Board of Education Meeting July 21, 2021

001m here um let's uh stand for the pledge of flag allegiance the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice good evening welcome um we'll start off with the with my report welcome dr hunt now to our vhs new venue for us tonight um i don't have a whole lot to talk about except for that at the last meeting it was very difficult to hear other board members during the business um so we'll be going through a new preamble to our public comment that was sent to the board yesterday and we will not be hesitating to um call recess or take any action as necessary to keep the meeting under order a reminder that barry altschuler is not able to attend or

002participate tonight he asked that i reiterate that he only agreed to have the meeting tonight on wednesday under the condition that he could attend remotely and participate from afar otherwise he would have pushed for another i'll pause what's that noise i don't know let me try again um am i too close maybe what if i step back is and yell but i'm more worried okay let me try again well that's much better okay i'm just going to start over so welcome dr hunt to um to our new location here at the vhs auditorium the last i don't have a whole lot to report but i just wanted to talk about um somebody in the back roof you can raise your hand if you can't hear me okay i think i see dr fuller one oh

003there we go how about we try that oh that's better all right so welcome dr hunt to our vhs auditorium i don't have a whole lot to report but i do want to address that the last meeting was so difficult to hear the other board members and to have a during our discussion in the conduct business that we will be going through a new preamble for our public comment that was sent to the board yesterday and we will not be hesitating to call a recess or take action as necessary um so please stay tuned for that new preamble um barry altchuller is not able to attend or participate this evening and he asked that i reiterate that he only agreed to have the meeting tonight on this wednesday under the condition that he could attend

004remotely and participate from afar otherwise he wouldn't have agreed um to push for a different and he would have pushed for a different date i do have a statement from barry that i will read when we get to the board discussions um and given number of people that we have here tonight i'd like to ask the board if we could consider having dr hunt do his uh superintendent report prior to public comment so just change the order of the meeting tonight if that's okay so we can hear from him maybe it might um change some of the public comments that might occur is that okay with everyone if we move that to how many do we sign up i'm going to get into that in just a minute but we have uh 59 signed up

005everybody okay i would support moving um dr hunt's proposal to the beginning of public comment but i am so sorry i didn't very the condition that he had this that we have this meeting was so that barry could participate remotely but he's on vacation he's not allowed to participate that's correct he's not allowed okay i i didn't understand what he said that makes sense he thought that he would be able to so he that's he wanted me to reiterate that he wouldn't have agreed um otherwise okay so we have 59 folks signed up for public comment we also have about an hour of public comment um from voicemail so we have you know three plus hours of public comment so before we get started i just want to make sure that everybody knows that that's

006how long we're gonna have public comment are we still okay with having public comments all to group together looks like most everyone's wants to talk about the protocols everybody okay yes okay okay so that means we're likely not going to get to our second discussion item so we can assess that um after public comment maybe or after we um discuss the covid protocols okay so with that then i'm going to turn it over to you dr hunt and i'm going to hand you this microphone so you can give us your report thank you very much um i want to thank our custodial maintenance staff our tech crew for all of the work you don't land over here with this kind of setup and needing technology without a lot of work and effort so i appreciate

007everybody in the back and i know they're working diligently in the microphone so everyone can hear so just wanted to let them know i appreciate their efforts i also want to thank uh everyone that is here tonight and all those that have expressed your opinions uh certainly we've received a great deal of feedback from the community and i think when you when you think about what what's a recipe for successful public education it always lies in a community that cares and i understand these are divisive times and emotional issues but i also feel very good that i land in a district that cares so much about what we do and what we offer to kids so thank you for expressing your opinions this is obviously a very divisive issue and we we need to keep

008reminding ourselves that no one really wants to be having these conversations we all want kids back in school freely without any kind of restrictions at all however the reality is covid remains concerned for our country and our community and struggling to find the right answers is a challenge that every board of education and every community is working through right now these are extremely complex issues and decisions with thoughtful realistic arguments from both sides and within this i think it's really important that we focus on the issue not people and that we work together to continue to move forward there will be a time we are pass cover 19. we i hope that the the divisiveness that this can cause doesn't impact us long term also before i get in my presentation i think it's critically

009important that everyone understands because you've been here before right guidance is constantly changing and shifting and i'm going to update you on what we know today and the work we have done based on the information we have today idph has been threatening to release uh additional guidelines in in in documents and when that comes we have to be able to pivot and move we also have to realize the reality of no matter what we do reduction in mitigation strategies uh or not if covid crawls into our schools and begins to grow we have to be able to turn back and put back in place mitigation strategies so although a plan may be in place and and the hope and the goal is always take one step forward and continue to move forward there is a

010reality of dialing mitigation strategies in and out to ensure the safety and well-being of our staff and our students as we go forward that has to be i guess articulated and shared with you as we move into this process so i want to kind of just walk into this a little bit give a little bit background i think everyone understands the cdc guidance idph american academy pediatrics number one goal is to get students back in in class in person five days a week for education and that needs to remain our focus and our goal in moving through this a lot of the recommendations are based on your ability to have students come into the school five days a week and receive that education we believe that we will obviously offer a full day five day

011a week education for students and we have a program available for students and families who require a distance learning model for medical reasons uh the idph cdc have certainly released information and made it very clear their suggestion is mass should be worn indoors by all individuals age two or older not fully vaccinated and that at least three feet of physical distancing should be uh should be maintained between students within classrooms it was reiterated by the american academy of pediatrics i think earlier this week also within the cdc and the illinois department of education it states if school administrators decide to remove any prevention strategies for their school based on a local conditions they should remove them one at a time and monitor closely be thoughtful as covid cases increase and hopefully that doesn't happen within

012the district barrington 220 has has continually worked with lake county health department on the phone with them a couple of times today i was on the phone with them this morning for a webinar with all superintendents and we made contact uh with them later this evening to discuss our plan uh in a little more detail we'll continue to have those conversations work with them on our data and seek their guidance in the best path forward for our students and and our school district so just to review last week not i know there's a lot of emotion at the meeting we walked out of there that that we looked at mask optional was the i guess term used at that time i i would recommend that the board move towards a master recommended for unvaccinated students

013in grades 6-12 but not required students and staff in grades pk through 12 will not be required to wear any mask outdoors requested the board also requested that our district leadership team develop a plan that included a phased out approach to indoor mask wearing as one of the mitigation strategies in pre-k through five and that we discuss the mitigation strategies based on public health metrics tonight i will i will tell you that we had a team uh principals administrators worked very very hard to get where we are tonight uh but we have to remember i think that was about five working days so the metrics and some information are gonna have to continue we're gonna work through that and and bring that forward as we as we uh are able to put that together so

014since last week we've gathered our building principles we met with the the company representing shield which offers testing to school districts at no cost work collaboratively with our executive council team and are bringing you a recommendation for a phased approach if that's the course of the board of education i i know that masking is currently all of the attention however it's important to realize we've got a number of mitigation strategies that are in place within our schools and they'll continue to be in place as i previously previously stated we have the authority to incrementally remove or potentially add back strategies on the local data found within our schools i want to clearly state regardless of the tonight's decision on how we open schools in august if any point we have to remove masking or and

015bring masking back due to a rising cases we need the authority to do that from this board of education i want to review the mitigation strategies that are available to us as a school district based on recommendations from public health officials there's the symptom screening web app that that the district utilized last year students kind of designated within buildings where to enter one-way hallways kind of operational decisions within buildings to limit interaction and connection between students that are still in place appropriate hand washing hand sanitizer ppe the things that are necessary will continue to be in place for our students there's been a shift from three to from six feet to three feet in social distancing and that will be used as much as possible and when possible will expand beyond three feet uh we

016we will let visitors come into our buildings we're gonna monitor that and really focus on educational purposes so visitors will will be limited brought in for educational purposes seating charts uh were in place last year they will be continued to be maintained um and assigned cohorts for lunch so if we do have a positive case we we can contact tracer appropriately physical education classrooms are encouraged to be outside as much as possible high touch surfaces will be cleaned at least once per day and supplies will be available for additional cleaning district will request vaccination status of all eligible students and of staff to obtain that data and information last on the mitigation strategies we're going to recommend tonight that we move forward with student testing we currently last year had buyer bionx now available to

017students who were symptomatic so we could quickly test and get a result we've met with shield illinois which is a pcr screening test i believe the board had information about this last year we're recommending that we implement that and parents have the ability to opt out if that's not something they're interested in biggest difference probably from when you heard about shield last year if you're on the school board and now is it is being fully funded by the federal government in a grant so a significant amount of money to pay for those tests and additionally they provide all of the personnel so we do not have to add personnel or staffing to make that happen so we were on with shield right away last week i believe we have a conference call coming up tomorrow

018with a little more information and certainly as as we move forward with this we'll we'll continue to update you on progress with that lastly is masked as available mitigation strategy and obviously something that we want to talk a little bit more about tonight so uh in terms of mass mask wearing is for unvaccinated individuals is recommended and any student or staff member may wear a mask at any time there's not a situation in which a student will be asked to remove or a mask against their will and certainly all need to be welcomed and respectful of that decisions mass are required currently on public transportation trains air airplanes and we fall under that requirement as well so students will have to wear masks on bus buses regardless of their vaccination status and that's per the

019center of disease control and the public order on transportation cdc and idph have recommended that unvaccinated individuals wear mass indoor while at school i think it's really important we we start to shift and and try to understand our local data and when i say local i don't mean county i don't mean zip code because that's what we've tried to rely on i mean the the testing that we're doing with students to really understand what is going on in our schools and what mitigation strategies we can either back off or move forward so that's a big piece of this plan that we're recommending from this point forward mass are recommended for unvaccinated students in grades six through twelve i think the decision of this board last week was that they would not be required so when

020we look at phased masking and mask wearing the plan that the the board of education asked us to to look at we are proposing the following that mass would be worn by all students in grades pk through five when a minimum of three foot okay i've asked already that's that's enough so if you let me finish please so mass will be worn by all students in grades pk through five when a minimum three feet distance cannot be maintained mass we continue to recommend that unvaccinated students in grade six through twelve 12 wear them but that's not required and the district closely monitor local data to guide future decision making when you look at phase in and 3 feet of distance we want to monitor that data for future decision making we want to implement or

021remove identified mitigation strategy based on that we recommend but we do not require mass for after vaccines are expanded and made easily available accessible to young children so essentially the the proposal allows for students to or ask the students where mask into the building when they're in situations that are three feet or less certainly on buses when they're in the classroom with three or four three or more feet available that they could take their mask off when they transition in hallways and in close proximity to others they would be asked to mask when they had large assemblies where uh social distancing could not be held they would also be required to meet to wear a mask and we believe that's an appropriate phase-in plan for for the school district we've asked all staff members that

022have access to vaccine obviously that came after first responders last year and all staff members will be required to wear a mask indoors unless they provide proof of vaccination so uh the metrics you know i obviously said you know this has been a lot of work in getting to the recommendation tonight so we will implement the shield illinois saliva based pcr test and an opt-out provision will be available we'll continue to monitor active cases within the district and then evaluate vaccination percentage of students and staff and continue to work with lake county health department develop a matrix to determine the most appropriate matrix i will tell you it is very very difficult and and i had this conversation this morning uh with the health department i feel like our families deserve and need to understand

023kind of what those benchmarks are and when an end is in sight with masking and there there's very much a non-answer when you ask that question so we're going to have to work collaboratively internally with our staff as we build our local data within our buildings and and monitor that the best that we can moving forward i want to touch on quarantine just to be clear when you look at mitigation and consider mitigation quarantine is not something this board of education has the authority to control that's a public health order that comes from the health department we are obviously supporting and helping them with the process but they control those decisions currently fully vaccinated individuals that are more than two weeks since the last dose of the vaccine would not have to quarantine or participate

024in any screening if they have no symptoms symptomatic individuals should be tested and will be quarantined if needed our unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals have to be vaccinated for 10 days in isolation from the time of symptom onset 10 days of quarantine from the last date of exposure they would students would not be able to return to school until fever-free without fever reducing medications for at least 24 hours or other symptoms are approving at least 10 days since the isolation quarantine began i i will i will tell you it was uh indicated today that when the guidance does come out we should not be surprised if there are if there's a step back to the 14 day quarantine and if exp if an exposure happens without masks again that was what was articulated and i

025believe hopefully the idph guidelines will come out by the end of the week uh quickly we sat down with our our union to discuss quarantine and education specifically as we've gotten some questions regarding how that would be handled so within a period of 24 to 48 hours is that window in which you determine uh if a full vaccine or full quarantine period is needed uh during that time we'll have uh asynchronous potentially synchronous lessons available those students will have access to learning through seesaw and schoology things that all of our students and our parents are familiar with and then other resources provided by the classroom teachers if it extends beyond that that window of time the teacher will plan synchronous asynchronous as appropriate to meet learning objectives and be available for students to ensure that

026their learning continues in and instructional standards are met so i know i appreciate being moved up on the agenda to share this information i know there's going to be discussion questions maybe after a public comment but i did want to address that tonight uh assuming we're going to do that later is that accurate um i do want to address two other things that have come up um in our prior board meeting as we go forward uh one being critical race theory uh there have been several public comments made in the in regards to critical race theory uh critical race theory or crt is not part of the illinois social science standards therefore the theory is not taught in barrington 220 schools our curricula are aligned to state standards so the board of education has recently

027adopted an equity statement and as a district we are committed to supporting equitable and inclusive learning environments for all of our stakeholders the board of education wants to fully understand and appreciate the richness of diversity and that's the work that we're doing it's not tied to a curriculum and it's not tied to a specific theory for sure the board had approved or has approved an equity statement and that can be found on our district website also want to address senate bill 818 senate bill 818 was has not been passed as of yet proposes to amend the student online personal protection act sent to the governor uh june 25th and again has not been signed yet been signed should the bill be signed into law it will require illinois state board of educations to create revise

028and or adopt age development age developmentally appropriate comprehensive health staring standards by august of 2022 any new standards in curriculum in barrington 220 would go through our district curriculum committee and review process which includes board and stakeholders input and feedback so comments regarding specific things being taught to our children uh due to senate bill 818 aren't accurate because my understanding those standards have not even been drafted and it would go through a process where we would look at and and recommend to our board of education what we felt would be most appropriate so i wanted to address those two topics as they're certainly gaining a lot of conversation and traction within communities not only in barrington but across our country so that concludes my report and you have it as answer questions after public comment

029all right thank you dr hunt okay so we now come to the portion of our meeting set aside for public comment we do value your thoughts and opinions and in accordance with board policy 2 230 we ask that you state your name your elementary attendance area or relationship to the district before beginning your comments we also ask that you limit your comments to three minutes janine does have a timer that will go off after three minutes but this week we'll also introduce a three-minute countdown timer that will appear here so you can see how much time that you have left tonight in going forward we will not allow the board's business to be impacted and we will ensure all voices are respected and heard from board policy 830 regarding visitors to and conduct on school

030property it states the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among people on school property no person shall strike injure threaten harass or intimidate a staff member a board member a sports official or a coach or any other person no person shall impede delay disrupt or otherwise interfere with any school activity or function all in attendance must be respectful of others and allow the board to dialogue appropriately if disruption continues the offender will be asked to leave and escort it out as necessary we will not hesitate to expel offenders i will also call for a minimum of a 15-minute recess if the board is unable to conduct business so in order to allow as many people to speak if someone else has spoken and represented your views please do not feel the need

031to repeat their comments instead consider standing and showing your report your support we ask that actions do not delay or impede public comment or the work of the board and as a reminder public comment is not a conversation if any comments require attention we will ask dr hunt to follow up and report back to the board again please refrain from calling out harassing or threatening any staff board or community members we also do have some as i mentioned before some voicemail so i'll be asking the staff to let us hear some of the voicemail comments in about four different segments of 10 to 15 minutes each and there are two microphones this evening one here and one here so as i call you up please uh come to the nearest microphone and i'll try to

032call two ahead as i did last time as well okay okay so first up actually we have a board member aaron chanding i'm going to hand my phone over to you thank you sandra there we go all right it's not too loud right it's not i'm not deafening okay thank you so much sandra please know what i'm about to say comes from a place of sincerity and authenticity so to my fellow board members and by extension to our district 220 community i have to push while talking okay yes okay so to my fellow board members and by extension to our district 220 community this last week during a one-on-one text string with a parent i was typing in shorthand and used the term anti-maskers to refer to a part of our community that prefers a

033mask optional approach at all grade levels the parent texting told me they felt differently from the mask optional approach and i encouraged that person to send their thoughts to the board so we could hear from more viewpoints i believe my exact words were that the board was being quote crushed by emails from anti-masters unquote without my knowledge that text thread ended up being posted in a public facebook group and was spread around how or why it got out there isn't important to me what i do want to say is that i now realize my use of the term anti it was important okay here we go what i what i do want to say is that i now realize my use of the term anti-masters was hasty disrespectful and hurtful to a segment of our

034community it was divisive and unnecessarily lumped people together i want to emphasize that there is a lot of passion and nuance to this discussion on covid protocols in that every family arrives at their points of view on masks in particular differently i own that i used a loaded full term and i apologize to the board and to our community for using it from now on i will go with terms like mask optional or mask choice instead i'm committed to having the utmost respect for each other as we listen to one another and discuss options even if we express different points of view thank you okay thank you um again we'd like to reiterate that um we'd like your comments comments to focus on pro covered protocols and grouping reopening of school and please refrain from

035calling out harassing or threatening any staff board member community member in your public comment okay so let's go ahead and get started i'll call up two first up is arlene reindeck and second up will be corey fittus is this sparky this is working okay okay great well good evening my name is hold on we can't hear you hold on okay let's can we stop the time is that possible how do i fix it is this better no that's better i just have to talk louder we need to though you can you can give her this one thank you arlene for your [Music] great patience is this working okay thank you i do have a soft voice so i apologize for that so the quieter the better for my um purpose here so my name is

036arlene rindak i'm a 40-year resident of barrington hills and i've raised my children in district 220 i do have two grandchildren at station over these 40 years i have built my career in public health i am a public health nurse with a master's in public health i have held leadership positions in local health departments most recently serving on the covet bureau for the city of chicago working on case investigation outbreak investigations and breakthrough cases i have been a substitute school nurse and have provided care for an ongoing basis to a medically fragile child in school i too serve on boards namely the illinois league for nursing and pads of lake county in the past i served 12 years on the village of barrington hills board of health i come to you to emphasize the board's

037prominent responsibility and what that is and it can be summed up in one word assurance assuring such as a stellar education sound fiscal management and the safe and healthy environment for students and staff and the good news is in regards to safety and health is that you have the guidance of cdc idph and local health departments whose sole purpose is to protect and to promote safety and health 7. you don't need to guess guesstimate quibble or stress just okay you do not have to guess guesstimate quibble or stress just follow the guidelines mass should be worn indoors by all individuals two years or older who are not fully vaccinated additionally i want to give you some food for thought that we as adults can take this pandemic and use it model it to build discipline

038perseverance and resilience into our kids that will serve them well throughout their lives 40 years from now they could be telling their kids stories of how they faithfully wore mass when needed how they didn't give up until the pandemic was truly over and how they know they could handle whatever life brings their way thank you arlene okay so i i really had to focus to hear arlene so before we start corey's timer can we at least test your voice for a minute can you hear me i think you can hear me fine can you i'll keep talking i think it's can you hear me this one seems better i'm going to walk over and switch with you always wanted to walk across the stage test okay my name is corey fittus i'm the mother of

039three children in the district my elementary district is countryside although my children have moved past that at this point i thank you dr hunt i'm encouraged by your presentation and have adjusted my comments accordingly i've been a parent in 220 for the past 12 years volunteering in my children's schools and in the community i was shocked to watch the previous meetings public comments and was compelled to come here to support the need to follow actual science and not emotional please i'm impressed by your presentation and look forward to that going forward in the fall for the board members i appreciate your time on the board of vol as volunteers and appreciate the scope of decisions that are being thrust upon you you do not owe those who have supported your political campaigns any more than

040those who voted for others i simply ask that you think of the children who cannot vote and who are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine to protect them and continue the masking mandate as recommended by the cdc in the department of health thank you for your time okay um next up is heather gresham and then following heather will be julie novak julie can you come over here so we can try to move a little quicker you're fine my name is heather gresham and i am a parent of three children in district 220. tonight i am reading a letter on behalf of my friend arthy who has a work obligation tonight and cannot be here dear district 220 my name is arthy vijay kumar and i am a barrington 220 parent i have a child

041entering sixth grade at prairie middle school and a child entering third grade at grove avenue school i am also a physician and i am an adult kidney specialist i have taken care of patients who are severely ill from covet from the beginning of the pandemic i am vice chair for the department of medicine at sherman hospital in elgin i have been a strong proponent of the kids coming back to in-person instruction both my children returned to school during both hybrid and full-day auctions when they became available i wanted to reach out to all of you to consider some facts when deciding masking policy for this fall the covid vaccine has not yet been approved for children under 12 years of age this includes all elementary students and most sixth grade students it is anticipated that

042there will be emergency use authorization for children under 12 sometime this fall the current vaccine for children 12 to 18 is one hundred percent effective at preventing severe covet most children who develop covid19 to develop mild symptoms however some get severely ill requiring hospitalization some children develop reactive airway disease as a long-term symptom of covid19 infection in rare cases children are at risk of developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome approximately 340 children in the united states have died from covid currently the cdc and idph continue to recommend basking in unvex in unvaccinated individuals to mitigate spread all children under 12 are currently unvaccinated i would urge all of you to consider continuing masking requirements in children under age 12. this includes all elementary schools and all 6th graders once the vaccine is available to this population families

043can decide on the risk of contracting severe covid versus getting vaccinated however until a vaccine is available to these kids as a community we should continue to provide them with protection to minimize infection it would be tragic if even one child contracts severe illness or dies from covet 19 due to negligent observations of public health guidelines by the 220 district furthermore it places the district in liability for litigation which is at the cost of taxpayers if vaccine is approved for 12 and under by fall masking guidelines can quickly be relaxed i am not writing this letter because of my personal political beliefs in fact i am a registered republican and consider myself a moderate conservative i am also a physician and a parent who cares greatly for the well-being of my community i believe by

044not continuing universal masking in children 12 and under the district is putting these children in harm's way sincerely dr arthur vijay kumar thank you heather [Applause] julie novak and then next up will be rachel roberts can you hear me is that on okay my name is julie novak and i have three children in the barrington school district one at lions and two at prairie but today i'm going to read a letter from a friend of mine who did not feel comfortable coming forward due to the behavior of the last meeting hello first let me welcome you dr hunt to the barrington community i'm a local surgeon with two children one of whom is entering second grade my sister and her family live in chagrin falls and she has two children in the chagrin falls exempted

045school district as a primary care physician at southwest general hospital treating covet patients as a front-line physician throughout this pandemic she appreciated your respect for the guidelines set by local health officials and the cdc as well as your courage to follow this advice in making difficult decisions to protect her children she told me her loss was going to be our gain when we got word of your move to barrington i hope you will prove her right i am aware of the number of emails you are receiving from my medical colleagues with factual data i hope you and the board do your due diligence and study the facts presented by both sides please understand that our trust in you as a board includes not only our faith that you will make sound decisions on areas pertaining

046to your expertise but that you will also have the ability to know the limits of your areas of expertise the aap has come out with guidelines that leave no room for interpretation irrespective of how loud the voice as a board you must follow the most competent voice in these matters just as we physicians take an oath to do no harm if this board is going to make medical decisions for my family then i ask the same of you i do not envy the position you find yourselves in however this is a decision that requires courage and a strong moral compass this is not a popularity contest start slow follow the metrics and trust the experts there may very well be a day that you will have to legally defend the path you choose to follow

047with my gratitude and respect for your commitment to our children thank you [Applause] please stop the buoy rachel okay 15 minute recess [Music] [Applause] katie do not feel the need to repeat their comments instead consider standing to show your support we ask that your actions do not delay or impede public comment or the work of the board so please stand and support we can see you standing but let's please not add clapping and booing that will delay the meeting okay so to get started again i also understand we have some students in the audience we always love to hear from our students so i'm going to call up the students next and then once the students have finished i think we've got five or six of them then we will go to some some audio

048from the voicemails so the first student up is anna hutchison let's let's make sure we can hear anna before anna gets started should be on hello testing oh perfect [Music] throughout [Applause] stand please are you finished hannah okay please continue thank you anna okay all right please [Applause] okay okay next up [Applause] next up is haley and cole duzek i would really appreciate that we not delay the meeting any longer please stand and show your support in order to keep this moving along we have 59 plus people signed up for public comment thank you kaylee oh but if people don't feel comfortable without masks being in public they should wear it it's hard to breathe with a mask on and i can't really hear my teacher that much and i must have seen my friends

049playing console and my mom said that i don't have to wear a mask to school but some of my teachers are all saying that i have to go to school i'm wearing a mask that's not fun it's hard to breathe sometimes when we wear them we don't want to wear these masks we don't want these masks i wear a mask at school because it hurts my ears and because when you wear it it when you breathe it gets wet and you wear it um like at the same time after it feels weird i don't want to wear a mask because it makes it hard to breathe and people can suffocate like roberto's brother did on field day and that's not good hi my name our is smell gross even my friends say it smells gross

050secretly sometimes we take off our masks and see how much we lost our teeth i do not want to wear a mask because it's really really hot and it gives me a tiny ache and like when i breathe the mask like bounces off into my mouth and that's disgusting because it hurts my ear when i put it on dear school board why do we have to keep wearing masks so many schools are not making kids wear masks it's hard to breathe when i wear a mask it gets wet and yucky when i just run around a lot i can't understand what my friends are saying and see their faces it makes me disappointed and sad i had covered last year and i didn't even get sick i'm not afraid of cloven and you shouldn't be

051either this is getting ridiculous let us take off a mask thank you haley cole are you ready love to hear from you i don't want to wear a mask at school because it hurts your ears and sometimes when you breathe it like the water from your um breathing gets on your mask and it kind of feels yucky the next time you wear it thank you cole okay we have one more student alexandria rossini hello can you hear me awesome hi maybe a little bit louder oh sorry hi my name is alexandra rossini i have a little sister elizabeth in fourth grade at hub street elementary i like to start off by responding to someone last week saying how would you feel if a doctor was performing surgery didn't wear a mask my response is simple

052they're not wearing a 5 cloth mask from target they only prove a mass against the covid virus is n95 kindergarten fifth grade students have the least chance of severe complications or death the 2018 through 2019 flu season has killed more children than kova did during the same period of time kids kids have been mass free all summer including sports there have been no deaths or hospitalizations because of coven with all due respect to make them wear mass again is not following science or data you are simply making decisions based on your own fears lastly please do not [Applause] lastly please don't take away my parents choice for their child nobody's asking your children to stop wearing masks please do the right thing by the majority of kids and parents who want to make masks optional

053my sister and every child deserves to have their lives back thank you for your time thank you alexandria [Applause] there are two other students that wanted to speak i don't know the names can you ashley and ryan thank you and thank you for standing and showing your support yes please use the microphone please use the microphone just speak into it it's already turned on like this hi my name is ryan little i am a soon to be seventh grader at station middle school and i'm here to talk about i'm asking the younger kids just imagine being my sister walking into elementary school and having to suffocate while learning if these kids want to learn it's going to be very it's going to be a very big distraction to them having to wear a mask if

054you're in elementary school and your teacher told you to listen in the lesson wouldn't it be hard to concentrate while you're constantly thinking about how you need to breathe my experience with the maths are not very pleasant you see every day at school last year i constantly was thinking about how i cannot breathe and how i need to get a mass break my sister really wants to make new friends and i'm sure other kids do too but how are you supposed to make a real connection with someone if you can't even see their whole face it saddens me to think that kids and others it saddens me to think that other kids can see each other's faces anymore seeing someone's face and true personalities what can make you a strong friendship but with math it's

055very hard i also believe it's a parent's right to tell their kids if they should be wearing a mask or not of course elementary school kids are not going to judge a kid if they're wearing a mask but parents really do guarantee you that safety that you need and i think the safety that everyone needs is that their parents telling you if you need a mask or not i watched the last school board meeting and a lot of people are mentioning about losing the mass and getting rid of them in our schools when people elect you you're supposed to do what the majority of the town wants even if it makes a couple people mad you're supposed to represent us and most people don't want their kids to wear a mask i just hope you

056take this into consideration i'm ask the kids who don't have another so they can have another good school year now that they're asking you thank you thank you ryan ashley little hello i'm ashley little and i am a fourth grader at roslin road elementary school i would just like to say when i go back to school i want to see my teachers and say hello welcome to fourth grade not hello not hello welcome to fourth grade with a mask i i want to make new friends and see their their faces how can i make how can i make friends with someone and not even know what they look what they look like imagine new kids kids to our school they are probably terrified to talk to people because they can't see anyone smiles i already

057wait i already go to the grocery store indo parties sleepovers and playdates without without without masks why can't my parents make that choice for me but not but not at school masks are very sweaty distracting i am constantly touching my face face when i wear a mask at school i i can't concentrate i need to breathe please consider this when voting thank you thank you so much thank you ashley so can we queue up 10 minutes of voicemail please murphy and i am hello my name is michael murphy and i am calling to express my concern to make masks optional for this coming school year i have multiple children in the school district and i believe it is our option and freedom if we would like to wear masks thank you have a great day

058my name is juanchoi mui and i have a child at station middle school after watching the previous board of education meeting on july 13th i was concerned it is inconceivable to me that outright misinformation which has been debunked and people's personal opinions would equate with the strong recommendations from every reliable knowledgeable well-researched and well-informed medical and scientific cohort and organization it cannot be reinforced enough how important it is to heed the official guidance from the american academy of pediatrics the illinois department of public health the lake county health department the centers for disease control and prevention and the more than 100 local doctors who have signed the petition for universal masking in our schools universal masking by all students staff and visitors at barrington 220 schools should be the policy until all school-aged children are

059eligible to be vaccinated have unrestricted access to fed vaccines and community spread of coven 19 is within the acceptable ranges set forth by the pertinent local health department the evidence is clear and the message from the cdc scientists worldwide and doctors is aligned and straightforward wearing masks to prevent transmission of coping 19 as well as other illnesses like gold and flu the spread of covered variants including those currently known and those yet to evolve in our community makes masking even more important the variants are shown to spread more rapidly and cause more severe illness hospitalization and death doing the right thing may be more difficult in the short run but the benefits are the protections necessary to keep our schools running safely and assure our families that everything has been done to keep all children

060safe and healthy public schools should be a safe location for all children even the most medically vulnerable the choices that some families make should not put all families at risk method measures should be held in place to curb transmission especially in those who cannot get vaccinated likewise there is no long-term data on vaccine efficacy i feel lucky that my family has been able to avoid coping 19 this whole time through social distancing diligent hand washing and strict masking whenever we are indoors in a public place i would hate to see all the progress in reducing numbers in our community go down the tubes now with mass wearing and layered mitigation i am hopeful that we can have in person school all year thank you very much hi this is vinay singh i am a physician

061and father of three in the district i wanted to bring up one item for public comments which i may not make it in person due to work dr hunt in the last meeting and in your responses to other letters you have emphasized the need to monitor and evaluate local data to consider mitigation strategies you have also noted the differing recommendations regarding masking between the cdc idph and american academy of pediatrics and looking at those organizations they all have consensus in recommending masking of unbacked native students the only difference is the academy of pediatrics also recommends the masking of vaccinated students i would agree with you that looking at local data is important 220 did this last year with northwestern's cova dashboard which allowed us to input the district zip codes to see what was happening

062locally in the cdc's coveted guidance documents for k-12 the cdc stratifies the risk of community transmission between low moderate substantial and high low was zero to nine cases per hundred thousand over the past seven days and moderate is 10 to 49 cases i went to northwestern's dashboard and found the numbers for monday and tuesday of this week and they have more than doubled from last week and now stand at 28.8 cases squarely within the moderate community transmission category we are not in the low transmission category there has been a corresponding increase in pest positivity rates not surprising given the near tripling in kids numbers over the past two weeks in illinois in the same document in addition masking the cdc also recommends screening testing in the moderate category weekly screening for all low intermediate and

063high risk sports and extracurriculars and offering weekly screening for unvaccinated students teachers and staff going mask optional in the setting of moderate community transmission would at least warrant a robust screening testing program as an offsetting mitigation and to reduce district liability is there a plan in place with shield illinois to provide this how can you ignore recommendations for masking and screening tests without even knowing the percentage of students in the district that are vaccinated how are you allowing three feet of physical distancing when the cdc says that only applies when the unvaccinated students are matched otherwise it's six feet the district ignoring masking testing and distinct recommendations and not promoting vaccination knocks off the top four mitigation strategies recommended by the cdc that leaves us only with ventilation hand washing cleaning and disinfection staying home

064when sick and contact tracing or quarantine those options do not inspire much confidence we all want in-person learning and don't want to see the school shut down due to inadequate mitigation you have a duty to provide a safe learning environment for all our students i implore the board and administration to mask unvaccinated students as recommended by all the expert organizations thank you hi this is michelle ross and i'm calling because i believe children should wear math to protect themselves from covid families should not have to choose between sending their children to school and their health and not all families have the money to send their children to private schools in order to make sure that they are masked additionally it's super important to keep our kids in school without break this year they have been

065through enough and the best way to do that is for them to be wearing masks so that they're not covered outbreaks that keep them out of school thank you so much for your time have a good day bye-bye good evening my name is carolyn oster hughes our family would like to welcome dr hunt to barrington we have lived in our lakes for over 23 years over the course of these years we have welcomed over 22 foster children into our home we have been blessed to have adopted five of those children kyle is 23 graduated from bhs and just enlisted in the u.s marine corps colby 21 graduated barrington high school worked for another barrington high school grad and lives in chicago emily 16 is a rising sophomore at barrington high school lamar 11 is an

066incoming 6th grader at station and megan 4 will be attending pre-k at the elc barrington 220 has been instrumental in aiding us in our mission to help the most vulnerable in our community look at what we have accomplished together barrington 220 has changed the trajectory of our children's lives once again we are calling on the leaders of 220 to play a vital role for the most at risk in barrington we realize that we live in a globalized world and it is naive to think that everyone will adhere to a common behavior at the same time but until maths are mandated no one will be safe until everyone is safe we need to act together and be the barrington that brought dr hunt here and the board members to valentine's volunteers precious time and energy thank

067you so much for your time enormous regards carolyn and marcos drew hi okay i said that we were going to play 10 to 15 minutes at a time and that's what we just did i i'm not sure if i said or not but there's a few few voicemails that went over so we're we're making they're cut we're cutting them off okay so as we hear them then they will be cut off okay so um next up is rachel roberts and tiffany karis will follow thank you again before you get started uh rachel thank you again for standing and not delaying the meeting i appreciate that thank you but let's be quiet and let's make sure we can hear the speakers my name is rachel roberts i have a one child at lines and a sixth

068grader at station i'm reading the prepared statement of debbie herlock i'm a parent of two roslyn and one high school and a college student who graduated from barrington i have lived here for 20 years i'm a graduate of harvard law and have been practicing for more than 25 years the last 14 of which have been as an attorney for a large multinational health care company i am on my company's cobia 19 task force and case management teams as a parent resident and attorney i watched with growing alarm as the board discussed ignoring cdc and local health recommendations which state non-vaccinated students should be masked as well as the clear recommendations from the aap which recommends universal mask wearing in schools regardless of vaccination status other than improving the ventilation and enhancing clean proto cleaning protocols

069masks are the only real mitigation measure we have in 220 as social distancing is not possible at our large schools furthermore unlike a number of other school districts 220 is chosen not to utilize any testing protocol under this scenario universal masking is the only safe option i listen carefully to the arguments for mask optional and family choice but these arguments miss the very basic point your mask protects me and my mask protects you in this scenario it is not simply a matter of personal choice it is a matter of civic responsibility and common courtesy we need our schools open for in-person learning parents stated last week that the increases in mental health issues should lead this board to conclude that masks be optional in my opinion these statements lead to an opposite conclusion we must

070do everything in our power to keep schools open and avoid isolating our children making masks optional is reckless and will lead to increased coveted cases and quarantines and jeopardizes the continuation of in-person learning wearing a mask is not harmful and it gives our children the best shot at a full in-person school year finally we also need to consider our most vulnerable children my son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was six he is now eight and too young for a vaccination but at grave risk for covet complications if he were to catch it how am i supposed to send him into an environment where he is at risk of major illness because others don't have the common decency to wear a mask during a global pandemic what about his sister who is vaccinated

071but could bring it home to her little brother because unvaccinated teenagers don't have to wear a mask if 220 cannot provide a safe environment for my children's learning at whose cost do they enter private school i know many parents have varying opinions but if parents are not medical experts their opinions are only personal beliefs not fact and certainly not medically sound as a school board it is your job to look to the experts i implore you to listen to the doctors and experts and require masking especially for anyone who is not vaccinated thank you thank you rachel next up is tiffany and following tiffany will be bena kamath rain can you hear me no we cannot tiffany can we there's some heckling going on out there that needs to stop let's make sure that we

072can hear you before you get started can you hear me yep is that better okay um i clearly didn't get the memo about the red shirt so sorry to all of those on this side my name is tiffany karis i'm here as a mother a doctor and a concerned community member i wrote to you all earlier this week with my plea to support universal mask wearing in schools regardless of vaccination but even in the last several days there have been changes the covenant pandemic is ever changing and so too must we be ready to pivot in our actions after what i heard at last week's board meeting i was compelled to come forward to represent a level-headed science-based approach i represent many who are now too afraid to speak up in support of masks against

073a very vocal group of people i'm the mother of two girls in the district ages 17 and 11 who have attended grove prairie bhs nbs and next year station middle school for my youngest in the chinese immersion program i'm also a physician i'm a specialty medical director for a large health system northwestern medicine i've been on the front lines of upholding evidence-based approaches to copin 19 mitigation efforts since march 2020 and while i'm here representing my own views they are in line with those put forth by my health system i've seen this virus firsthand my daughters and i all had covered 19 which i contracted at work we have gratefully fully recovered but my biggest fear during that time was the possibility we could have spread this infection to someone who would be far less

074fortunate despite being vaccinated i continue to wear a mask to prevent breakthrough infection in myself and spreading it to those around me who are unvaccinated or who have had an inadequate response to the vaccine i support masking in school regardless of vaccination status at this point in the pandemic i look forward to losing the masks but this is not the time the transmission rates are increasing due to the the transmissibility of the delta variant and the loosening of infection mitigation efforts while delta is rearing its ugly head in this country we have let our guards down losing the masks gathering with friends and family dining at restaurants returning to school in sports and traveling like many of you i'm thrilled to enjoy these activities again but we must do them with safety in mind so

075we can continue to do them the science supports mass to prevent the spread of covid19 all it takes is a google search of reputable sites to see that these masks prevent the spread of covet 19 and do not impact oxygen inhalation or co2 retention the jam study cited at last week's meeting was actually retracted stating it was scientifically terribly flawed on sunday the american academy of pediatrics released guidance encouraging in-person learning vaccination of those age 12 and above masking for all persons age 12 and over unless a medical or developmental condition prohibits use in short masks are safe and effective we can and should continue to wear masks in school to keep everyone safe it is a simple and painless effort with vital impact i want our kids to have the most normal year they

076can and if wearing a mask can keep all our kids safely in school we should wear the masks thank you tiffany so bina is next and then after bina scott popovich i don't think you have to turn it on i think it's just been left on can you hear me yeah okay my name is bina kemethrane and i am the mother of three boys four six and eight years one of whom has an intellectual disability and is in foundations at countryside i'm also a pediatrician and a neonatologist and i work at the american academy of pediatrics the aap as the vice president of global newborn and child health i strongly believe that our children should be in school for their health and well-being however we must do this safely i am worried the delta variant

077is on the rise and if we do not take the right steps now to keep our kids safe we will backslide to where we were a year ago with virtual learning and our kids isolated so let me present some facts so that all of you can make decisions with the facts in mind the aap has followed the data over the course of the pandemic over 4 million cases of covenant and children have been reported and over recent weeks the numbers of cases have doubled since the end of june we know that the delta variant is much more contagious and is quickly becoming the predominant variant affecting the us it is thought that children less than 10 years have milder infection and are less likely to spread covid but this may not be applicable to the

078delta variant there is still much that we do not understand for example why a significant proportion of children infected with the delta variant become long haulers based on the science the aap released guidance on monday morning about how schools could reopen safely this fall first we should advocate for all eligible individuals to receive a covet vaccine however vaccinated individuals can still become infected and spread the disease and that is why i continue to wear a mask we need to normalize masking the aap guidelines recommend universal masking unless there are medical or developmental conditions that prohibit this a significant portion of the student population is not eligible for vaccination and we need to protect them as a neonatologist i care for the most vulnerable of patients premature babies who lack a strong immune system and i

079continue to wear a mask for them i wear a mask for my son with a disability who struggles to reliably wear a mask and my other sons want to protect their friends and their brother and wear their masks without complaint there are over 10 real world epidemiological studies that show that masking works and you can read them on the cdc website they're in a table there unless there is a plan to monitor each individual's vaccine status this is the safest and most effective strategy to protect everyone and to send a consistent message especially as we are in the process of learning more about the delta variant with so much unknown we need to do the safest and the right thing universal masking that will keep our kids where they belong in school i am hopeful

080that the board will rely on the science and the knowledge of the experts to guide their decisions and to ensure that they are making the best decisions grounded in facts to not only get our kids in school in the first place but to keep them there safe and healthy thank you before the next speaker starts i want to remind you to please be respectful of all the other speakers if speakers get interrupted and we can't hear them i'm going to extend their time or ask them to repeat their last statement so we can all hear what they have to say please do not interrupt while someone is talking scott and after scott will be jessica spenceos thank you before my final countdown starts there just want to give my respect in that i have tried

081to truncate what i'm going to share a little bit based on what people have said but also the person following me jessica spenso she has conceded her time to me good evening my name is scott popovich i'm actually from district 301 i was invited here by some fellow district members uh because of the experience that i have in the healthcare field first covet is very political which i won't address now code is also very emotional cognitive dissonance is the greatest pandemic actually but in all of this in my opinion so i want to encourage you people believe one plus one equals three no matter how many facts and data you give them they won't let go of it because they are so guys i didn't say anything chill out [Music] let the man speak he's

082got two minutes please finish [Applause] [Music] you have two minutes and 18 seconds left let him finish well i would like to recall at least 30 seconds ma'am to 2 45 that's when it started so fine i'll go through the facts very quickly i've been a picky nurse for 21 years i've worked with babies to teenagers i've worked with covert patients young and adult i have seen more children die in my in my in front of me and literally in my hands than any single person in this room including the doctors who have talked so if anyone should be want their kids in a bubble wrap it's me even my daughter headquartered from an adult family member so let's give some quick facts here yes food does kill more kids than covet here's the thing

083half of those kids that were healthy that died from flu were healthy half of those ones who died from covid had underlying conditions two or more underlying conditions big difference the foundation for research on equal opportunity states we estimate that americans between ages 1 through 4 are 3.4 times more likely to die of the flu than covet 19. children under the age of 15 have a 1 in 155 000 chance of dying of the flu but a 1 in 1.2 million chance of dying of covert 19. so if they're concerned about the health and safety of the children then why weren't mass required during flu season before say matt kobe disappears magically tomorrow are you gonna require mass next year for flu season because obviously it's more deadly than covet conditions to require catch code

084without a mask you need five to fifteen minutes of direct face-to-face exposure such as sitting at a table the second aspect of that is the viral load that you're exposed to so in theory a person could sneeze in the air leaving covert droplets i could walk right through it and not catch covet because i walked through it so quickly and there wasn't enough virus to go inside yes mass can work but here's the thing there's more to the story only for 20 minutes professor yvonne kosar department of infectious diseases at university of sydney those surgical masks are only effective so long as they are dry as soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets which is about 20 minutes so if we

085are going to have kids wearing masks i hope you're going to have them changing every 20 minutes what about teachers teaching catching culver from students and spreading it a study from benign brock israel states it is estimated that kids carry a viral load 63 percent lower than what adults carry which affects the likelihood of of or makes it harder for a kid to transmit to an adult if anything it's for adults who are transmitting to kids lastly psychological effects i have seen a double the amount of suicide attempts in my picu largely related to a loss of hope with the mass being contributing to that thank you scott next please you're standing we can see your support next up is heidi shannon and after lydia's is lisa lopano heidi shannon lisa lopano after lisa will

086be khadija ray hi my name is lisa lopano and i'm a mother of four young children my two oldest are boys ages eight and six that attend countryside my six-year-old was born with a rare condition and has disabilities he is mostly non-verbal and uses a wheelchair i came to speak about the risk associated with young children wearing masks because i feel that they are not being acknowledged nearly as enough as they should be to my knowledge there were some students that were negatively affected from wearing a mask during field day you may have heard how a child ended up being hospitalized for me it wasn't a child it was my child my six-year-old woke up very sick that following saturday morning he had only ever been this sick two years ago when his shunt failed

087i rushed him to lurie's because i thought his stunt was failing again when i got there they discovered his shunt was fine thank god he wasn't gonna need brain surgery but they discovered he was severely dehydrated he had very low blood sugar low potassium low bicarb the doctors confirmed to me that this happened because he was wearing a mask outside when he shouldn't have and i want to point out that my son was well hydrated before during and after field day and he has never had problems wearing him uh he's never had problems in the heat it was because he could not breathe in the heat before this happened my concerns about mass wearing grew throughout the year my six-year-old the same child is an oral seeker and he would chew on his masks he

088will go through four masks each morning since he will be attending the full day this year am i supposed to send eight masks for him each day clearly he clearly cannot wear a mask properly therefore as his mom i need the choice i also know that my eight-year-old who is a typical child was not always able to properly wear his mask nor keep it clean i want to bring awareness what other parts of the world are doing people are focusing on the cdc and idph but in other countries like italy they are not masking children under six years old not one country in europe is making preschoolers or kindergarteners wear math and the world health organization is a very credited source so it's not some whatever source that's you know can't be thing and the

089who says that the evidence on the benefits and harms of children wearing masks to mitigate transmission of covet and other coronaviruses is limited however some studies have evaluated the effectiveness of mask use in children for influenza a study of mass wearing during seasonal influenza outbreaks in japan noted that the use of mass was more effective in higher school grades than in lower school grades one study conducted under laboratory conditions and using non-beta coronaviruses suggested that betw children between five and eleven years old were significantly less protected by mass wearing compared to adults so it just goes to show that kids are not wearing them properly so they're not being protected and that's why we need the choice because it's basically for nothing thank you lisa thank you so next up is khadija ray and then

090shanaz kelleher and then after shannaz will go to another 10 minutes of voicemails thank you kadija my name is dr khadaja ray i am a pediatric anesthesiologist who has served this community for 10 years and on the front line of this pandemic i have a rising second grader in the district i am here today to speak in support of universal masking for in-person learning no matter what opinion people hold the vast majority of the community seemingly shares a common goal to have the students back in school we must figure out how to get the children back in the building and how to keep them there uninterrupted for the entirety of the school year what we decide for august may not be necessary in november but let's give the district a chance at success there is

091no more a place for political ideology to dictate public health policy than there is an election of school board members even if it were true that more children die in car accidents their death doesn't have the potential to cause an exponential number of more deaths i've heard parents say it's my child i should make the personal decision for my child well yes that works when the choices only impact your child in your home maybe you choose not to make them wear a bicycle helmet they crash the injury is personal to your family your child your choice that is not applicable in a worldwide pandemic where your choices have a potential negative impact on your neighbors and the community at large two-way masking decreases transmission masks are not dangerous we do know the full impact of

092the delta variant or we do not know the full impact but we do know that the young and unvaccinated are disproportionately affected pediatric deaths are not the metric for why they should wear masks i was told by a school board member that the deaths of children caused by covet is statistically insignificant the deaths of over 300 american children insignificant so we dismissed their deaths but then we use these wild claims that mass harm someone's child as statistically relevant enough to go against the cdc aap and the world health organization in medicine we speak of risk versus benefits prior to decision making the benefits of universal masking far outweigh the risk at this time incidentally a huge number of people that are against masking are also refusing the vaccine what are we supposed to do and

093the fact that we have children in this audience and there are adults here who do not show decorum but we expect these children to behave in class and not be bullies is beyond me thank you kadaja thank you for your patience and my mispronunciation as well shannaz kelleher can you hear me hello my name is shannaz kelleher we have lived here for nine years and entrusted our three children to 220 from the elc on up to bhs we absolutely love it here within our community some have suffered and this has shaped our views on the pandemic it is not easy to share this but i require your respect and compassion to do so we struggled twice with mild cases of covet requiring no hospitalizations but costing thousands of dollars with symptoms that persist to date

094we were fortunate to have great health care and very privileged to be able to afford it we were all healthy and without a single pre-existing condition in 2020 my preschooler husband and i caught it our youngest sickened first by five days fact kids can spread covet our youngest was very ill and the sinus inflammation did not receive despite medical intervention she could not taste her smell from january to june she was on a medicine cocktail to breathe and sleep she was miserable until her sinus surgery five very long months later she is great now fact kids can suffer seriously from covid i sickened terribly and it took away my sense of smell and taste i will not bore you with my various infections specialist appointments etc covet hit my lungs vision and sinuses i was

095easily winded and i could not breathe my sense of smell was gone my surgeon performed a painful sinus procedure and i was able to regain a small fraction of my sense of smell though it has not improved since fact healthy active people can become long haulers months later my husband contracted covet the second time from an asymptomatic carrier while exercising fact asymptomatic transmission is real fact covid is airborne and fact you can get kova twice the second round was more severe and left many months of side effects in order to get him tested twice we were masked in a car together for six hours my tests were negative and his positive fact masks do work our cases were mild we don't know what covett in our home a third time will look like we do

096not want to know a move to remove masks and end contact tracing could force covid right into our classrooms look no further than the adult mask bullying that occurred last week for a sneak peek as to what masked optional schools done poorly could look like all kids deserve equitable safe access to school with minimal disruption until there is opportunity to vaccinate at all of their ages i'm going to quote a letter from our pediatrician she and her practice bedrooms pediatrics serve countless area families many of us have trusted them with our children we don't yet know what being a generation of pre-existing conditions can look and feel like quote well her quote is in lockstep with the cdc in aap and i know you all received it she adds wearing masks is the simplest thing

097we can do to keep our children from getting coveted and preventing serious illness or side effects such as myocarditis diabetes brain fog and others which we have been seeing in children infected with this virus please do not force our chances to make that choice thank you thank you so can can we have the volume on the voicemails be a little bit greater so we can hear these next few thank you for this opportunity to be heard my husband and i are both physicians and parents to two young children in district 220 my son will be entering third grade at countryside this fall last year we participated in distance learning and strongly desired to return to in-person after vaccination however that wasn't possible since that time we have really been looking forward to in-person learning and

098would like to see evidence-based measures implemented throughout 220 that will allow in-person learning for all students to continue this year safely and uninterrupted there's no question coca 19 has taken a huge toll over 600 thousands live lives lost in the us alone job and security increased suicide rates mental health issues disrupted education the list goes on no one asked for this pandemic and unquestionably everyone has suffered we need to support one another now more than ever it's because of high vaccination rates and other mitigation strategies in our area as well as the summer period that we are currently enjoying are somewhat lower incidence of disease life in some ways seems to be returning to normal let's make prudent decisions now in order to protect for the long term these new liberties we are currently enjoying

099and need so much as much as life is returning to normal seemingly and as much as i would love for this pandemic to be over the facts remain we are dealing with the novel passive pathogen the new delta variant is much more highly transmissible and proportionally affects greater numbers of students of children and cases are rising once again especially in areas of the country with lower vaccination rates now is not the time to let down our guard masking is one of the most effective ways to protect ourselves and one another against covet this is a measure that will allow in-person learning and social interactions to continue in a meaningful way not just for vaccinated or healthy children but for the children who are too young to be vaccinated and for the individuals and families with

100serious underlying medical conditions i urge you to continue to follow the guidelines clearly laid out by the cbc idph and aap their recommendations are unequivocal unvaccinated individuals need to continue to ask indoors this means every student in the cadified school as well as a large swap of students in the middle and high school settings going against these guidelines that's a very dangerous precedent with shaky legal footing furthermore if masking requirements are universal for all students and staff for 220 while indoors this will best preserve privacy as it relates to vaccination and health status of note i'd like to mention that all 75 000 plus healthcare workers and staff my own hospital system are required to mask while indoors at work regardless of vaccination status a requirement that has been in place for over a year

101now with no untoward effects and one that is not going away anytime soon especially during potentially dangerous winter months ahead if local medical and public health experts endorse these decisions in order to protect their patients and communities why would we want anything less for our children respectfully yours christina borgen thank you hello my name is anne field and i am a parent in the district with an incoming sophomore and senior at vhs this upcoming school year and also a daughter in college that attended the barrington school i'm a licensed attorney with over 25 years of experience specializing in insurance coverage and risk mitigation i sent the board and the superintendent a letter with my concerns and legal expertise that i will not repeat every point here but i do want to provide the following summary

102i strongly recommend that this administration and board mitigate as much risk as possible with this upcoming school year there's a simple solution follow the advice of the aap mandatory masks for all students in every grade pay with kindergarten through 12. why am i recommending mandatory math for everyone in school k-12 it is a proven successful mitigation factor when all individuals are masked having one consistent role is much easier to enforce in the school one rule will hopefully eliminate the peer pressure and the bullying that students will be subjected to if they wear a mask from those that choose to not wear a mask people that have been vaccinated are still going to get covered 19 particularly with the delta variant i personally know several people that are vaccinated and have become sick with the delta

103variant the delta variant is here and it will continue to spread rapidly as stated by many medical professionals particularly among those that cannot be or choose to not be vaccinated it is extremely contagious and people of all ages including those that are vaccinated are getting sick further confirmed by the rapid increase of covered positive results in our zip codes feeding into district 220. outbreaks in our schools will require quarantine and our ability to learn in the classroom will be jeopardized and or we will need to revert to distance learning for all in the event we see extremely low infection levels in our zip codes that feed into the district i recommend that the district then consider a shift and only require masks to be worn by those that are not vaccinated proof of vaccination and

104yes you can legally ask for proof of vaccination should be required for those that are given the option to choose whether or not to wear a mask in other words the only group of students that can be mask optional are those that are confirmed to be vaccinated please carefully do your research and don't cave under pressure to the hecklers shouting in the room be thoughtful follow the medical experts in your community government bodies and medical industry groups such as the aap that have given you good guidance on the most prudent and safe case forward to sway from that will simply be reckless and you do run the risk of breaching your tort immunity shield as quoted from the miller tracy law firm masks limit illness risk not for the person wearing the mask but for

105the person who is in contact with the person wearing the mask uh hi my name is eugene terry can you pause it okay thanks we'll we'll continue in a moment what i said earlier was that they they chopped them up at the end of their sentence after the three minutes so that's i don't think anybody goes over more than finishing their thought so let's let's continue with some more in room people i had it pre-done please no more okay so next then we can listen to him again so we can make sure we hear it [Applause] [Music] up next is jim mcgrath and then followed by kelly langan i need everyone to be quiet while jim is speaking or i will call another recess enough we are listening to people's public comment please jim make

106sure we can hear you first thank you this is my name is jim mcgrath i have two grandkids in in the district first thing i'd like to do is congratulations a little bit louder can everybody hear him i can barely you can't hear is that better okay my name is jim mcgrath i have two grandkids in the district first thing i'd like to do is congratulate the team for the plan that was just presented earlier today next i'd like to go through some of the comments that were made last last week one was that a mask was found to have tuberculosis on it after only one day highly doubtful that that happened in the u.s because there was less than 9 000 cases in all of 2019 however what it shows is the mask did

107what it is supposed to do it stopped the pathogen in the mask and prevented it from getting to the mask wearer the same thing that will happen if you're wearing a mask for covet kids can get covered just reported tonight on the news a young girl five years old in georgia died from covet so keep that in mind to claim that barrington does not have the pandemic is not possible that would mean nobody in barrington actually goes outside of barrington or nobody outside of barrington comes into barrington that's the only way we could isolate and make that that statement effect just yesterday it was reported that covet cases in illinois have jumped more than 200 percent in just two weeks this is quickly becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated the american academy of pediatrics has

108issued a statement that all kids while in school should wear a mask whether vaccinated or not i think listening to medical experts should be a high priority and the primary source of information for the d220 board um there was a comment about kids wearing masks that they breathed more co2 that happened last week that report was withdrawn last week by the ama it was false we know the virus tends to go away in the summer but returns in the fall as temperatures we spend more time in indoors we saw that happen last year it's going to happen again this year the mask optional policy if implemented we can anticipate that the kids will be bullied and ostracized for those who are wearing masks i was talking to a doctor yesterday about this he interrupted me

109to say but the kids wearing masks will be ostracized so keeping that in mind the district needs to keep that in mind when you're considering the bullying campaign let's not open another avenue for kids to be bullied the board administration needs to follow the cdc and idph guidelines keep the kids safe thank you thank you jim kelly and after kelly will be kylie humbert hi my name is kelly langen and i'm the parent of a recent graduate of grove avenue elementary and soon to be sixth grader at prairie middle school i'm here to share information on a petition in support of universal masking in all district 220 schools this position is consistent with the recommendation of the american academy of pediatrics which has been discussed quite a few times tonight given district 220 has stated

110that it's not operationally feasible to verify vaccinations universal masking is the only option we have to minimize the risk of in-person learning disruptions and to keep our students family staff and local community healthy unfortunately covet is not over the delta variant is spurring a major rise in cases across the country and in illinois in the last month the average number of new cases per day in illinois has grown from 222 to 834. this petition in support of universal masking in schools was launched by a group of concerned parents after last week's board meeting it was clear that it was necessary to show support for science-backed decisions that follow official guidance i'm happy to say that in just over five days this position or this petition has generated an overwhelming response from families and medical professionals

111who are thankful to have an outlet to show support of necessary safety protocols to date 647 people probably more since i've been sitting in this meeting have signed this petition the list of supporters includes 108 doctors and nurses including chairs and vice chairs of medicine and other department chairs from local hospitals many of these doctors shared powerful comments one example is a pediatrician who stated please follow science as a pediatrician i am concerned about the help of these kids the delta variant is much more contagious and kids under 12 12 are not vaccinated mass work they have worked in my office all pandemic i wear a mask nine hours a day surgeons and anesthesiologists have been doing this for years please avoid the inaccurate stories and do the right thing for the children be on

112the right side of history support kids wearing mass please listen to the voices of these concerned parents medical experts and public health officials so you can say you did everything you could to knock out kovid once and for all and keep the 220 community healthy and safe thank you kelly kylie humbert is up next and then followed by brian prigg can you hear me me a little louder oh i'm loud by nature don't don't ask for too much hi all my name is kylie humbert i'm mom to a countryside student i'm going to tell you about my friends you can close your eyes if you want to imagine the story only it's not really a story it's their harsh reality and the harsh reality of this disease i watched three barrington kids under seven wave

113out the window of their home and i went to check on them you see their mom was in the hospital a physician who had contracted covid after spending months caring for her community caring for my community your community and our community she fell ill you see my friend she was my age she looked just like me she was healthy yet still she contracted this awful disease while caring for others her husband also a physician would text me through the window when i would bring them dinner and drinks while their little boys looked on through the window my friend's husband would text me they've put her in prone position it's their last effort before they put her on a ventilator and then her two-year-old would knock at the glass and wave to me she couldn't walk

114up a slide hill with her boys that summer i watched it all happen who knows if she'll ever be able to do that again even after her release and her coveted free symptoms now who knows what's going to haunt her over the next 50 years or the trauma her boys will deal with and knowing they almost lost their mother not being able to hug her goodbye as she was admitted to the hospital for what could have been her final days that's trauma not mask wearing that's not trauma as a board you're in one position right now in one position only keep the kids safe period above your constituents wants you have that obligation to all community members and our children keep the kids safe by ignoring recommendations set forth by the various agencies already presented

115today you're basically telling us to ignore our physicians ignore our doctors take it medical take medical advice and expertise from people who have no credibility right at the end of the day i was confused thinking hey dr barry is sitting up here on this platform who served our community for years yet it seems to be falling on deaf ears yet the one person in public health expertise is being ignored i thought maybe i should call some other pediatricians and see what they had to say i called advocate i called pediatric associates lake shorepead north arlington peed children in teens bed rose peed i called all of our kids doctors every single one of them said the exact same thing not shockingly they all said you must universally mask all kids while indoors i couldn't find

116one pediatrician in the area who was okay with you removing this mandate not one and i tried because i do believe there are two sides to every story there's not one children's doctor i could find who is okay with you removing a mask mandate when our community was surveyed last year by this board of education and dr and dr harris last year we made the choice to return to learn on the assumption that the board would continue to follow the science just as dr harris himself preached over and over again last year follow the science and that's what we want don't mistake the loud voices of a few for the entire community because it's not the case mask up thank you kylie i'm keeping the time i don't need any help thanks so um brian

117you ready after brian will be monica casey all right am i loud enough all right dr hunt members of the board my name is brian pricky i have three children one attending lines two are soon to attend you've heard and we'll continue to hear tonight much of the science behind masking you've heard and we'll continue to hear about concerns from both the pro mask and mask optional as i've now learned this term groups you've heard and will continue to hear pseudoscience against masking i don't need to reiterate to you what the cdc idph and multiple local physicians have already said what i want you to hear tonight is that we're talking about children children whom we keep safe with active shooter drills children whom we keep safe with fire drills and tornado drills children whom

118we keep safe with security systems identifying sex offenders the threat that covid19 and in particular the delta variant posed to our children is no less real than the threats posed by all of those things we already protect against the psychological effects of those drills are just as real as the psychological effects that a subset of children experience from masking principles write letters about them every year we already expect the parents in our district to message and guide our children through the doubts and fears those drills cause i'm here to tell you tonight that the parents of our district are just as responsible for guiding their children through masking as they are through those drills i urge you as i did in my email to put safety above all else above personal feeling above parent wishes

119above union wishes above a re-election campaign if you're having trouble doing that borrow a yearbook look at the faces of the children say their names remember that they are who you are here to serve with the best information available to you i appreciate that your plan as presented today follows much of the good guidance available and i urge you to steadfastly follow that guidance finally i employ the board to strictly enforce the rules of decorum at this meeting so that these meetings can be held in the same respectful meeting of the minds that we expect in our schools thank you brian monica casey and after her as alyssa casey hello can you hear me i'm monica casey i'm a parent of three children in the district for over 15 years as a school board you're

120faced with making difficult decisions and let's be honest you're not going to please everyone in every decision you make but it is clear to me that on this particular rule you absolutely can by having masking a choice everyone is taken into consideration students can wear a mask if they are their parents prefer students don't need to wear a mask if they or their parents choose not to it's that simple i would dare anyone to argue that teaching or learning behind a mask is more effective than without do not underestimate the negative effect that a mask has on education at this time each and every school district surrounding ours has approved mask optional k-12 why are we behind viruses will continue to evolve change and mutate we need to do the same the concerns centered around

121stigma stigmatization and bullying comes up over and over and over why is that you could be vaccinated someone who's already had covet and has antibodies protecting them could still choose to wear a mask you could be immunocompromised and choose to wear a mask or you can be someone who just wants to wear a mask who cares it's a choice there is no right or wrong or politics none in today's environment where it is so important and crucial to be acceptable tolerant sensitive and equitable this is an outstanding opportunity for us all to demonstrate those very things for students teachers and parents this is the perfect opportunity for all of us to take advantage of the situation and demonstrate this students teachers and parents respecting each other's decisions choices and circumstances with empathy and dignity that

122is what needs to be the focus here for you as a board and that is what needs to be taught in our schools individual choice and mutual respect regardless of that choice we all want the best for our children our teachers our neighbors we respect and value all of you we need to come together be resilient as a community in order to move forward in a positive manner with hope for our future and our children's future i appreciate your time and i sincerely hope you listen to the families in this community now begging for our voices to be heard and the rights to be supported i thank you for your time thank you alyssa next up thank you monica next up is alyssa and followed following alyssa will be leonard munson hello all i'm this

123is just ending from last board meeting but hello all my name is alyssa casey and i'm a sophomore at barrington high school i'm here to speak up for the younger students k through 5 regarding masks and other covid restrictions i believe masking should be a student to parent decision we are no longer at serious risk of contracting covid and children under the age of 12 have virtually zero percent in contracting or spreading the virus covenant and masking has taken a massive toll on each of us children under six have never been able to cognit cognitively live without live mask free or to live free at all they've missed one of the most important stages of social development in k-5 they haven't been able to socialize see real emotions or expressions participate in group activities or

124projects or even give each other high fives or hugs in over a year and a half and we are not about to go into our third school year having this affect us it's time to say goodbye to these requirements and make them optional we have all had enough of this our district is well prepared and the district has funding to swiftly move into next school year safely and efficiently it's time for us to get back on our feet back to normal and stop punishing students parents and faculty for something that is now next to irrelevant personally as a teen i've gone to music festivals parties and sleepovers however have yet to contract this horrible virus we the suit we as a district need to need to take this seriously and respect everyone that is related

125to the situation we we made the in-person learning work successfully since this january and we will succeed in safely returning to normalcy with or without masks and also in elementary school as well so please it is time to consider all of this and it's time to get back on our feet barrington thank you alyssa after leonard will be paul rednicky my name is leonard munson i just wanted to point out that everyone in here has also walked up and touched this mic spoke into this mic there's always opportunity there will always be opportunity to contract coven it is just reality and it is the way of the world i am not an anti-massacre i'm not an anti-vaxxer i'm a realist and i'm a critical thinker okay so we have created a hysteria and a phobia

126of covet that we are making our children fearful of everything okay and so all the people that have spoken anti-mask are against and voted against our kids being in school last year we've got to stop that so let me go over some statistics and these are illinois statistics there are 12.7 million people that live in the state of illinois there were 24 million 411 people that got tested for covid 24 million only 1.4 million of those were positive for cova if that isn't covet hysteria i don't know what is [Applause] the other thing is that from age 1 to 24 for the state of illinois covet is not even in the top five because there's only five listed four deaths in that age group from 1 to 24 it's not even in the top the

127top r which should traumatize us really is accidental unintentional deaths of children assault homicide is number two number three is suicide number four is cancer and then heart disease that's from age 1 to 24. that's what should make us fearful because cova doesn't even it doesn't even function but the education of our children is a lifetime and if they're not in school they're not learning and i know that everybody thinks that this remote learning or if you're in support of remote learning and you don't want to mask don't wear a mask if you don't want your kids in school stay home in remote learning dr uh already said you have a remote learning option let me go to one other quick statistic this virus is 98.2 percent i work in a retirement community of over

128700 residents we've not had one case of covid but they are an at-risk population so i believe in the risk mitigation factors for that community because they die look at the statistics i have them right here those are the statistics of the people that have died from covet there will always be tragedy with with sickness people with diabetes they have they have varying degrees of it i know some people spoke about getting covered i had covered i'm a i'm a healthy adult i had covered i stayed home i mitigated circumstances i went back to work i didn't have one resident pass away from covet now we had probably 30 45 residents pass away but thank you leonard thank you i had paul rednecky was next [Applause] good evening you can hear me i cannot hear

129you paul it's on fall it's on i know it's not i'm trying to figure out why you can't hear me i can't you're mumbled a little bit but better just talk as loud as you can okay all right so first off uh i know it's not a dialogue with the board but dr hunt if you or someone from your office could get back to me in the presentation it sounds like any remote learning opportunities from quarantine procedures would be different than the remote learning for medical students it sounds different than the form i signed so if someone can get back to me on those differences that'd be grand i'd like to start with a quote by john adams facts are stubborn things fact this board has a responsibility to act on factual data last meeting

130the cdc's vaccine adverse event reporting system was referenced a few times if you look at the about page on the cdc's web page for that database it will tell you those are unverified data there's just a way for people to enter things into a system and hope they get investigated it doesn't actually represent reality this board has a responsibility to act on factual data okay this board also has a responsibility to provide the safest in-person environment possible this means being as risk-averse as possible especially regarding kova 19. and while some students may be low risk others are very high risk and what else is high risk is the transmission effect that they might bring at home to someone else in their household a grandparent a mother a father another sibling from another school okay the

131board also has a fiscal responsibility to this community masks may be one of the least expensive most effective mitigation tools you have in your toolbox so let me sum it up this way masks cheap lawsuits expensive okay and here and real quick no matter what this board decides you're going to have to be very very careful and very very aware about bullying if you go mask optional i worry that those that choose to wear a mask will get bullied if you go with only vaccinated people wearing a mask my concern is for someone who's not vaccinated would get bullied by someone who is the one way around this is universal masking it follows the advice of health agencies and it removes the opportunity for bullying thank you paul next up is elizabeth stutter followed by

132karen kroll do i press it or i just just on okay all right hi i'm a parent of two students attending schools in the barrington 220 school district one of which is an elementary student at north barrington i'm also an epidemiologist with a master's in public health and i hold the board certification in infection prevention and control i've worked in the field of infection prevention for almost two decades my experience in this career path is not well understood but if i were to explain it in the simplest of terms means i keep people from getting sick infection preventionists work in all types of health care settings we review the evidence and guidelines and then implement policies and procedures to prevent patients visitors and staff from getting infections they didn't walk in with chances are if

133you've walked through the doors of a hospital you've been kept safe in part because of an infection preventionist prevention strategies are sourced from peer-reviewed journals the cdc idph who and other agencies not google social media or public opinion a lot of covid prevention comes down to common sense and time tested strategies to prevent infection these include masking testing hand washing distancing quarantining airflow and vaccinating many of these strategies were available last year and were used in the school i'm surprised to learn that in the middle of a pandemic we are debating again whether they should be used i made the very wrong assumption that the board would look at the experts when outlining a covid prevention plan for the fall i was disappointed to learn that instead you are weighing public comment and weighing the

134amount of loud voices on either side in order to render a decision on me and maybe universal masking as well as to require the other preventative strategies recommended in a layered approach there are simple facts that are unavoidable no matter how loudly the opposing sides voice an opinion to the contrary there is a very real pandemic going on it is infecting the pediatric and adolescent population the science of prevention really hasn't changed there is a lot of noise telling you that it has and it's just too hard to do as a board you have an obligation to keep all of our students safe by instituting policies based on the guidelines from the experts in this field they are telling you that the pandemic is not over and that masking is essential what this boils down

135to is that you only have really a couple of options for the upcoming school year based on the science none of these would include optional masking for all students all of these require masking for at least non-vaccinated students and staff the approaches you installed last year generally did keep our kids safe from person-to-person spread in the school setting i hope you continue to use the guidance of the major scientific communities to enforce similar strategies in the upcoming year to go against the evidence of the experts and unwind these from required to optional in the middle of a pandemic is negligent and will result in the spread within schools thank you elizabeth next up is karen kroll after karen is agnes tomasian good evening everybody um i spoke to you last time at the last meeting

136and again thank you very much for making that decision for mask optional for all the barrington high school kids sixth grade and up i think it's excellent um i'm really kind of surprised that everybody is thinking that these masks work so good if the children um wear these masks to school these are the ones that are approved for ages six to twelve actually and they say don't wear them for more than four hours at a time these are the ones that when the kids are actually you know borrowing one from the nurse because the earloop masks it says clearly on the bottle that they or the box that they won't protect you from respiratory viruses you open the box too and it stays here i need my glasses i'm sorry i'll read it verbatim that

137it is recommended that the mask should be replaced after four to six hours this product is suitable for the protection in daily life against particles in air polluted environments it is not used for respiratory protection in infants or children that's this this that's this one right here that doesn't protect you from a virus that's like thinking a chain-link fence is going to protect the mosquitoes from coming in it doesn't work and again it's just very important this is a crucial age age you know kindergarten through you know fifth grade is the one we're talking about here tonight and i really direct this to you more than anybody aaron because i know the three of you already agreed and you did pass it for the you know high school kids too i appreciate that but the

138well-being of our children and young people is highly dependent on the emotional connection with others and masks create a threatening and unsafe environment where emotional connection becomes difficult and they won't be able to see their teachers expressions and they won't be able to see their children's smiles and they are at the lowest risk of contracting this virus 99.997 0.003 are actually in danger of contacting this that's a very low percentage kids have a strong immune system they're born with it take extra vitamin d then no cytokine storm can happen in their actual body it can prevent the flu extra vitamin d let's promote that extra hand washing but let's not muzzle our children let them be free let them start the school year with with a happy period and not being fearful of each other

139and fearful and wash your hands sanitize what's in this hand sanitizer benzene is a national carcinogen my father died of lymphoma because of benzene are they alcohol based wash your hands take your vitamins breathe fresh air not through a bacteria bacterial streptococcal viruses they're going to have bacteria flu viruses everything that they're constantly breathing in and i'm sorry somebody said something about the co2 it is the carbon dioxide levels are extremely high in children and it's just not fair to our babies it's not fair let them be free let them be their new kids please thank you very much thank you karen agnes after agnes will be brian kim hello my name is agnes tomasian i have three children my twin daughters attended barrington schools k through 12 and are now in college my son

140just finished his freshman year at high school i'm a registered nurse in the community and my husband is dr doug tomasian he's a cardiologist we are advocating for personal choice we are both vaccinated and do not regret this decision even though longer term safety studies have not been completed for school-age children however the benefits of vaccination are far less clear children now unequivocally known to be at a very low risk from covet 19 infection studies from regions where schools were not closed have demonstrated that schools do not pose a high level of risk for spreading infection additionally there is likely a very high level of natural immunity among school children the actual percentage of students possessing protective antibodies as unknown and has not been well studied but it is well known that the children are

141often asymptomatic with infection and then are found to have protective antibodies when tested unlike the low risk associated with cove infection in children the risks associated with the vaccines in children are not well studied as of yet the vaccine approval even in adults is for emergency use only meaning their overall safety has not been fully assessed side effects of the vaccine are unfortunately common and we've all heard blood clots pulmonary embolisms respiratory issues cardiac side effects including myocarditis and arrhythmias regarding mass it is well known medically that simply cloth mass and surgical mass are not designed to protect the wear against viral pathogens surgical mass are were designed to protect patients undergoing procedures being infected with bacteria from surgeons mouths which are loaded with bacteria the bacteria in the mouth are not airborne pathogens in

142almost all cases and are much much larger than viruses keep in mind our students that are forced to wear masks during recess dance sports activities are the same children playing and socializing with their school friends after school and on the weekends without math the data supporting wearing surgical cloth face masks to prevent the spread of cobig 19 are very poor and the trials showing small benefit have been criticized for lack of proper control what is more fully studied based on countries which children have been in school is that secondary schools do not pose a significant threat of cover 19 viral spread and that children can safely return to the classroom without wearing masks and do not pose a significant threat in terms of viral spread i implore you to give the students of district 220

143back the freedom and to make wearing a mask a personal choice for all thank you thank you agnes brian brian oh okay after brian will be amy kim hello good evening i'm a physician and father of three elementary students in the district i strongly urge you to follow the science-based recommendations of the cdc idph and aap to require masking in barrington 220 schools particularly at the elementary school level where the entire student body is unvaccinated the pandemic is not over do not assume that the drop in cases over the summer is permanent across the u.s nearly all states are now reporting increased covet cases since many since many elderly are now vaccinated more cases are occurring in younger and unvaccinated groups just this past week covet cases in the u.s increased 69 percent while hospitalizations

144went up in illinois cases are climbing with 870 new cases per day a 550 increase from just a month ago do not assume that the covet this year is the same as a covet of 2020. in fact we know that it is not the delta variant is 60 more contagious than the previous version and is spreading exponentially it now represents 83 percent of new cases up from only 10 6 weeks ago do not assume that because children were safe last year they are safe from the delta variant with last year's virus children were less likely to catch and spread covid this is not true with delta which is more contagious in all age groups including children covid is more dangerous in the elderly but we know that some kids still do poorly so far at

145least 346 children have died in the u.s from covid i'd like to offer for comparison the influence pediatric influenza deaths in the past four years 2017 188 pediatric deaths 2018 144 pediatric deaths 2019 195 pediatric deaths in 20 in the 2020-21 year one pediatric death that's with masking during that period of time 346 children still died of covid it is clear to everyone that in person schooling has many benefits enhancing learning and improving the well-being of our children it's for this very reason we must fight to keep safe in-schooling person in-person schooling possible for the entirety of the school year there's an overwhelming body of evidence that masking works is safe and is effective against cobia spread masks not only protect you but their most effective function is actually to protect others from your respiratory

146droplets one mass child surrounded by unmasked children is of minimal benefit making mass optional is reckless and jeopardizes in-person schooling by making it more likely we will have forced quarantines interruptions or even the need to pause in-person learning if there's an outbreak i ask you as a board to seriously consider your duty to provide safe in-person learning for all students in d220 i ask you also to seriously weigh the potential ramifications and liabilities that the board and district may be exposed to if recommendations of every major medical organization is ignored and an outbreak occurs leading to the death or injury of a child thank you thank you brian amy after amy is luke bennett good evening my name is dr amy kim i am the mother of three elementary and preschool aged children in the

147barrington school district i am also a physician that has served on the front lines in this war against coven 19. caring for severely ill and hospitalized patients i have seen firsthand the death and destruction kovit has ravaged on patients and their families during these terrifying times i had to remind myself of my great responsibility and privilege and the oath i took in caring for my patients first do no harm second to help them to the best of my knowledge and abilities as members of the board of education you were elected to this position and entrusted also with a great duty and responsibility of guiding the district in providing a safe and equitable learning environment as well as the best educational opportunities for our children to vote for an optional masking policy will be in effect

148putting our children's health safety education and lives at risk many in this community have fallen asleep to a deceptive lullaby a lullaby that says covet 19 is eradicated in barrington and that it doesn't affect children by now you hopefully have done your due diligence and know the truth the fact is that covet 19 is on the rise and we are on the path to another surge the delta variant now the dominant strain is not the same as last year's strain we simply cannot predict how it will affect young children there have already been more than sixteen thousand children in this nation hospitalized with coveted related illnesses yes i have seen them in my hospital this is not inconsequential our children's lives should never be gambled with even one death would be unconscionable especially if it

149could have been prevented with effective mitigation efforts such as universal masking our collective goal as a community is that our students return to in-person learning to have the most productive opportunities in academics and the most meaningful social interactions as possible under the umbrella of safety to ignore the guiding light provided by our medical community including the cdc idph and now aap would effectively cancel the possibility of a successful return to in-person learning i'm here to remind you that this is the worst public health crisis we have ever faced in our lifetime to deviate from the guidelines of the medical community is reckless and irresponsible i strongly urge you to continue to follow the recommendations as set forth by the expertise of the cdc idph and aap thank you thank you amy luke bennett followed by

150amy lovett hopefully i'm getting these names right you don't need to turn it on okay i'm luke bennett i have a kid at countryside and a kid at prairie and i'm going to make this brief because i think most of the points that i wanted to make were already made by a lot of intelligent people here in this audience and why would you want to listen to me anyways because i'm not a doctor but luckily all the doctors in the room seem to be saying that we should go ahead and mask our kids and i think that we should take that into consideration because when i get into a car accident and break my arm i'm not going onto the internet to look up what some guy might say i'm going to a doctor we

151trust doctors in the community for a number of years to make decisions for us regarding our health and it's the same way with things like um like the mmr vaccine we know that the kids can't go to this uh into into school without an mmr vaccine yet for some reason now it's a big deal when we have masks i don't get it and i could name all of the different regulatory bodies and university health systems that have come out and said that we need to mask and that we need to kids under a certain age that are on vaccinated need to be masked but they've already done it and it seems to me that the evidence is clear and if we're going to go ahead and come to these meetings and and yell at each

152other and get feelings into it don't let your feelings creep into it it's unequivocally it's unequivocal and objective that masks benefit our kids and we're going to need mass for our youngest kids coming in this next school year thank you thank you luke amy lovett and then following amy is abe ryder good evening my name is amy lovett my family and i moved here from the city last summer we live in the huff school district good intentioned people should have the goal of getting back to interacting with fellow humans normally having children interact maskless which we have all been doing all summer and outside of school all of 2020 and 2021 may help assuage the fears of other parents who want to keep their children and other children masked it is important for society to

153see normal behavior mandating the masking of children cannot be the norm today and into our seasonal respiratory virus months we are caught in a cycle of blame that will never end positive pcr tests go up people didn't mask hard enough we're told positive pca pcr tests go down good job keep masking they say notice i did not say case as a positive test is not a true diagnostic indication of a respiratory infection historically symptoms were also required for a medical diagnosis as a parent unless you want your child in a mask forever we should all want this to end and that starts by saying it's okay to take the masks off for comfortable parents and one by one they all may come off thank you thank you amy abe writer and after abe would be

154margaret doll's dream thank you hello my name is abe ryder i am the father of three children in district 220. two art lines one is at station we are involved in the fabric of this community and beyond serving on various boards and volunteering our time and giving to charities i want to welcome you dr hunt as you can see and as you know this is a community where people care they care about the oath that this board has taken regarding our children's education we've been watching as a family of five the majority of the board meetings over the past year believe it or not yes we have been watching we wanted to come as a family but we could not in good conscience allow our kids to stay up until 11 pm or later i

155know especially on a school night we've seen the meetings where people are discussing yet another tax levy on the taxpayer just after a referendum passed and of course who can forget a previous board member driving with camera on and making a sandwich for all of us to see i'm not throwing stones here by the way we are watching okay and the only reason my family is not here tonight is they have a swim banquet in which i am skipping to represent them here i frankly would rather be there as a dad supporting them it is too important but now you have called me to action my challenge to the board we all agree that mask optional is the goal the long-term goal that's the future state we anchor into that i am for mask optional

156many of us are at different spots along our journey and i appreciate that and starting with the phase approach is a great middle ground and thank you for that however more can be done with the future state of mass optional with with our elementary kids our superintendent you've laid out some great mitigation strategies and we'll continue to follow those but i believe the board can do more my challenge to you is to commit to innovate do more figure out what other school districts are doing other states are doing because they're doing it without masks and everybody's safe you are using apple computers think differently okay and by the way my youngest was when we a number of years ago when he was at the elc you know he had speech therapy and honestly with with

157a mask i can't even imagine that happening when you have to form words around lips so i appreciate those parents who are going through that and from a human perspective this sounds cheesy but i carry a coin in my pocket on the one side says live the golden rule do on to others as they have due to you i am far from perfect perfect i do my best and so my fellow audience let's please respect the board when they are having their discussion and for the board the flip side of my coin says it's your move it's your move innovate and let's make masks optional thank you thank you abe marga and once margaret is finished let's do another 10 minutes of the voicemail can you hear me okay can you hear me now yes

158okay great thank you i'm margot dahlstreem thank you for saying my name correctly um i know it's one that's easy to mispronounce um i have lived in barrington for over 20 years my husband grew up and graduated through all the school districts and our elementary district is huff although my two older kids have graduated and my youngest will be a freshman at high school this year and i'm just calling to share a little bit of information one of them is has to do with an email i sent to the board on sunday asking about quarantine and i know dr hunt you said that that's kind of out of your control but i went through the dashboard and added up the sum of students quarantined from october of last year till the end of this school

159year and that was over 13 000 quarantine days and of that there were 173 positive cases so with the policies that were in place last year it sounds like there are a lot of healthy kids forced to stay home and i know we experienced this in my house too when my older daughter had sniffles allergy symptoms and my younger daughter who had zero symptoms was forced to stay home was forced to stay home until we could bring a negative pcr test which at that time took a while the other number issue that i just wanted to share has to do with the battle of the petitions you may be aware there are two of them one of them is called safe equitable education in barrington and they are advocating for mass mandates at all grade

160levels and have noticed they have six as of this afternoon had 645 signatures somebody went through all those and identified that 145 of them either are anonymous just have initials or are out of state let alone out of this district and one was even from mexico um the other petition is tell the barrington 220 boa to make masks optional um and i just want to verify we're not anti-mask if you want to wear a mask wear a mask if that's what you need to do to protect yourself or your children go for it that petition had 1669 signatures as of this afternoon [Music] and there may be some out of area but i don't think it makes up the difference so i'd ask the board to just look at the signatures that are in district

161and i know mine says like zurich i'm not sure why but at least look at those that are in this area and less attention to the ones that are out of the area thank you so much thank you margaret okay can we hear we have some voicemails i can't hear the him voicemails [Music] all right well josh is getting that together let's hear from marsha mccleary [Music] evening board i appreciate all your efforts and um i won't repeat um all my data based emails and everything i've sent to all of you thanks for entertaining that um dr hunt so appreciate the mitigations and the presentation here it really took a lot of thought and i can tell a couple things i just i'm going to change what i was going to say just addressed that

162pfizer and j j are both sponsors of aap so that's something to be aware of and the aap also recommended that the kids go back to school last june i can provide you that press release and that guidance was ignored so just take that also because we would have loved to have our kids in school but the board chose not to have our kids go back to school and did not listen to the aap guidance at that time so we can't really pick and choose how we treat the aap guidance let me talk okay the other thing i want to talk about is the herd immunity concept is actually made up of two components it's made up of vaccinated individuals as well as those with antibodies we have largely ignored in this state at least

163and country the antibodies piece of the data and i did have a long conversation with the lake county health department today about that so they're going to take a look at incorporating that and how that might be included so and that's really critical because the cdc estimates over 40 percent of the u.s population has antibodies now we don't know how they long they last we don't know how long the vaccines last so you know they're probably both equally questionable but if we have a vaccination rate of 50 something percent 60 something percent plus some overlap but a 40 rate of antibodies we might be at hurt immunity or close i don't know i don't want to argue about numbers but it's just roughly in the direction okay and that's probably why our data is so

164good that's probably one reason and i looked at the data and i think we have to use local data at this point because if you look at a lot of these governing bodies they go with the lowest common denominator so if you have a state that is blowing up with covid they're going to make the recommendations and i would say watch what they changed they took a lot of the language change it from shall to should because they wanted to give local guidance and that's what i'm seeing so look at the local data and it's a pre-pandemic levels yes things are changing but when would we return our kids to normal i do want to address the quarantines i sent you guys an email and it is a big issue we did lose the 13

165000 student days for 175 positive cases we lost 3 300 staff days for 90 positive cases we have to take a look at this and these kids in high school have to have zoom access because they cannot miss 10 days of school for a quarantine thank you marcia josh are we ready no okay all right so brian melton and then followed by david oh gosh jermaine brian melton okay david i apologize i can't read your handwriting and i meant it with no disrespect so please state your name for the audience my name is david jorah i am for mask optional i have three kids in the district two of whom complained of terrible headaches uh and trouble breeding um during you know during last spring and i can you know i appreciate that we can

166have a intelligent conversation i appreciate the physicians as a attorney my prior career i work defending physicians i'm also an engineer so i can read studies but there's some misconception that all of a sudden some that all of us on this side are ignoring facts and data that's not true i can tell you what doesn't make sense for me what doesn't make sense for me is that people on both sides of the room have been going to packed costco's targets stores and i and i know i know people who are pro masks and and i've seen their posts on social media when it's convenient they'll do what's what's convenient for the family and and you know all of a sudden the schools have become the most dangerous place in the world so to me we're

167not ignoring data what's problematic to me is that you know we're gonna master kids from eight to four and then after four pm everybody is free to do whatever they want and then and believe me we've been very respectful with with the pandemic we've been very we have elderly parents we try to keep everybody safe but to me uh the fact that people are just going around going going to vacation it's going gonna just gonna skew the data you know you'll come back and and you know the kid will test positive in school and will assume it's it's because of school but but it's not the case so so to me you know that that's been the biggest problem for me i'm not anti-science i'm not anti-statistics but when you look at what people are

168doing every day it just doesn't make sense to do it for eight hours a day [Applause] so and then i only i had few questions regarding the proposed plan um dr hand you mentioned that you've been in conversations with the with idph and currently there is no data available we can based the statistically when we'd be able to maybe lessen the mandate uh we don't know the vaccine is coming for for younger children so my question is you know we have school districts in in our county that have lifted the mandate so i'm just curious as to why the data has been interpreted you know that's another thing you know the data has been being interpreted differently by neighboring districts so you know to me we've paid so much in taxes we have so many

169resources we can implement so many mitigation strategies to make sure that our kids are safe and and to give everybody an option thank you david [Applause] okay we're ready for some voicemails and david hopefully we'll get your questions answered during the discussion please so we can hear the voicemail oh hi my name is mrs eugene terry my granddaughter will be attending district 220 this fall i want to explain why i am reaching out to you the board today my husband son and i all had coded i thought that i was going to lose my husband twice because of kovitz coven attacked my husband's heart and he is still recovering and has a long road ahead of him he is at very high risk if he gets it again i am still working on getting my

170energy level back to what it used to be my son luckily is doing okay kobet is not in the flu we watched some of the board meeting last week it was embarrassing to see how parents behaved when someone spoke against their beliefs children practice what they see as well as what they hear i am afraid that my granddaughter will be bullied because she is wearing a mask to protect herself and others she is being taught the community matters i'm hoping that you the board will make the right decision for the community as a whole instead of just for a few please keep politics out of health decisions it makes sense to keep protocols in place that will continue to protect us all that includes wearing a mask the american academy of pediatrics says all children

171should be wearing that i wonder how many of us would not even be here if people didn't get the vaccine when smallpox and polio and all the other diseases became a community risk it is very sad that we as the human race have become so selfish look at what we are teaching our children again i ask you to keep politics out of health decisions and hi my name is carmilla henley i am a mom of a alan henley who's going to be going to uh second grade this year on north barrington i'm very much in favor of making last optional and let the parents decide what's best for their children also what i would want to bring is that in other school districts within illinois mass are being optional like in st charles is 3

17230 i believe it got voted seven to zero votes for making it mandatory so um thing i want to bring up is that covet is the same everywhere right so there's no difference in um the epidemic approach in barrington versus how it is in king charles so how is that a town that is 45 minutes car ride from barrington makes it optional where we're trying to make it mandatory is there is there any difference so but for thought i'm very much in favor of making that decision um up to the parents i feel like they're the ones who can make the best choice for their children um also all of the adults and people that we obviously care about um and their willing well-being is um is important they had the opportunity to get vaccinated

173and be protected so kids should not carry the responsibility to um to have well-being of elders that that's all thank you good evening my name is jeff vanzak i'm a proud parent of two children in the district and at our wonderful nbs elementary school first off i'd like to thank the board and dr hunt for their service to our community and for sharing their valuable time leading us during this unprecedented and difficult period i wanted to use my brief three minutes to reinforce a few concerns i had with the board's recent direction for opening our schools back up this fall as a bit of a background on the chief investment officer for large institutional investment portfolio including experience working for the largest non-profit healthcare system in the country i have a background in statistics statistical

174modeling and risk management which is a daily responsibility of my duties as cio and helps me understand the challenges that we face analyzing both the quality of the data as well as modeling the spread of an infectious disease such as copenhagen one thing i want to make clear because this is a common misconception that our public officials have done a poor job of reinforcing this concept masks are not intended to protect the wearer they are warned to protect others and stop the spread of the virus let me repeat that math or not to protect the wearer people keep acting like mats are optional because you can just wear one as your own personal choice to protect yourself it doesn't work like that unless we're going to send our unvaccinated kids out ppe and strap n95s

175to their faces all day it won't work either everyone wears them for the safety ball or the school becomes a possible infection the answer especially for the most vulnerable at mbs we have a very few handful of students with deadly peanut allergies the entire school is peanut-free as a result why to protect that very small minority of students from a disastrous outcome i didn't see any parents up in arms yelling at board meetings in opposition that they have to constantly check their children's lunches every day and can't give them pps it's all about risk management and avoiding disastrous outcomes weight against statistical possibilities you probably won't get copic if you do you probably won't go to the hospital if you do you probably won't die probably having our children wear a thin piece of cloth

176is a minor inconvenience that can save even just one line these children aren't in a bubble so they will continue to spread the disease to family members and other average individuals the american academy of pediatrics updated their guidance to require masculine schools the governor mentioned the extreme liability that school boards will be undertaking if they don't follow public health guidelines and our very own board certified pediatric pediatrician dr altschuler recommends that our children be masked for the start of the school year to prevent spread of disease yes there are social and mental health concerns with children wearing that but this is a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that requires us to all care for each other no one likes their children or themselves wearing masks but we can sacrifice a little and it might save a life who

177knows that life may be the life of your child or someone you love i hope we can all agree that we should love and protect our neighbors and our wonderful community please follow official health guidelines and requirements for our children until we can all celebrate the victory over this terrible disease and welcome everyone back with open arm my name is christine ditman perry and my daughter is set to start the dual language program for kindergarten this upcoming fall thank you to the board for posting about voicemail public comments after what i witnessed last week at the board meeting and the complete lack of respect some in the community showed towards those with differing views i agree it is not a safe environment to speak out thank you to those brave individuals who just speak out

178in favor of wearing a mask with that i am asking the board to keep the safety of all children at the forefront of their decision making i ask that you rely on science and what experts are advising for safe school openings and the k-5 student population that is universal masking due to a lack of vaccination availability furthermore i ask that the 2.8 million set aside for air quality and cleaning be spent and communicated with the community from what i have gathered that money has not been spent and or is in the process of being spent to put it in perspective of a district-wide distribution of the 12 schools have 30 classrooms each excluding public or gathering areas that would equal around 2.1 million spent under hepa certified air filters for in-class as recommended by the

179idth that doesn't even begin to dive into the costs associated with larger schools with more classrooms gyms art rooms music rooms lunch rooms auditoriums etc they cannot rely solely on the government grant to keep our students safe from covis layered with universal masking contact tracing and distancing will help ensure the student and staff populations are safe again i am asking for universal masking of k-5 until at least the time that a vaccine is available for those younger in the kindergarten to fifth grade population after such time i ask that adequate amount of time is put in place before phased masking this would allow individual families to research vaccine effect effectiveness along with potential impact and make an educated decision lastly i heard a lot of talk about unvaccinated students being bullied for wearing a mask

180i can guarantee my child would not be part of that bullying we value humanity and our community and we teach that first and foremost first and foremost in every lesson she's not scared of math nor is she scared of people who are wearing masks i myself am worried that she will be bullied due to the rhetoric of the individuals within this community and their false claims along with just overall anger that they showed at the board meeting last week again i am worried she will be bullied for wearing a mask for keeping herself and her community safe thank you for your time my name is kristen mann and i have two children currently in the district as i watched the board meeting last week i was reminded of a documentary i recently watched called behind

181the curve at arizona netflix this film is about a group of people who have organized and called themselves the flat earth society they believe that the earth is flat and enclosed by a dome and they reject the idea that the earth is a spear they believe that nasa astrophysicists physicists and professors at schools like caltech and mit are lying to the public they have formulated this theory based on intuition and subjective experience noting that the horizon looks flat you can't physically feel movement on earth and believe that gravity is a made-up concept how did this happen how did a group of people organize to believe this pseudoscience a few psychological phenomena are highlighted in this film that i believe are relevant to the anti-mass movement dr pier espen stoknes a psychologist discusses the concept called

182confirmation bias he states confirmation bias is one of the most solid empirical findings of psychology if i have a belief or an attitude i will search for instances that confirm what i believe i will find myself in a company with a lot of other people who think the same way as i do also noted in this film is another psychological finding called the dunning-kruger effect dr joe pierre a psychiatrist and professor at ucla states the dunning-kruger effect is a psychological finding that people who do not have knowledge or expertise about something tend to have a false confidence that they are in fact very knowledgeable about something based on the public commentary last week and the decision of the board i fear what is happening in our community is the spread and validation of misinformation on

183the part of non-experts rather than listening to science data and facts from true experts changing years my husband is a front-line physician who had and continues to treat coped patients at the beginning of the pandemic when victims weren't available i adopted the mindset that my family is at high risk of contracting covet due to the nature of his work knowing this we were diligent about social distancing math wearing and the like we did this to protect our community extended family friends neighbors etc this is because wearing a mask offers protection to others not just yourself after one and a half years of working diligently to protect others it's inconceivable to me that i have to fight for my child to be educated in an environment where mass wearing may be optional among the non-vaccinated populations

184the thought of one of them or another child contracting kobit from school because our school board decided to go against the recommendations from the aap cdc idph lake county health department and over 100 doctors in our area who have signed a petition urging the board and parents to follow these guidelines makes me sick to my stomach what a slap in the face to our medical community and personally to my family this is exactly what i was referencing previously with the dunning-kruger effect and confirmation bias i also would like to take a moment to notate some of my incoming kindergartners thoughts on masking when he was asked if he mind wearing a mask he said no it doesn't bother me it's not even a big deal mom i just like going to school furthermore i asked

185him how he would feel if he went to school and there were other kids who weren't wearing them hi my name is amy lauric and i have two children who will be going to prairie next year my mother who is 79 and a type 1 diabetic lisp the last year was especially challenging we took extra precautions and my children completed the entire year learning to keep her safe fortunately even with my husband working outside her home he works for ups we were able to stay covered free he wore a mask every day while working and i believe that's what helped him stay healthy despite outbreaks in the ups facility the mask did not make him sick it was washed every night and often he brought several masks to work to ensure they stayed clean and

186dry the vaccines became available my entire house was vaccinated knowing this i was happy and excited for my children to return to school unfortunately at the last board meeting a very angry knob of parents with misinformation not supported by science will lead the school board into a decision about mass or grades 6-12 and the discussion was to continue for the younger grades making math optional is not following the cdc idph or the american academy of pediatrics i was shocked the school board could be pressured into going against public health guidelines i asked the board to reconsider their position the only safe option is optional for vaccinated with proof of vaccination or universal masking that's optional will force my family back into a now outsourced version of distance learning i cannot take the risk of one

187of my children bringing home a coveted infection even vaccinated we are not 100 protected the delta variant is more transmissible and the diabetic population is especially vulnerable diabetics are higher percentage breakthrough cases it's a risk my family cannot take thank you for your consideration goodbye is that the last is that the last voicemail no okay all right so we're going to continue on with heather duzak is heather's still here after heather is mara golzada hello okay i would like to start off ask everyone to please close their eyes you too and you too internet people close your eyes think about the moment each of your babies was born and there's that moment of pause and then that horrible terrible piercing newborn scream think about the way a toddler says mama dada think about their big

188belly laugh think about the way they mispronounce words like bischetti or hospital open your eyes in each of those moments our children used their breath their unmasked unmuffled breath also think back to those moments what did you see you saw their face we have reduced children to potential carriers of one single virus they're a person a total person they need so much more than protection from one virus they need to see their peers they need to connect their teachers need to see their faces to help them learn to speak so that they don't go off into the world saying do you want to have bischetti it's important for them as their young my five-year-old was up here on the stage with the video it is important that they connect with people babies need this connection

189these youngest of our kids need it too they need to connect with other people i'm sorry i'm pulling something up um so i am asking each of you as hold on members who have been elected by the community um sorry my phone to do what's right do what we are asking for the entire person not for one virus places like aurora plainfield crystal lake arlington heights glenbard wheaton as we go and over 140 other illinois school districts in the past two weeks have chosen to make masks optional these kids need to have their faces exposed they need this to connect and to learn and as we all leave tonight i would like everybody here to go out take a deep breath of that summer air fill yourself with gratitude that you have the freedom to

190make this choice for yourself our kids do not have that freedom what we are asking for you is to do the right thing for them that so many others have let's join them let's be leaders let's do the right thing for our kids unmask the kids thank you heather margle's out of rope roble and then margel's adam mcgonagall is up next good afternoon i guess i was lucky enough to fight find a pediatrician in south berrington who could not be here with us tonight but um wrote a letter that i will read on her behalf to human may concern my name is joanna posdell i'm a family practice physician my solo practice is in south barrington illinois i was asked by my patients parents who have students in many districts including district 220 to say

191a few words on their behalf i am not a public speaker nor politician i'm a mother and a doctor i am asking you to use common sense when making decisions about mask wearing please following there are a few points to consider let children enjoy school without causing additional and unnecessary stress by wearing masks some kids already have anxiety problems so placing them in an environment where everybody wears a mask create even more stress panic attacks and such more all of this decreases a child's ability to learn effectively at the same time stress weakens immune system children become vulnerable for infections besides it is well accepted that children have statistically a zero chance of dying from covet the cdc shows the k-12 mortality rate from covet or with kovid is .0003 which is 3 per million

192it's called negligible since children have the lowest death rate from covet infection why put masks on them and cause other problems anxiety headaches skin issues it is well known that an asymptomatic person will not cause an outbreak it is caused by symptomatic ones sick kids are staying home anyway also masks especially clothed ones offer no protection from the virus so will not prevent it spreading instead being touched many times and becoming wet from exhaled air becomes source of other infections children need to build their immunity by having contact with a variety of viruses and bacteria i believe that strong immune system is a key in the fight with any infection including covered with some help a few supplements like vitamin d omega-3 probiotic zinc children who are happy enjoying mask-free school are able to fight

193any infection the mandatory mouth mask and skull is a major threat to a child's development it ignores the essential need of a growing child the well-being of children and young people is highly dependent on the emotional connection with others we're communicating with each other not only by talking but also by body language and face emotions children need to see other emotions therefore the masks should not be required for children especially during school allowing them to have a normal school experience and make memories they will remember fondly for years thank you thank you followed by katie valdisano thank you son hello good evening everyone thank you for coming um we had a great discussion today i appreciate all the opinions and everyone i also brought a box of masks that i picked up at walgreens and

194it looks like the mask making companies disagree with a lot of doctors that send the letters here to be read because it states clearly that they don't protect us from viruses and i'm not gonna i'm not an attorney to state why they stayed on the box that they don't protect from viruses also it has been over a year now through and a lot of studies show the truth of mass just not working we are all here intelligent men and women and so i will not waste a lot of time on a rehash all of the data to you i leave it to you a little list of references that i haven't printed right here whoever wants to look it up and read through it i have several copies for people if they would like to

195take it home and read it at home in a study of 25 930 children impairments caused by wearing the mask were reported included irritability 60 headache 53 percent difficulty concentrating 50 less happiness 49 reluctant to go to school 44 malays 42 percent impaired learning 38 and drowsiness and fatigue at 37 percent there are 74.2 million children in the u.s fewer than 200 had died from covet in 15 months of those that were positive only 1.3 percent needed active medical care children face 1.5 times higher risk of dying from the flu three times higher risk of dying from car accidents 10 times higher risk of dying from drowning and more than 20 times higher risk of dying from homicide this is actually through an idph and i have a printed printout from an idph stating all

196those debts total of 19 debts from covet in 15 months in the state of illinois this is sort idph for everyone also it states that only three in a cook county because cook county actually have it on a website printed right here they're only all the debts in the cook county there are a total of ten ten of them this is uh the sources cook county medical examiner um three of them were from covet two of them were unknown secondary causes everyone else is a primary cause to the death um so i don't know you know what it's everybody's talking about symptomatic carriers we're putting this label around children which there are not asymptomatic carriers they don't spread disease also wearing a mask it's kind of discriminating our children with speech and language disorder um

197hearing aid kids with a hearing aid they can't they can wear a mask and speak and also our amazing immigrants they will be attending our school this year also that language is going to be their second language thank you thank you margosata sheba sans oh are you katie yes katie please go i think i should be you'll be next hi she was before me because i made sure to check the name ahead so sorry about that hi everyone i'm katie baldesano i live in the huff boundary i have three kids in the district and um i think we could all agree that we can find facts and data to support whatever we want right we can all agree that our students know that so at any rate you've gotten a lot of facts and data

198you know that these young children are at the lowest risk of contracting covid and dying from cope you know that you also know that cloth masks do not protect against covid and they're seldom if ever worn correctly by young children i sent you a picture of my little guy with his wet disgusting mask just this week so i would like to talk with you about young children and their learning i have worked in the field of early childhood education for over 20 years so i am an expert in early childhood early childhood is a specialized field that focuses on early learning up through age eight it was identified that kids in this window cannot be taught like you just teach a fifth grader it's different they need different things different strategies and it's a learning

199window that closes you can't have an extremely poor early childhood education and go back and fix it when they're in middle school it just doesn't work that way so i'm wondering if you are familiar with how young children learn if you're making decisions for these young learners you should know a couple things they learn through relationships and experiences they learn by interacting with each other and with the adults in their school early childhood teachers create learning environments that are full of choices and all kinds of interaction so every child can get what they need to be successful that's actually the original definition of equity is about kids getting what they need to be successful not equal everyone needs something different so masks on these young learners erase our facial expressions they discourage communication which is

200what early learners need they restrict learning social development and they impede human connection and in early childhood preschool to third grade early childhood is all about the human connection young learners in math will not have the needed foundation laid in emotional reciprocity serve and return communication reading nonverbal cues and auditory processing nelson mandela famously said there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way that at which it treats its children if you vote to mask these precious young learners you will be communicating disregard for early learning you will also be perpetuating an environment of fear brains that are fearful cannot learn that is fact thank you thank you katie okay we're going to do one more sheba and then we're going to take a break okay we're going to take a

201five minute break after yeshiva thank you my name is sheba sands and i'm the proud parent of four children in the district grades 4th through 11th how are all of you doing this evening do you think i'm glad to be here or disappointed am i feeling happy or sad this evening do i seem relaxed or nervous do i want to be friends with you or am i really depressed you honestly have no idea how to answer my question because you can only see 25 percent of my face and the only reason you can hear me is because i'm intentionally over projecting my voice contrast this with dr alt shuler last week who chose to wear a mask and could not be heard even with a microphone now imagine having barry as your teacher all day

202and not being able to hear him for six hours i recognized that it was barry's choice and personal decision to wear a mask likewise it is my personal choice and decision not to wear a mask just as it should be for all district 220 parents and teachers and students now imagine being a child trying to learn to read and write and pronounce words at school or trying to connect with a new teacher as you're all wearing masks your teacher can't tell if you understand the material and you can't tell if he or she is pleased with you or frustrated with you district 220 is constantly preaching about social emotional learning and trying to be out front on this topic it is impossible for you to properly serve our children socially and emotionally when you're eliminating

203facial expressions from their school day seeing and interpreting facial expressions is vital to proper social emotional learning and development studies show that communication is only seven percent verbal 38 percent vocal and 55 facial facial expressions account for more than half of how a message is communicated and received and yet some members of this board want to rob our youngest children of a fighting chance to properly develop in this area by forcing everyone to wear masks at last week's meeting our board member leah said she found it difficult to even think straight because of all the constant noise and yelling for three and a half hours imagine how our youngest children feel when for twice that long six and a half to seven hours a day they're forced to wear a mask where they can't breathe

204properly or connect with other human beings proper oxygen is vital to concentration and proper social emotional connection is critical for success in school and life how much learning does the board think kids are doing when you rob them of these crucial comments thank you sheba okay we are going to take a five minute recess five minute recess is that enough everybody in case you have a board ask for a five minute recess in case you're wondering i'm not happy to be here tonight i'm here to stand up for my kids i would much rather be doing something else ready to get started again um may i ask aaron walls to come forward and followed by miranda hoffreder all right thank you very much i was ready tipped off over here so good evening i'll start

205by acknowledging dr hunt for his leadership during the the first board meeting last week and superintendent of 220. one thing he said that really impressed me was he advocated for his belief in local autonomy for each school district rather than one size fits all philosophy as a reminder to the board here you're all elected by the people here all the people here not the lake county health department not the cdc not the big pharma-funded american academy of pediatrics you represent us all of us both sides and you represent to do what the majority of the overwhelming people here want as desires for our children's education speaking of the experts here tonight that people have been referencing in the last 18 months we've been introduced to the surgeon general dr fauci the who the cdc and

206many others they first told us to not wear masks to wear masks only if you're at risk or around others at risk to our masculine outside to our mask when you're inside to wear masks while you're eating even the idea of wearing two masks simultaneously at once because it's better than one we've been told it's so dangerous for violent criminals to be in jail that they need to be led out of jail we've been told it's okay for you to drive your family of five in your car to go fishing but once you and the child get to the boat you can only go with one kid at a time on the boat we've seen medicines banned and we've seen medicines fast tracked for production we've seen a governor rush to build a hospital for

2075 000 people in our state only to have 38 people treated but hey what's 81.1 million among taxpayers in here right we've been told by experts that visiting restaurants is dangerous unless of course you're eating outdoors or maybe you'll get lucky and sit in one of those makeshift plastic igloos we've been told that we need to flatten the curve slow the spread stop the spread don't let hospitals get overrun and also we actually need to get enough people six we can reach hurt immunity we've been lectured by the governor to avoid unessential travel and how to raise our children meanwhile he shipped his family and children off to florida speaking of florida we were told that everyone in florida and texas would die for opening up too soon we've been introduced to phase one two

208three four and now thankfully five which who knows that's gonna last we've been told natural immunity is no longer a part of science and then only the vaccine counts we've also been told the vaccine safe and effective although i will say with the experts tonight pushing the delta variant i don't even know if that's true anymore so i guess what i'm trying to say here isn't it time that we let we the people here all decide what's best like so many other districts are doing thank you keep submitting our authority to special interest groups and government organizations that have financial and other incentives for the guidances they give after 18 months this you really need these people to tell you what's best for your family are you really going to follow the recommendation without doing

209a cost benefit analysis and asking yourself does this policy come with any unintended consequences why are we told to follow the science here tonight with all these experts yeah we don't acknowledge there's 40 states that have no school mass mandate that's over 10 000 school districts or 30 million kids don't those numbers count why can't we look at those metrics all right choose freedom choose tolerance allow parents to decide what's best for their children's do not discriminate against the family for either mast or unmasked respect all here thank you okay miranda [Applause] is miranda here okay andrew rediger after andrew is joanie hello good evening everybody my name is andrew ridinger i'm a father of two going to third grade at north barrington elementary i have a degree in biochemistry and i've worked in the

210business side of precision medicine and cancer genomics industry for the past 16 years i'm not an expert this is my first board meeting and i couldn't help but attend tonight to stand up for my elementary age twin daughters i'm not here tonight to discuss coveted spread statistics death and infection rates and restate all the misinformation and propaganda that has been spread for almost two years now by fear-mongering power-hungry elitist bureaucrats i'm here to raise a few points with the board and voice my reasons as to why mass should be optional for all grade levels in district 220. first i'm here as an advocate for my daughters and all the children in this district who are entitled to proper lung and cognitive development which is currently being impaired by lack of oxygen from masking it's imperative

211that this foundation be laid now for our children as we will not be able to develop it later by taking a board seat you must understand that it is not the role of the public education system to politicize elementary school kids furthermore if 220 chooses to adopt and discuss medical protocol in their curriculum they then must abide by the hippocratic oath and refrain from causing harm or hurt in their treatment decisions or else you will find yourself guilty of child abuse second we must remember the the cloth masks which are being worn by our children our hosts for a number of other health problems including suffocation heat stroke bacterial pneumonia dental issues and utter destruction of their developing immune systems i asked the board why do you choose to traumatize our children and make them

212compliant political pawns at the expense of being healthy children while harming their ongoing educational development we all know the foundation of education is developed during the elementary years and will stay with our children for decades to come we are depending on you to make life impacting decisions in a positive manner that will ensure life liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be sustained for our future generations this is my final plea as i stand before you tonight do not attempt to take away my kids rights and my rights as a parent and taxpayer in 220 and finally and most importantly if a decision is made to mask children in grades k through 5 without an option even phased masking to begin the school year at the elementary level i along with other families in the

213district will have no other choice but to take possible legal action to protect our children from the intentional trauma being forced upon them by the politicization of innocent children who have no capacity to defend themselves i encourage the board and dr hunt tonight to choose quality education and lay the stage in the foundation of your tenure here in 220 that builds a physical emotional and intellectual foundation that prepares the children of 220 for success in their future years i pray tonight along with other families in 220 that you will make the correct choice and make masks optional across all grade levels for the long-term social emotional and educational development of our children thank you andrew joanie juan mata okay will van art michael danforth aaron lodani lindani lindoni sorry oh here we go good evening

214my name is aaron landoni and i'm a father of three children in the district i came into the country the united states of america the land of the free and the home of the brave many years ago i myself have seen my own country of birth venezuela who was the world's largest oil reserves and once the richest country in south america is now completely destroyed because their leaders and their so-called experts and media through their fear campaigns made decisions against the will of the people all in the name of good intentions the united states have gone all around the world promoting freedom and liberties and found many wars defending these liberties i ask that you the board members continue to lead by example and practice what we preach throughout the world freedom don't take away

215our children's god-given right to breathe freely if you want to wear a mask or not wear a mask that should be our choice what happened to my body my choice that many people promote and defend i would ask a question to everybody here present do you all believe in my body my choice our children should not be wearing masks that's a symbol of fear and besides extremely bad for their well-being i asked the lord to please listen to us parents and follow the law which says under the illinois compile statute 745 section 7 discrimination it shall be unlawful for any person public or private institution or public official to discriminate against any person in any manner including but not limited to licensing hiring promotional transfers staff appointment hospital managed care entity or any other privileges

216because of such person's consensus refusal to receive obtain accept perform assist counsel suggest recommend refer or participate in any way in any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience very important i can just imagine seeing the eyes of our children not even their cute little faces and smiles but their sad eyes while being instructed by the teacher probably every five to ten minutes don't play with your mask max don't touch your mascot cover your nose george our kids do not need that our children have already been exposed to great amount of fear and stability psychological trauma and segregation to the cope copen19 this is affecting their development please do not force this aversive technique on them and i landed by quoting president ronald reagan who said freedom is never more

217than one generation away from extinction we didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream it must be fought for protected and handed on for them to do the same let them breathe thank you thank you aaron rob manfredini [Applause] okay i got technology issues i don't have a phone i use paper doctor for 20 plus years a big fan of research science paying attention more importantly being a critical thinker so when it comes to this issue we've heard a lot of facts i've heard a lot of doctors speak i'm a little embarrassed be quite honest at what i heard because superficial looking nobody looking at the depth so when we look at things we got to ask ourselves three basic questions do you believe dr fauci [Music] what'd he say may 2020 don't

218need a mask what did the chinese say in january of don't need a mask because it vectors in through the eyeballs through the membranes so the idea is we should be wearing swim goggles rather than masks if we really want to be proactive what else did he say well he said in june we don't wear masks again we don't need them what do you say five months ago masks are emotional support tools and we just have people wear them because it makes them feel safer now i saw an ugly study out of england last week or a couple weeks ago 41 percent of all ukers are comfortable wearing the mask because it makes them feel like it's a pacifier makes them feel good look good be a baby i live in nature nature can kill

219me any time i could drop dead right here i get hit by bus i can die cancer in a moment anything can happen to me nature's rough nothing's easy in nature i don't need a pacifier because i choose to face nature rather than cow towel to nature so what do we know about the masks themselves well the label on the box says does not stop viruses or bacteria we know a surgical mask it's only good for an hour and a half doctors change out every hour because it becomes a bacterial nightmare i had a patient yell at me the mess stops the droplets and that stops the virus you idiot well she doesn't understand virology she didn't understand immunology she didn't understand a couple things but she wore that mask for four and a half

220months she also had rhinitis and sinusitis and since my issues maybe mask caused that maybe next question do you believe in science if you believe in science the cdc pointed out that eighty percent of all cova deaths were always vitamin d deficient seventy one percent of alcove deaths were mask always wearers dr fauci dr fauci when he did an analysis of the spanish flu which by the way that's a whole nother kitten caboodle with the us army but when he did analysis of spanish flu he wrote the mask masculists were burying the masks worse because of bacteria thank you rob thank you rob van ferdini okay uh bill betts okay ralph cesso helena ledowski so good evening board i'm a mom of four two in the district i'm a volunteer and a nurse i was

221just volunteering at safety town today and i had so much fun singing morning with the kids mass run i care greatly for these kids and the parents of this community we're a strong community filled with impassioned parents our community split down the middle and that's okay because we have public health doctors so please listen to them we have so much in common though we all are fatigued and but we and we haven't lost children but unfortunately over of the 600 dead most parents hindsight is 20 20 and yes kids should have been in school last year but the knowledge of the virus and treatments were so new now 23 000 kids were infected last week they have a low risk of dying right yes they do but the virus is learning and mutating again as

222it passed it's buyer load of the delta variants out about up to a thousand times higher than the 2020 variant this is a new game and one month said to me that her local dance studio and other businesses will do what 2020 does and she's so worried her girl will have to stop dancing let's get rid of the mass as soon as possible but it's not time people think kids don't get sick but i only had across my backyard to find my neighbor's nephew in icu people also say that ten percent of survivors are long-haulers and these people's lives were tossed upside down and their kids eyes were tied down and that was my neighbor too we have to be balanced yet mass um get gross so we have to change them and use some

223of the money granted to replace them when we see their wet yes basic hygiene like cancer types before meals is not strictly enforced in our school so let's fix that yes kids are depressed but isolation financial insecurity and family dynamics are larger factors contributing to that so let's keep schools open yeah sometimes kids are annoyed with the mass but think of the kids with transition difficulties and other special needs kids who need consistency more than anything else almost one fourth of our kids have some type of disability everyone knows that consistency wins when it comes to children feeling secure are we really going to rollercoaster this let's just keep them in school i have had many texts coming my way since last meeting and hope you received more than seven emails this time around from

224those who are concerned about no mass again regarding medical privacy and protection from the virus masks do provide one way to keep vaccinated unvaccinated issue private from peers while preventing spread as i said in last meeting surgical max do not protect the wearer they like these people say it the box is true they prevent spread from the person who is wearing them koben delta varying chrisley poses the threat to vaccinating let's have doctors learn about it before we pull mass on these kids we shouldn't judge those who cannot get vaccinated or will not but these are individuals at risk and some are teachers we need to protect our teachers we are well traveled community and therefore this is not a local issue also sunny hill parents have called me and these families are at high

225risk because of their work is senate family and just being hispanic i promise they would get a voice this virus has a goal and that is to stay alive its need to live seems to be more persistent than our patients thank you helen thank you uh sue marianne jane zhang it should be on prior good evening my name is jane zang and i am a community member as well as a local educator so i've seen how masking has impacted the students directly for the students in the age group 0-17 their survival rate as a percentage is 99.99 in addition the highest quality scientific studies and trials the men analyses systematic reviews and randomized control trials conclude that there is no statistically significant difference between wear and mask or not in preventing the spread of respiratory

226illnesses such as influenza or a coronavirus why are healthy people treated as sick and all need to wear a mask and it of course is some people are innocent until proven guilty does it not seem backwards that now people are treated as sick until proven healthy given that the district has decided to go with mass optional for grades 6 to 12 why not also for all the other grades given their risk from covin and with the highest quality studies say about mass my next point relates to the vaccines that are currently available under emergency use authorization where their end point is not to prevent people from getting coveted but to prevent more severe symptomatic coping would you give your children an experimental shot with no long-term safety data that only reduces symptoms for disease with

227over 99.9 survival rate that you can still get and transmit containing carcinogenic ingredients that is currently in safety trials and will be until an estimated 2023 made by companies known for committing fraud and crimes paying billions of dollars in fines whom you cannot sue because they assume no liability for their products over the past 16 months how much energy and effort has been spent to educate people on how to make their bodies healthier and stronger to build their natural immune system versus how much energy and effort has been spent to remote vaccine to provide artificial immunity so does it make sense to encourage or even recommend the vaccine for the children given the risk from the virus and their unknown risk from the vaccine and finally connecting the dots between the mass and vaccine from

228the beginning this most people were told and believed that everyone needs to wear a mask to protect not only themselves but also to protect others regardless of if they were healthy or not because of supposed asymptomatic transmission remember if you are vaccinated the end point is to prevent symptomatic covid which means that those vaccinated could still have the virus and transmit is it not under the same logic that vaccinated or not if you are asymptomatic your viral load must be so low that you yourself are not manifesting symptoms and very likely cannot transmit to other people where is the consistency with their own reasoning i urge the board to put illogical fears aside and truly dig deep into the truth to make the best decisions on behalf of everyone censorship is happening all around the

229world seeking to hide the truth mass and vaccine should always be a choice for all when there's a risk there must be a choice the truth will always win i will end with these two quotes about censorship and truth when you tear out a man's tongue you are not proving him a liar you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say all truth passes through three stages first it is ridiculed second it's violently opposed sec third it is accepted as self-evident thank you for your time thank you jane josh little [Music] josh little and then we'll follow josh with the the following voicemails the following guidelines of cdc ieph who aapd et cetera any statements on the board the science is clear of new divorces although i'm not sure i heard one

230statistic regarding hospitalizations did stick out though sixteen thousand kids hospitalized with probe in the u.s how many kids are we talking about tens of millions maybe 100 million kids in the united states numbers and then think about the risk involved doctors are risk adverse lawyers are whispers thank god they are not policymakers because by nature they don't understand how to mitigate risk manage risk you know you know who doesn't know how to manage risk those people that are responsible for the output and success of an organization we haven't had much time with dr hunt but if we believe what the folks in chagrin paul say then yes dr hunt knows how to manage risk schools are supposed to educate our children listening to the children they feel better and are able to concentrate more without

231a mascot at the start of today's meeting dr hunter both planned that appearance could be a good compromise in k through 5 mass size and large groups and once they get their classrooms take them off free free enjoy your teachers enjoy your classmates focus on learning you know who [Applause] and we were told to knows home let us continue to make decisions and again with this doctor sent you an email um thank you josh [Applause] okay can we hear the rest of the voicemails hi my name is harassi i am a new parent to the district and i am just going to give my opinion for the masking that we are discussing at this board meeting um thank you for your time i just wanted to say that i know this is a difficult decision

232but i believe as a nurse and a mother that the best thing that we can do is to continue to follow the science of the experts and recently the american academy of pediatrics is recommending that all kids regardless of vaccination status wear masks in person and i know a decision was already made for sixth through twelfth grade so at this point for k through five and they are not yet vaccinated the best thing we can do for our children to ensure that we can be in person learning is to enforce masking in indoors not outdoors but indoors i know that all we want to do is have our kids come to school but if kids aren't basking then what what happens if one kid gets a positive test with the rising number of delta variant

233cases that are highly contagious for especially unvaccinated children mental what will we do when one kid becomes positive in the class will we have to quarantine the whole class well we have to move to a hybrid model or e-learning and that's definitely something that none of us want so a stage masking approach really is the best way to ensure that our kids can stay in school for the duration of the school year and stay healthy so i just want you to take that into consideration that we should be following excuse me the science and the experts the world health organization is recommending that even vaccinated individuals endorse so why are we not looking out for our kids a year ago adults were wearing masks until they were vaccinated the kids are still not vaccinated so

234they should be wearing masks and to ensure their safety for those that say masks don't work they do for the ones that say that the kids are emotionally traumatized from math squaring i believe that our kids are very resilient and have shown that over the past 18 months that if we model the attitude and behavior if we model wearing math they'll do the same they just want to be in person with their friends and have more of a normal life of being in person we would have said a year ago that our kids could be in person would be ecstatic now we're arguing about wearing that excuse me so i really think that the best thing that we can do to make sure that the kids can be in person and have a more normal

235school year is by wearing math just because we are tired and don't want kovit to still be here it doesn't mean the pandemic is over it isn't so we're starting the beginning of the third wave and we really don't want to be where we were at at this point last year so really i just want everyone to take that into consideration this is a public school we should be looking out for the public health of the community and that includes our children so we should be enforcing masking and the fade masking approach we're hopeful that whatever parents choose to vaccinate their children that the vaccine will be readily ill this is nicole molinaro if we don't end masking and mitigations now for all children and adults when do we end it what vaccination percentage do

236we have to be at what positivity rate do we have to be at when will this end when do we continue to live in fear of kobe for the rest of our lives do we ignore all the things that have been taken away from our children it is safe to say we have never seen anything like this before we went from 15 days to slow the spread to what exactly we are at 16 months later begging for our life to return to normal does the mass cause harm yes i can't imagine the psychological damage it is causing these children masking is not normal and should not be considered normal human beings have evolved have not evolved to wear masks as a school board you are here for the children think of them think of the

237children who are behind a mask while many adults are breathing freely at home working over zoom think of the psychological damage a mandate will put on our children think of the real stats as you think about mask and mitigation kids are more likely to die from cancer drowning car accidents and suicide a recent study determined that children had a one in two million chance of dying from coven yes one in two million to give you a bit of perspective children are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than to die of covis before you vote on masks and mitigations this evening i want you to ask yourself these questions what is the end game when does this end do we live in fear of the next variant forever are children spreaders of covet

238should children be treated as vectors of disease should children be able to see a face of their friend or their teacher should children be told consistently throughout the day pull your mask off put your mask over your nose and mouth is there any true data showing math work is there any data showing that asymptomatic spread is a thing and we should continue to quarantine healthy students just because they're exposed to a virus this needs to be over and we need to return to 2019 normal not a new normal viruses are a thing and will be with us always we need to do better and need to really look at hardcore evidence and facts remember this all started as 15 days to slow the spread when does it end and to all the school board members

239please listen to your community and the majority of your community that is asking for normalcy to return this needs to be done thank you hello my name is i also emailed doctors hunt and corps and i would like to just briefly read my email aloud thank you as a physician i ask you to follow the science math should not be optional honestly for all kids especially elementary not all kids are vaccinated even though the vaccine is available and to make that known is a hippo violation i would like my child to be in school and even more important stay in school consistency is still very important imagine if there was a positive then what what's the plan if math mitigation can be possible without closing the school or class i'm not understanding the problem parents

240that don't want to do this can be private school that's what i had to do because 220 was closed last year i needed in person i made that decision for my family and did private school others can do others can do that too the board meeting last week or the previous one was not very constructive as many parents were yelling and screaming and not really listening to each other [Music] everything can be reevaluated month to month or even every other month the numbers are rising let's be smart they should not be the bad outcome to help make this decision let's stay open and mask up this can be simple take the emotion out of it kids are amazing resilient and have no problem wearing masks i have three kids six and under optional leaves that

241open to bullying and discrimination and liability period phased approach is bad period re-evaluation is something that we can do over and over again with time this will give this will give teachers children parents time and confidence and consistency as well as peace of mind the only thing that should be optional is math outside during reset with parents consent for the individual child for elementary that would teachers know which child should be masked or not i think that a decision should be made so plans can be made accordingly other districts such as deerfield have already done this and their plans of what it means to have a positive what the next step is we just need to do this let's start masked and then slowly unmask safely that's what we should be doing and preparing for

242all the scenarios now and not fighting over something that's so simple thank you my name is jasmine begg and i am a physician and mother of three children in the district um i would first like to start off by stating the facts and disputing facts that were claimed in the previous board meeting just because someone claimed something loudly does not make it a true or factual statement and i hope we are teaching our kids better than this covid is still very much here as cases rising all across the country show us including in illinois many icus and hospitals are full in neighboring states and we are actually actively surge planning and continue to search plan right now in illinois hospitals as well i as a parent have looked at the data as a scientist as

243well and i find it somewhat ironic that a district that promotes stem careers for children will consider not following the advice of scientists epidemiologists physicians and everyone else who has spoken out as a physician and mother i am appalled that the district is even considering making masking optional at any grade level the low vaccination rates in those students eligible for vaccination makes the threat of transmission very real for even the vaccinated children in the middle schools and high schools in illinois there is a 30 vaccination rate of kids ages 12 to 18. that is providing no protection to anybody right now we clearly cannot rely on the honor system for unmasking students when even board members and others sit in this room unmasked in an under indoor public forum who are not vaccinated blatantly disregarding

244cdc guidelines igph guidelines world health organization guidelines the american academy of pediatrics have come out and stated just this week that there should be universal masking in all schools to allow children to return to school and normalcy this school year we all want that we all want our children in school what you do outside of school with masking is none of my business but you come into a public place when these are public schools here you wear a mask you fly on public transportation you wear a map you go on a public bus system you wear a map you come into a public hospital like mine you wear a mask that's all we want let's follow the science here let's follow the data and lead to a safe school year for all of us thank

245you good evening to the board and to all the barrington parents my name is louis cosito and i'm the father of three kids that have gone through the barrington school district system from kindergarten all the way through high school i love barrington and i love the barrington school district what they've done for my children and our family has been fantastic so i'm speaking tonight in hopes that other families can have the same experience the same wonderful experience that we've had any topic that involves our children will become emotional and could be divisive so it's important i think to view the issue as logically as possible we learned over the past year and a half or so that thankfully this virus doesn't attack the vast majority of our students obviously those with underlying risk factors must

246be cared for separately also we've learned that teachers are not getting ill in any medically significant way from their students a whole year of data from private schools as well as public schools within our country that attended school last year have given us reams of information also internationally we can look at other school districts that have had very little effect to their teachers from their students we've also learned that masking children has led to awful outcomes illness anxiety as well as the loss of personal expression and identity in fact the most harshly affected are our special needs students it's harder for young students to develop linguistic skills more data continues to come forward about the risk of headaches the inability to focus impaired learning drowsiness and fatigue i think we would almost all agree that

247any mandate for some in our society to cover their face is dehumanizing and really inhumane so why subject the youngest among us to follow this practice when there is no data to back up its medical value i join those who are strongly in favor of allowing parents to decide whether or not to have their children of any age attend school this year with or without a mask thank you for your consideration and as always go broncos and phillies good morning my name is christine and i am a resident and a grandparent of children who belong to the barrington 220 school district i am an advocate at this point from no matter there is no hardcore evidence that masks work we need to enforce good hygiene but until we can be provided that evidence we should

248continue to practice good hygiene that's encouraged by all the staff once there's evidence that can truly show us that these masks work then we can have another discussion till that point keep doing what common sense tells us wash your hands stay home with your sick and that the staff should definitely encourage anybody who is sick to be attended to by a doctor or that parent and again practicing good hygiene is our best bet currently thank you hi my name is krusek i'm the father of two girls going in second and fourth grade i'm leaving a voicemail since i'll be with my girls tonight i wasn't concerned with how i might be treated based on by others based on my opinion it's a complete shame the board continues to disappoint the parents and children in the

249district the board is not representing the majority of parents based on the meetings i've watched instead they continue to allow the politics and union pressure to drive their decisions to continue to force young kids to wear mass is nonsense we don't need a school board to look out for the safety of our kids when it comes to ridiculous math that is useless we all know this young children are the least likely to contract or spread the virus why force them to wear masks and parents don't want them to wear their mask the teachers are vaccinated then why do the kids need to wear mail colvin will always be here covent or some other virus will always be here when does the control end the way the public schools are going i'd rather have my girls

250in private catholic schools i know i'm not alone in this i'll leave the crt comment out of this i'm sure other parents will talk on that as well i'm also confused why there are two board members that don't have kids in our schools what's the agenda that these people are trying to push the boards to do their job they were elected to do and listen to the majority of the parents we've all had enough of this nonsense thank you hi my name is and i have an incoming kindergartner into the district this year thank you so much for allowing us to contribute our comments i'm also a practicing physician and feel very strongly in support of masking for our unvaccinated children we all have a common goal in keeping our kids in school and keeping

251them safe this year and masking is part of a multi-layered strategy to get this done masking is easy it's safe and all our kids can do this and it'll keep each other safe and keep us in school thank you for your time and thank you for allowing me to speak are you voting is that the end okay all right we can call public comment closed captioning not [Applause] available to read through so i'd like to do that first and then i'd like to jump into questions any questions anybody has um with the presentation all right so sandra i am confused and i know that barry would like a statement read but i thought that we said that he can't participate so i just he's allowed he was allowed to prepare statement and and and i

252can read it it's not what i said okay i thought i heard you say he wasn't allowed to participate and if he could participate i was not allowed to personally participate but i can read a statement that he prepared okay so um from barry thank you to the board and thank you to the barrington 220 community for allowing me to speak to you today this is the first board meeting that i've missed in over two years as a member i take my responsibility seriously and i'm sad that i cannot be at this important meeting much of what i want to say was supposed to be communicated at our board meeting last week the environment was not conducive to any sort of clear communication i am disappointed that our board did not discuss them asking question

253more vigorously many of you spoke directly to the spectators in the room and did not address your fellow board members we seven debate the decisions and we seven along with our administration need to be clear in what we are doing and why we are doing it we spent more time discussing the technology research options two weeks ago with dr fuller than we spent discussing masks at our last meeting we listened to over two hours of public comment but each of us quickly justified our vote without asking any probing questions of the administration are communicating with each other although community sentiment is very important in our deliberations we cannot base our votes on a petition what if petition asks for a drastic decrease in our taxes what if the repercussions be eliminate the chinese immersion program

254the gifted program sports extracurriculars every vote has a consequence what does it mean to our schools if we have a mask optional policy do we have other mitigation options are the other mitigations less palatable than the use of masks i know the crowd limited our interaction with each other but we did a disservice to the community at large without delving into the topic more completely hopefully tonight we can ask probing questions and look at both sides of the question to try to understand why why each feel the way that we do in science and in medicine there is no one way to analyze or solve a problem we continually research and revisit what we thought were proven facts there is no black and white but there is that there is usually consensus once the preponderance

255of the research is analyzed you can find a study to justify your position on a subject no matter how radical the hypothesis is so it is with covid and related research let me first say that there are many reasons to dislike masks and be against masking of our students masks interfere with socialization they create anxiety in some ways they are filthy at the end of the day's use they interfere with language development they can lead to dehydration and overheating many kids cannot wear masks whether medical emotional or behavioral not to mention parental objections as shared at our board meeting last week i dislike masks intensely but must continue to use them in my office to protect my patients from each other and to protect me and my staff the main arguments against massing made by

256so many of our speakers last week were based on two articles the the jama or jama pediatric study claiming that mass caused a dangerous increase in carbon dioxide and a dangerous decrease in oxygen in young children and the florida study that showed the existence of pathogens some dangerous after mass use in children both of these studies have been severely criticized due to poor scientific diligence both procedural and how the conclusions were arrived at there are significant questions that the authors have not answered that made the study's very poor evidence against masking the jama article has been totally retracted in the florida pathogen study the bacteria colonized from the mass were predominantly bacteria that are naturally in the respiratory tracts and saliva of many children these bacteria do not grow on their own and cannot be

257cultured from the air if they are not exhaled or coughed by a human thus the mass could have prevented these bacterias from passing from an infected individual or prevented them from passing to an asymptomatic child if there was tuberculosis on a mask that means there was someone in that classroom with latent tuberculosis a very scary thought if there was a lesson from the study it was to change mask often wash your hands after handling your mask and wash the reusable ones after use another common statement is that the covid vaccine is an experimental vaccine how can a vaccine that has been given over 40 billion times worldwide be considered experimental there is risk benefit in just about everything that i do as a pediatrician whether ordering an antibiotic for strep throat or suggesting a management

258strategy for behavior or academic issues in a patient so it is with the coping vaccine however the benefit of the coping vaccine far outweighs any risk in the us we have very rigorous standards for safety and effectiveness of medical devices medications and treatments because of the emergency use declaration the covert vaccine is undergoing the most intense safety monitoring in u.s history almost 350 million doses of coping vaccine have been given in the u.s there are common side effects like soreness of your arm feverishness fatigue and flu-like symptoms occurring in about a third of vaccine recipients i think of these as signs of vaccine is working and stimulating one's immune system because of intense monitoring other rare side effects have been found including blood clots in women and myocarditis in young men these are very rare

259and in the case of heart issues according to the specialists at lurie's children's hospital very mild one thing is unchallenged vaccines and maskings are the vaccines and masking are the two best ways to mitigate the spread of covid if you are against vaccines and against masking what do we have left i must emphasize that we must have this discussion about mitigation no matter how great our summer of freedom has been it has it is without debate that covet is on the upswing last thursday's tribune had two headlines on pages four and five quote summer camps struck by coveted 19 unquote and quote covet 19 deaths cases on the rise again globally unquote right now covet hospitalizations are almost all individuals who were not vaccinated the church camp in downstate illinois that had to be closed

260down in june was run by an organization that did not believe in vaccination or masking luckily the young children were most minimally affected but their parents and camp staff were not so lucky as many of them needed hospitalization i don't want to project a negative outlook or expect the worst but we are currently at a summer trough of covid cases and know that the numbers will rise we don't know how high we also know that the delta variant which is predominantly type that is occurring now seems to hit young people harder and more preferentially maybe because more adults are vaccinated with a question mark we also know that natural immunity those who have had coveted but were not vaccinated does not protect as well against a delta variant and the vast majority of current coveted

261patients hospitalized are unvaccinated we cannot have it be the quote it can't happen to me mentality unquote i want to be proactive and not reactive on the issue of covet increases our 220 website says that safety is a priority in order to enable effective learning that safety must include our whole 220 community the student is a bagger who is a bagger at jewel a babysitter or swim or soccer coach the home situation where the extended family live together with the children the medically vulnerable student or family member asthmatic overweight diabetic heart condition cancer or immune compromise all are at a slightly signific significantly increased risk if they get coveted and many of them are unable to get vaccinated we must find a way to protect everyone dr hunt provided a slide with the most common

262mitigation methods projected i am concerned that the individuals who have passionately fought against vaccines and masking also do not want us to invoke or want us to minimize other mitigation methods we cannot put our heads in the sand covet is still around and we must be aggressive in our prevention techniques if we go down the path of optional masking i implore the board to be open to strong mitigation efforts by our administration and teachers they are working hard to get everyone back into school full time which is what most of the mask optional parents want and others were asking for four four four to five months ago let's not rush to the illusion of quote back to normal unquote one of the rallying cries from our passionate parents was quote my choice my my child

263my choice unquote i ask that we change that to quote my community comma my choice unquote yes we all have the choice but please don't be short-sighted we need to advocate for our neighbors and friends as well as our children there's going to be an optimistic ending to the covid saga let's not rush to get it to the finish line in an unsafe fashion as i've said before we have so much work to do to deal with the worst effects of covid the social emotional and learning loss let's not get too bogged down in the mass debate it too will pass and hopefully in a short time we can all agree that we no longer need to mask and we no longer need to mask anywhere to prevent code thank you so does anyone have

264questions for dr hunt on what was presented earlier i do not have a question but i would propose that we should get a preliminary vote together in bear's absence to make sure that we can provide directions i didn't understand i'm sorry steve you want to what i would like us to talk about and consider voting for dr hunt's proposal well i want to make sure that all questions are answered first so do we does anybody have any questions angela do you have any questions no i don't have any questions regarding the proposal um i think that when it gets a little closer to i know we're not in finalized form right we have to to come up with the benchmarks as far as when we move from your proposal to the next stage or we

265move back because something has occurred so i appreciate the time and the energy that you put into this proposal um you know what i would like to say as far as just commenting on the group here is that um you know i think that we have a lot of common ground in this room even though it doesn't feel like it but we all really love our children and we all really love our community and we we we are scared all right there but there are different fears that are driving the feelings of the people in this room and i think that if we step back from that feeling when someone says something that is the opposite of our fear where we're like i can't believe i said that and step back and think i understand

266why someone is afraid of contracting a disease that has really hurt their family or another or killed someone in their community or in their work or whatever i think that we can say i understand that and i think that if we are on the other side we can say i understand a parent saying this is my child and i want to do what i think is best for them and when they come home and ask me for something i want to advocate for them so i think that we can all have common ground in that now i said at the last meeting i would prefer that we give parents choice no no please please please we've been here long enough so um and that is my preference but i will say that i heard something

267that was truly music to my ears last week which was the word compromise and this is a very emotional topic and it is hard for one of us to look at the other side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle and think let's find compromise because i only see it my way and my way's right to me and my rip way is right to my family so i know what i think is right for my family and i know what i think is a compromise in my opinion it's choice but the majority of the board does not feel that way and when aaron stepped up and said she was willing to compromise i applaud that i applaud the fact that dr harris took our time sorry of course i have it dr

268hunt took our directive and came up with a strategy to have a phased masking approach for pre-k through fifth grade and even though it's not what i think is ideal and what i think is addressing my fears and my concerns it's a compromise and i feel like as this community we really need to come to a point of compromise so that we can move forward so i support your recommendation i thank you for all your hard work and that's it yeah angela i completely agree um i think what this proposal effectively does is it provides adequate protection from children because of all the mitigation techniques that we put in place in addition it provides additional mitigation tactics that we had not even discussed in prior meetings and therefore you know it's not my ideal either

269i mean frankly i've made them statement given all my research all the conversations i've had with folks in this room out of this room uh with my own personal you know due diligence i'm personally you know in favor of mass optional as well however i understand that there are folks who disagree with me and i respect your thoughts and frankly i you know you know empathize with what you need and i think that this solution that dr hunt and the administration has put together is a very good middle ground for what you want as it relates to crowded areas and providing safety and then in areas where the school district has gone well beyond its you know call to make the situation safe for our students i think in those areas we could be massless

270and therefore you know it doesn't strike me if there's questions i would really like to start you know giving a preliminary indication as to what our position is and i second you angela i think we should you know affirm dr hunt and the administration's proposal okay anybody else any comments i really wanted to get the questions first to make sure but anybody else have any comments questions uh dr hunt in the administration i know that you were tireless this week and answering emails and putting this together so thank you so much for the hard work on that thank you for the community too for weighing in on on all of your viewpoints i know there's a lot of passion like i mentioned earlier around the subject and we all arrived at our viewpoints in in

271different ways and through different experiences uh dr haney have a couple of questions for you i'm wondering you so under this plan in the initial phase uh masks would be worn by all students in grades pre-k through five when a minimum three foot distance cannot be maintained so then this initial phase my understanding is that we would start the school year with kids potentially on our case or pre-k through five potentially unmasked in the classroom uh and being all unvaccinated at that point because they're not eligible could you kind of walk me through what was the local data or metric that you used or did we consult with a lake county health department to justify the elimination of masks and mitigation while unvaccinated kids were in a classroom indoors yes so let me um maybe

272i'll end with the or i'll start with the lake county health department we did send our plane over we did contact them we talked about reasonableness our plan is totally based on what was kind of provided to us in terms of an evaluation of mitigation strategies we've actually added strategies with with the testing piece and the feedback was it was a very reasonable plan in terms of uh balancing mitigation i mean the the whole point of this is to really strengthen the areas that you're going to have and be very thoughtful and incremental about what you're going to remove and the feedback was that this was very reasonable from the lake county health department i had beth jones um reach out to them today in terms of you know what exactly that looks like we've

273got details to work out we've we've done this in five days right so uh i i know we've prepared for three feet in classrooms where we have additional space in there i i think there's opportunities there we've got to work with our teachers we've got to talk through all of this with them so we're trying to provide opportunities for when appropriate with larger graphs of social distancing to provide opportunities for kids to take the mask off and get a break from that obviously when they're walking down hallways when we have large settings any kind of assembly you know when we know we can to maintain that distance we would mask on and it'd be clear transportation on the way into the school all that would have mass to start the year and then in terms

274of the data you know it's the same data you guys been looking at you know throughout this you know it's been about cases per hundred thousand um rolling average in terms of cases positivity rates that that's what i have looked at and what i've continued to to to kind of go back to i don't love that data i would rather be school based with shield testing by implementing that will be school-based data and i think we'll be provide a lot more clarity on what's actually happening within our schools hopefully that data indicates an opportunity to move further with this maybe it's going to indicate we need to be more conservative and back up okay so my quest for middle ground last week kind of landed me on okay mask optional for middle school in high

275school partly because i was hearing from you that it was operationally unenforceable so we were essentially mass optional anyway and i expressed a concern for our elementary and actually still have some a lot of latent concern around sixth grade because so many can't get possibly can't get the vaccine and so so my concern right now is well i have another question wrapped up in the concern so the cdc has come out and michelle wilinski the head of the cdc has said that that the three foot distancing is the most effective when it is coupled with masking is mitigation and the idph has backed up the cdc are you telling me that the lake county health department said that masking is okay with our plan to remove masks when they're at a three-foot distance because it

276would i would be surprised if they would go against the cdc to be clear that is not what i said i i said we presented our plan and they said it was reasonable it made sense it was a balance of mitigations which we which we talked about they have not gone against cdc they're not going to go against cdc they've they've been consistent with that and they will remain that way reasonable seems very nebulous to me so it's i i do we ha i mean so they didn't give us any kind of data some folks asked about the end game so i wonder is did they say that okay if you know you should tighten mitigation if you're you know if if your case load is this or if you have this kind of outbreak

277or if this i mean what's what what's their threshold very specifically i addressed this in my presentation i asked it very specifically today with the lake county health department what is our end game in terms of data what what could i what could i tell to my community and to my board of education when we hit let's say cdc we're in moderate right now i think somebody mentioned that earlier we're in moderate if you type in lake county is it when we go to low is that when we're allowed to be recommended mass but not you know require them and they wouldn't answer that question i don't feel like we're going to have the conversations we're going to reach out we're going to talk to them i i don't think they're going to provide that

278metrics and you know i started this by saying we're not ready to present to you this is what the metrics would be we just have not had enough time to flush those details out you need time to sit down with them i will certainly call them but i'm telling you the response i got today i i i want to engage with them i want to work on what that metrics would look like i'm certain when we talk to shield and we spend some time with them they're going to have some suggestions on the results that we receive from our student testing i think that's a critical part of building that in and and we'll be able to bring that back to the board of education so it sounds like you're having further conversations then around

279our data and around metrics absolutely i mean he just said absolutely i feel like dr hunt has presented us with his plan he feels he and his administration have the ability to carry it out he would i highly doubt they would be doing anything that they think are gonna shut our schools down and if we get close to that point i feel like he has the mitigations in place to pull back i i trust our superintendent and our administration to do what's best for our children [Applause] i'm not trying to discount your fears but i i think actually dr hunt i that indian prairie right uh just one mask optional they're the fourth largest district they set up a metric it's like five percent if you like if transmissions to get between over five percent

280close to eight then they talk about pulling back i'm assuming this is what you're talking about you're going to figure out those numbers yeah and i i again i i didn't want to i didn't want arbitrary pull these numbers out of air i want to i want to talk to the health department i want to look at this and i want to bring you something that has you know some back so some rationale behind it right so u-46 decided on monday to an approach where pre-k through five would be mass required and then middle schools and high schools would be mass optional and their superintendent said hey if we decide to move mitigation remove mitigation layer by layer one layer at a time we would start with social distancing we would start you know with

281they would keep ma and this is pre-k through five why are we deciding to begin with masking which the cdc has shown has been very effective among unvaccinated populations who are indoors like our kids would be in elementary so the cdc has said it has reduced transmission and roosevelt you know by um other studies have shown you know upwards of 40 or more so i just i just wonder why not why not start masks just question hypothetical question why not start with masking and remove other mitigations or start with masking it is we have more time to work with the lake county health department if they say okay we have to wait till vaccination is available for this cohort or maybe we don't maybe your numbers look really good right and then you can you

282know remove you we're comfortable with you removing masking is a a layer of mitigation so my concern is why because i think it's a lot harder to if we start with masking the delta variant goes nuts we have outbreaks all over our schools and then we say okay kids you got to put your mask back on i mean this is pre-k through through five where it's a little bit harder to have that kind of um flexibility with mass wait they're keeping me safe they're not there's so i just wonder why why don't we start with masking in place and then lift that as we're as health departments around us are more comfortable well that conversation really was done was established last week when the board said create a plan for a phased-in approach with math

283phased out well [Applause] i can't live in the world what a what if what if what if what if so let's start and if what if happens then we'll we'll pull back but we there's always if anything if i've seen anything there's always going to be another variant there's always going to be this there's always going to be that we're going to go into the flu season like these these children in elementary school are going to be going into their third year of either being masked or distanced or on zoom or whatever we just heard from an elementary expert telling us that these are the most formative years like give them a chance when they're sitting at their little desks in their classroom and i i guess i'm sorry all of those are important you're

284right and i i've never ranked them i've never i've i've never kind of thought through that which is more important i'm sure there's people here that could weigh in on that conversation with me where we started was where we were kind of directed to go and that's what we provided uh for the board to to consider and give feedback on i just wonder we asked for a phased approach so the phased approach could start with masking and lifting it as we have because look here i'm i can't hear her i can't hear you so please repeat yes so i was pointing out that what we had asked for is a phased approach to eventually get to mass optional i don't understand why that phased approach can't start with masking on the first day you know

285it could it could go either way like you could start on that if that's the direction of the board that's we will do what we're we're directed to you you're we were asked to bring a proposal and recommendation forward and we did and it certainly there's a thousand different ways you can phase my other concern is of course the advice of the cdc the aap you know all of these like i said we come to our conclusions and our viewpoints largely through our own experiences i think with covid and when we are you know everyday people with different professions i we're gonna reach various conclusions i think based largely on our own experiences so i wonder if that's the case why not follow reputable health organizations and reputable bodies like i have not i have

286not come to find like one reputable health organization that is like oh yeah unvaccinated kids who are in classrooms indoors should uh social distance but not wear masks i just i haven't i haven't found that first of all i've completely i could have complete respect for all of the organizations and i believe wholeheartedly in the quality of what they put forward additionally we come to the table with personal experiences i have an autoimmune son and a first grader last year who was coveted positive and it happened at school i get i i truly truly understand both sides of this and and we're trying to come up a way with that incrementally takes a step forward but i've also heard from the beginning focus on local data let it be localized and make decisions based on

287your local data and we've looked at we and i you know i'm from ohio right so i i can tell you all the data we could get was county-based sometimes zip code based well our community was made up of multiple zip codes you're constantly trying to plug these things together and then draw conclusions on it if you put together data that's based on what's actually happening in the stu schools that that should drive what we do and i i you know everybody's applauding on the mass that we may get a little more break be ready for we may have to bring them back that's a reality that we have to face and be okay with um that if we want to take the the path that was given i was asked to provide what are

288the paths available to the board of education last week i did that there's a path there because they very clearly said if you're going to if you're going to make progress do it incrementally take one step at a time and i understand you could pick any of those mitigations and and build around it we we built it around masks [Applause] [Music] one working thank you appreciate it uh and wow this is loud and uh erin you know if i could add a couple of comments because i understand where you're coming from but when you read the cdc guidance i'm just going to quote here that they say that you should have level of layer prevention strategies which dr hunt and team have provided if i'm reading this correctly there are 13 mitigation strategies in addition

289to the optima masking in general places where they're larger populations and then the other factor that i think we all need to take into account here and dr hunt did mention this is locality should monitor community transmission vax coverage among other factors to determine what is appropriate so because barrington 220 is at a certain level for these items which we have received from dr hunt and we have you know ourselves researched you know if this is what the lake county department of health has said is reasonable i'm not sure who we are to now try and challenge this whether whether we're talking about masking or let me just go from the list here um you know three feet social distancing you know designated entrances high-tech cleaning with high-touch services you know all these things in

290you know in totality are mitigation strategies that are protecting our students and so yes we're moving masking and perhaps it's not the stuff that we want to take and perhaps it's not the step that this other district that you're you know mentioning is taking we are more than offsetting that mitigation risk with these other strategies how do we know we're offsetting the mitigation the lake county department is verified we don't know that that all the data we have from kids in schools is when from when they're masked i mean of course transmission is going to be low or the summer when everybody is outside i just i worry that that we're not accounting for you know future spikes i believe we also have the data from the 40 states that have gone um unmet have

291lifted their mass mandates i think we would have heard about it if it wasn't i think that the media would be all over it if it wasn't working i believe well school hasn't started yet so district started last year with this awesome aaron i mean and the other piece and just to be clear if if we we start with mass and start mass testing is a huge mitigation strategy that i think we're very fortunate that advocacy happens so we could access that at no cost to our district no additional personnel cost and and have that and create that database so that's a huge strategy that we didn't have in place whether that offsets or not i don't know that there's a magic science to that but i think it's an important piece of what we

292do and what we will do kind of through this last chapter when would we know the the um data from our local from our students when will we have that data i don't i i i don't want to speak to that i we have a conference call with shield tomorrow i don't know if somebody on the team can i know the turnaround is is fairly quick but by the time we get it up and running and i i don't know exactly when we'd have that i would imagine it would be fairly early in the school year if we start week one dr hunt you mentioned the idph was you anticipated new guidelines coming out from them or something coming out from them you said did you say this week or what if again it could

293be like ohio and it's this week every week uh it's coming um i i do believe something is on the way hopefully this week for sure was that lake county health department no that would be i think they're going to come from idph and i will get a letter i think i shared a letter from dupage county with the board of education today we will get a letter from lake county very similar to what was sent to dupage county i also asked our legal counsel with the letter from dupage if that is similar or looks like the letter from lake is this plan in jeopardy does it put us at further risk of liability and the answer was no but the wording was highly recommend unvaccinated people being or students being masked in school in

294the dupage one i i read it this morning that's what it said yeah said strongly recommended strongly okay i have i have something to float just kind of keep an open mind what i realized that a huge segment of our community would like the choice of their pre-k through elementary in a classroom uh without a mask right for the majority of the day another segment of our community huge segment also it seems we're likely the choice of their kids and they're and unvaccinated kids in both cases unvaccinated kids in a classroom where masks are required right so so this is so i'm just floating this out there and this is just because i read from the chart that you gave us that lake bluff i think the school district was asking you know what would

295it look like if we had classrooms that were mass optional and other classrooms that were mass required i i just i'm floating this out there temporarily until the vaccinations available for all kids i i'm floated out there to see if there might be any interest in finding out a little bit more information about this approach just fine i'm aware of one other school that's you know kind of walking down the road as a possibility um i don't believe they've got a legal opinion on it yet i think there's some implications legally that would certainly have to be thought through in that environment there's a lot of logistics i think you know when you look at i think it's very easy to think we've got a you know 200 first graders we've got x number of

296sections let's just shuffle the deck here and yeah he could make a survey based on i know certain is a toxic word but if we had that as hey just shuffle the deck these three or four are mask optional these are masked but a lot of thought goes into class placement every single year i mean our teachers and our administrators work on that you've got percentages that have to be upheld with regular ed special education you've got students that have aids and co-taught environments you've got chinese immersion dual language enrichment programs all of that gets makes that operationally you're going to sacrifice a tremendous amount to go down that road i just wonder if it might you know if it might want if we as a board might want to look into it as an

297option potentially well erin i again i love that you you think outside the box and you bring up new ideas potential middle ground i appreciate all this i do think that dr hunt's response is so indicative though of what we've heard in some parent today said it very eloquently which is you know we're teaching the whole child and it's more than just trying to mitigate a virus we're also trying to you know teach children the basics as far as their education as well as socializing as well as being cognizant of their social and emotional learning and all of that so i do think that um i while i love this idea and i'm thinking this would be so great at the same time i keep stopping myself to say we're not teaching just around a

298virus we are still trying to provide quality education and i know that there are again fears as to how to do that safely there's one side that feels like you know masking is is unsafe there's another side that feels that not masking is unsafe and i am not discounting what either of those positions are i just think that dr hunt has developed a strategy that has been approved by our local health officials has been based upon local health data which is what the cdc also recommends is that we look at our local health data and it's all with a plan to do to gather data from inside our schools which is something that we were so far behind last year because we weren't in school and it felt like a bit of a missed opportunity

299at least to me i was definitely advocating that we start in school so that we could start to develop and get a lot of that data and so we were missing it you know until february march um so i i think that this is a great strategy and i think that you've really done your research as far as you know getting information from lake county department of health i know that it's difficult to get that many times and i will point to how great our district has been for example when the mumps outbreak happened and we were lacking direction and our school and our staff and our administrators came up with the path forward and we were able to keep schools open we were able to do stuff this in an equitable fashion and we

300saw this happen then and i believe that we can continue um to rely on the expertise of our administrators and our superintendent finally as far as the american academy of pediatrics i will say that only twice in my board career have i written drafted a written statement and read it and both times it was based on asking the board to follow american academy of pediatrics recommendations the first one and i've shared this anecdotally with sandra and she will laugh i was i was asking that we delay the decision to go one to world with all pre-k through third grade students based on the american academy of pediatrics recommendations on screen time and that they were going to issue new recommendations the next year and i gave an impassioned pre-written plea i was voted down six

301to one and one board member who is no longer here um told me in very colorful language what he thought of the american academy of pediatrics um so that that was our but in retrospect look at what happened all right it was great that all of these kids did have devices because little did we know we were going to have a global pandemic where these children did need access to devices to have access to their teachers to have access to education that's number one but number two was the last time that i gave an impassioned plea to start schools and the american academy of pediatrics in their recommendations said that the policy adopted by school boards should be to open schools in any way possible and our board decided to look instead at um what

302other school districts were doing to school districts around us because as we had this meeting school districts were kind of deciding left and right we are not going to open in person we are going to go to 100 remote so we looked at local data versus the american academy of pediatrics so while i understand um the the desire you know and that this is also another authority i think that it has been a common practice and i don't dispute the the looking at local data as a relevant point of consideration for these difficult situations can i just jump in real quick i certainly don't want to come off from what i have understood and my experience here all of two weeks late county board of health has been very responsive very supportive and helpful and

303i don't know that i would use the word approved um and i'll ask beth to correct me if i'm wrong but i think the response was excellent points in line with what you have with the cdc the the you know the access you have with the cvc and would be supported so i i believe that is i don't want to give the misrepresentation that they stamp and approve these things so just a few comments if i may i want to say thank you to dr hunt and his staff for whipping this together in a week and answering hundreds of emails i want to say thank you to the people who are here tonight because you must really care to be here at 11 30 at night at a school board meeting that was called in

304one week's notice so we have a community who really cares and it's appreciated and there are strong feelings i get that last meeting when we talked about this this this possible plan i was feeling like erin was that it would probably be prudent to start school with uh elementary kids masked but to see what would be a plan to remove the masks everything changes so quickly like all of a sudden the delta variant is bigger than it was a week ago things are changing we we're going to hear more guidance from the health department that we haven't heard yet so you know this is kind of what happened last summer in a smaller scale things keep changing and we need to be ready to change our decisions and make good decisions that we can um

305when we can um so there's a couple questions and concerns i have here um if we don't have the testing when school starts we're not going to know exactly where we're at is one thought and then looking at the strategies like last week you showed that circle that had the nine strategies looking at it carefully and reading through the plan today today i noticed that contact tracing isn't there and i also noticed that um high touch surfaces will be cleaned at least once per day which i think is less than what happened last year in the school year i think things were cleaned constantly so so those are diminishing some of the mitigations and i think we're supposed to be increasing them unless i'm misreading it or not understanding yeah so um to be clear

306uh quarantining we we talked about corn quarantining today contact tracing is part of that that would not go away so that that'd still be included i talked to dave dave buying about you know cleaning one touch surfaces we we have the staff availability to be where we were cdc changed their recommendation on that and we what is there aligns with what the cdc said now that is applicable kind of across the board there are areas that are more kind of at risk you've got special education classrooms uh areas that need additional cleaning during the day so there are areas that we will address beyond the the one time per day but that does align according to dave to to what cdc's changes were so so also i have questions about lunch for all age levels

307because i think lunch is the time when nobody has a mask on okay so that's in progress so we don't have that answer yet we are operating under three feet we believe that's but they have not specifically replied regarding cafeteria so we're we're operating around three feet are we thinking about tents and outdoor options for all grade levels for lunch i honestly haven't had those conversations so i can't answer that i'm going to be just honest with you if they were in place last year i would imagine we would have that in place again it was mixed as far as i know a minutiae question have we thought about potentially like masks that are clear and so that the mouth could be seen for those classes like chinese immersion or speech therapy where you may

308need to see them out i'm you know i haven't i've i've seen those and we've uh we and again my prior district we had certain therapists that would use those especially when we were kind of really in the weeds with covet haven't had any of those conversations here i also have a concern around i'm being told we do have those that we do have those and can invest in those with us or funding potentially yeah i do have a concern around because you know there's nothing magical about three feet right like covet is an aerosol spreading virus and if you're unmasked and unvaccinated you could get it at six feet you could at five you get three so i wonder if we do go mask optional with all our unvaccinated elementary and below kids and

309we do have you know these these uh cova-positive cases where we're then ending up quarantining like whole classrooms of kids there's going to be a huge demand for remote learning we've completely restructured how that looks people can't just kids students can't just pop on like they did last year what what's our contingency plan there yeah i can't predict what's going to happen or not my hope would be if if we're seeing seeing cases move in a direction where that could happen we would be moving towards bringing mass on in and you know increasing you know space so you know if we we i i know our team i haven't worked with them a long time but i know if we have an issue where we have to do quarantine a class if that happens that's

310a reality that could have happened a year ago too they will have a place as a plan in place and ready for kids if there's potential for less of an outbreak if the kids are fast and with and using true three feet of this totally true and believe that will be i i would not surprise me in the guidance if they tried to incent you to mask with some of the quarantine restrictions i don't know that but it would not surprise me i'm just going to piggyback quick on what angela said about trita the whole child and erin i actually thank you for bringing up the concerns i appreciate it if we we do need to go through this stuff um i guess i mean obviously i compromise i mean my own opinion has always

311been compromised as a choice also so honestly for me this is even this is more um and i am just i think and we talk about training the whole child i am honestly i'm tired of treating our children as like we've made it their whole goal in life is to not get sick above their education above their mental health above they have to fill out a form before they walk into school they have to sanitize they have to walk on certain side there's so many things but and it's great we're doing all these things so i just feel that if we when they're in their little classrooms with their teacher and their friends and their classmates at their separate desks if we can give them the chance to be free and be mask-free if they're

312comfortable or not and see their teachers face and see their friends face i don't feel like i i just feel if that if we could give at least that and start there it is a start and i would love to see where we can start there and go from there i think dr hunt has put together a great plan that meets a lot of con a lot of in the middle and he's put a lot of thought the administration's put a lot of thought into it and i don't think i i i believe in them to make this work so i agree with you katie except i one concern is that what we've been asked to do is to create a plan based on local data and my concern with just implementing as it is

313is we don't have our local data so i would prefer i'm not sure how we can get creative about getting the local data before school starts but maybe there's a possibility there but i'd rather us make a decision based on our local data which maybe would come in the first week of school so that we can say yes we are confident we're in a space with our data that masks don't have to be on in the classroom i i understand that so my preference would be that if if we can get that we don't take off the mask until we have the data that shows that we can what which specific data are you talking transmission rates are you're talking vaccinations like what data from exactly the uh shield the shield tests oh the shield

314tested yes the data from from our students our local data on the shield testing is it possible to get vaccination data like the percentage of staff that's vaccinated in the percentage of students that are able to get vaccinated is it possible we will obtain staff data and we will ask we would like to do this soon ask our parents to submit whether they've been vaccinated or not we can't no we can't mandate that we can certainly ask i think a lot of our parents would step forward and share that data two-fold i think it's a data point we should know about gives us an idea how many of our students and you know 12 and up are actually vaccinated and two if there are contact tracing it gives us an idea of you know a

315quicker place to go in terms of contact tracing and identification i think it's important to know that and it may also make us rethink our sixth grade seventh grade high school optional masking depending on how it is if it's poor this is what our experts are talking about you know these data points and i think it's important to follow our experts we've followed the guidance through last year and it's kept us in a good place i had one more question about some of the some of the preventive measures ventilation is one of them and i'm pretty sure at the last meeting we talked about we had um federal funding to improve our ventilation but we wouldn't be able to do it by the time school started but it would be during the school year if

316am i remembered correctly uh that's correct and and craig if you know if there's more detail to this let me know i believe that work is kind of in the design phase you know it's got to be engineered and designed and then would be bid and brought to the board you know and the next step would be then you know doing the work and that's all the buildings if i remember correctly what's that is that all the buildings if i remember correctly i know this is a lot of information yes it is okay so i kind of think this is premature until we have more information and more data i mean dr hunt correct me if i'm wrong but you guys need to start working in some one direction i mean school starts in a

317month like you need and and i agree i can accept the proposal if we have shield date once we have the shield data we know the metrics on what's acceptable to to remove the masks that that gives us you know direction to move forward with this plan essentially putting the testing in place and bringing that back if i'm hearing you correctly yeah that's how i feel okay okay so well i think where i'm uncomfortable with i i understand if if a parent wants their child to be masked optional uh i think i'm actually okay with their kid being mass optional with other parents whose kids whose kids are also mask optional what makes me extremely uncomfortable are the parents who want their kids to wear a mask their unvaccinated children to wear a mask and

318do not want those children to be around other unvaccinated children who are unmasked i mean that's that's problematic for me so i just i right so i'm very uncomfortable with mask optional for all pre-k through five when there's no vaccination possibility can we stop calling it mask optional and you adopt what doctor recommended recommended yes recommended but not required is i think where we want to get to again this is not that we're not proposing that we're proposing where there's opportunities to allow kids to take their masks off as a first step right but that means that that students who are masked will essentially be in classrooms with students who are unknown all unvaccinated that's what's problematic i understand yeah and that's why i want the shield testing so we can know we have local

319data and understand the metrics maybe i need to understand a little bit more how the shield testing works can you give me we we test every child how does this work we our call with them is coming up this week later this week so it's a saliva test every child would go through get the test believe the data is 24 hours later is that right i think it's 24 hours later we'll have the data we haven't had a conversation about is do you do it once a week twice a week i i we have questions about how many to get statistically significant all of that has to be flushed out right so it's not it's maybe a portion of the cla it's not every single student it's like you you do i mean what about

320parents who do not want their child they can opt out so we still don't know if half the class opts out if that's going to give us enough information to know i don't know exactly because we just questioned it right that's a question if we know that idph is probably going to come out with new guidance can we at least wait for them before making a decision well i i mean there are other districts that have not made a decision yet on how they're going to approach masking so [Music] i understand that we establish the metrics right what i'm concerned about is we start and then we get this shield test results and we automatically have to put the mask on because we find that that our numbers are too high or too low however

321we want to put it so my preference would be again to get the local data first establish the metrics get the local data and then make a determination based on the metrics that we've established whether or not the masks can stay need to stay on or they can come off we can't mandate that yeah we can't do that sorry i can't hear so i'm not sure that we have four people to say that we can accept the proposal as it is well we have three we certainly have three so the direction is to proceed with getting more information on shield what that would look like what the what start to work on the metrics and bring that back to the board in am i hearing yeah and i would like to see what the idph

322is going to say i gotta be honest i feel like we're right back where we were last year and i it's just more than frustrating i i i don't know how much more data i'm not trying to discount i want for information but there's only so much more information they're going to continue to get them we waited for the cdc then we waited for like now we're going to i'm not advocating for waiting for anyone i'm advocating that we complete the plan that includes the metrics the plan that we have right now doesn't have any metrics and we don't have the data from our local students so i'm not advocating waiting for others i'm waiting for i would like for us to complete and start but but do you understand so what if half the

323students refused to do the shield testing then it might not be statistically valid maybe maybe we need to increase the distance i i don't know i can't sandra i'm sorry i can't hear you say that again we'll just keep waiting we'll just keep waiting i didn't say just keep waiting i thought you said we just keep waiting for the shield testing i thought that's what you said i'm sorry i said that i'd like the metrics let's complete the plan i haven't seen if it's if it's moderate or low you know when is the mask able to come off we don't have our local data and what is what does off mean just so i'm clear is that a mass recommended but not required that's off or is the kind of the first phase as we

324articulated it so i preferably start with um the mask on until we have the local data and the metrics in place and established okay that's my preference so i can accept the plan with that motivation local data you're talking about is the shield testing i'm just trying to filter yes what i'm hearing is that we have three of us who want to start the year with masks on for uh fifth grade or elementary and below and three who are fine starting the year with uh masks recommended but not required for fifth grade and below is that right that this is this is what i'm creating well if there's a way to get the data before mass before school starts then and and we've established the metrics i think we could have i think we could

325reasonably ask our parents i think i i don't like to speak like i know this community like it's my backyard but i think our community will step forward provide information on vaccination 12 and up i think that's data we could likely gather fairly quickly i i don't see us trying to get kids in and test them before august 20th i just i don't think that's realistic maybe i'm wrong we can chat i just want to be transparent with that i'm sorry i'm not looking for creative solutions i'm i'm sorry i'm not following so are we saying that we want to get testing for children that are vaccine eligible or or are we talking about all the kids throughout the school two different things i i heard an interest in knowing who's vaccinated get a rough

326idea of percentage of students vaccinated 12 and up and that we would like to see get a sense of what the shield data is giving us prior to taking this that next step of moving towards the phased approach okay i'm summarizing for you so please okay that's not accurate let me know okay no thank you so i guess my question is it sounds like there are three people at the board table that are comfortable with the current proposal and three people at the board table who are looking to start the school year pre-k through five with masks which is not pursuant to your proposal so at this stage how do we move forward we have a we have a stalemate i don't know that we have a stanley because we know where barry is i

327mean i read his statements but you said that he could not participate yeah he can't i mean you're essentially it's a it's a tie and there's that's what it is i i think what we're saying though is that given dr altschuler's position that it's implied how he's going to vote and i and you know the other thing this is a special meeting you understand and we're not voting right so there's no vote on your special meeting uh with discussion items unless it was laid out before so there's not an action item to actually even vote tonight understand certainly getting feedback is important getting directions important but you you can't take a formal vote so regardless if we start with mask on our mask off we still need to develop the metrics right we still need

328to know when based on the data um we're gonna have to put the masks on or take them off or increase the distance or what have you so could we continue to develop the plan and mature the plan we meet again in a week and a half is that right two weeks august 10 august 10th to the 10th right august 10th what do you guys think i think it makes sense to have an update at the next meeting about what information we're learning i cannot hear you do your job go ahead so what i was saying is i think we should look for an update at the next meeting if we have new guidance if we have new local information if we have more data about vaccinations and keep moving forward in a hopeful way

329but but using the data and seeing what's what's changing okay and we're we'll also have potentially new guidance from idp i think you will forget and lake county health department i i definitely will i think that's helpful as well all right well i'm disappointed i was really hoping that we could come to some sort of situation to move forward i think that we seem wishy-washy and i know that you're saying that you're looking for more information but it doesn't feel like being leaders it seems like kick in the can and it's i think that it's that kind of uncertainty that creates the discord in our community i feel like when there's a decision made people move forward we deal with it but this doesn't feel like like a decision to me it feels like more

330more questions i don't i respectfully disagree angela i we need to have the metrics we need to know what they're going to be we need to know when we're going to be moving masks on and off right so we're gonna we're not as we are moving forward with and developing the plan we're not waiting for more information we're just continuing the development of the plan dr hunt asked us last week for two weeks and we didn't give it to him so it's not quite complete yet so let's let them finish and but then respectfully what did we what was what did we do we just listened to four hours of public comment for people who want a decision and i mean we i like i i think it really boils down to whether we start

331with the masks on or we start with the mask off it really boils down to that and i'm not comfortable with it but yeah you guys are just starting with masks saying start with mass off in a very controlled environment it's this is not a free-for-all willy-nilly take the mass off i didn't i didn't say that it was i i feel like that's how it's being portrayed and it's it's not he we had a very succinct proposal for a controlled environment to take the mass off our children this is not just a start with the map but we can also make modifications of that proposal too we don't have to go with just exactly what was presented and i think that's what we're entertaining based on more guidance and data and information i mean it

332sounds like we if we if our local data can can be realized in the very first week of school potentially then we've only asked for a few days i agree i think we're leaving a lot of parents in lurch that's my personal opinion i disagree actually katie i think we're giving them pretty good indications as to how we're going to go here i think the decision is that you know we're not going to go over the proposal and we're going to start with masks on the school school year and and i think parents should know that and plan for it accordingly okay i think i've got some direction and follow-up items uh certainly you'll get information from me as soon as idph lets their guidance out okay and you'll send us the information update on

333shield as well absolutely okay all right so it's 11 48 wow so we're obviously not going to talk about our next discussion topic so do we have a motion to adjourn a second i think i heard katie and steve roll call please yes motion passes meetings adjourned [Music]