather that information so we're continuing the screener it's a very simple item it sounds like screener sounds somewhat i don't know it's basically just looking with you working with your child or working with your employees to say if you're not feeling well if any of these things are are true with you you shouldn't come into work or you shouldn't come into school so that's a big a big partnership with with families you know with the parents to say

195you know please do the screening with your children and it's a partnership with our employees to say you need to hop on your phone or your laptop or wherever the case may be and fill that out thank you mr francis now we want to talk about self quarantine for a school setting dr teriel is going to walk us through that and this is based on wayne the wayne county health department and cdc guidance for self quarantines and closed contact tracing good evening so once again we will be doing contact tracing in the schools and contacting families or staff members if a quarantine is required so if an individual is considered a close contact that is defined as somebody who is less than three feet of an infected person for more than 15 consecutive minutes so

196if a staff member or a student falls under that category then they are considered a close contact and the quarantine is for 10 days and they may return to school or work after 10 days as long as they are 24 hours symptom free so they may not return to school symptomatic there are some following options that we have to shorten the quarantine that are acceptable alternatives for the cdc guidelines so again a quarantine can end after day 10 as long as they are symptom-free and they can return to school or work a quarantine can end after day seven when the following conditions have been met a negative pcr test and no symptoms during during daily monitoring so the specimen for the pcr test may be provided within 24 hours of the time plant quarantine discontinuation

197so that would be 24 hours before day seven they must quarantine for seven days and again if they are have a negative pcr test as well as no symptoms they may return to school or work after day seven we also have a no quarantine period is required for close contacts of a positive covid19 case number one is always the individual must be asymptomatic so not exhibiting any symptoms and one of the following applies within the past five months the close contact had a positive confirmatory coveted pcr test or the individual is fully vaccinated which is defined as 14 days have passed since the close contact was vaccinated with the second dose of the pfizer or moderna or the one dose johnson and johnson or the potential exposure to covet 19 occurred in a classroom while

198both the positive covit 19 case and the other individual were masked and they had at least three feet of physical distance between them so again an individual will quarantine for 10 days and may return to school or work as long as they are asymptomatic they can return after the seventh day as long as they are asymptomatic and have a negative pcr test or they do not have to quarantine if they are asymptomatic can show that they are fully vaccinated can show with a positive confirmatory pcr test that they have had covered within the past five months or if the close contact occurred in a classroom where the positive and the uh close contact were both massed and had at least three feet of physical distance between them okay mr centers i just had a clarifying

199question on number two um when it says quartetine can end after day seven um if they have a negative pcr test and says 24 hours uh you said 24 hours before the seventh day is that correct so we're talking basically the sixth day correct okay and one of the things that we looked at that was um a good deal of feedback that we received from our staff from our families from our students that that extended at one time it was 14 days which was extensive 10 days also and while we certainly want to be again responsible we also want to be reasonable and as we took a look at our data with regard to students who were close contact quarantined and whether or not they then contracted covid we felt comfortable utilizing this acceptable alternative

200based on the cdc guidelines to have the quarantine end after day seven again with the negative pcr test and no symptoms during daily monitoring um in that seven day period there'll be a weekend in there somewhere so that really shortens the school days down to um at maximum five and so while we would like our students to have to miss no days we feel that it is um a responsible and reasonable measure um and we appreciated that flexibility for us to be able to include in our quarantine process for this year are there questions from board members or comments from border uh or cabinet mr sanders so i just did want to emphasize again the last one that said um if uh both individuals were massed and they had at least three feet of physical

201distance between them so that means our typical classroom seating for the coming year we know that our class sizes are still smaller than typically so would that allow for three speed of space um in a in a normal classroom if people both people are masked no quarantine necessary am i is it catching on to that right i think the answer that depends for the most part if you're sitting in one spot all the time i think there's the odds are most classrooms are going to have that space but we're trying to get as much as possible as the opening statement was with regard to with the distancing is to to get back to instead of having to always be singly in a row in your desk trying to go back to some group work trying

202to get back to the carpet so there will be times it just depends on how many minutes that was but if the generalized quest you know following your generalized question in most classrooms that that could be likely accomplished it's just a matter of what's going on in the classroom as far as the learning environment and what's occurring as the activities thank you other comments or questions at this point dr terriel did you want to add anything nope okay so again seeing as uh quarantines were a significant issue last year if a student is exposed to someone who's covered positive if that's if that exposed student has had copenhagen him or herself within the last five months and had a positive test they do not need to quarantine correct correct correct also if that student who

203has exposed has been vaccinated they will not need to quarantine is that correct as long as they're 14 days post second vaccination for the fish they're correct okay and we say because for the pfizer because that's the only one that's authorized right now for 12 to 18 year olds going backwards which is a second there would have to be evidence of the positive test in the past you can't just say i've already had to worry about it you'd have to actually have kept the test result from got it or have access to that through your through your health care provider and the other president burton caveat is that they must be asymptomatic they cannot have any symptoms corrupt either okay okay so if the if you're if if your student is exposed if they have

204either have a positive cova test in the last five months they do not need to quarantine if they have been vaccinated and they are fully vaccinated meaning two weeks past their last dose they do not need to quarantine or if they were masked and the student who had coveted was both masked both of them were masked and there was three feet then they do not need to quarantine so there are definite steps that we can take to as as parents to reduce the chances of quarantining of our children okay are there any other questions from the border yeah mrs bonfield so and i know we talk about um and i'm we'll pick on the elementary school kids getting back to normal and one of the things we talk about is carpet time so if the

205kids are all masked in the classroom and they need to maintain three feet of distance in order to avoid quarantine what if parents uh from my viewpoint as a parent i would say i don't want my kid to miss any school i don't want them to go to carpet time i don't want them to be within three feet of the kids so i i think there's a a little bit of i find a a little bit of um not not saying it very well i just i think if if we're gonna say that the kids if they are within three feet of each other i'm concerned if we're putting them in situations intentionally that bring them three feet to less than three feet together and then we are looking at a potential quarantine situation no

206mrs opus did you want to address it you do we certainly have talked about that mrs bonafield and i can respect that i i think in talking with um and getting feedback from our staff and um getting feedback from our administrators um they feel strongly that our students being isolated from one another for another year as they were last year where they had to be separated they couldn't co-mingle they couldn't work in small groups weren't able to come to the carpet again these don't have to be extended periods when we do that it could be for a story it could be for a 10 minute mini lesson but that one of the things that we had talked about was the importance of those learning and interactive opportunities being very very important for our student learning

207experience and that we had that that that really outweighed um that consideration that that really was a pressing a pressing need that we felt that we had i don't know mr green if you want to speak to that i know our our principals have really helped us on that in that regard thank you sure we will uh when we get to the elementary portion we'll we'll be using the phrase the bridge year quite a bit this year and i look forward to speaking a little bit more in detail about that but that is as superintendent okus stated one of our main priorities this year is as all educators know no two years is the same in any situation and so how can we continue moving the needle forward and those were those type of activities

208um you'll hear our desirous of our leaders in our buildings and our educators and of our parent feedback we received from last year as well to have more of those normal activities taking place for our students any other comments at this point okay mrs o'quist okay we'll move on to the next section and it's relatively brief but just with regard to cleaning hygiene practices etc that will continue from last year it's our intention to we have the equipment we have the product we have the staff that will continue during the day to hit the high touch areas all that just makes good sense really at any time but i i am proud of our custodial staff i'll say it on camera it's all of our lps employees we do not outsource to a third party

209we we employ all of our custodial staff and building supervisors they are wonderful men and women and they do yeoman's work day in day out and we will continue to keep the buildings clean and areas where there's special need and attention we will use our our disinfecting mister and just keep that ball rolling okay so all those pieces um the you know the hand sanitizer plentiful throughout the school the the wipes etc um you know teaching proper hand washing all of those things um will continue and really there's no reason why those shouldn't continue in perpetuity those are good practices and our emphasis on them i think rubs off on our students and that's a positive thing so let's talk a little bit now about mask wearing this has been probably one of the most

210discussed portions of our mass of our mitigation measures we had some extended dialogue last week on this we talked quite a bit about factors that actually come back to our factors for consideration our case data and where it has been over this uh the past several weeks in the past couple of months we took a look at the age of our students the accessibility to vaccines and also the feedback that has been shared widely again by health agencies members of our community and our board of education so collectively based on review of those factors for consideration we are recommending the following mass guidelines mass to be required for students in grades pre-k through six with the exception of when eating drinking outdoor activities recess etc as the students in that age group are unable to

211have the protection of a vaccine mask wearing strongly recommended for all students in grades 7 through 12 and our post-secondary students and math squaring as we've shared previously is required for all students staff and volunteers riding in school buses per federal guidelines that includes to and from school athletics field trips activities etc mask wearing may be required for large-scale events based on review of factors such as duration of event number of people in attendance density of that indoor location this would clearly be communicated to attendees ahead of time and mass would be provided for those who did not have them allowable face coverings would remain the same as last year exceptions to this would be students who have a documented medical condition would provide written paperwork from a medical doctor and the principal would then

212contact our director of student services dr terial for those students we would have an alternative um shield for their protection as well as the well-being of those around them the second piece is that is part of the recommended measures is putting out information for the choice of individuals to be vaccinated per the centers for disease control vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to end the pandemic is available to individuals age 12 and above vaccinations are readily available for those who choose to access them and we have information available on that we also talked about the measures of physical distancing and ventilation so i think we talked a little bit about physical distancing i'll have mr green talk about that briefly and then mr francis talk a little bit about ventilation and then we'll

213pause and talk a little bit about the measures overall and then we can talk specifically about elementary and secondary mitigation measures thank you i think i'll sound a bit redundant on the physical distancing i may have taken this uh my last answer to that reflects this part but again on physical distancing we really want our intent is to return those instructional practices that we had prior to last year that are age appropriate and instructionally impactful as you will hear the elementary group is going to begin to mobilize the principles the leaders in the buildings and start to review those different strategies at each elementary building as they looked like last year yes i'm sorry president burton i'm sorry if if folk audience members could please be quiet so we can continue the conversation because we

214are only part way through our uh our discussion of this i would appreciate it if you need to have conversation you can have it in the hallway that would be appreciated mr green you can see yeah absolutely and so right now we're reviewing those different classroom setups and we're going to be continuing with our seating chart procedure that was very successful last year that information was very valuable to our administration and to student services in their contact tracing and quarantine process and i don't know if mr francis if you wanted to speak on the ventilation now you're all set yeah i think i am okay um this is really information that we that we talked about last year there was uh especially in the in the early days there's a lot of discussion about ventilation

215and there's quite a few news stories etc about old buildings poor ventilation we were very fortunate in this district with a community that supported the 2013 bond a big piece of that work was going into all of our classrooms and renovating them for many different areas and perspectives but one was hvac system systems our unit ventilators have the capacity to turn over the air in a classroom a typical size classroom six to eight times per hour that meets or exceeds what code is we have co2 sensors in rooms we can bring in fresh air we can control some of that meaning that we can raise it we can bring in more fresh air at different times we ventilate through we during the school year last year of the 2021 school year we had changed out

216our filters we we put aside our traditional filters and bought something called a dual nine it has a a better catching capability without clogging the mechanics of the of the airflow so we've been using those so we're really we're fortunate again with regard to what we were able to do before this time came to that 2013 bond and we are turning over air in our classrooms whether it's an inside room or a room with a window that that air circulates and we bring fresh air into those rooms so we're going to pause here and ask the board to give feedback on these recommendations we will spend a little bit of time talking about just our process for talking through elementary specific and secondary specific mitigation measures but we'd like to just pause on the recommendations

217that we've shared with you thus far and gather feedback from our board are there comments or questions from the board mr centers and mr johnson sure um first i want to thank everyone for their hard work i i think it's clear that uh these are very thoughtful recommendations they're guided by something they're guided by data informed decisions um and they are very thoughtful for our students and our uh school community so um i know there was a lot of work done this year this weekend non-stop especially by our superintendent mrs oakless so you know these are very difficult decisions i think everyone in every district recognizes this and they're contentious everywhere and there's reason for that because they are tough decisions when they're talking about health and safety of kids so um i i am

218uh supportive of this plan going forward and uh that's that's all i got president burnham thank you mr johnson at this point i just had a question mr francis we we talked about the ventilation and turning over six to eight times a day are there any oh that's an hour are there any kind of industry standards that uh we go by or yeah that fits in we use we've had all of our hvac systems when they're put in balance we have a company that we have a third party not part of the mechanical engineering that comes in afterwards all of our systems were put in from building by building through the throughout the bond and they test and they make sure that it is meeting minimum code with regard to air flow etc so the

2196 to 8 per hour for that size room that that is pretty much the standard or above you can get it yeah it's actually above i think five is an excellent way right around five six and so we are turning it over we actually at the beginning of last school year opened it up a little bit more brought in more fresh air purposely we turned turned on the system a little earlier we're always trying to be energy efficient but we were turning them on a little earlier bringing in fresh air earlier so it could actually circulate through because it would be off during the night so those are types of things we were doing and continue to do okay thank you personally other comments questions at this point mrs jarvis thank you i appreciate the

220special consideration to quarantine time especially with regard to last year last year it seemed that students who were sent home for close contact quarantine missed more school than kids who actually were homesick with covet and so this looks like that's been addressed and i think in a very reasonable manner because it is likely that our mitigation factors would help with controlling that spread so thank you for taking a look at those numbers mr johnson thank you president burton um i echo mr center's comments that clearly there's been a ton of work that has gone in into these recommendations and it is a very contentious issue but i look at the mask wearing is just one component of these overall all measures and although i i favor a choice i think this is a reasonable compromise

221to those folks i think overall the the plan is designed to uh create a safe environment for our students and i think going forward as we monitor the numbers obviously these are all subject to to change as we as we go forward so um i can support this plan anybody else want to speak i've got a few thoughts but mrs acosta just a quick um i know that you spoke at the beginning that um changes in mitigation strategies or measures would be on a two-week there there'd have to be a two-week consistent trend to move up or down and i know that right now we're looking at and i'm simplifying all the factors that you mentioned but that we're in a substantial transmission period right now and we're looking at we're within two weeks of

222school starting so it's probably where we're going to be for now but there's a possibility there could be a possibility that those trends could change well we anticipate starting since we won't have any new data with regard to the school specific or level specific we anticipate starting the year with these strategies and then continuing to monitor that as we go forward thank you um mrs oquist um we're going to be with this plan our secondary students are going to have and i'm talking specifically about the mask portion right now our secondary students are going to have masks be strongly recommended especially if they were not vaccinated yet but not required our elementary students that are going to have masks required because they have not had the chance to be vaccinated yet and from all of

223our discussions over the last many weeks that is a significant factor because it's not that they have not been vaccinated yet but but rather they have not had the opportunity to be vaccinated yet i know to me that's a significant difference i feel a higher burden of having a higher level of protection in that elementary classroom because they have not had the chance to take the choice to make the choice whether or not to be vaccinated yet um so that that is significant to me and that's that is one reason that i can i can support this plan uh another significant piece to me is that we are looking at these curves every two weeks well we're looking at them daily let me rephrase we're looking at it daily and looking for a trend over

224a two-week period right now we are no doubt we're in an upward trend um i don't like that but that's fact um and what we don't know is whether or not we are experiencing the beginning of a speed bump like we did after last christmas or the beginning of a mountain like we did after last spring break time but hopefully if that if that curve comes down shortly once we see a downward trend over a few weeks and we have school specific data i assume the combination of those two pieces is what you're referring to when you're talking about by the end of september we will have data that we can take a look at and specifically obviously we're going to continue encouraging vaccines year-round we're continuing going to continue ventilation year round we'll continue

225uh cleaning measures etc but but masking is something that we can make a change on but we will be looking at doing that if i understand what you're saying correctly by the end of september we will have at a time that we can stop and take a look at this data again because then we will be able to see what that uh community spread is looking like right now it is as mr francis said it is right on the edge of between substantial and high which is the highest level it could be but by the end of september we will know whether or not we are still going up which would be extremely unfortunate or whether we are fortunate enough to be coming back downward by the end of september if we are coming downward

226and we are back into low or moderate which is what we were over the summer and then we also have the information about our school numbers whether or not we're seeing cases in our schools to me those are two very significant pieces of information by which at the end of september we can reconvene this discussion and say do we need to continue with masking at the elementary level or is that something that we can discontinue at least at that time so what from i guess i'm asking for clarification am i understanding correctly that by the end of september we will have more data to look at and we can re uh readdress this issue knowing most of our mitigation azures are going to continue all through all through the year but by the end of

227september we can look at this again knowing we have more data at that time and determined whether or not we need to continue on because it is the safest thing to do or whether it could at that point or in the future potentially be made optional at the elementary school level well those would be two of the five factors we would look at all five factors so we would we would be looking at the local case data the specific school school school specific the age of students and whether or not there has been any change in regard to regarding access to vaccines the wayne county case data and then the local cdc transmission levels so we would be taking a comprehensive look at all of those in making a determination of which mitigation measures we

228will continue do we need to add any additional layers at any particular level or are there any that we think can be lifted so we'll we'll really take a comprehensive look at that of all five of those factors and taking a look at again any changes whether that's lifting any mitigation measures enhancing or strengthening mitigation measures or maintaining status quo okay what we know what we do know for sure though right now is that the the plan assuming it has uh consensus this evening the plan will continue at least through the month of september and then we were we are going to i mean we obviously we monitor this daily but we're looking at a minimum of this plan and through the end of september and and we will continue to monitor it and make

229determinations from that point forward whether we are adding or removing any mitigation measures and throughout the whole year so i would say that unless again we saw a spike at a particular school or program i don't want to say that we won't make any changes before the end of september if we did see the need to add a mitigation layer i i want to say we would not necessarily wait a two-week period if we saw a spike if we saw data that started coming in we would certainly want to react to that more quickly just so that if our primary focus is keeping students in person then what what what the guidelines would be would be to add additional layered mitigation strategies rather than look to pivoting to remote understood thank you sure are there

230other comments or questions mrs bonifield um i appreciate everything that's been done um and i think the the cleaning and all of the mitigation in in this document is fantastic however i can't not voice um i i don't think that we should be masking our kids um there's a number of reasons why um i think all kids learn differently i think that there's some issues with uh the efficacy of the the masks um and and there are a number of other reasons but um as one of seven um [Music] like i said i obviously all the other uh all the the other mitigation strategies but i i just can't leave it unsaid that i i i do not agree with masking our our youngest learners other comments or questions from board members we do um

231i respectfully uh want to state that the reason that my thought on the masking portion has changed is because the livonia data has so drastically changed i was 100 percent comfortable a few weeks ago when we determined that masks would be strongly recommended but not required at all levels because at that point the livonia numbers were in the low to moderate range and had been rock solid for three months it's just been in the last three weeks that they've all the sudden they began creeping and then they began running and now they're spiking and we have now within a three week period we are within a fraction of one percent of the highest level um so clearly we have some spread going on in our community um i'm not happy about that but to me

232that is a that factor was significant um i am very hopeful that our that we're hitting a speed bump and not a mountain but nobody knows that yet and because our specific community numbers have gone up so drastically uh that is why i have changed my opinion on masking in our elementary school because they are the only group of our population that has not had not had the opportunity to have a vaccine yet if if and when they have the opportunity to have a vaccine or if and when our livonia numbers come down i would very much like to readdress that but for now looking at this plan in totality um i can support it i think that it's it is as reasonably thought out i mean it's it's been incredibly thought out it is

233as reasonable in its conclusions as it can be um that being said i don't expect that ever that anyone is going to 100 percent love every single factor in in the plan when it's this comprehensive and when it affects 14 000 students and i've said it nearly every one of these meetings since covet began and i still firmly believe it safety looks different to different students and different family members depending on what's most important to them but there's there's coveted safety there's other physical safety there's social emotional safety there's mental health safety there's academic safety and depending on what your child needs the most or what your family may have highest need of or higher or highest area of vulnerability in that will determine what what area of safety is most important to you so

234i don't expect that 14 000 students and all of their parents are going are going to absolutely love every aspect of this plan but it is my hope that we can get behind it as the most reasonable plan that we could put together and in hopes that our conditions of our own community allow us to ease up on this as soon as is safely and reasonably possible are there other comments or questions from board members mrs acosta um i was going to add and i know i always get really nervous when i'm speaking um but for me also parent choice was important um and i'm you know that was like just one of my as a parent in the district like i want to be able to make those choices so it is disheartening that

235we're at this level where this decision has to be made and that added mitigation measure um and i'm just hopeful like i kept saying that within the allotted time that we can see that mitigation measure shift in a way that is more empowering to parents but i appreciate all the time and effort that's gone into this plan are there comments from other board members mrs i'm sorry mrs jarvis thank you i appreciate not only all the work that went into this this is incredibly extensive but i also like that it is data driven and more importantly that it's local data that we're looking at livonia wayne county and then out state because we are not going to be controlled by other communities and what's going on in their community we need to be a little

236bit closer to home and the fact that it's data-driven shows that we can be responsive to this data and even though the the data right now is suggesting that we implement these it also shows that when the data changes there will be an end point this is not just an open-ended statement it's not an open-ended recommendation it's data driven and if the data says that it's safe to to change our mitigation measures we can do that so i appreciate that data supporting the decisions here are there other comments i'm hearing general consensus among the board in support of the cabinet plan that has been put together do i have agreement on that is that that is what i'm hearing that we are in support of the plan as a whole recognizing that not everyone loves

237every single piece but on the whole we have consensus okay i am seeing nods around the table mrs opus i'm going to turn it back over to you at this point i'd like to just ask i know we're getting to a very late hour just very briefly ask mr green and mr willenberg to just speak um in broad terms to again there are probably you know a couple of dozen mitigation measures that we take a look at are really part of our day-to-day operations so mr green and mr willenberg if you would just touch on that briefly absolutely thank you earlier i spoke about the term bridge year and i i want to first of all thank everybody for their comments and questions and i look at it through that that long view and i

238look at last september our kindergartners weren't in person this year they're going to be we're going to have open house we're going to have new family tours we're going to be doing a lot of things we could not do last year is it where i want to be as an elementary department in our elementary buildings absolutely not but we're moving in the right way just like mr francis talked about the data moving in the right direction we're moving in the right direction so right now our principals will be looking at all those different mitigation strategies they looked at last year they'll be reviewing them with their communities educating their communities answering those questions and that arranges from arrival to breakfast to fresh air you know mass breaks and all those different strategies we worked on

239last year and what those will look like so uh again i i just want you to you know kind of as we think about this the things we are going to be doing this september with our students that we could not do last year mr willenberg hello i think the vast majority of our families at our secondary level are excited to be back to in-person instruction that was shown through our instructional mode surveys in the spring of last year and we also at the secondary level are in that process of analyzing all of our previous mitigation measures from last year certainly some mitigation measures like maximizing physical distancing in the classrooms and in the cafeterias will remain i mean we'll we'll push that and try to get keep kids separated as much as possible some

240measures uh such as not allowing anyone at the drinking fountain or the hallway traffic flow you know those may go away but that's through the work of our administrative and other staff members you know weighing in on that to see uh how we can best accommodate everybody back in the in the building and you know we want to keep people safe we want to get back to educating kids and enjoying their their enthusiasm for learning so i'll just again um thank everyone who contributed to um to this plan and to their good thinking around this this is certainly there are many many things that we like to be focused on as we start the school year and that we are excited to focus on to start the school year we know this has been a

241very very difficult topic for our parents for our students for our staff certainly for our teams and our board and we don't take that lightly and so i can tell you that there isn't anyone around this table who doesn't care about the children we serve deeply i can tell you there isn't anyone around this table that doesn't care about the students or the staff who advocate for the students before them each day it has been our desire in livonia public schools to partner with our parents to provide the resources and support our staff need and to care for our students in many ways that has not changed our commitment is strong we are all in this in this process i'm trying to deal with a really unprecedented time and so i think it's important that

242we continue to be patient with one another as we begin the school year we will welcome our students with open arms we are thrilled to have them back in our schools we hope our partners our parents will continue to partner with us we are here to support our entire school community including our staff um and we are eager to get to the first day of school we look forward to being first day greeters out at our schools welcoming our students and knowing that that is the very best place for them so i am respectful of all of the thoughts that we have heard over many many weeks and want to share my confidence in the people that are dedicated in livonia public schools to serving the students we will be there for them um from

243day one to day 180 and we look forward to the year beginning with them i'd like to just echo mrs okwit's comments when you think back to a year ago right now our staff was coming into our buildings and our students weren't even coming in until october we were one of the rare school districts that actually got our kids in school full time every day from october on with a few speed bumps of of spikes that we had to take some action but i'm incredibly proud of livonia public schools i'm incredibly proud of the immense amount of work that our staff went through all 2000 over the last year to get us so we're looking out of the tunnel finally instead of into the tunnel um i'm i'm thrilled that we get to go back

244to school i'm thrilled for the rest of the kids around the state of michigan that are all going back to school but i'm so thankful that we have a really comprehensive plan to make sure safety stays paramount with our kids so that we can keep our kids in school i'm thankful as mrs jarvis said for the mitigation measures that have been proposed so that court the quarantines are not going to be as impactful negatively on our students i'm very thankful for that very thankful for the folks who have who have worked in the medical world for the vaccines because the the presence of those vaccines has been a game changer and the fact that they are available for so many of our students and i'm anxiously awaiting when they are available to the rest i

245certainly respect families decisions whatever they decide to do with that but but it will be a very happy day when every family gets to make that choice because they have it available for their son or daughter so uh there's there with is as as strenuous as this process has been immense amount of of work on the part of our administrative team and our board members i'm just thankful that we have gotten to today we have a plan that we have consensus on we can go forward on and we can look forward to that plan growing because i'm confident that the end of the school year is going to look even better than the beginning of our school year and even the beginning is looking pretty darn good when you look at where we've been over

246the last year so thank you very much to the entire team that has worked so so hard getting our kids back into school any other comments on this item before we switch over to personnel we have a few quick things to finish voting on and then we will conclude for the evening um our next item on the agenda is item uh eight personnel matters eight a is teachers for approval may i have a motion please president burton mrs acosta move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district accept the recommendation of the superintendent and offer employment for the 2021-2022 school year to the teachers listed on the attached document support we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr centers and mr batte good evening hello everyone the group of

247new staff members we are presenting to the board this evening is comprised of special education and general education staff in the areas of social work psychology speech and language occupational therapy business music and performing arts elementary education and early childhood they are all well qualified to fill their respective positions and have been fully vetted through our extensive interview process we're very confident they will perform perform at a high level and represent livonia public schools in a manner that is consistent with our shared vision and collective commitments these positions have also been included in the 2021-2022 budget and fill areas of need for our district we're pleased to be recommending such a talented group of individuals to join our lps family and with your approval we are excited to have them working with our students thank

248you are there comments or questions from the board or superintendent just welcome and correct congratulations absolutely welcome and mr bate do we have any staff remaining on layoff at this time um we still have uh two uh in the secondary ranks um one i am told uh uh has acquired a job in our district and it's unfortunate because we just recently had a resignation we could have brought him back and he's a really good guy um but those the timing sometimes just doesn't work out that way so which leaves just one in the area of spanish there is something potentially in shared time that i was going to reach out and see if there's a possibility there so we're working with that but it's a specialized area it sounds like correct got you okay thank

249you any other comments or questions on this item seeing them we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr centers for teachers for approval uh mrs bonfield will you take the role mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mrs bonifield says yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes president burton yes and that motion passes uh the next item on our agenda is eight b resignations and this does not require a vote of the board that's for informational purposes and uh the next item is eight c retirements may i have a motion please president burton mr johnson move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district adopt the ada attached resolution of appreciation for the services rendered by eric pudas support we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mrs jarvis

250mr abadi it's just the one this evening mr pudus and um i don't have to add years of service together for a big group it's just the one but it's 35 35 dedicated committed wonderful years to our district uh in the role of custodian knight leader assistant building supervisor in multiple buildings so we certainly appreciate his service over the years and wish him well in his retirement um and we asked that you approve the resolution absolutely comments or questions from our board members or our superintendent congratulations absolutely well done absolutely and it's a good time to to stop and say another thank you to uh all those folks who are have been involved in in our building maintenance uh throughout this past year and a half they're always important they're always vital but i'll tell

251you they're even more so i mean everyone everyone's job has gotten harder and more important over this last year and a half and certainly this folk these folks are at the top of the list so congratulations we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mrs jarvis mrs bonfield or um sorry for retirement mrs bonfield we please take the role yes uh mr johnson yes mrs jarvis yes mr centers yes mrs bonifield says yes mrs acosta yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you thank you mr batte we've come to the last item on our agenda this evening which is hearing from board members we have had lots of opportunity to share thoughts this evening but if there are any board members who have anything that they would like to share now is

252the appropriate time to do so anybody would like to share anything all righty on behalf of the board again thank you to everybody in our community uh for sharing thoughts uh our community data has been very important to have our numerical data is also important to have so thank you to everybody who has contributed to getting our our team to this point tonight where we can have a plan going forward for the beginning of school uh we have nothing left on our agenda again thank you to mrs oquist who has been our fearless leader through our entire covet process when you think about it really this this started a year and a half ago with 250 people that you led uh into mitigation measures for how can we safely do school in livonia public schools

253and it continues today so thank you so much you are a superintendent among superintendents thank you very much we are adjourned have a nice evening everybody you