001sandra bradford here angela wilcox barry alt-shuler here leah callister lazari here erin chan ding yes katie carham here steve wang here all right i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right okay so we will can everybody hear me okay we will begin tonight with my report i will keep it pretty brief because i know we've got a lot of folks here so first i just wanted to welcome dr hunt to his first meeting here in district this is great um so just a couple of quick things i've been watching the construction updates hopefully everybody else has been able to watch them um a lot of fun things that are happening as we have our construction underway at station
002and prairie and at grove i also know that on june 26th we had the dreamway ceremony so we'll talk about that a little bit later we get to our reports um and then the other thing i wanted to mention is that i had the opportunity to visit the boys and girls club in dundee so i visited their facilitator facility last week and i'm looking forward to visiting sunny hill operation in the in the fall so i don't want to be labor we've got a lot of people signed up for public comment i think i counted 49. folks that are signed up [Applause] so board members that is two and a half hours if everybody takes three minutes so um i just want to make sure that we're aware of that and um we typically end
003our meetings at so i wanted to just ask if we're okay to go ahead and start with the public comment and then just assess where we are to see what we can accomplish i think we've got several um timely business items that we need to get to tonight we've got a hearing that we do need to stop public comment at eight o'clock hold the hearing and then we can return to public comment but we do have to hold that during hearing at eight o'clock that hearing will have public comment but that public comment will be centered around that um the use of those funds only okay so i wanna make sure everybody understands that we'll start the public comment we'll take a pause for a public hearing and then we will return to public comment
004and then we will get back to our agenda items and hopefully we can get to everything but if we cannot we can discuss as a board what we can we can move off okay um and then just as a reminder we agreed that we were going to talk about cobia protocols today and give direction to dr hunt um and that um depending on that direction we may call another meeting so be thinking about that as we as we go through and hear the public comment as well um that that might be a possibility um depending on the direction that we decide to give to dr hunt so that's what we agreed to i think it was two meetings ago so any questions or comments on how we're going to proceed here going forward and just
005one quick update um i am wearing a mask i'm not trying to make a statement but i have a immune compromised family member so i need to to mask out so all right any other questions sandra i think the only thing that i would bring up is just can um i assume that most of these people are going to talk about the covet protocols could we move the proto or covet protocols understanding if there's also the the hearing that we have to you know have in a certain time but can we move up the discussion for covid protocols just so that we can yeah let's uh make sure we can get this me conducted um i i want to make sure we get to the urgent action items though angela that's my only concern is
006that we we met okay okay public comment hasn't started yet please i think we're all understanding that we're in we're in for the long haul tonight so we'll get to what we need to get to but i think the public deserves to hear us discuss it uh we could go right into after public comment is uh dr hunt's report we could go right into the discussion item at that point if we have as long as the board is willing to stick around to make sure that we get through the other action items that we have to get through so i heard four people yep so we've got what we need okay all right so um we have come to a portion of our meeting um where we set aside time for public comment we value
007your thoughts and opinions in accordance with board policy to 230 we ask that you state your name your elementary attendance area and your relationship the district before beginning your comments we also ask that you limit your comments to three minutes and janine will remind us of our time with the bell um while this is not a conversation if comments require further attention we will ask dr hunt to follow up and report back to the board please refrain from directing any comments to any individual or staff or community members and in order to have as many people as possible important important thing here in order for as many people to speak if someone else has spoken and represented your views already please feel free to stand and show your support of their ideas or clap instead
008of you taking even more time if you're repeating the same things over and over again so just wanted to stress we do have some things we need to get to this evening so um and we will talk about this as soon as we will get to this uh discussion topic as soon as we finish the president's report for the superintendent report all right first are you ready okay um kelly ditman [Applause] hi here can you hear me okay no no it should pick up your voice once you start talking can you hear me okay perfect well hi kelly dittman new to this and excited to be with all of you uh recently moved back from iowa and new to the area a north barrington resident tech executive and a passionate mom for all things education
009so thanks for having us thank you i'm here as an interest in citizen and taxpayer for district 220 so first off we've had a lot of caffeine today and we want to give a big thank you to dr hunt dr hunt we're thrilled for your leadership you have an impressive background coming from a couple of states over so thank you so much and we look forward to working with you and advancing education outcomes here in the community i'd like to talk about two areas in particular one a voice of the community and two unmasking our children first and foremost voice of the community we've had the opportunity quite frankly and you can see here as evidenced by the group in this room a lot of us have been spending some quality time outside of this
010room talking about the needs of our children you know one of the pieces that one of the leading concerns amongst barrington residents is the issues around education of our children and quite frankly some of the governance of district 220 and what i mean by that is that many parents and tax payers feel that there's a lot of decision making amongst administration state agencies and quite frankly we want to be a part of the solution so we're here we'd like some more transparency on how we might get involved in some of the subcommittees and how we can help drive through statistics and data and research you know driving some of these pieces forward second masks boy i got to tell you from a personal note my husband and i we have been spending some quality time
011really grappling with the decision for our son we have a six-year-old son and based on his well-being based on his behavioral needs and quite frankly health needs what are we going to do in the future and and mask has not been a good situation for him um you know as it relates to today's and again new at this um we talked a little bit about coveted protocols right and i was under the oppression as a citizen that we would be voting tonight and with only five and a half weeks until i have to make a decision with my husband about where my son should go and how we might make that the best path forward sandra a question for you is around how are we how are we enabling a voting opportunity um so that
012we can gain clarity in those decisions so this is not a dialogue so we will be addressing that when we get to the discussion you know and i can appreciate that um there's a little bit to that to that end part of this is a critical component and and part of my comments are going to be around asking some specific questions you know sandra or barry angela steve aaron leah katie where do you stand on masks are you for or against them we'll find out when we get to our discussion so next up do i have more time nope she rang the bell got it well thanks for having me thank you so much leonard leonard munson hi i'll make this quick my name is larry munson i've been i have a 14 year old
013that goes a freshman to school this year and i just you know my first impression is you're going to brief the protocols the covet protocols and as you can see we haven't had a voice in this at all and you're going to brief the protocols which i think is ridiculous for the board to do that prior to even hearing public comment i work in a healthcare environment i work with 700 residents that are over the age of 80. so i wear a mask and have since march 8 to 10 hours a day but they're an at-risk population we do not have an at-risk population so they should be we have to be logical in this process and you guys have already robbed our children of a year of education in the classroom we voted you
014guys in for a reason so i ask you to be a leader among the community if you got a tough job as your first day here but um i asked you to be a leader and understand the protocols for our children where they should be i'm not a man i'm not an anti-math person i respect your right to wear a mask because you have someone that's compromised okay 100 absolutely okay but there's not a person here that doesn't take their children to costco to a restaurant to jewel and is already participating so there's no reason for our children to be masked that's the first thing they should be at five days of school okay there should be no three days a week two days a week one day remote remote learning is garbage and you
015know that follow the science there is no reason our children should be remote learning if you want to look at the research prior to the covet hysteria we wanted our children off of social media you forced them onto social media [Applause] the other thing is testing it is my right as a parent to not have my child tested my child should not be tested at the age of 14 to go to a barrington school that i pay for because you certainly didn't subsidize me for not sending my kid to school and you say that the electronics cost more i don't buy that i mean i'm sure you have the data and you could probably prove your point but i want my kid in school and i don't want him tested okay if i want him
016tested i'll take in and get him tested there's all kinds of statistics out there i bet the majority of our school has already had um and that's probably not been tested because most kids were asymptomatic and didn't even know they had covet so they didn't even get tested and we're not accounting for that and if you want to have your child vaccinated i support it 100 but my child should not have to be vaccinated nor should he have to carry a car [Applause] and i'm sure that my time is almost up so i won't go into any steps but i just want you as a group to be leaders and i think that you need to hold off your protocol recommendation until you hear all the public comment and i don't understand why you'd even
017have it i know that illinois that's my time thank you [Applause] from america's front like that we can pass them out for you so you can start [Applause] hi everybody my name is i have an entering freshman at barrington high school and a 10 year old at rose and um again i just don't want them segregated for kids that supposedly get this experimental vaccine to have to keep masks on or they get to take them off and the ones that don't you know i really don't want to put this vaccine in my children so it is an experimental drug and it is against the nuremberg code to actually vaccinate or of course coerce our children into getting the vaccine and to ostracize them from certain activities because it still is very experimental and that's very
018scary to me there's tons of terrible side effects that are happening children have died and there's over 450 000 adverse reactions in the bears that have been listed so it's it's myocarditis you know the heart inflammation the the blood clots in adults i mean it still was very experimental so you know what worries me more is i mean my daughter's on pom-pom so she's already gets to practice without her mask son that's wonderful but the 12 and under that aren't even eligible for this vaccine which i wouldn't give them anyway um they have to wear mess all day and that's awful for such young children i see them driving on buses with their faces covered and it makes me want to cry i mean this is not freedom and they're at the lowest risk of
019actually getting getting hurt from this there's a 99.997 percentage rate for them to be okay so let them breathe let's practice you know extra vitamin d um get them some quercetin zinc and you know let them breathe and be free i mean that's my biggest you know this this is disgusting too i do want to say something very quickly about this um it can't happen you guys i mean i love that you're allowed to as the district to make the decisions for us i mean there's been so many schools that have gone mass optional that's what i pray for our children to be masked optional and this has to go uh you know inappropriate or whatever but i can't undo a vaccine that is being mandated or better never be mandated i pray okay that's
020my biggest fear as a mother in this district okay so please please please keep our children free and mass optional that's my prayer to you i'm gonna hi my name is melissa atterbury i'm the president of the barrington education association the bea would like to take this opportunity to welcome dr hunt to barrington 220 and we really look forward to working with you we know you've done your homework by watching board meetings visiting the schools attending meetings and speaking with staff to prepare for your transition to barrington we appreciate all you have done but we know coming to a new district is so hard with so much coming at you and we know that there's still more more for you to do understanding our past will help you to problem-solve in the present and plan
021for the future first and foremost you must know that we have the most amazing group of staff eager to serve students each and every day they are always learning happy to discuss defend and develop their craft the level of collaboration and collegiality is unparalleled in barrington now we would be remiss not to mention how important our parents are and working hand in hand with us to make sure that this is the best experience for their kids as a staff we feel very supported by parents and couldn't do the work we do without them finally our students they're enthusiastic and innovative they come with a wealth of background knowledge and a love of learning we encourage them to think out of the box and take risks they bring the joy to our day and we they
022are the reason that we do what we do while all of barrington schools are amazing with a proven history of excellence in academics as well as a commitment to meeting kids social emotional needs they each have a unique personality and that is what we would like to address tonight we would like to share with you dr hunt some of our traditions strengths and history so that you might have a better picture of each school's personality so let me start with rose we love that we have a diverse student population with approximately 30 languages spoken by our families teachers and parents work together to celebrate this diversity with multicultural events our librarian includes information on various holidays in our morning announcements and gives book recommendations to our staff by learning more about one another students learn
023to appreciate the differences we have but more importantly see how much we have in common another thing that we are very proud of at rose is our fifth grade musical rose has a long history of performing an elaborate production complete with head mics lighting cues costume changes and choreography countless hours go into this production this could never be achieved without the help of the parents to build and change sets and sew costumes this is such an important part of being a fifth grader at rose that we are proud that we did not let the pandemic hinder this transition tradition the rose staff looks forward to having you come and visit to learn more about our amazing school thank you marcia marshall mcleary where'd she go hello everyone i'm marcia mcclary and i've written you all
024a bunch of emails so i will try not to repeat everything in my emails welcome to dr hunt it's a tough time to join and i appreciate the tough position you're all in with the guidance just coming out and everyone needing answers in the staff how to plan and prepare for the schools this year um i did want to highlight that i sent you an email you may not have gotten to of the 21 districts i knew of as of this morning in the state of illinois that had gone um and made local decisions away from the isb and idp agent cdc guidance and those and one of those one of those districts is oswego it's consolidated it's very very large and it is a suburb include suburbs of chicago so i thought that was
025a relevant benchmark that they might have answers to i know there's some questions about legal aspects to all of this and i think that you can reach out to any of those and find out what they're hearing and why they made those decisions and they have publicly announced some differences to the guidance now they're varying differences some of them talk about mass some of them talk about quarantine someone talk about contact tracing differences some of them say they're not going to do the testing so it's it varies but the point is that they are doing it different than guidance they've obviously gotten some type of legal read or decided that that's that's their decision-making authority and i know that was a concern of the board i heard it from a lot of people so i
026just wanted to address that um i also wanted to read a couple things from my email that um are i think are really important for where we're at um and i would ask you guys to consider these in your discussion if covent were to start from today with the latest data and science including the fact that children are more likely three to five times more likely to be hospitalized or die in a car accident or drowning risk that all of the parents here take every day and we know that is this something we want to continue knowing what we know today would we newly start quarantining healthy kids what kids primarily just in the school environment wear a mask but nowhere else with distance we distance kids only in school nowhere else not let them
027sit by their friends at lunch or are we simply having just a hard time making decisions and making changes d220 is looked at as a leadership school district in this state and i think we can answer those questions and really look at the data in science and say the answer is i think that we just need to make a change the other question i have to ask ourselves is another difficult question if we were to continue any mitigations what are the specific metrics exactly to restore all of the freedoms that we can't do today why is that what is the data we want to see we have only had one positive coveted case in summer school according to the kova dashboard by d220 one in summer school the kids are all running around on mass
028we've all seen it in school they might be mass except for sports we have allowed them to unmask optionally for sports and most of the kids as you probably observe are not massed and we've seen one called the case so i just ask you to consider all that thank you so much okay so just to make this maybe go a little bit faster i'm going to call the next two barb floyd and then after barb is danny olsen barb hi there i am barb floyd i am a resident of barrington 220. i have talked in district 220 for this will be my coming 32nd year uh i was at countryside for 30 years and last year was my first year at north barrington and tonight i am representing north barrington school so dr hunt tonight
029is your first board meeting with many more to come and we feel so lucky that you are the one north barrington also welcomes our new principal dr lisa west we hope you know we feel blessed that district 20 220 only hires the best we welcome you both to the barrington community with open arms you'll see that north barrington is filled with so many charms we've got dedicated professional talented teachers and staff that go above and beyond even without an ask we created a wonderful we create wonderful learning opportunities for each little mind and a better school you will never find it wouldn't be possible without the support of all of our great parents and pto we all invest in our children because we believe in them so we work well together hand in hand which
030makes north barrington oh so grand colt pride is all about trust and making pro taking pride in ourselves learning why and how to make good choices and discovering the importance of finding our very own voices we all know north barrington is a special one-of-a-kind place we've created learning environments where children feel safe our building has an elevator and two floors there's a new gym floor and the children love to do a layup and shoot and score home of general education full instructional and chinese immersion each classroom is unique with their own teachers conversion there's drama club running club student council and more but the best is our outdoor learning arena with nature galore playgrounds and gardens where life is so sweet when you come to visit north barrington you're in for a real treat so
031welcome home we're very glad you're here thank you thank you guys and the teacher in me is just going to take one minute to say i am very proud of district 220 and i am so appreciative of the tender care that all of you board of ed members made in making decisions to keep our children safe our community safe and you have very dedicated teachers that many of you might feel that your children have missed a beat in this last year and yes there have been a few little holes but i'm telling you the education has been exceptional and i will speak for kindergarten only myself in chinese immersion i feel that our children did not miss a beat and i am so proud of their perseverance and their ability to learn in a whole
032new way thank you very much so danny olson is up next after danny's gonna be becky riley but i'm gonna need to ask for people to be respectful and be quiet and so we can hear the public speakers please i don't want to have to use the gavel in the middle okay thank you well it's my uh first uh school board meeting and now it's great to see everybody stand and do the pledge so it's a great site to see [Applause] three children that go to rosalind elementary this year i'll have a fifth grader third grader in kindergartner going my wife and i also attended district 220 schools from kindergarten through senior year of high school when my wife and i got married in 2010 we moved to our hometown to raise our family we
033are here today to join the pleas of so many of our fellow parents to end mass mandates for the upcoming school year and to make sure that unvaccinated adults and children are not discriminated against in our district period [Music] we all know that children's risk of contracting or spreading covet is negligible summer school cases have been extremely low despite illinois entering stage five and being fully reopened illinois residents have been moving out about moving out and about masculists in virtual all areas of life there's no logical reason required masking in a school setting vaccinations have been readily available for any and all adults who wish to receive them for many who have not they have religious and or medical reasons for not pursuing the vaccine ending the mess mandate will not stop those who wish
034to continue wearing masks from continuing to do so medical discrimination cannot be tolerated in our district the cycle the psychological effects of separating the vaccinated from the unvaccinating in the school setting will be profound you'll open up new opportunities for bullying and ostracizing children based on their private medical history the illinois state of educate board of education illinois department of public health and the cdc have all acknowledged that all that excuse me that districts have the local authority to end mass mandates many districts have already announced they're ending their mandates including oswego county school district 308 central district number three richard burton district 157 and nipper singh school district number two in conclusion i would like to ask you all to please give our children their freedom back the state is open the risk is
035negligible our kids deserve to get back to school with some normalcy thank you for your [Applause] time hello everyone welcome dr hunt new board members thanks for being here listening to me tonight um i'm going to start off by telling you some stats and some stories and also i'm going to tell you that i am a parent of two middle school students here in barrington at 2 first of all suicide rates are up among teens and they're in an all-time high during the colvid isolation during the distancing the amplified challenges that children and teens have already experienced children child psychologists warn us that prolonging the mask wearing social distancing and discrimination will likely only drive those numbers up we've already witnessed that the physical harm that the mask have employed upon our kids one example
036is this on may the 22nd a north barrington mother reported her six-year-old being admitted to the hospital for metabolic issues low blood sugar dehydration from wearing the mask too long outside in hot temperatures a volunteer parent at the same school the same day reported watching a young boy aggressively vomiting and those are whole words he was outside in the middle of his field day one child left countryside via ambulance while another was admitted to lurie children's hospital one mom who picked her child up at noon on field day because he reported he was suffocating around the country there are many cases just like these and i think we've all heard about them on average master worn about 6.7 hours a day independent studies have shown that mass can grow dangerous pathogens and promote significant bacterial
037growth yes more recently and perhaps most disturbing is the jama article concluding that mass can retain a toxic level of excelled co2 in as little as three minutes this can lead to brain fog disorientation confusion headaches and much more serious health problems totally by any standards and especially mine if i am a retired respiratory care practitioner these standards are unacceptable for any child certainly not yours certainly not yours certainly not yours or mine did you know that children are 50 times more likely to die from the cold vaccine than the virus the vaccine adverse event reporting system or bears as we call it has an alarming number of adverse effect reports following the vaccines especially in children to reiterate what someone else just said earlier four hundred and thirty eight thousand four hundred and forty
038adverse effects within those twenty six thousand hospitalizations seven thousand disabled three thousand heart attacks two thousand two hundred myocardius reactions 985 miscarriages one more thing half of those from myocarditis are children yeah that should be alarming thank you [Applause] becky monica casey followed by alyssa casey good evening welcome to the district i'm monica casey i'm a parent of three children in the district 220 for the past 15 years i'm reaching out to all of you once again i was attending the last two board meetings on the same topic and i'm looking to ask for the requirement of the masks and or screenings to be fully resolved today once again i urge you to place priority on lifting the mass mandate irrespective of vaccination status for all barrington students as of last week the cdc and
039idph gave our recommendations to us and restored decision making at the district level for illinois schools the district 220 board can vote for this today and has the ability to do so unmask our students and the disruptive quarantine processes for healthy children and decline the unnecessary testing being proposed by idph as of today 40 states already eliminated school mass mandates altogether and several school districts in illinois have as well parents are responsible for deciding their children's health and well-being and masks should be optional and effect based on the family's preference and should be respected by all staff and students as a united group with the male goal of promoting an outstanding education for our children period listen to our community please remove extreme administrative burdens from the burdens to the d220 staff and end explicit
040implicit taxpayer costs of these measures as members of this community it's imperative to make this a priority masks dehumanize and desensitize our children requiring masks for students throughout the day is both physically and psychologically detrimental to their cognitive and social development and over the past year our medical providers indicated that health issues directly as a result of wearing masks are many there are so many long-term negative effects of asking and yet so avoidable i implore you as representatives of barrington 220 to be leaders advocate for what our community our parents the sole reason you are here in your respective positions today are actively asking you to do i have faith that you will bring this forward with a sense of leadership positivity and hope for our entire school district stand united with the primary goal
041of providing an outstanding education for our children and leading education all together in illinois thank you casey's coming up and allison's allison simon is on deck hello all my name is alyssa casey and i'm a sophomore at barrington high school i'm here to speak about this upcoming school year regarding masking and other covid restrictions we all know the state of illinois has lifted social distancing and mask mandates with businesses and other areas and activities no longer requiring them as a member of barrington high school's dance team we have recently been able to practice mask lists indoors and outdoors without any issues or positive cases lake and cook county are at a 0.5 on the cdc social vulnerability index i would like to reiterate the fact that the cova vaccine is not fda approved yet and
042with new concerns being cited as many doctors and pediatricians not recommending use for children as covid cases continue to decline it is no longer a pandemic or a national health crisis and we need to return our focus on learning and educating students in school versus promoting fear bullying and segregation we need to respect industry we need to respect we need to respect individual health care needs and choices and not force medical decisions with ramifications and stigma moving into next year i know majority of my peers feel masking social distancing and other covid restrictions should no longer be required and vaccination distinction should not be allowed instead masking should be a personal decision for each family with their physician as a community there is no serious risk of contracting covid and the probability of spreading or
043contracting the virus especially in youth is virtually zero percent [Applause] we have gone through so much this past year as a nation as a state and as a community coveted masking has taken a massive toll on each of us think about this some toddlers and young children have never even played with one another mask list have never gone to a store school without seeing masks on each and every person they encounter they've missed one of the most important stages of social development and k-12 have suffered greatly we haven't been able to socialize see real emotions or expressions participate in group activities or projects or even give each other high fives or hugs in over a year and a half this is specifically the reason we have increased rates of anxiety depression and suicides while being
044desensitized and dehumanized and dehumanized it's and it's extremely sad and unnerving it's time to say goodbye to these requirements we've all had enough of this over 40 states across the country have eliminated mass mandates in school regardless of vaccination status wrigley field and movie theaters are packed with adults seniors and children so regardless of masks or vaccinations so why can't our schools i mean look around this room [Applause] hi my name is anastasia i have two young children at grove avenue school i am a proud first generation american whose family lived through communist history not this altered history being taught today weaponizing public education for political gain is shameful call it by any three letters or words you choose but we know exactly what the purpose is these sex and race theories have been debunked
045internationally barrington is expected to be at the forefront of moral factual education yet it's continually being pushed to advance political agendas from springfield illinois we know the staff is being trained to view children through the lens of race rather than their uniqueness as a human being parents are on alerts our children are on alert and we have taught them to be on alert now because of this yes any unacceptable assignments teacher behavior surveys or bullying is going to be challenged and circulated amongst parents we have we have a running list already of staff members promoting anti-americanism and anti-white race culture manufacturing hate-based school culture by demonizing white people is racist if any staff member fits this description they will be called out a child should never know what side of the political aisle a school
046staff member is on this is not their job and it's certainly not your job they are our children we are the majority innocence to be stolen and weaponized we the parents request an immediate platform with a q a on who decided that be the change barrington a social justice movement should be partnered with our schools to push radical activism false facts and an accusatory curriculum against white children and white parents why did the school district spend resources and taxpayer money adding a diversity position and anti-white curriculum during the 2020 school shutdown your priority was to get these kids in school in person not to work on radical social justice campaigns [Applause] these appearance requests all plans and communications between your diversity director the district staff visa change bea teachers union and barrington area library because
047we know there is a direct correlation between them thank you in a press group and an oppressor group then pitting children against each other is wrong why are you grooming our children to hate america and each other and we're pushing back you are on notice leave our children out of the political [Applause] game jim simon jim simon is up and followed by margot dalstrom allison did not get the chances that was anastasia what was your last name anastasia from growth thank you thank you anastasia okay so alison simon and then jim simon you did a great job [Applause] good evening so my name is allison i have almost four kids two who are at countryside and i'm here to also advocate for making masks optional come fall i won't reiterate what everybody else has already
048said but from my opinion i don't believe there's any data that the masks are actually working but there is data that the masks harm the children the co2 there was a study done parents took i believe seven masks to a lab to have them inspected and all the disgusting things that were on the mask make me afraid to put my child in one i i also think the community respects people who choose to wear the masks for their own reasons we're asking for the same thing let the parents choose if we want to mask our kid or not for whatever reasons that may be k through 12 more importantly the smaller kids the data from last year seeing pictures seeing them uh when they were in school they were wearing them below their noses they
049were touching them they were sucking on them that that's not wearing a mask properly so to me the masks were irrelevant last year and there was no outbreaks there was no shutdown of schools uh my uh i would like to say that before the pandemic had started going uh my my children when we didn't know any information obviously everybody was nervous when i asked my child are you given the opportunity before lunch to wash your hands he said no before snack no can we bring back good hygiene measures hand washing cdc says that's the number one thing wash your hands he wasn't even been given that opportunity to wash your hands i don't even think they were doing it now you just slap some hand sanitizer on but they say it has to take four
050minutes to take the fact so uh i have some some data here also from the cdc that says uh the most recent seasonal flu and h1n1 were more deadly for children than covid in the united states deaths for children 17 and under for covert was 324. the 2018-2019 flu season was 477. our last pandemic the h1n1 between 890 to over a thousand children were were killed by that but yet none of these mitigations were in effect then i have some also uh some suburban cook county data shows that hospitalization rates increase drastically with age under 20 is a 1.28 percent over 80 is 35.2 percent hospitalization by age and then my last is the illinois data shows that mortality rate also increases dramatically with age our children under 20 is at a .008 percent thank
051you jim jim simon and then margo dollstream good evening my name is james simon i'm the father of three soon to be four students in the barrington 220 school district i'd like to address two topics first i'd like to add my voice to those of the other parents and students that are employing this board to stop the literal muzzling of our children in their academic setting the time for masks and social distancing has passed it is time to reinsert personal choice and parents ability to make individual risk benefit calculations for their own family back into our school system our children have been pawns in a political battle that has politicized medicine of all things in spite of the complete lack of evidence of any significant risk to our children or even that they are vectors
052to spread this disease among others the time is now for courage from our school board from our teachers and from our administrators to end the mask theater and use the cdc guidelines for what they are recommended guidance not one size fits all mandates the second topic i'd like to address with the board if i may is what this district is doing or rather the lack of what this district is doing for the most academically talented among our student population i've recently learned that huff street will not be offering their gifted program the so-called extended self-contained program for our third graders this year after talking to program administrators it appears that none of our second grade population met all four of the thresholds for the typical criteria the four metrics that they use for selection into
053this program interestingly it would appear that the verbal scores were the most problematic not coincidentally our second grade cohort had the latter half of their first grade academic career impacted by remote learning and almost the entirety of their second grade career if the top one percent of our students haven't been immune to the impacts of your drastic overkill measures to fight this disease i can only fear for what the rest of the 99 percent of the class has been impacted [Applause] after talking to the administration of countryside elementary about what options remain for my second grade student who scored in the 99th percentile of his great of his age cohort the only option available to him is one year acceleration in math that is a wholly insufficient gifted program for a district with the quality
054and reputation of barrington 220. [Music] our top performers are still top performers the top one percent top five percent of the class are still top five percent and we need to do more to maximize their potential i implore the board and superintendent dr hunt i understand you have a history of improving gifted curriculums in your past i implore you to do more for our students to maximize their potential this our students on this issue and any number of them deserve better i challenge you to do better so margaret okay great thank you and then aaron checkman and then we'll probably be pausing for our our hearing at eight o'clock hello my name is margot dahlstreem thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak and i want to address what many other parents have addressed
055but more with focus on vaccines but first what we know about the covid illness one of the first things we learned based on the preliminary mortality data from china is that this virus is representing a vanishingly tiny threat of death hospitalization or severe disease to children now we know that for the vast majority of the population recovery from this illness is at 99.5 or better without any treatment and cases now are at pre-pandemic levels in this state regarding the vaccines we're learning some short-term side effects that include the myocarditis pericarditis neurological disorders and fertility concerns since there are no long-term studies on the coveted vaccine what is it that we don't know about additional side effects i'm i am all for getting my children vaccinated for illnesses that pose a serious threat to their well-being
056where those vaccines have full fda approval i'm all for allowing those who worry about their own risks related to this virus for getting the vaccine that's been available under the emergency you saw youth use authorization but i am not in favor of coercing anyone through social media pressure bribes or incentives or the threat of educational medical discrimination to getting an experimental vaccine for a school board to vote on policies and procedures that would feed into that coercion is reckless i'm also very concerned about the creating a culture where private health information ceases to be private anymore [Applause] when i think back on our lower elementary school days and the secrecy that shrouded any head lice outbreak the public the public knowledge aspect of this virus and vaccine is at best inconsistent and absurd the risk
057of feeding into this culture in the school district with differentiated masking policies based on vaccination status extensive testing programs proposed by idph contact tracing and disruptive quarantine processes include compound learning losses from last year and perpetuating anxiety depression and other mental health concerns that have skyrocketed since this pandemic began thank you all for listening [Applause] you um welcome dr hunt it's very nice to meet you my name is erin checkman i'm a mother of three children currently in the district i am so moved by our wonderful speakers tonight you guys did amazing i'm just emotional just hearing all of your brave comments um i would like to add another perspective on the mask issue um here's a visual aid so we can see how we compare to the rest of the country in the states
058that are in the states in dark green they have banned the mass mandate there are no mass required for children in the states in light green you can see they have no mass mandates and they have local flexibility here in illinois in light blue it's very lonely in the little pocket there um it is showing that max our masks are vaccine contingent and the states and the dark blue are the very last ones that still have forest mass requirements i feel that this dramatically shows a lot about illinois and it speaks volumes as we know people are leaving illinois in droves to go to go to these other green states from the latest numbers that i found 80 000 people have left this uh left illinois this year so far um let's not give them
059another reason to leave i i assure you that your decision tonight about mass and you said that you will be making your positions known tonight will impact parents school decisions for this fall our children's health and right to breathe is riding on your vote [Applause] your decision will make parents decide whether they keep their children in 220 school districts or find alternative educational options if they even choose to stay in illinois at all after our amazing summers we've been having we don't want to go backwards we don't want any of our children masked especially our young elementary students who are voiceless in this fight we don't want them masked or socially distanced it's unnatural and it's harmful to their development the safety and of our children and your future tax dollars paying in the balance
060as a mother and someone who wants to be proud of our town i'm praying that you have the courage and the strength to fight for our children and make masks optional [Applause] thank you for your time thank you thank you okay it is 7 59. we just wait 15 seconds and i'll switch to 8 o'clock i think and then we can start our hearing yeah i'm going to invite dr dave byne to come on up we do have to have a hearing which is a requirement of the utilization of our esser funds i believe this can move fairly quickly dave will give a little bit of background on on the reason for this uh give it a high level how we're using the esser dollars in terms of our uh recovery in response to covet
06119 and then we can resume public comment so i'm gonna turn it over to you dave we actually need to okay and then a roll call please open the hearing angela wilcox barry altschuler yeah leah callister lazari yes aaron chan ding yes katie karam steve wang yes okay motion passes thank you uh board members i've got a short presentation for you today and as part of the overall public hearing that you have received input on the american rescue plan elementary and secondary school emergency relief program so this is the arp esser program so you might be familiar with the cares act i was really the first esser program and then there was a second esser program and then there was a third which we refer to as the arp esser and this was authorized under
062some legislation that was passed by the federal government and through that the federal government has provided funds to school districts to reopen and sustain safe operation of schools and try to address the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on public education across the country and barrington has been allocated approximately 6 million in funds through the arp esser program and these can be used for expenses that we incurred back from march 13 2020 through september 30th 2023 so it covers a little longer period than the previous two esther programs there's a stipulation in this legislation that says not less than 20 percent of the funds have to be used to address learning loss through implementation of evidence-based programs or interventions and that those interventions need to respond to students social social emotional and academic needs
063so that's a portion of of the program and in addition that grant recipients which would include our school district have to uh seek public comment on the plan for a safe to re return to school program uh of instruction for in-person instruction and then once we've gotten that and we have that that plan in place then we have to post that on our website so i'm here to talk a little bit about that i've got a very short return to school plan as you know board we intend to return to school full-time with in-person instruction for the 21-22 school year additionally as we've shared with you before we do intend to provide some additional staffing materials and sel supports for our students as they return to school after uh not being in school as much
064over the last year and a half so just as a recap and reminder for you um as to how we had talked about spending our sr3 funds so we're going to be have to have about you know we have to no less than 20 spent um to support students what we have um sel about 1.2 million student learning 1.3 million additional half a million in curricular expenses and and 200 000 summer school this is well over the 20 percent threshold that we need to have in support of our students as they return additionally as we had talked about at previous board meeting uh we are earmarking about 2.8 million which is uh for a combination primarily air quality to improve air quality within our buildings which was called out in the sr3 regulations as an
065important focus that school districts should consider as well as some additional costs associated with cleaning as we roll into this next year so that was just a recap on the program that we have that was all i had for you and if i'd be happy to answer any questions from you at this time otherwise i'm going to go ahead and head back to my seat in case there's any other public comment for you i think it's uh important to note this is reopening in terms of bringing students back that's masking this this is about how we're using those funds as it relates to supporting students upon the return uh from cove exactly right thank you dr hunt so is there any anybody have any questions is that 2.8 million that we want to allocate toward
066air quality do we know right now what specific types of systems we're looking at are they hepa filters are they we're looking at bipolar ionization systems primarily and also some improved controls with some of our fans and controllers for our hvac system make sure that we've got uh the best mix possible maximum amount of fresh air coming into our our buildings we're able to control that effectively it's primarily for adequate ventilation that's right it's improving air quality and ensuring that we've got appropriate ventilation but it's not like a hospital grade filtration system or anything like that no okay any concerns with any hiring that that's that's going on to fulfill these funds well you know i would i would defer over to some of my colleagues um you know on that but can tell you
067that with this legislation uh districts across the country we're looking to find additional staff members to provide sel support for students as well as some other services so there has been quite a bit of demand in that area but i would refer to dr hunt or some of my colleagues maybe you could give us an update in your next report yeah we can do that i know teresa's been working you know diligently to fill these positions and we're in good shape and and we'll certainly provide you an update when maybe at our next meeting okay any other comments or questions we did not do a separate public comment i just looked through here i didn't see anybody that was wanting to talk on on us for funds um thank you board members thank you thank
068you anyone need to address the board on escrow funds okay hearing none we'll call the public comment of the hearing closed i think we need to have a roll co-vote to close the hearing we have a motion to close the hearing katie second aaron and a roll call please andrew bradford yes leah collister lazari yes katie carram angela wilcox barry altschuler yes aaron chan ding yes steve wang yes that says the hearing is closed all captioning not welcome available good evening for those of you who don't know me my name is jessica hutchison i'm the mother of two children one who will be entering second grade at rosslyn another who we will keep in private preschool for another year i'm also a mental health professional specializing in sudden traumatic and violent loss today i sit
069before you all once again urging you to give our children a sense of normalcy warranted or not the decisions that have been made over the last 18 months have tragically impacted the mental health of our youth it saddens me that a lot of this fallout could have been prevented the following numbers were pulled directly from the idph website and can be found under death statistics for those who would like to fact check in 2020 552 children ages 1 to 17 died that's a 10 increase from the number of deaths in 2019. the increase was found in the top three leading causes of death accidents which includes drug overdose homicide and suicide even more staggering was young adults ages 18 to 24 which had a 34 increase from the year 2019 once again you will find
070those statistics under drug overdose accidents homicide and suicide there was a 25 increase in those same areas for 25 to 44. in 2020 there was a 64 67 excuse me 67 increase in overdose overdose deaths alone for ages 25 and under in every single age group there was a substantial increase in overdose deaths in lake county alone there was a 27.8 percent increase there's one common theme in every single number that i have just now listed the isolation experienced over the past year resulted in more young deaths than the year before all of which are directly linked to their mental health we need to get back to normal when we are out of a routine or in an unfamiliar place it deteriorates our mental health conditions wearing a mask in spool is not normal the
071issue is not the physical wearing of a mask it's a constant reminder that accompanies the mask the mask represents uncertainty in fear that has killed our children if you want to provide a positive impact let our kids get back to normal lastly i urge all parents right now listening to talk to their children about their use of mass we started doing this in my mental health practice i have heard time and time again my kids don't even mind the mass however when i encourage them to ask their children why why they don't mind their answers have floored them a seven-year-old boy told his mom because without it i will die a 13 year old girl told her mother because i can hide from the world when i lost my father to suicide in 2011 i
072learned two huge life lessons one is we can do everything exactly as we should and still not prevent death two is life will never be risk free every thing comes with some level of risk we have asked our country to follow the science and we must continue to do so the social emotional struggles far outweigh the risk of transmission in the risk of severe disease or hospitalization for our kids [Applause] krista followed by josh little good evening my name is christa bowen friends i've been a resident of barrington since the third grade went to grove avenue school and i have two children um a almost junior and a son going into eighth grade i am reading this compelling letter on behalf of elissa padson my son who will be a senior has a medical exemption
073from vaccines since he was a baby he almost died twice from vaccinations and it was unanimously advised from children's hospital northwestern and the mayo clinic to never vaccinate him again his younger sisters are fully vaccinated so she's not an anti-vaxxer his exemption has never been an issue with district 220 for 12 years per his doctor's recommendations he will not be getting the coveted shot i know you will hear from others with data on the dangers of wearing masks for the entire school population but i'd like to address a scenario that may be under consideration to only mask those children who do not get the vaccine hopefully the board will vote not to mask any children but if the compromise is only to mass kids who don't get the shot i'd like to offer an argument
074against that please consider that this coercive strategy threatens the children with segregation marginalization and old-fashioned bullying this mask issue is no longer about the science but it's about winning adult agendas and our kids are being sacrificed is the pawns i listen to my friend who's on a school board for a different district i was in shock when he profoundly said we will probably just be taking things away from them until they take it bottom line my son turns 18 in september if he were to submit to your tactics to get vaccinated i'm terrified that this will put his life in jeopardy and once again and this will be a disastrous direct direct result of the board's vote as of june 4 there have been over 5 000 deaths in the cdc's bayer's database from the
075covid vaccine there has been a total of 238 deaths in kids under 17 from covid that's a 0.04 percent my son's chances of dying from the vaccine astronomically exceed that of covid i asked the board to allow our kids to be used as pawns for political significance signaling if the vaccine works then those that have taken it shouldn't be worried i respect their right to take an unapproved vaccine with no long-term studies so they should respect my right as well hello my name is josh little and i'm the father of three kids in the school district first i'd like to welcome dr hunt to our community and let you know we look forward to watching you lead this group of outstanding teachers and administrators i also would like to say if you play your cards
076right you just may end up representing this community for a long time and if that interests you i just ask that you look around the room today listen to the public comments and then think about what this community stands [Applause] for just a little exercise if if anybody in this room has ties to the community of i don't know 60 more years stand up [Applause] about 30 years 20 years stand up 10 years stand up and if you moved here because of the barrington community that these people helped establish years ago stand up dr hunt this is barrington this is what this community stands for [Applause] i uh echo the sentiments spoken earlier regarding masking and quarantining and i won't uh say see a lot of the same points raised earlier but i wanted to
077end with this one of the last things brian harris said was it's easy to lead in good times and be a good leader it's easy to lead in good times and to be a good leader you have to lead in tough times too i ask that the board leads us out of this pandemic make things normal for our kids consistent with everything that is happening around barrington field of dreams no masks bc park no masks shaku moretti's mcgonagalls no masks barrington pool no masks jewel no masks we could go on and on if things go bad we can always go backwards but why start the year in fear when our community has already moved past [Applause] thank you josh after robert winden will be demographic good evening um for those of you that don't know
078me most of you here do my name is robert winston i have two children here in berlin 220 schools i don't need to spend a lot of time reiterating what you've heard tonight you know most of which i agree with not all of which but that's the nature of it is we're all going to have slightly different takes what i'm here to kind of implore this board and remind you guys is that out of all the guidance that has come out from the cdc in the state of illinois in the recent days is they are passing on local control they do realize that the cdc has to look at the entire country and they're not looking at what is going on at variant and they can't and they shouldn't but this board can and this
079board should um and remind you guys that you were elected from the barrington 220 community and just that's it you make your own decision and not reiterate what somebody else has told you to think or what somebody else has said look at the evidence look at this community and then you know make the best informed decision that you guys can and we all are trusting you guys to do that so thank you after jim will be courtney holdsworth my name is jim mcgrath i have spoken to the board several times over the last couple years some of you guys know every time i've spoken it's been for the safety and well-being of the students i have two grandkids in d220 one is vaccinated one is not old enough to be vaccinated um so i've always
080talked about support and safety of the kids and that's been for guns we now have a a something that we have to worry about that we can't see and that's coven what's coming out now is the delta variant it's new it attacks kids there are 20 kids in or 12 kids in mississippi 10 of which are in life support right now because of this let's not bring that to barrington okay let's keep uh file the cdc guidelines i have experience with mass i know they work in november i was working with my son to move some furniture we were in the cab of a truck for a half an hour we worked together for an hour and a half we both wore masks the day after that he tested positive for covet so did his
081wife and kids i did not get the copic okay listen to jim please please i'm sorry i wanted to make sure they're quiet we can't hear you thank you so so i know mass work okay i have not anecdotal i have direct experience so masks work i and all i'm asking is that the board follow the cdc guidelines students benefit from in-person learning we all know that and everybody wants to get back to normal but you have to go through some hard times before you get back to normal please everybody was respectful and he listened to you please let's hear jim out so if people don't want to get vaccinations there's an option you can wear a mask where's your mask or you can wear a mask or you can do remote learning okay so
082so all i'm asking all i'm asking is that the board follows cdc guidelines and i'd just like to make a comment to all the people that are against masks next time you have an operation why don't you tell the people in that operating room masks are optional [Applause] all right all right okay courtney is up next thank you jim courtney is up next courtney after courtney will be brian kroll please my name is courtney holdsworth i grew up in barrington attending north barrington elementary prairie middle school and bhs i have an incoming freshman and i move my fourth grader from north barrington to quest academy in regards to masks why are we still talking about [Applause] you do this that our kids have been together all summer jumping in huddles together on baseball fields celebrating
083wins sitting next to each other at open movie theaters dancing at the eighth grade dance swimming birthday parties barbecues so now we're going to bring them back for school space them out and put masks back on them frankly this conversation is tired and i can't believe i had to take time away from my 18 month old to stand up for my 14 year old tonight sadly there is no point in getting into the data and science because it doesn't even seem to matter anymore when will the 220 school board i grew up with and know and love make what we all know is the right decision let the parent choose whether or not to mask their own kid the job here your job is to educate our children not worry about my parents they're fine
084and not to insert control by mandating my child with a piece of cloth over his face that we can now buy on clearance at target for 99 cents okay dean dean left as well okay um sheba stands after sheba would be heather ewald hello i'm sheba sands and i have to admit i was a little bummed out about the hearing i thought it was going to be really boring but one nugget i took away is that we're spending 2.8 million dollars on air purification so i think that means we don't need masks oh in his introductory hello video online dr hunt indicated that the core of his job has always been about improving the learning experience for our students and i could not agree more let's start by letting them get some fresh air to
085their brains while they're trying to learn let's also recognize students medical freedom and the inviolable rights of parents to make medical decisions in the best interest of their children we don't need the school board or any other entity to try to usurp our role and our kids should be free to learn without distractions of unnecessary quarantines invasive testing or vaccine discrimination and rather than worrying about legal liability and covet insurance and push back from the id ph or isb maybe district 220 should be concerned about liability related to coercive medical experiments on its side [Applause] the data illustrates that masks are not safe and at the very least mask use and other medical decisions should be optional at the discretion of parents face masks are bacteria-laden petri dishes resting at the doorstep of our respiratory
086membranes as already mentioned 11 different pathogens including pneumonia sepsis and tb were found on students masks after just one day at school no wonder they're known as space divers in addition on june 30th of this year the journal of the american medical association pediatrics published a horrific study with the randomized control trial not surprisingly 100 percent of the children reached four times the osha permissible limits of co2 exposure in just nine minutes if that were happening with employees in your school district and they filed a complaint that would be a big hr issue imagine what this level amounts to after an entire school day as such the study's authors stated quote we suggest that decision makers weigh the hard evidence produced by these experimental measures accordingly which suggests that children should not be forced to
087wear masks end quote these coveted protocols could leave our children less healthy than at the start of the pandemic they're unnecessary they're beyond risky and we as parents are our children's chief caretakers we don't need your help we need you to teach them history has shown us that public health disguises rarely return true informed consent or freedom to the people so as we stand on the border of medical coercion outlawed by the nuremberg code we pray you have the courage to stand with us and support medical freedom for our children make masks optional without any discrimination based on vaccination status or testing [Applause] heather and then next up after heather is amy season thank you for allowing me to speak tonight to all of you who are representing my family on our school board and
088thank you for your time and dedication to our d220 children i would like to especially welcome our new superintendent dr hunt to our district and to illinois i'm heather ebel i'm a parent of d220 children and i would like to share my perspective on math squaring when returning to fall school some of my children are able to wear them just fine but some of my children get headaches and can't breathe with them on this is my experience some of my children get anxiety with the mask wearing some of them have anxiety seeing people wear them i'm greatly concerned with my children in chinese immersion who are struggling to learn the language because they cannot see the lips move of their peers and teachers a lot of language is learned with your lips i just need
089you to know that some children do suffer when forced to wear masks my children do there are negative consequences to mask wearing i am also concerned with the divisiveness that this topic is causing in our district a topic i feel there should be no problems with wear a mask or don't it's your choice there are people demanding that people demanding that vaccinated children be marked somehow at school or forced to wear masks at all times regardless of if there is an outbreak or not there are children not able to be vaccinated of no fault of their own some parents have decided the risk of the adverse effect reactions to the vaccine outweigh the risk of their children dying or being adverse reaction to coven we need to be equitable to all the children on our
090district and stop the negative rhetoric we need to come together in love and solidarity we do not need to be shaming children who choose not to wear masks or do wear masks i know that you have stated that our districts will be following the cdc guidelines but their guidelines leave wiggle room for each district to determine their own preventative strategies and masking guidelines especially when community transmission is under 10 cases per 10 000 as we are now in lake and cook counties according to idph today the cdc states that quote in general people do not need to wear mask outdoors so i urge you at least to make sure that our children do not have to wear masks outside at recess in the heat and humidity of illinois um and just i'd like you to
091be brave um and make the choice to make masks optional thank you and god bless [Applause] okay um and busy mary kellenbach mercedes beltran i think she left as well alison rohrbach dr betts after dr betts is the tomations i see both doug and agnes hi good evening i'm uh bill betts i have three children in the school district and they're centered in the barbara rose elementary school area and i think it's common sense that everyone here knows that the kids are not wearing their masks anywhere other than potentially at school right so it seems a little bit silly to have them wear it at school so i mean that being said a lot of people have mentioned that now i know let's take a step beyond common sense and let's talk about politics and
092the law because i've heard the board reference a number of times the idph recommendations i like to just read some important excerpts from there it starts off with considerations for reopening schools it's considerations this is not a law it then goes on to recommend the following and i'll read the important part that pertains to this maintaining a distance of at least six feet from other adults this is at the time this is written and from other students when feasible when feasible obviously you can decide it's just not feasible to teach in a school and have everyone packed in close and get what you want done right so this is not a mandate this is a suggestion and lest you think that the illinois lawmakers are not capable of making laws and telling you what they
093really mean they do they they say shell they don't they don't recommend things they tell you what shall be done and the word shell describes mandates you see shell zero times in the entire idph guidelines it doesn't say shell a single time you can do an easy word search for that if you look at something regarding mandatory tendons for school children it uses the word shell 72 times and then it goes on to describe what happens if you don't do it right you're guilty of a class c misdemeanor yada yada you're going to pay money you're going to do jail time so keep in mind that when these guys make these recommendations they're just recommendations you guys are the ones who set the rules and they let you know that too in the actual recommendations
094so i urge you guys to use the authority that we've given you to make that call on our behalf like don't defer to the idph thank you all right uh doug tomasian magnustimation okay uh john cushing lenny keller joe holland hello joe hello hello um my name is joe holland i've been a resident for over 20 years uh daughter graduated from high school two goals one in high school one going into high school my wife graduated from barrington high school and her mother graduated from barrington high school um hey listen it's been a tough you know last 18 months i think we all recognize that i think we all made some sacrifices people can argue whether they're good bad or different but the news flash right now is in barrington i can't speak for the
095rest of the world the pandemic is over yeah right covenant will be with us forever but the pandemic is over in barrington um i don't say i it's awesome to see everyone without masks on i also understand why people have masks on everyone has free choice but at the end of the day you know our kids deserve to get back to normal if they want to wear a mask wear a mask if they don't don't if they're vaccinated that's great if they're not that's their choice i think everyone has had a chance to take care of themselves so i think it's time for us to take care of our kids and i also one recommendation if you guys vote no for math right now you can clear out the room [Applause] [Music] rick lavoie rick
096here oh i see him and then helen you're next you're after vic you're after rick hi good evening thank you all for being here thank you for representing us thank everybody for coming out i thank everybody that spoke uh you guys stole everything that i did i'm kind of stuck with just a little story i'm one of the few that moved to barrington because of the district we moved here two years ago my daughter has special needs her brain is developing yeah she needs oxygen she should not have a mask on there's so many things i want to say this gentleman has every right to believe what he wants to believe we shouldn't censor people or yell at them the mask worked for him he stated it he can wear it his grandkids can wear
097it but our kids we don't want it and the majority speaks and we're speaking loud and we're telling everybody for our kids no masks if his grandkids want to wear masks if you want to wear a mask if it worked for you great god bless you but not for our kids um to piggyback off of another point the statistic is the exodus from illinois per capita we are the highest of all 50 states only two states lead us and that's new york and california that's by volume per capita people are leaving illinois so they're sick of all the rules and regulations and the push down on us so we're imploring you to act on our behalf we're speaking to you and we're hoping that you'll listen and stick with us and that's really all it
098happens [Applause] [Music] while helen's coming up dan naranjo is next after helen hello ford um welcome dr hunt i'm helen ledowski i have four kids two in the district i'm a full-time advocate for all things 220. many of you already know me not just just up this subject i worked as a critical care nurse for a very long time chances are if you were in the swimmer in this room i have advocated for your child at some point my youngest is eight so i'm excited about normal um he didn't miss a year of schooling and i think the top priority was to get him back i'm so thankful that we're back almost three-fourths of my kids are fully vaccinated but i have zero judgment for those who are not and many of these people in
099the room know me and know that's true i care for all students and have helped make the food better with high school the environment better worked on the referendum core campaign committee and help with special needs initiatives i'm here 360 for 220 and i care about every single child i was raised to believe um since i was 22 you know and started in the healthcare field long time ago that you know infectious disease protocol was the law just like we understand that wearing a seatbelt and traffic lights are the live someone came up to me and said i refuse to just uh i think it's government overreach to you know wear a seat belt or go through a traffic light i just wouldn't know what to say and that's how i felt when people were
100talking to me about math i was like kind of like i don't get it it's just where i came from in the world that i that i came from um the maps were necessary to protect my patients myself and the greater community it's how many of us not all of us that medical folks are raised it's the law for us in the hospital it's disheartening to see my worlds collide the mass seemed like common sense but it seemed to offend so many i feel only people who should be giving you advice actually are infectious disease experts a contagion of this magnitude is global and therefore whatever happens in india today will affect us in the united states a few months later it's not just about our region when we go to a birthday party movie
101whatever with our kids that's our choice but school isn't a choice and we have immunocompromised cancer parents all these people who should go to school and feel like they're completely safe people say that if you want to wear a mask it should be a choice and those who wear a mask can feel protected but that's not how masks work if i'm wearing a mask because i care about you and i'm protecting you it's not because i am trying to protect myself although wearing a mask does have some protective qualities let's say there's a no mask wearing classroom and we talked about this today with my friend who um who disagrees with me but we care about each other that classroom is a family all year they are family johnny goes to a huge party where
102almost no one is vaccinated essentially the entire classroom has gone to that party because johnny has now gone back to his classroom and that's his family because of johnny's exposure he also is exposed to the rest of the classroom just like hiv you know no one should care what johnny does it's not our business um johnny what johnny does not our business math you know and that puts the mass issue to rest because we don't i don't want to care about who vaccinated my class in my kids classroom i don't care what my kids are doing what the other kids are doing regardless who dies what more of what this variant's job is to live at any time the bearing can change to be more deadly to our children for kids in elementary knowing many
103have been traumatized by school closures we must understand the kids being in school should take top priority consid consistency of mass use age eight to twelve um hand washing distance apart she remain consistent until it's safe to do otherwise inside the classroom not out thank you thank you i did okay dan you stand here okay after dan is margel's adam mcgonagall my first time speaking at the board and one comment i'm going to make i did write all of you yesterday and only one of you responded so thank you very much to the person who did one thing that i'm most disturbed by is the lack of emotion and the lack of interest that you're showing this crowd now one thing that i do want to clear up really quickly is that hiv is not
104transmitted in the air okay i think that dr hunt this is your opportunity to make a change in barrington do not do what your predecessor did which is basically sit back write out his last term and retire letting a board make decisions for our children without any consideration for those children i'm in no way asking this board to do away with masks especially for students and parents who choose to wear them i'm simply requesting this board respect the parents who on a daily basis make decisions in the best interest of their children i'm the father of four children who have been in 220 schools and i've tried hard to make the best decisions for them i do not want to lose that choice because of arbitrary policies and decisions made by individuals who literally have
105no skin in the game my children were completely overjoyed when they returned to in-person learning but were definitely adversely affected by the arbitrary rules requiring masks as a parent i struggled to explain to them why they had to why they had to when every study shows that one they're not super spreaders they were named or titled and two children were the absolute least susceptible to have adverse effects from the virus i'm tired of explaining stupid and arbitrary rules to my children implemented and devised by adults who are not living their lives it's very easy for us to wear masks when we choose to as you two choose to as you choose but to explain it to them when we know they're at zero risk it's very difficult for a parent as a new superintendent and
106certainly the 220 board board member you must be alarmed and by the increased rates of depression psych made med prescriptions and suicide rates among our youth children today already face so many pressures and stigma as is what the idph guidelines provide is just another means by which a child can be labeled vaccinated or unvaccinated and all the assumptions that are taking place between and among those two groups let families make choices privately do not succumb to the few who somehow fear they're doing their part or you know making the world a better place by by following these guidelines relaxing rules for those who are vaccinated at its core will foster and support discrimination ostracizing and bullying all factors which each one of you categorically should oppose i'm out of time but you guys do what
107you're entrusted to do do what we voted you in for get rid of the mass mandate [Applause] margolzada and the sarah jean kitty still here hello i am jacques mcgonagall welcome dr hunt um to a district to 20. and um i wasn't going to talk about math because i know a lot of people talk about mask already but i do have a degree in the science and i spent quite a time in um laboratory wearing masks studying bacterial and viral transmissions between animals and humans and i can promise you neither of us ever wore a cloth mask for our safety so um there you go i kind of debunked the cloth mask theory how they work um we all have heard the quote those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it how
108do you feel about learning history that it's not actually factual while promoting the business this is the basis for a critical race theory or crt however you want to call it which is now being pushed on our children theory by the definition is a well sustained explanation of an aspect of a natural world that can incorporate laws hypothesis and facts theories are typically used in science and i don't rely on past history critical race theory attempts to push rewritten history along with the facts are being distorted to better serve the narrow-minded crt agenda basically the certain people are inherently privileged and all others are oppressed and it's all based on a skin color in illinois we have one million polish immigrants i am a first generation polish immigrant how many how many immigrants from europe
109do we have here right now how many how many immigrants from europe do we have here right now look at all the hands how is this even remotely possible to assume in a blanket statement that they represent white privilege are responsible for slavery and should hate themselves a blanket statement condemning white people is just as ignorant as twisted as those who condemn people of color period my sons my son's ancestors which is my grandparents were slaves in german and russian camp after world war one how many children in america can claim the same should my son feel guilty not just for his skin color but for his white ancestors well this is one of the basis of the crt theories crt teaches the business as far as i know we have one race the human
110race and our constitution states all men are created equal why would anyone want to teach our kids otherwise i want school when kids can be kids where they can learn how to respect one another regardless of race creed skin color religion or sexual preference without being told that they are privileged or inferior are oppressed my son and others should be proud of who they are they should learn how to be leaders and not followers how to explain and develop their brains instead of being restricted due to feelings of fear and guilt we don't need to guide kids to make decisions based on the ignorant and fully incorrect accusation that crt promotes as martin luther king jr said it took a day when people will be not judged by the color of their skin but the
111content of their character crt teachings not only ignore this universal statement but turn it around anyone teaching or in favor of critical race theory should really read up on a real history so they can better re-evaluate themselves they are the ones that should not be pointing fingers in others thank you is sarah j and kenny here is she gone okay um paul read nikki uh how about adam huffman [Applause] do you all mind if i stand i know i can talk loud so good evening ladies and gentlemen sirs and mams now i just addressed you as respectful as i know how when i grew up it was common courtesy to say yes ma'am to a woman yes sir to a man and generally suspect respect my elders nowadays our children are being taught very confusing
112and just plain incorrect lessons and in the process have lost a great deal of respect for their fellow human beings let me straighten out a couple of things for you if you're confused though i have it on great authority i'm a christian man oh i'm sorry i have a father of five here in the district too i lived in barrington hills um i went on great authority in the bible that god he made them male and female if you're still confused you can read it it doesn't say anything about pansexual non-binary gender flu i don't know what the hell that even means i'm not sure what it means and i bet most people here don't either our children are being taught a bunch of nonsense about many different genders which are mostly determined by how
113one feels at that particular moment this is so confusing how are they to be respectful when addressing another person excuse me they or good morning them or pardon me it i did not know who or how you identified today please forgive me i'll try harder next time to call you by your made up identity no one else could possibly know by looking at you this is so confusing and is tearing up the morals and values of the children of today it's no wonder so many are on antidepressants anti-anxiety medications why i'm on the top of those sex let me speak about the ridiculous sex education you're proposing to teach my child or my children five of them first of all i do not relinquish my parental responsibility to you as educators [Applause] to have free
114reign to teach my children whatever you decide is age appropriate for them let me remind you how this works we're the parents and have the responsibility to protect our children and guide you the educators on what's age appropriate for our children to learn especially when it comes to sexuality and sex education some brainless stooges that call themselves chicago public school board of education adopted the most ridiculous and offensive sex education standards i've ever heard they want to teach sixth graders how to use a female condom to have safe anal sex between boys y'all didn't know that yeah it's right here it's right here it's all over yeah you all should check this out there's a nice lesbian pictures pictures no heterosexuals i'm weird i still like my wife's vagina [Laughter] sorry was that too much
115because that's what we're asking kids to do right go up and say hi you can call me by this that's sex that has no place they just need to say who they are and what they want to do my kids want to play ball with their friends they don't want to come out no you're a girl and you're oh who do you like to who should i call you today it's ridiculous that's a bunch of crap thank you adam thank you adam adam i don't know if you heard the bell but the bell can you wrap it up please new educators stick to reading writing arithmetic leave the carotene to parents parents go back paul rednicky after paul will be christine ditton thank you sorry that's in the oven that's okay okay all right [Applause]
116all right my name is paula rednicki i have a student at countryside and a student entering barrington high school later this fall i want to keep correct a couple things i've heard over the course the evening first off the phrase all men are created equal is primarily the declaration of independence or the 14th amendment to the constitution not the constitution itself second of all this board is primary responsibility is to keep our children safe whether it's safe on the playground safe in the busy please you cannot learn effectively if you're not in a safe environment it's the responsibility of this board to keep the students parents and teachers and staff in these buildings and even in their homes outside these buildings as safe as they possibly can i have an immunocompromised individual in my house
117earlier this summer my wife had a kidney transplant so we struggle with mask versus not mask my son is going into high school he's fully vaccinated he is excited to go back to in-person learning he's excited the possibility of going back and maybe not wearing a mask however my daughter is under the age of 12. she's not able to get a copy 19 vaccine yet so i'd like to turn the argument i've heard this evening from the parents here on its head a little bit if forcing people who haven't been vaccinated to wear a mask is a form of discrimination and opens people up to bullying i would like to know how we're going to prevent kids who choose to wear a mask if they're made optional from being bullied i've seen it in my
118own neighborhood already this summer kids that will not play with my daughter they won't go near her because her parents have not told her what the purpose of a mask is they say oh she's sick i can't play with her i won't talk to her i won't go near her okay this is a microcosm of what we're going to see in our schools so as to last year kids were not robbed of a year of education from my perspective i saw a lot of teachers working harder than i've ever seen them work i got a lot more emails from teachers and support staff late at night when i thought they'd probably not be working going through their inboxes catching up on email just like i was working from home and pulling some kind of eye
119hours myself so also my kids were not forced by this school under any form of social media i call on the school board to follow the cdc guidance unvaccinate individuals should be wearing a mask hey i understand you all disagree but it's my turn to talk yeah okay um the conditions of covet 19 for anybody who's under the age of 12 or an unvaccinated older than 12 have not necessarily changed except for the fact that more people around you are vaccinated and give you less chance of catching the virus brian kim hi uh my name is brian kim my wife and i are both physicians we have three small boys that are in the barrington high school district i'd like to offer a little contrasting viewpoint so i just ask that you hear me out
120so as i mentioned she and i have been working in hospitals ever since this pandemic started we have been wearing masks 10 to 12 hours a day still continue to do so even though we're fully vaccinated we've both witnessed numerous patients who have succumbed and died to covid my wife heard she caught covet herself while taking care of patients at the hospital she couldn't be here tonight because she's taking she's working actually tonight despite being in her 30s absolutely healthy she developed severe respiratory disease was in the hospital for seven days almost put on a ventilator i mentioned this only to point out that even though we may individually feel that our we ourselves our children have low risk we don't know there's some degree of unpredictability to this it's easy to forget how deadly
121covet can be especially during periods like this where we have low infection rates and societal reopening is occurring in our area i urge everybody however to remember that it's because of higher masking and vaccination rates that we're enjoying some of the freedoms we have now to reopen we only need to look at states like missouri where low rates of masking and vaccination have led to ongoing severe outbreaks with hospitals filled to capacity requesting additional ventilators and nearing previous winter surge levels of infection while children are less likely while children are less likely to develop severe symptoms or require hospitalization from covid compared to adults recent cova 19 data is actually changing the delta variant is becoming more prevalent it's more contagious and even amongst children hospitalization rates are increasing children can also develop long-term complications
122from covet including multi-inflammatory syndrome which causes persistent fever pain severe heart and kidney damage summertime is a period when even endemic disease such as influenza is at a low kids are not in school we're outdoors we're a space we're spending a lot of time separate from each other however we know that in the fall flu comes back covid's not going away covet the same conditions that lead to increased flu also lead to increased covet i believe that most people served by barrington want and realize the importance of in-person schooling for our children believe me when my wife was sick i had no idea what the heck i was doing with the remote learning however i asked the board to keep into consideration how to provide the safest environment for every child kids who are under
12312 who cannot be vaccinated kids who have immunocompromised conditions or have people in their household who are immunocompromised this would i ask them to please protect vulnerable populations while giving every child in the district the opportunity to attend school in a safe environment thank you mike whaley okay that actually concludes our public comment very quickly please thank you um just as a please identify yourself yes i'm a uh within the district um and just as a member who serves on a board locally i want to thank each of you for your time here this evening i know how difficult it is to sit in your seats and have members of the public be accusatory towards you um it's a difficult job you don't get paid for it and i really appreciate commitment to listening to
124the public here tonight you are a new board there are new fresh members they're great old members you have a new superintendent you can do amazing things and i just want to thank you for your time and for being considerate of all the people who came to speak to you tonight thank you colleen i'm just adding your name here so you don't forget okay all right so that concludes public comment um next up is dr hunt's report and then we'll go into our protocol discussion as we discuss and then let's do a time check after that how about that's great uh first of all thank you very much for everyone being here tonight and commenting um i i do want to just take a minute before we get into the protocol conversation um to to
125thank this entire community uh teachers tonight kind of a difficult environment to stand up and appreciate your kind words and i'm extremely excited with my family to be here i'm very appreciative of the board of education that was in place when we went through the selection process as well as appreciative of the the new members that are here tonight uh a few will understand the amount of time and commitment uh and energy it takes to do these jobs well and um i certainly uh respect and appreciate you stepping forward and representing your community i have a feeling for many of you uh covet 19 and a pandemic was not on the list of things you thought you'd deal with um when you ran for the board of education i also want to recognize dr brian
126harris for his work in transition on his service to barrington 220 as well as the executive council janine stark just have done an amazing job in helping support me and my family get here so i appreciate that very much when i was evaluating barrington as an option in terms of my professional endeavors obviously the school district has many things to be proud of and accolades to in place that are attractive to candidates but it was actually the people when i came here and kind of did a solo recruiting mission with my wife that we sat next to in restaurants and talked to about this school in the community that drew me here it's the type of individuals and the type of kids that are here that make this place so special the type for example
127when you're driving from cleveland ohio in a u-haul truck and your movers decide to cancel on you you put something online and two high school students cameron smith and connor riley show up your house and help you unload your truck that's that's the kind of community that barrington is and i'm very appreciative and honored to have the opportunity to work with all of you and join you as a community member uh in moving forward um it is kova 19 is a test to every community it's not unique here i know you feel like this is unique to barrington but it's a test everywhere and it's the communities that realize how difficult this is and the ability to come together to try to navigate through this final chapter hopefully of covid that will lead to success
128and get us the other side so i i i again appreciate everyone being here i appreciate the passion uh you have for your schools and and know we take our responsibilities very seriously uh i will transition and try to update the board i joined july 1st officially we were waiting for guidance and of course it clops on friday before tuesday meeting so we we our team has worked diligently to kind of understand what that guidance means we want to provide an overview for the board of education on kind of where we see that and and the information we have for you and then we'll move into that conversation so i'm going to ask beth jones to step up uh beth didn't realize that i was going to completely hijack her day this morning uh when
129when i came into her office there was some a legal webinar that we were able to sit through uh really helped with some of the questions that we were wrestling with and i think it's important that we review that at a very high level um the information that that we were um provided today uh so this is uh out of uh one of our legal rep firms uh offered the the presentation and i can't find the name unfortunately uh no it was not forensic uh who was it was pre-about it was kriya bhojak who put on a presentation this morning and then i did speak with branson after that to kind of verify some of the information uh as well so we're gonna talk kind of at a high level uh as we as we
130currently see things i think it's important to note that um with within this you know obviously student safety is something we always have to worry about and can be certain be concerned with our our number one priority remains and and will remain educating our kids and moving them forward and regardless of where this ends tonight or next week or in two weeks we have to be cognizant and aware we may be put in a position we have to pivot that's a reality and i i know you don't want to hear that but it's a reality of this situation so i think we make the best decisions we can based on the information we have at the time and we um kind of need to continue to evaluate numbers cases and and where we're going uh
131you know locally i am a huge advocate for local control i've fought for it my entire educational career we've had those conversations um even here in illinois and i think there is there's there is an opportunity here finally to engage in this conversation and look at your data locally and make decisions locally so we want to walk through i'm going to turn it over to beth and we'll kind of just piggyback back and forth and certainly if you have questions on something that we are getting into just board please stop us along the way i will do our best to answer them thank you for letting me talk with you i i know this is a super difficult decision um i do want to say that we're only making this decision because we do have
132our kids coming back in the fall and that's a that is a celebration to have our kids coming back in person um got to look for some of the silver linings and i'm just presenting information to you tonight so that you have all of the data so you can make an informed decision that this is not the administration saying we feel we should do one thing or another so please keep that in mind um so we have four options currently that we're talking about um that are just just options that are things that the board needs to look at we have the four options in front of you the universal masking option non-vaccinated masking option of phase masking and masks optional so i'm going to go through what all of those are and some of
133them are self-explanatory we don't have a plan behind any of these because we're waiting for direction from the board to let us know which one you would like and then we would make a plan as an administration to make sure that we follow what we need to do to keep our students and staff safe the universal masking option is straightforward everybody is required to wear a mask whether you've been vaccinated or not hold your booze all right the next one and your booze okay now the non-vaccinated masking is only for those who have uh not been vaccinated would wear a mask parents might need to let us know the status of whether or not kids have been vaccinated that's another option the next one is face masking we start with maybe some levels start the
134year not wearing a mask others are required to wear a mask and then we see what kind of data we get and the data is just looking at transmission um the vaccination percentages and also if there is any um you know the the um the levels of uh covet cases within our community and then the last one is masks optional everybody in the district could choose whether or not they want to wear a mask we did talk about this was given to us as an option that sometimes some districts are asking parents to sign a waiver saying i don't have a problem if my child wears a mask or doesn't wear a mask okay so those are the four options that we're talking about um this is something that we were that was explained to
135us if you have more mitigations in place you know the district does want to protect students we also don't want kids to get sick we don't want parents to be suing the district that's another reality um and that's just to show you if we have more mitigations in place you have less liability more toward immunity obviously it goes the other way and that's the political stuff we've been talking about all night the strat the prevention strategies that we have in place we have nine strategies up there we do everything in this district right now except for the surveillance testing so what we're talking about is really layering our services for i mean our supports for kids if you take something if you take the layer off they recommend that you do it slowly if you
136take a layer off like you take the masks away you need to um look at the other options up there and determine are there other areas where we maybe need to increase what we're doing like our ventilation we're doing that you know so that's that's something to look at to improve in that area so that is my really short presentation to you on what the options are board um do you have questions do you have comments or anything any discussion that you would like to have now would be the time to do that amongst the board questions so i mean to be clear the decisions that we or the guidance that we may give tonight it's flexible right depending on you know what's like for instance if in september the cdc says you know kids
13711 and under vaccination is open to them they that may we could maybe revisit at some point i mean like i'm just saying that everything is it's ever changing if that's what you're saying that that's correct what the information we have today is actually different from the information that we got on friday because on friday the interpretation was these are going to be the mandates and like we've talked about tonight there is there is wiggle room for districts they it is not a mandate they are recommendations right so what we what we decide knowing what we know now yes it could potentially it would help the community i know see where we're heading but we could still have some flex it's not like this is what stands for the 21-22 school year i don't think
138anything is going to be able to stand for the 21-22 school year because we don't know what's going to happen with the rates of of people getting coveted if it if you know it decreases if people get vaccinated i mean if we don't have a lot of sickness in our community and things are going well obviously we'll go one direction if we see that the variance does you know become an issue for us then we'll have to do something different so i think it's an ever-changing topic but i think right now what we're talking about is and i don't think you actually have to make a decision i think you have to make a decision of what you would like the administration to look into and determine like what plans would we have for that
139if we did it that's just a recommendation i think it's really important to be clear to the community delta variant something explodes we have a mass breakout it will shift to change we will have to change that is that is a a possibility just like if you went with phased masking if everything was working great we would want to pull mass back the change would be pulling back change maybe in quarantine procedures those things can be pulled back and changed as well so i think the answer to your question is yes and it could work either way so the understanding is that the mitigations could loosen or they could tighten depending on what our status is in the area and your your position in terms of where you stand with this can be balanced with
140different mitigation strategies so i heard no social distancing maybe you say we are gonna strike we're gonna we're gonna hit three feet we're gonna strive for four feet where we can but we're gonna pull back on masks and or we're going to do random volunteer testing that you can put other mitigations in place to balance what you pull away that's i think the point of the slide that was shared on prevention strategies were there any options on quarantine as well when and updating quarantine they have not made any recommendations for for changes for that at this time they are saying continue with the quarantining um the process that we have in place for we don't currently have a process in place because we don't have a remote education system no we do for contact tracing
141and quarantining we do are we at six feet right now or three feet no we're gonna wait i'm sorry can we get back if a child that gets contact trace and has to go home for ten days and it's unvaccinated they will be on zoom with their teacher we don't have a plan exactly as what that's going to look like whether it'll be they will be on zoom or whether we will do something alternate we don't know at this point that's why we have to make a determination of what we want to do and then we'll make that determination that's that's aside from the masks though and i think that you know i guess what we're looking for is guidance in these buckets tonight and we come back to you saying okay we've worked with
142our staff we've talked to our teachers here's how we would best handle quarantine and bring that information back to you i think before we we spend a lot of time detailing all these areas narrowing that focus for us would be extremely helpful so we can bring those details back to you just to clarify our current quarantine process are we at six feet with with a positive exposure or three feet three feet with the with the recommendations that we have now they're talking about if you're three feet you try to keep the six feet if you don't have masks if you can't we want kids back in school so they're saying you can go to the three feet okay and it's the two weeks with a negative pcr you know what that's like yeah that's it
143it depends it depends for ten days or two weeks if you're not but those are different topics than the mask wearing which i could share information with you to discuss that at some point as well yeah i know that this is the as we discuss i'm trying to make a list of plan attributes like quarantining procedures that would be part of it you know what prevention strategies we're going to have in place so as i as you talk i'm going to make a list and i'll try to summarize it and when we get to the end too i think it would be very helpful to make my decision knowing how many percentage-wise uh students and faculty are vaccinated i know there's um hip-hop i understand that so i'm not looking for names i'm looking for
144percentages yeah do we have fifty percent do we have eighty percent right now it will be so much easier to make a decision if i know where the protection levels are right that's right i'm asking different vaccinations right now let right now the data that we can get is from 16 to 64. so it doesn't they're not delineating students right now at the lake county health department when you look up on the website you can see through like covet act now you can see zip codes but it's it's it's looking at all vaccinations it's not breaking it down by the age groups at this point for us and we don't have that through the lake county health department yet either did they have that information that they they could help advise us on i know
145one of the guidances is that we should be consulting with them right yes but they don't have that information for us at this point no and that's something we're looking for too just seeing so we can see percentages of people who are vaccinated who are not that are within our school community so i'm just going to give my opinion to get the ball rolling here i believe it's time to return risk management back to the parents i think we should [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh thanks sorry thank you um i i ran for one reason and one reason only i felt this board was not representing the community and that is why i i wanted to run here's my personal opinion on this thing we started this well over a year ago it was two weeks
146to slow the spread then it went let's keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed check then it was wait until we have a vaccine check then it was let's vaccinate our frontline workers we did it let's vaccinate vaccinate those most at risk our essential workers thankfully our teachers we did it then it was a certain percentage had to be vaccinated in illinois we at least 90 percent of those 65 and older have been vaccinated with at least one dose and we are at 70 percent 12 and over that is the goal that the government has sent we have met it here in illinois check uh that it was transmission levels currently we're at one point three per five one point three five percent rolling average for positivity in our in our area and then even more
147importantly than positivity i looked up hospitalization rates in all of illinois currently in all of illinois we have 108 covet patients occupying icu beds 108 in all of illinois so i ask here's my what is it what's enough like what is what's the end game i we have no idea if they're going to improve a vaccine for 12 and under we have states we are one of only how many states a handful of states still mandating masses in our school when are we going to free our children who are not statistically affected by kovic my children go to school where they say be a hero wear a mask i don't want my child to be a hero you know our children don't need to be heroes they need to be children yeah that is that's
148where i am there's the board member okay [Applause] [Music] so for clarification dr hunt you sent us some recommendations yesterday for board consideration do these four options supersede those considerations or recommendations or would you like to share those it certainly changed based on this morning uh our ability to go in these two others care in other categories in my opinion i i think going in a phased or a mass optional direction is should be our kind of our threshold or our direction moving forward is your current recommendation that we select one of these four options in terms of giving guidance yes because we we have a lot of work to do administratively to put the details together on what these look you know this won't be popular we have to have mitigation strategies in place
149they have to be there so we need to know what we're dealing with on this side of things so we come back to you saying we feel like this is an appropriate balance of mitigation strategies if you're moving one of these directions with masking and then to the board katie thank you so much for sharing your thoughts could we maybe start on a point where we know we have some consensus or we could potentially know that we have consensus as a board and then move on from there so for instance you know we know that 12 and up can get vaccinations right so is there is is there a possibility is there a possibility that we could start at is there a possibility that we could start it considering mass optional for our middle schools
150and our high school right now as a starting point as a starting so are you suggesting are you asking that for 12 age 12 and up we would do the non-vaccinated masking because you're asking if that's we all could agree to that as a minimum yeah either non-vaccinated or phased in terms of consensus in terms of consensus that we should we can allow mass optional for those who can have the capacity to get the vaccine not saying that you must have the vaccine to be mass optional but those that's discrimination that what i am saying is we may have consensus around our middle schools and our high school being mass optional and could we use that as a starting point can we discuss that and then i'm trying to see where we have some alignment
151right now is a board so we have a starting point let me say that katie thank you steve we need to go now hear me out from everything i just heard our big issue is liability our liability will be managed we're going to have mitigation things in place there's no reason that mass can't be optimal and let me clarify we're not saying that masks are not an option if you want to wear a mask you can wear a house when you're in a classroom i'm hearing from folks correctly you're going to be separated by three feet so the mitigation tactics are in place we're spending 2.8 million dollars in air filtration yeah we we're doing everything and i think we're doing more i've spoke to my own principal we're doing not just what we need
152to do we're doing more yeah there's no reason why we shouldn't be mass optional [Applause] what i'm proposing is that can we consider something that is not an all or nothing approach i just i feel like why why are we continuing to punish our youngest learners our kindergarteners were in school last year guys our kindergartners were in school last year for two and a half hours a couple months for two and a half hours a day the teachers did the best they could there was no enrichment opportunities we're then gonna make those little learners come back in stick a mask on their face they're not we're not like what are we doing our youngest kids should not continue to be punished for a disease that statistically does not affect them members my concern is that
153our 11 year olds and under do not even have the capacity for vaccinations like their cancer this discussion is this question is for my fellow board members okay if the board can't have a discussion we're going to take a quick break i i really need to the board needs to talk let the door talk i can't even hear someone sitting too let's get away from me please very disrespectful i am silly i am willing to give concessions to those who are 12 and older regardless of vaccination because those who are vast knows whose parents jews have vaccinated their kids and those students who want to vaccinate who feel they are protected will be protected regardless those who are those who are 11 and under their parents cannot even have the capacity for them to get
154vaccinated and that is my concern for me the game changer is when what kids 11 and under have the capacity to get vaccinated they don't then that's a parental choice then whether or not then if the parents choose to vaccinate them can you guys hear that can you can you hear can you hear her no i can't can i just say something to your community okay i am thrilled that you guys are here and i think all of us are happy to have your input and we have listened to public comment for a very long time and i appreciate what every single person said there are things that people said that i personally agree with there are things that people said that i personally don't agree with and and i don't think anyone at the
155board table interrupted and i appreciate that you're passionate if there's anything to be passionate about it's about your kids but to this extent we've got to get through this conversation and i know there are things you're going to agree with that are said and things you aren't going to agree with that are said but i ask you if you could just quietly bear with us until we get through it we won't have to take breaks and we can all still participate instead of just doing this longevity thing and waiting for people to leave so can you agree to that yes thank you but we already wanted our kids back in school last year and the same board that's sitting there told us no so what you're telling me right now is you're going to tell
156me no again that is all right thank you thank you angela i appreciate that aaron can you please continue yes so my concern is for those who parents who would like to vaccinate their kids who don't even have the capacity to vaccinate their kids right and so and so right now for me the game changer would be okay we can vaccinate kids 11 and under and so then those those vaccinated kids could potentially if you believe that the vaccination protects your kid could be protected from unvaccinated kids who who do not want to mask and then that mask then for me once that happens i think mask optional would make sense because you have the option to either fully vaccinate your kid or not i mean it is your choice so my cons i i
157wonder if we could consider coming to consensus and i'm trying to have a discussion with my fellow board members please so i'm wondering if we can come to a consensus that for now at least on the part with with 12 and up or sixth grade and up if logistically that's easier to handle no because kids can't those kids do have the potential to get vaccinated if they would like or if their parents would like and then that is in line with what idph is recommending which cdc is recommending and so so like we're so could an example of that of the phased masking be something that aaron is talking about so we could we would have masks required if people are not vaccinated under the age i would like an answer to my question yeah
158phase could look a lot of different ways the face could follow the vaccination phase could be you start sixth grade and up in kind of mask optional situation you then phase in the other elementaries as you go once you look at and continue to monitor data so you can you can structure phasing how however you want that's not phase masking has the end goal of getting to a mass optional correct right i mean it's just an incremental way of getting there instead of saying boom exactly i think it would be helpful if we did choose a phased masking stance like katie said i think it would be helpful to have some end game handles in terms of okay if when we go at mask optional for all students does that mean all students have access
159to the vaccination or does that mean right exactly or does that mean we have a certain number of hospitalizations or lower or certain number of positive cases or lower i mean what i think that's the thing i'm saying i think if we do fast face basking we need to have some of those handles from the administration yes i i totally agree with that i totally agree you need benchmarks and data we learned about this friday there was no way for us to pull that together right if that's the option the board directs us to go in we will spend some time talking with the health department try to defend figure out those benchmarks and bring them back to the board and that would be helpful for the community to know it would give a good
160direction are we talking to all four health departments or are we just continuing to work primarily with lake i i typically i typically have worked with lake county i said every wednesday morning superintendents and health department are on the on the phone with the lake county health department so tomorrow morning you will have some input from the county health department correct the man the requirements that have been handed down to us is for us to we can we can make changes as a local body in conjunction with our local health department that's what it says that's what i read does anybody disagree with that yes okay so tomorrow you would meet with our local health department so sandra what more are we going to find out that we don't have access to right now i
161mean i got to be honest let's give them a chance to talk i'm i'm not sure i'm ready to to go all the way to mask optional right now and take a vote on that workout without seeing a plan i'd like to see the plan and we have to give dr hunt and his team time to show us what their plan looks like they have had this came out on fridays right we need to give them which plan we want to see is it [Applause] okay so so it's really hard to think clearly i feel like i'm in a baseball game and the team is going hey better better i mean we listen to the community so i respectfully ask that you listen to us and don't heckle us or comment or cheer because it's
162really distracting um i think it's important to step down yeah you should listen to us can i just ask you okay leah please finish okay so i realized no it is not your turn i would just like to speak to the [Music] all right it is time for us to take a break the board is trying to have a discussion and we are not able to have a discussion the community cannot be quiet and let the board have a conversation we are going to take a five minute recess angela would you please request again okay can i have a do we have a motion to take a break [Music] okay can we have a conversation at the board table please all right next time we're gonna we're gonna move to a break okay thank you
163sir leah continue please with your thoughts so i would just like to acknowledge that there are a lot of people here tonight but there are also a lot of people watching um this this meeting from home and i would expect that some of them are watching at home because they're concerned about masking and they're concerned about being in a crowd of people who are not masked and perhaps not vaccinated i also wish to say that um i don't think it's fair to blame the school board for closing school last year for having kids be at home i think there was a there was a pandemic in the world and school was closed all over the world i think mental health was affected and it is not fair to blame the school board because students had
164to be at home because there was a pandemic and people were dying i don't think it's fair to say that we are heartless people who don't care about this every single one of us has been affected and knows someone who personally who died or was critically ill or was in the hospital last year we do care about this our children were affected and that's not my my concern as a school board is everyone's children not my children so we're looking at what's best for barrington for all students every single one of us wants kids back in school and i think we should really be rejoicing that that's where we're going kids are all going to be in school five days a week we're getting what we've been looking forward to for a long time and
165students are going to benefit from that when we look at when we look at all the the things that we're doing to mitigate illness here i think it's important that our district is doing a lot of them i think we've been successful you know and that's why we're at the place we're at right now it's also summer time i think some of the comments that were made tonight were very valid some of the information that shared is very important um i think it's important to go in a positive direction we want to have school open we want to keep school open if we change our mass policy we want to keep that policy we don't want to go backwards so i think it's important to take it in steps i think there's a vaccine for
16612 and older so i think we can talk about mask optional for kids that are vaccinated i think also that there are kids quiet there are kids that are not able to get a vaccine that are 12 and under who are going to be in school with teachers and exposed to other family members and other people in the community and i think it's important that we take care of the safety of our students so leah if i could summarize for you it sounds to me like you are leaning toward a phased masking or a non-vaccinated masking approach yes one of those two which i would like to have 12 and older be vaccinated vaccinated uh unmet vaccinated masking and i would like to look at phase for the younger children for elementary okay so would
167you consider that to be a phased masculine yes all right i would like to get the input from the lake county local health department because that's kind of where the cdc was going that we've got it every area is different and if the lake county gives us more information about our area i think i can't hear she's sitting right next to me i think it's important to consider that because they are our experts they are our doctors who are excellent katie you had a you had a question julia appreciate your comments i would and not just kind of i would like to point out because i counted we received seven emails asking to keep the mask mandate and i couldn't even count how many we asked to remove [Applause] that was signed by close to
168500 people asking to remove asking over 500 people asking to make messages getting started like so i guess so i just feel like we are supposed to represent our community that is where we mask unvaccinated children i'm not willing so is it i would like to work toward having mascots and i think that is the end goal none of us like masks like we don't want to thank you i am concerned can you hear can you guys hear the time for pregnancy i am concerned for our elementary students who do not have the capacity to get vaccinated should their parents want to get out of that i'm in favor of implementing a responsible phase mask optional for our elementary students i am fine i am okay my concession even though even though i have a
169preference for you know for for making mass optional for vaccinated students i understand that's very difficult to enforce and so my concession is that i am fine with mask optional for 12 and up so for and and then because of the enforcement you know because essentially what we're doing is honor system i know it's difficult to enforce sixth grade i am okay with our junior junior for our middle schools i'm gonna say junior high date myself i'm fine with our middle schools and our high school being mask optional at this point so aaron if if dr hunt and staff came back with a phase masking plan that incorporates those different strategies mitigation strategies that gets us to mask optional across all ages is that something that you you could consider yes and i'm okay at
170this point saying that i am fine with mask optional for our middle schools in high school and i would like to i would like to get to a point where we can be a mask optional for a k-35 i just need to know i just need to know what i just need to know what those metrics are to get us there does that mean are we basing that on whether vaccinations are available are we basing that on other metrics things like that i'm just trying to say you can't based on vaccination availability because i will tell you me personally sure i would say we can't based on vaccination availability because i'll tell you a lot of parents in this room are telling us they're not going to vaccinate their kids i understand that and they
171have the right to not vaccinate their kids if that is their choice their kids i think those parents should also have the option to vaccinate their kids and those those those parents with kids like me who are 11 and under i have one who is in the process of getting vaccinated one who cannot yet get vaccine i would like to eventually vaccinate her but until she is vaccinated i'm not comfortable with her not wearing a mask while she's indoors [Music] so so for me for me the threshold that it would change like if the cdc were to say okay we can fully vaccinate all kids then i am comfortable going now so but i'm not saying that all kids need to get vaccinated sure does that make sense i understand can i can i clarify
172that yeah please steve steve go ahead so can i clarify so but i and if i understand this correctly your daughter can still wear a mask it's just that on the children i think and i think that's and i think that's the crux of the argument here right because so she can still wear a mask but she is extra vulnerable if unvaccinated kids are not optional you want to go to the mask i do however i am i will i will work with aaron to understand what we can do because we do need to get down that path yeah i guess i come to a consensus yeah i'm with you so i guess my point is you know you know we spoke yesterday one-on-one and we talked about this and i want to re-present this
173to you you know how about a point where we say you know if you're on a bus public transportation if you take a public school bus now or a public bus nowadays you're wearing a mask so for our children if you're on a school bus fine let's put a mask on those kids no well okay well let's just okay so what advanced options i'm not sure we have four people that are ready to jump to mask optional i'm just gonna make that statement i'm not sure if we do our night here but we've never heard that from barry and angela so i know five degree is all we need right now okay well if i may are you ready for me all right so and please don't cheer okay just let's just let's just keep
174this going my preference is to go mask optional please don't cheer i understand and appreciate that aaron is trying to come to a middle ground okay i do not feel comfortable landing on this middle ground but at the same time i want to do something good that's exactly i have done nothing good for this community lately it feels very difficult to move forward so to the extent that erin is willing to come to middle school and high school are listen to me i agree with you i agree with you i don't know if there are four people who agree with you okay so my my vote would be mask optional if we do not have that then my vote would be mask optional for middle school and high school now okay i know you guys
175don't like that and that's fine give me a minute to persuade my board members here okay so just hold on quiet thank you all right so i every meeting i come here and i bring my board member oath and i forgot it go figure so i had to look it up and i always highlight what we're talking about what is my responsibility in this meeting all right so here are my keys i shall respect taxpayer interest do not cheer i shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality education of every student in the district i shall foster with the board extensive participation from the community it's in the oath that we take and i shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students and that is why i am taking
176the approach that i am okay we are leaders and we are given the job to hear community input look at our own anecdotal evidence we look at the children in our district we can talk with our administration our superintendent and see whether we should make a decision that is a recommendation or decisions is based upon our own experience and knowledge as community leaders we were community leaders in this whole area when we moved our start times people looked to our district district 220 move their start times we should move our start times they looked at us when uh we started the incubator program that was my very first thing when i started the board i helped write an agreement where we were licensing the right to use our curriculum we decided that and we are
177good at it you know sandra when you and i are on policy or when we were we were writing policy before we were even getting it that was coming down from our illinois leaders we can do this we have the capacity to put in other mitigation strategies so we're not putting masks on little kids stop it i trust our administrators and i trust our district to be innovative and to look at all of the things we've learned over the last 16 months and utilize that and and and create a situation where kids are all treated equally throughout our district through kindergarten through 12. and i understand aaron what you're saying as far as you know when i have the the choice to vaccinate my child as an elementary student that's what i will choose to
178do but these parents are saying i want the choice to decide whether to put a mask on my elementary child and i don't know how to say one choice outweighs the other so as leaders as intelligent heartfelt people who do love this community i ask you to consider all of the research that's been done i mean i feel for these parents that have gone out and just tried to dig through studies and i'm not going to compare one study to another because everyone's right okay you want to say that you know masking kills giraffes i'm sure you can find a study that says that if you want to find a study that says that mast will save the universe we can find a study that says that it's up to us now and i don't
179really know what else we're going to get by working with the illinois department of health or the lake county department of health and i understand the hesitation i get it but i feel like at this point we've got a room full of people that are coming to us for answers and we've told them hey we know you've got some really hard decisions to make and when we keep waiting it just creates more of this discord more of this frustration i hear you answer i don't feel like we're waiting i feel like we're gathering the data so i agree with what you're saying um wholeheartedly i think everybody at this table would like to get to a mask optional place i think the question is how we get there so may i ask this and then
180barry i want to make sure you get a chance to talk to if you can one one um how difficult is it if we all agree that you know getting to mask optional is a goal right i think we do i think we do and maybe that can happen on august 20th and maybe it will happen on september 20th i don't know making up the dates um but if we ask the administration to give us a plan for the phase the phase masking that gets us to the goal of mass optional is that something we can all agree to take a look at and how much more difficult would it be to develop what the plan would be if we went right to mask optional to start with to do does that make sense it
181makes sense um i'd say that uh we obviously the mitigation balance that we would move towards with mask optional would be a little different than a phased in approach that's th that though that would be the nuances and there's no science to this we would just have to sit down and brainstorm and work through this is that something that other districts are probably going to do after they hear from the health department tomorrow some districts some districts have already come out and made these decisions i'm sorry i can't hear you some districts have come out and made these decisions already it's you know in illinois illinois it's different you know unit district is different than you know a high school district who i've seen statements come out from high school districts already or mask optional
182you know because of the vaccine and i think the high school is a pretty easy place to go in that direction the elementary folks i've talked to a few today they're working through this right now i think i think that would give us more information so how much time how's it going how much time do you need tonight we're having a conversation i've asked many times angela's asked leah to ask me to ask are you pleased to let us finish our conversation how much time i would not want to wait until august 10th i would want to turn around and give this information back to the boardwalk in the next two weeks in the next two weeks that seems reasonable to me sandra you are pulling us to see where we were with the i
183know steve is favoring mask optional and katie's favorite mask optional angel you're also favoring mask optional right i think they all share the goal of mask optional i want to get to mask optional right now i'm comfortable with mask optional for middle schools in high school and a phase masking approach for elementary all right so i hear face i hear face from you leah are you are you i'm unvaccinated at masking i can't hear you for six through twelve i'm on vaccinated masking tell me again so could that be part of a phased approach though is is the question yes so you could you could support looking at looking at a plan that dr hunt and team put together on a facebook page back up there so are you non-vaccinated masking liar or phase masking
184which one or somewhere in between so i if anyone cares i'm for non-vaccinated masking for six through twelve and i am for um masking for elementary and then phase masking for all so she said essentially very similar to what aaron said that's why i'm sorry i don't think she's saying aaron's name i think she's saying only vaccinated children can take mass off is that what you're saying she's saying at this time she's not saying whatever she's saying at this time she's saying this right so another definitely part of a phased masking plan and leah said yes that could be part of a phased masking plan yeah i said mask optional for ju for middle school mine was mask optional for middle schools in high school and phase masking for elementary that's what i mean so
185i'm taking we're taking us we're taking a fall please let correct me if i'm wrong i heard non-vaccinated masking from you right right you say that one more time if i can't hear you can you say that one more non-vaccinated masking and for elementary masking and phasing masking for everyone okay [Music] all right we've got to get through this conversation we can do that with you in the room or we can do that with you outside of the room so please let please let the board work through this you'll make the decisions this is not a community discussion are you ready to talk or would you like to take a break first i'm willing to talk if people will give a little respect and they've asked very respectfully several times to just let them finish
186their discussion that's all they want i will discuss it is our discussion please pause for a moment thank you all right i promise to summarize if we have trouble if people have trouble hearing i promise to summarize what the discussion is okay so does anybody else have any comments that have already spoken that they want to say again i don't want to lecture i don't want to argue i really want to just share my you know my heart i've heard what everybody has said here i have read every email i know somebody commented that they didn't get a response when you get 100 emails you can't respond to all of them i hear you and i know you're in your heart you want to get rid of the masks and that would be my goal
187i cannot see getting rid of masks by the start of the school year so are you in favor of a phased-in approach then similar to what was discussed earlier yes i am i i want to hear what the superintendent can put together for us okay i want to have strict mitigation for places where there is no masking i want to still have masking in the on buses for example i agree with no masking when kids are out on the playground in recess we've proven that outdoors we we can all do very well with or without a mask in the classroom i feel if people have not had their vaccines and it's not a matter of of picking and choosing we can do this on the honor system it's not i mean if if we say
188no masking or or messed optional then i feel like we are prejudiced against the people who want to mask and they're going to be i'm not feeling well and i don't want to get everyone else sick okay i'm trying to be i'm trying to be a good citizen right so just all right we need to hear barry we need to hear from barry i'm very happy i'm very happy to go outside and take my mask off inside i feel very comfortable and i hope you guys feel comfortable so i don't give you something that you don't want and i'm vaccinated [Music] we need to finish this discussion please let us finish this discussion the other option is we could just end the meeting and postpone this till august let's let them discuss i'd like to
189at least hear their reasons we're not helping let them discuss okay very so i think what i hear you saying is you would support a phased approach as well that's correct i want to see the school year start i want to see where the delta variant is going there's a lot of unknowns right now last year last year at this time we made a false promise to the community we said let's open up the schools and then we had to backtrack because things changed we need to be flexed we need to be flexible we need to we i'm sorry you guys don't believe in scientists i'm a physician i'm a scientist we have to believe the science the delta the delta variant everybody who is hospitalized in missouri right now that did not get vex
190vaccinated that is now moving over i can't talk i know i know i can't say what i want to say [Music] i think how we get there is what we what we're struggling with right now what i'd like to ask is if we have four people that are willing to let dr hunt in the administration come up with a plan to get us to mask optional and phase it in do we have four votes for that before we go there may i ask a question yeah sure so i just want to clarify so it sounds like katie and i angela can i count you in this as optional yeah yes yeah that's what she's saying so if three of us were mass optional and aaron so i don't think we have four i don't think
191we have four to go correctly i said optional for middle schools in high school right so so that's my point we have three that are best optional we have three that are not uh that's optional aaron to me is in the middle right now i would like to find middle ground yes i talked to each one of you yesterday individually so that we could try to find so so i guess what i'm saying is if we can find a middle ground i would say at a minimum we start with as people pointed out six through twelve so middle school high school are mass optional no doubt yeah but is that what you want we have four mask optional you're going i'm sorry you're right great great so middle school and high school we are in
192agreement with four of us i think that we can go mask optional i think what we need direction on if i'm hearing folks correctly is that we would like to know you know whether it's rolling positivity rate whether it's new cases per hundred thousand in the population we need to know some metrics that dr hunt and the governing bodies are comfortable providing to us to say what milestones we need to hit in order to go mask optional for elementary that would all have to be part of their plan that would have to be part of their plan right now yeah so what if what i heard dr hunt say is that he would like two weeks to come up with a plan to get us to manchester options do we have i think what you're
193asking correct do we have consensus at least four at least optional for middle schools in our high school correct and if we can do that i think that will help the community at least understand that we're in the no no we're talking about grade grade six through 12. so not all six graders are 12. i understand i understand but based on what i'm hearing we're i'm not willing to go i'm i'm i'm here from the health department before i make that kind of i understand you're not one go but i think aaron is i don't know four that are i think you're for that that's my point is there anybody else are i are any of the three of you willing to say are comfortable with mask optional for grades 6 through 12. i would
194like to i'm just i'm just curious i would like to hear from the health department that the administration hasn't even had a chance to talk to the health department and about the layers of the strategies you also got to think about the operational side of that you've got middle school students guys quiet [Music] you have to consider the operational side of this and the reality of a sixth grade as kids are turning 12 trying to monitor that strengthen the other strategies around that sixth grade level yes yeah i mean i probably the mitigation will be the same i guess i'd like to see the administration's plan i would as well instead of dictating to them certain pieces of it because he asked us to tell him which plan to go and create that's what that's
195what i've heard so what i'm saying is i think we're saying mass optional plan for six through 12 and then we will perhaps consider the phased approach through elementary just as a starting point well mass optional of course that's optional of course but those are the two we should evaluate for for k through 5. we have four votes for mass optional grades willing to go to mass optional for grade 6 through 12. we do that i'm willing to do that yeah for middle schools in high school all right so do we have four people willing to go mask optional for grades one k through five a pre-k through five you have three i'm not quite there yet i'm not quite there yet either no okay that's right you need two weeks to come up with
196a plan a phased-in approach for elementary level pre-k through elementary yes okay so um our next planned meeting is august 10th i believe we decided to go mask optional for middle schools in high school we have we have agreement to go optional from sixth grade six through twelve [Applause] we do not have four votes to do pre-k through elementary options but let me finish i can't even finish a sentence um i'm feeling very uncomfortable and i can't hear right and i really wish that the people that are disruptive would be quiet or leave they can watch online they don't need to be yelling at us in person okay week the 26th are we available to come back together to see the plan in two weeks that will be july 27th is this a plan for
197a k through five then yes phased a phase a phase mask approach for k through so are we saying we're we have consensus for at least a mass approach for k through five sorry a phased approach a phase mask approach for we have four people willing to look we don't know what it looks like i don't know i can't say that we will bring that to you but you're also going to get a lot of information between now and then absolutely okay so right now we're saying mask optional for middle schools and high school that's fine right now we have enough for that yes and then we're saying that we would like to see a phased mask optional approach for grades k through five and what's going to determine that okay so i i would
198also like to understand better with that i mean what that mask optional looks like right through three six through twelve i understand that i would not have to air mass but what are the other mitigation strategies that are going to be in place i just want to make sure that we understand what that is i think the minute for the phase in or what it would look like if you went massive i can't hear angela so i'm clear you want to know what mast optional would look like in k through 5 as well no a phase yeah or how to phase it in what would be the reasons to phase it in or out got it right and and my understanding is we can continue to prove other strategies as well so even if we
199go mask optional for six through twelve we might be able to do other things as well and you know remove other layers as well right to remove other layers i didn't understand yeah because i that's just one layer is just one layer we hope our community is going in a positive direction and things are going to improve so then we can remove some of the mitigations if if the community spread stays low and goes away yeah right because this is a community project sorry i know that two weeks would be ideal and i think that there are some parents here that are looking to make decisions with their elementary kids is there is it possible to maybe gather information earlier i'm not trying to put you on the spot you're gonna be like this district
200is terrible no but i just wonder you know because i do think that um especially with the little kids you know there are other options for schools that maybe parents will be looking at you know have kind of had this conversation throughout the the year um and i know you weren't privy to that because you weren't sitting at the table but i think our goal was at this this meeting was to try to give parents some idea and we've we've done that for you know so i would just um ask that conceptually we can put that together but probably a lot of details that need to be flushed out and what i hear as priorities is how would you phase what metrics would you use to phase those seem to be the big questions and
201we'll try to focus there for the conversation okay but two weeks says so can we even have availability in two weeks i just want to make sure we set two dates to angel's point can we set one for next week next tuesday perhaps and what's going to determine that's pretty quick i'm trying to pull up a calendar yeah okay so i hear that one week is not quite enough is is uh if you can get the board together we will bring you so do we have seven people that can get together no so we don't have people that can get together on the 20th um what about that whole week is is there any day that week by the 21st 22nd 23rd we have any availability next week is better today the next week is
202better for me 26 the week how about how about the 27th we do just need a quorum but i think we probably need um i would like to hear from everyone if possible how does everybody else feel engaged i think it's important to have everybody here if you can prefer for whatever we don't have everybody until the 20. do we have everybody on the 27th let me ask that do we have everybody on the 27th yes you're gone um i can try to call in or do something but what about are you gone that whole week you're supposed to be on an rv trip actually you're you're out of time that whole week hating the whole week i can come back i love you back to 28. you're back to 28. um what about the
20320th you're gone the whole week right but you could dial it actually you know you actually you're not allowed to do that i just watched i just went through the training that we can do in this one time because of this i mean it's lasting reception so angela which which date the week of the 26th is best for you and you cannot dial in when you're on vacation you could dial in but you cannot vote i understand it's right i understand that you can also make a commitment we can also make a commitment that we get everybody hurt everybody everybody hurt right i'd rather not i'm not willing to lose a vote i'm sorry no i feel like if we're not i don't think that no we don't have to have an action item we
204can have it we can give you money okay [Music] what about on the what about on a weekend well let's be honest how about something what's that your vote i cannot get oh i'm sorry it's next week i'm sorry i i would prefer to take enough time i mean how about the 27th it gives me more time katie katie aaron how about the 20 seconds [Music] steve and angela how about the 20 seconds about the 21st 15th 21st wednesday are you here the 21st 21st 21 21 21 21 21 if we get together okay so the board can get together again on the 21st of july okay so i'll summarize quickly we the board has agreed to mask optional plan i'd like and we'll get up we'll understand exactly what that looks like but it
205would be a mask optional for all students at grades 6 through 12 and we will get together again on july 21st on a wednesday to discuss the pre-k through five plan and you're you want me to bring you want me to bring metric so i'm clear we're bringing you metrics that we would look at we're bringing you mitigation strategies for a phased approach potential timeline i'm assuming yes right and you also would did i hear you say you want to hear what mass optional would look like in pk through five as well yeah yes please because part of your phase in right i think we all agree quarantines and and i also heard we'd want to hear about quarantine i also reject quarantine what what does 14 look like in both scenarios correct team in
206both scenarios teams yeah across the district so i just have to say if we're going to do a mass optional we're going to have to up some of the other mitigation strategies that's why i want to see this we can't take everything away we can do as i think there's going to be families who want online learning and are going to be really upset if everything is mask optional in elementary if there's not a vaccine we'll see the plan okay so so okay so everybody everybody's good here to end this discussion everybody's good we're 6 through 12 mask optional we're going to see what that looks like because there's details that we need to understand what that looks like as well and we'll hear about grades pre-k through 5 in a phased masking approach i
207think we all agree the goal is to get to a mask option yeah and just to be clear we are not requiring masks outdoors correct for anything any good clarification right i mean just to be clear because we haven't said that you're right for is what happens outside will be part of the plan as well is that okay outside and buses katie so part of the plan would also be what happens outside and in the buses i want we're not masking children outside or is it we didn't agree to that we haven't why would we not agree with this i kind of think that this is cdc guidance was that outdoors okay everybody good outside okay okay so i'm gonna add to that we've got four votes for mass optional grade six through twelve no
208masks outside okay and then we will meet again on the 21st we'll meet again on the 21st yes there's a request for clarification we're saying are we saying that all grades do not need to mask while they're when they're outdoors that's right yes okay yes so i added that to what we have four votes for okay so i i would like to recommend we take just a quick recess and then come back to our action items is that okay can we take uh five minutes i think five minutes sure okay let's recess and we'll come back in five minutes ten twenty five thank you all all my super here because i'm so uncomfortable i'll bring up the first you um so let's um see if we hit well actually we have to go through informational
209reports still are there any questions on the informational reports that were presented the suspension report any questions any concerns that we need um board committee reports do we want to go through board committee reports or would we like to move on refer that to the next next meeting get an update okay finance would be the only one i believe and we can probably do that next meeting okay well we've already didn't have a referendum oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i mean productive we have a really short update that we should get the right support right i mean finance committee met we got a pre-budget you'll see the pre-budget soon and that was great at the end yeah okay there was a paper bed it was reasonable you'll see that soon for paper for
210the district yes okay um and i think that will come at the august meeting not the 21st meeting correct well if it's ready it's ready all right okay um another committee that met was the referendum committee you want to give a quick update there barry we already talked a little bit about the stoplight um it would have been nice if we had the the help of um you know our neighbors but we're going full speed ahead to see if we can make it work i think having ingress and egress from lake hook will really help a lot so we don't just have to depend on heart road ingress egress so we're working on that things are so just for clarification for anybody that's listening that you're talking about the egress and ingress from barrington high
211school on delay cook road as well as make sure everybody ingress egress from heart road which we already have the stop working on um so in terms of our you know timelines we're really doing a great job we are currently with the middle schools and um and growth and we are actively working on getting community input on what's going to happen with the elementary school so i you know i hope nobody's here but i hope people are still watching that people will add their two cents because they did a great job with the high school um and then we're going to be presenting in just a couple minutes of a proposal or of the bids for the high school boilers the boilers were included in the referendum plan they were always going to be done
212but unfortunately a couple of boilers have malfunctioned so we're moving it up a couple years this is a great time to do boilers because we don't need heat in high school so we need to prove that so we can continue what we've already kind of i mean we kind of put the card for the horse because there we told people with um that it's going to happen so we're going to be passing that today because we need to get that going so those are the big referendum things okay uh recommendation that you have so great job barry [Laughter] so we'll get there in just a minute um i'm trying to remember did we also get the timing of the ventilation did you give that to us yet or i mean we've got the approval to
213use it for us for fun but we don't know when the ventilation is coming right so we're actually working on specs for that it's something that we can do during the course of the school year without disrupting the educational experience for students but we're working on you know there's been some supply chain issues on on things we're hopeful that that's not going to be a major factor but we believe that we can do it during the hopefully the first half of the school year but we're working on that right now i don't have a update for the board okay great that's what we're trying to get from okay so it's not probably going to happen before the school starts we can't do it before school starts winter break we may be able to do it
214during the course of the school year um so it doesn't have to necessarily coincide with a break period because it's work uh that we can get done without disrupting the educational environment thank you excellent and then just for clarification the stoplight itself is not part of the referendum is that correct we're going to have to fund it from another source if we do go to that point okay okay let's just want to make sure that's clear any other questions on the referendum team okay all right um any other committee reports like um can we take just two minutes on the um dreamway would you like harry you were you were um able to attend that or do you guys want to hear that next time okay you want to hear today or should we do
215the next thing you probably need two minutes two minutes so i i went with um dr hunt this was his last official uh uh job his superintendents and i'm sorry dr harris i'm i'm ready yeah i'm ready used to my i knew our place our our new superintendent dr harris the saturday of the end lasted of his um duties we we went uh to do the to be part of the ribbon cutting um for the dreamweave as everybody thinks familiar barrington 220 the park district and the barrington village all contributed and we did a great job of cleaning up um flint creek from langendorff all the way to hart road our dream is to continue and do it on the other west of hart road but that's another discussion um we were i was overwhelmed
216at the number of uh village members that were there from the badc uh the bacon citizens for conservation the breakfast or i'm sorry the noon rotary club but what i want to just mention um and i hope people will will try to walk the dream light because it's really beautiful especially the um langendorff park is that we were honored by um uh cook county there was a resolution each of the government bodies got this resolution basically honoring us for our foresight and for the fact that we're finalists for the governor's hometown award for uh work that we did so this is going to go to uh bearing 220. i will i'll give it to janine and we can keep it in our coffers but yeah you can send that around to us that would be
217great it sounds like it was a great collaboration it was a phenomenal collaboration as they say it takes a village and we have the whole village together which was phenomenal awesome awesome okay um how about the consent agenda um can we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second second um let me just read through i promised i would read through everything that's on the consent agenda before we we vote um we have um exception bills from from june 2021 we have nslp exception bills from june 2021 bill list from july 2021 activity accounts for bhs and k-8 for june the 2021 wage payroll report from june the treasurer's report from june the revenue and expenditures report from june we also have on the consent agenda uh minutes from a special meeting
218on june 15th open session meetings from june 15th closed session meetings from june 15th and um opens uh minutes from the regular meeting on june 15th did i say 16th at whole thing okay thank you my head hurts right now okay um we also have a revised personnel report so hopefully everybody got a chance to take a look at that today um and then we have also the list of authorized depositories that's on the consent agenda so could we take is there any discussion or can we go straight to a roll call i just wanted to mention that we still have not okay the june 5th the june 1st meeting so just so everybody knows that that's something that's got to happen in terms of the minutes we put we deferred them last meeting and
219that you're going to get to the whole discussion today we may have to wait till august but it's still on our to-do list we have like 30 days right 30 days so we're already situated so we're already in a rear now yeah so i think we've got some extenuating circumstances here where we're trying to have a board discussion about that so i i'm thinking we're probably okay but maybe not without precedent okay we haven't had other times thank you okay okay so can any other discussion or questions okay how about a roll call sandra bradford yes steve wang yes aaron chanding yes leah callister lazari yes katie carram yes barry l shuler yes angela wilcox yes okay motion pieces um we have uh two action items i want to um ask that we uh do
220we want to talk about board protocols tonight i'm i'm i'm sensing no that we don't want to do that tonight board priorities protocols i'm talking about the action items oh i'm okay putting that can we move that to the next meeting to july 21st yes okay on the 21st are you right on the continent's last point of order is july 21st just talk about masking or are you planning on having a full meeting well let's let's let's discuss we should just be masking because it's a special meeting okay special meeting only one action item do we want to have an action item on there to approve the plan is that how we want to address it oh yeah so we will be prepared to be approved or we'll just be uh we we will do
221our best okay we'll do our best not that far away so okay okay okay the protocols are what we just went over right and our meeting they are but i'd like to um go wrong i'd like to go over them again and problem yeah because we haven't formally approved them right we merely went through it so if everybody could take a look at those and see if there's anything they'd like to adjust for those and we will bring those back on the august 10th okay um i think we need to take the action on the boiler bit yes i think that's timely so do we have a motion to approve um the boiler bid as presented um and do we haven't have any discussion do you have anymore you want to share with the how
222we did it i i do have one question there was a huge difference between the top and the bottom bid i just will be making comment on that i mean i'm i'm as a homeowner i'm always a little nervous when there's a huge difference taking the lowest bid are we getting quality are we are we getting the best questions best service so i just was hoping you'd comment on that right if it's a natural that's a natural question to ask what we do with every one of our bids is actually vet out the low bidder so when we get to this type of a bid all of our referendum construction bids are we have our construction manager review in detail the bid response have conversations with the low bidder to make sure that they understood
223what the scope of the work was we do reference checks to make sure that we believe that they can actually do the work so there have been times where the board has heard recommendations that certain bids be rejected they were low and they missed things that were not you know that they should have bid on so we actually looked for that and we looked for that in this case so every time that we're doing that we're double checking to make sure we're going to get what we expect from our bidder so can we call the vote angela wilcox yes sandra bradford yes aaron chanding yes barry altschuler yes katie karen yes all right motion passes and is this work started already or not yet no it will start until the board is approved it doesn't
224charge you okay yep so uh but we uh we will have it done before the heating season starts and and it won't affect school starving in terms of the kids it's all happening down in the boiler room mm-hmm great okay okay so we got through the action names we'll come back to confidentially closed session minutes at the end we had our public hearing we had our covet protocol discussion what's left is discussion items for board priorities and the policy for public comment and agenda for august 10th do we want to do we want to go through any of these discussions tonight anybody want to advocate that or can we move them all to the tent is there a lot else on the agenda yeah so do we want to take a look real quick what
225we have on the agenda for the 10th we have an sel update the tentative budget and adopting the board priorities which maybe we'll be able to do in one meeting but um i don't know it might be a good i don't know if you guys could stomach it could we do the board priorities on the 21st or no just we can have a discussion first and then vote on them on intent i guess i'd like to know if there's any big red flags yeah what we have yeah i agree i think it's good to as we start to align things and start the work of the district so if if you're comfortable and we're to a wordsmithing point we can push that to the 21st but if there's any major concern the board has with
226what we have there i guess i'd like to know sooner rather than later do you want to um maybe put a deadline for us to email you if we have that's gonna be good that'd be great um by friday friday friday this friday we're talking about priorities so if you've got any concern with the board priorities and then we can bring it up for discussion night on the 21st then we can vote on the 10th as per plan that's good i guess the reason what's up so there's one bit about it like when we were the the draft is what we talked about but like in years past we've kind of looked at last year's and kind of made sure we included some of those things and looped them over and we didn't do that
227so i don't um i think there was a you know we changed the methodology so i think there will be some differences i didn't look at it like more smith i just kind of glanced at it you have to get into it tonight on the agenda you have last year's and this year right so and we had conversations about how to how to make it match up okay because that's kind of i think a discussion right so we said we would continue to have a discussion on the 21st but get your any feedback or concerns okay by this friday whatever this friday is does that mean we're going to discuss it and then we'll action it on the next one okay on august 10th that sound okay to everybody so we're looking at board priorities
228final that pdf right in terms of feedback okay no no draft final was last year the only other comment i have is that you know the level of stress at this meeting was such that you know we're not ready to make good decisions tonight i don't feel personally and i don't want that to happen again next week because i don't know what that will bring just saying i'm hoping it won't bring that but yeah cautioning um it's very difficult i found it very difficult to even think when we have people just screaming at us so am i i don't know if we have a policy about it i think we just need to set very clear expectations on the front of the meeting and how that will be handled can we also discuss moving to
229a bigger venue let's let's let's go there in just a minute yeah so are we all okay if uh we set the president at the beginning of the meeting that that we're not gonna allow for a lot of constant feedback so we can have our discussions in by saying we're not allowing for it we're saying we're going to remove we're going to disrupters remove disruptors or stop the meeting until until then until they stop okay um oh okay with that okay now another venue is there a possibility on the 21st of moving to a different venue or do we have the same issues with restrooms at the middle schools all summer is there a possibility of going to the high school this way the middle schools are going to be a problem right those guys
230are fenced off right now middle schools it's only a week out i don't think we're going to have bathrooms and things functional what about the high school auditorium is that a possibility high school i don't know i i would look to people that have been in those meetings before i don't i don't cafeteria or auditorium the cafeteria um i i think at least angela and i have been in there it's very very difficult to hear um we could try it and it's just very very difficult to hear um i think you can hear better in the auditorium but the auditorium puts us up on that stage which is i mean it's up to us we just know that we would not be like this it would be we would be on that stage why does
231it have to be on the stage why can't it just be on the floor in front of the stage there's really no there's something there's an orchestra pit and then there's chairs yeah that's how it is not moving exactly yeah so we don't want to be in the pit no so um got it what about uh i know you guys have looked into this like roseline we have a stage at our gym and then the gym's giant and it's not a full huge stage have we thought about any of the great schools yeah we went through these and there were issues with everyone that was central unless we want to go all out yeah is roswell not considered central what was rosalind's issue i believe muslims was parking well there were also things being stored
232oh in the gym that's right too far away is that what you're saying it's not central enough i think yeah did you hear that comment we're going to let them look into other options and network and then get back just now okay okay um what else is fair go back to here um um so we're just looking at other things on the agenda is we're still under discussion items yes all right i i jumped right to kobit protocols it was one personnel piece that i know we've discussed but um enrollment at north barrington first grade class sizes are 27. we're looking to add an fte to bring down that class size we believe we can manage that within our current budget limits but i wanted to bring that to the attention of the board let's
233do it i don't have any concerns no returns okay no let's do it uh the other thing i i don't know that we've talked about during covent protocols oh can i ask my open session question about that first i think it was just a minute because i wanted to ask one more copay protocol question oh yeah yeah sure sure that was just that enrollment we didn't talk about in our plan attributes um what it looks like for the teachers and i want to make sure that that's part of i don't think i have to say it but i just want to make sure that we include what's what's happening with that with the staff okay that's part of that plan too is that okay yeah i would argue that i don't mean to go backwards
234but i'm just looking through it yeah and i i believe i communicated i had an initial conversation with bea and we'll we'll circle back with them kind of based on the direction we're heading and get any feedback that makes sense can you run through that sandra really quick that covert protocol i think it includes quarantine process quarantine process the prevention strategies that were listed there and how are we using them um i wrote down outside but we already agreed to outside so we don't really need that um bus busing i also wrote down if it's possible to get any vaccination statistics if it's desire it's desired to have that if they're available um what did i mean by hd is there anything else that you guys thought needed to be in there and what the
235metrics are yes and of course like the k through five are pre-k through five and we will have just so you know we'll have uh questions we'll have conversations around screening and testing as well oh great okay okay because we still have tests that have been given to us for nurses bionics i mean on a limited basis has that changed no we still have those earlier but still yes um anything else that we wanted to make sure it's part of that i had a couple of things for the next meeting we're not talking about testing right what was the question about the test we will be having conversations about that i know some districts one of the things they did from the mitigation strategy was they moved over to use the shield testing random testing
236for students who opt into that so they did random testing for students who opt in as a mitigation strategy to offset some of the masking unvaccinated children this is what you were talking about i think it was random unvaccinated children or any children opt in and i think barry brought up um mitigation strategies for uh middle school and high school right due to the mask optional right these plan attributes have to be for both plans oh right yes of course what i meant though last year during school when school was in session i believe our school district was i don't know given is not the right word um some tests so let's say a kid in school starts feeling sick coughing having symptoms it's possible for the nurse to test them at the school was
237what was happening you still have those some of that so symptomatic symptomatic testing at school with a parental permission parents called martial yes okay well and if you test negative then you're you know in a better situation than that quarantine obviously or to not to know the contact tracing right situation okay anything else um okay i had a couple things for next the next meeting that people have brought up to me but aaron you wanted to ask oh yeah just the just the question i think to teresa about um the jump in enrollment in fifth graders at north barrington like is that something that was uh that we saw in 2019 to or is that kind of new to i would have to go back and look we always get jumps i remember there was
238a jump at countryside there was a jump at rosalind there's jumps here and there it all really is year by year yeah and i know it was like covid and it's really hard to look at first grade because they were kindergarteners last year a lot of kindergarteners do private kindergarten anyways so it's not like we have three years of data to see where they were two years ago so i don't think you're going to be able to get a good good data i was just curious about north korea yeah i've been saying but like if we looked at fourth graders then we could look at them from third grade last year and second grade two years ago and we could see a trend first graders we don't have a trend because there's no there's no
239free data to know that i would say every year we have some grade level that we end up having to address erin if you look at it we actually this has just gone up since the starting of it we did have three sections last year and we moved it down to two sections for this year oh i see so we're kind of so we're actually kind of back to basically still under oh yeah and i know we've had a craig was telling us we had that kindergarten yeah maybe pandemic related jump right and then did we ever get that enrollment to come back i know we were down a little bit and we had expected potentially more as we got closer to the starting discovering the numbers we don't have a recommendation to add any
240additional sections that we achieved last time is still working for us we haven't seen that study incline at the same rate that we were seeing it slowed down a little bit so we're still okay at this time yes and we're still around that or did we come in we're still down down about 700 or so okay and we don't really know why right it could be pandemic related um i suppose you can speculate i think you can make an educated guess on that related right um i just hit a couple things but i think we'll be able to wrap this up by 11. um for the next meeting i had um some folks had asked for an update on the sel hiring so i think we already talked about that earlier in the meeting just
241want to make sure that we get that that update do we just want to include that with the august 10th seo presentation is that okay we still have openings so we're looking for psychologists which many districts are i have many people reaching out okay school psychologist who will include kind of like specific plans right like oh are we doing universal screenings and how will that work and other kind of programs yes by bilingual availability that kind of thing right that will be included that's all part of it okay cool yeah looking forward to that i was going to bring this up to my president's report but i thought i'd better just be quick um but i got a lot of questions from the board members on the hotels for triple i so there's been some
242discussion about whether or not we have a budget for to pay for hotels but whether or not we should board members should feel comfortable making reservations um for hotels so i just wanted to know if anybody has any objections to board members having their hotel paid for um because the if you attend that aaa conference there's things that go well into the evening and start early in the morning so if there's no objection i want board members to feel comfortable to use that budget and not each know haven't already traded differently but if we need to have a longer discussion on it then we should add it as a discussion item we have we're of adequate funding we have adequate funds in the budget i just don't want anybody to feel like that's if we
243have to have a conversation about it um we will have to vote we'll we'll have to you know present the plan and vote on the plan i just want to make sure the board members feel comfortable um making those arrangements yeah and be consistent yeah i i've never been um very comfortable with the you know it's just down in the city i mean i don't think people need to go down there that's fair i've chosen to stay but i'll pay for my own i'll pay my own way others feel the same you know i think if it was in springfield it wouldn't be an issue but it's in chicago so that puts a different light on it which you know but if a board member wanted to stay and couldn't afford to stay i think
244that's not right either you know right so it's a little bit of a mixed you know our staff we're paying for their hotels and we're not voting on it that's part of their budget and their um education you know to go to these conferences all right well i guess everyone please think about it and then as they as we we those plans we brought forward for us to vote on right before before the conference so we'll just leave it to come up that way but if um i'm hearing we got it's gonna be mixed so as you make your plans we have some people that support it and some people that don't so there's no issue with using the budget to pay for our registrations right like we can no i don't think there's anything
245okay it's more the hotel aspect that's right okay and then and one other thing thank you for your patience team um there was a couple things that were said in public comment that i wish that had summarized at the end there was a couple comments about testing testing the students to attend school that i didn't quite understand so is everybody okay if uh dr hunt follows up with that person who said they had to be tested to get into a school i think he was talking about third graders being that was the other question that was a different it was a different person that was all i heard testing no it was academic testing extended self-contained right one person talked about it send them self-contained and another person talked about academic testing to get into
246school i mean actually it was very early it was very early uh yeah um i think it was uh it wouldn't make sense to follow up then if it was unclear so if nobody else heard it then you know i would like to learn more about our excited self-contained because i've been hearing things like maybe we could get more clarity around this from the administration but i've been hearing that maybe this is the first year we've been using cutoff scores and you know that that teacher discretion used to be a part of it it seemed like there was a change in process of how kids could qualify for extended self-contained if i may uh so i'm sorry i can't i cannot so is it okay if if you make that part of your report just
247to give us a follow-up on that yep so we can all jim be consistent jim we'll follow up i think the whole gifted program was we reevaluated in that evaluation cycle that we've had a lot of talk about different things and so things might have changed for the better because it was looked at but but you know that's an ongoing process that i'm not specifically familiar with particulars of i do think there was a change in how kids could qualify and part of that was based on like are we using instead of using uh state scores we're using district scores and there's a little bit that's covered really yeah i'll i'll follow up and you'll get a call i think we'll find you and then i also would like to know some two things that
248were brought up was sex education and and kind of equity questions and i'm just interested in how our curriculum has changed over the last year if it has everybody's up in arms and i'm not i'm not aware that we've talked about any changes in what we've been doing so i have a note to come back around on that okay just to address it but you know just you know from our perspective especially on the critical race theory side um you know we continue to teach state standards the same standards have been in place into my knowledge we haven't adopted implemented um the teaching of critical race theory and that conversation hasn't happened uh so but again i'll reiterate that next next meeting i think the bigger issue is the politicalization that is being seen by
249certain teachers just anecdotally i can't speak to it because i haven't experienced it but i've totally have heard from parents that have said that certain teachers have espoused political ideology with their children in class and i think that's the issue that we need to address with our you know we have policies in place to address yourself then it should be routine and those folks should just be directed to you know talk to the building principles and make sure also i'm i'm curious and this doesn't this isn't an urgent discussion item but i know governor perry just signed the um teach act the teaching equitable asian american community history which would integrate um an asian american history unit in illinois public schools starting in 2223 academic year and so my understanding is that school boards and
250school districts have a lot of latitude in terms of how it's integrated and so i would be curious to to see how you know what our thoughts are as well so we probably need to get a legislative update here we were just going through this council the other day talking about when those things were going to arrive who's taking lead on them um get through this masking and we'll bring all of them i know we're the first state in the country to pass a law like this so i mean there's not there's not a ton of other state guidance to follow so i think we'd be in the vanguard here yeah there's there's probably five or six that we we need to at least make you aware of what's coming and how we're addressing and
251i think this kind of thing is we need to clarify that this is not at all critical race theory it's about expanding narratives right in in our histories right yeah yeah anything else for the next board items anything else we you decided what time your meeting is next week and everything oh on the 21st we did not decide on the time do we want to stick with uh seven i mean there's there's no need for a closed session correct so we're just going right open back it up there a chance you could come back barry if it was a certain time is there a chance you could come back if it's a certain time come for the day six hours away okay um what do you guys prefer i'll start with seven seven okay and
252it's the 21st right the 21st i'd say earlier is better yeah six i prefer earlier but i'll do either one whatever for everybody else all right um do we have a motion to secure the confidentiality of closed session minutes second roll call vote very alt shuler yes katie carram sandra bradford yes aaron chan yes steve wang angela wilcox yes leah callister lazari yes do we have a motion to adjourn second oh okay all in favor all in favor