September Monthly Board Meeting

001[Music] department [Music] okay [Music] come on in i'm in the right this place yes all right nice first uh it is now 6 33 and we are out of close executive session at this time we will reconvene the regular meeting with the board of education [Music] into the republic for which it stands one nation [Music] this is reid nemec here mrs whitcomb here mr zicker [Music] are they there any items on the agenda any members of the board would like to amend or move hearing none do i have a motion to approve the agenda of the regular meeting of the board of education on september 20th 2021 as presented remember whitcomb made the motion and member secret seconded the motion to approve the agenda of the regular meeting of the board of education on september

00220 2021 as presented discussion roll pop please mrs whitcomb aye mr zicker mr herrera mr bucher this is how miss mango all right this is reid nemec hi would any member like to request to have items open sorry at this time members of the public and employees of district 100 who submitted comments via email will be read and those attending in person may make public her board policy two two three zero the board must allow a minimum of 30 minutes of public comment and a 20 minute minimum total length of time for any one subject if we reach 30 minutes on any given topic this evening i may request an end to public comment in order to give the maximum number of people an opportunity to speak please limit your comments to three minutes all

003comments provided to the board of education the email prior to the meeting will be read first we do not have any of those so first up would be ryan curry speaking on a matter of education plan for quarantined children good evening i'm sure you're probably not going to see me but i have concerns dr wieseman i've gotten about 12 messages that were emails submitted to you over their children being quarantined and what kind of plan you have for those children to be taught my child i want you to guess how many days my fourth grader has been in school this year by october by october first five days she's been in class for five days and you guys have voted to do absolutely nothing to teach children on quarantine except push a lesson plan uh

004that our teachers are going to give homework it's absolutely pathetic you had a year of this last year and you presented nothing how many kids like that are sitting at home with parents that can't be at home to help them teach and what are you doing about it dr weissman every one of your messages focuses on in-person learning they're not in person those aren't your only students yet the only people you seem to care about through your messaging is in person learning you're wrong you also win as far to encourage these parents to send their kids to private schools you remember that so you're leading district 100 right and you're encouraging families who are fed up because you didn't develop a plan to teach your children at home to go to another district or to

005private school that's not what you get paid for that's not why any of you guys were voted in here a fourth grader in class for five days all year and you have zero instruction for them you are failing them your focus shouldn't be on in-person learning only it should be on every student in this district and they should have your attention so i would appreciate a game plan i'd appreciate you to do something this is month one do you think it's gonna get better it's not develop a plan help them out they need it they're not your only students please thank you mr curry next we have dakota speaking against masking and against future products those are my issues first day of school i had a teacher ask kids my boy what pronouns they want

006to be called by i don't agree with them especially in junior high they're going through changes going through they're going to be 15 the teacher has a role call sheet with their names on it what can't they do what they do call them by the name they don't need to ask what pronouns you can't go by that's too confusing that will confuse the kid even more i think it's just a seed they're putting the hat in the kid's head to confuse them i don't agree with it i caught up with the pistol told him about it he told me i should be looking for a private school that is here second is the masks ah my boy just came home just last week he had one teacher told him you don't wear a mask it's

007like somebody's putting a gun at it i know he did not say that and then so good job that's not right are we trying to scare these kids these teachers are doing a hell of a job so i do not agree with this last thing um there's a bunch of studies saying i think the studies come back is these mass do not stop the spread of this virus or they came back into so i do not think he's mass work i think you guys need to fight this i know there's three school districts that fought against illinois one they don't have to wear masks at school some are the ones in carroll county some in bethlehem i think we need leaders to step up lead us right who's asking guys step up and terry i'm

008speaking on sex education and critical race theory first of all i want to thank you for the opportunity to come before the school board i'm here to gather information on two controversial subjects the first one is um sex education i want to know what kind of sex education is being taught in this school district what grade does it start with what are the topics specific topics by number two um is critical race theory taught in this school system in this district what grade does it start with what specific top topics do they cover i would like to read all the material and the books that they are teaching from so how i'm asking them questions how do i go about doing this somebody help me or your kids you'd want to know yeah so generally

009um public comment is not designed to get back and forth um so i did write down your questions and if you have contact information um for us and you could come right now just after if you don't have anything else to say that i'm happy to follow up with you afterwards i've been answering multiple requests like that over the last two or three months thank you i appreciate that before i give you that information [Music] at this time we'll have a public hearing regarding district 100's final 2021 2022 budget anyone wishing to address the board of budget do so at this time hearing none the public hearing is now closed and we will move on to student council comments up first we have abigail from belvedere north high school [Music] from lincoln they said we

010had a great back to school night and close families attending to meet their teachers get home materials from the child team math and drop off school supplies they're always a great start and their students are very excited to be back to in-person school but footman said they've been busy getting back into those certain things they've been spending time listening to the first 20 days which is time set aside for students to learn routines expectations and to build their standards for learning and they said it has been great to see all kids back in school following the routines of this management caledonia their first week of school was fantastic they are learning new procedures and routines wrapping their masks and love going back to specials teachers are doing many get to know your activities and learning

011all about their new students at central middle school cross country soccer football volleyball cheer and palms are all back in full swing they purchased their students participated in the pbis kickoff for the first three days of school they spent homecoming weeks september 15-17 doing fun activities with their students and six to eight students participated in math testing in the first week of september and at bellevue north they reported their highest 18 test pass rate ever for bellevue north at 49 percent in spring of 2021. the girls volleyball team is undefeated and my number one was very successful where they're learning multiple songs by queen we planned a very awesome homecoming week through student council students have done an awesome job being back in the building wearing their masks and a fine arts hall of fame

012has been created just off the cafeteria that recognizes all of their musicians who have earned state and national honors thank you next is naomi castro from velveteer high school and nice to pronounce your name right naomi pastor yeah we got it so hi everyone i'm naomi castro i'm the president of student council in just have a couple board um for you guys so we had elementary school we had started their year with an abc calendar which includes days like it is for awesome f is for friends and k is for kindness we do this for the first 26 days of the year to engage students in school and build their system our school supply dropoff had a great turnout and we thank our cto for providing ice cream for our families washington academy washington academy

013is super excited to have students back in the building to have pe in session for the first time years our students have done a terrific job in their classes by practicing their morning meeting routines and working through their first 20-day plans where we establish routines and expectations for the school year students are in furniture this year with many project-based learning opportunities then please follow our facebook page for updates throughout the year south middle school the first 20 days like the rest of d100 we are currently focusing on rebuilding connections with students and rehearsing school procedures for the first 20 days of school students have heard consistent messages regarding expectations and are participating in relationship building activities such as circles and get to know your activities during advising as well as during classes sports and activities

014psms sports and activities are in full view volleyball football soccer cross country and cheer have already started drama club national junior honor society and proms will be starting in the next week or two it is really great that the students have such a varied option to participate in after school activities in power this year bsms students will be using empower to keep track of their progress we are teaching students how to access the materials and will be sending parent logins this week we are excited about the clarity of this new tool that will bring us are we equal settings and students success major the sms students will begin using success maker this week to help bridge gaps and extend learning we are excited to see the result of this new k-8 initiative boveda high school

015vhs was excited to welcome back students on august 26th we have balloon arches and raffle drawings over the following weeks we have class assemblies to review expectations routines and support instructions later this month is homecoming week september 20th through 25th student council is planning fun activities for the students in the community including potter cross a parade in an outdoor movie in addition the ffa dairy cattle evaluation team placed second in section 6 david capital evaluation contest also for the first time in belvedere ffa history alison aids was selected as a national delegate which means she will be representing the state of illinois on behalf of illinois ffa to elect the next national officer team as the national at the national convention at this time i would like to have an introduction of the new district

016100 administrators so if mr nelson mr miller could stand up and we'll let them let them go um you can come up a little bit closer [Music] um and just briefly introduce yourself tell us who you are and uh where you're working we appreciate you uh coming in so the board can see your face if you introduce yourself it gives you an excuse to take your mask so i guess i'll do age before beauty so i'm andrew nelson i am the human being at uh central high school and i'm andrew miller at belvedere north high school [Music] well thank you very much both of you for coming by usually we like a normal time we didn't come around and shake over his hand but uh we're just gonna do the distance thank you thank you

017thank you for coming it is our pleasure this evening to have attorney terry engler from angler callaway national chicago llc in oakbrook she is going to be joining us this evening to give us an overview on school district obligations under federal and state and at this point we're going to turn the floor over [Music] a great honor and pleasure working for several decades but it's very rare that your district special editor actually attends board meetings because we tend to only tell that there's pending litigation that the board needs to know about or weigh in on so um it's been an awful long time since i've had a chance to sit directly thank you very much for the opportunity it's not something that we take lightly and appreciate it greatly and work with a few superintendents

018and directors of special education and a lot of the staff to buildings that work with megan so number of people in the district so it feels like home to me even though i'm a pure stranger to you so thank you for the opportunity to also talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart my law firm like a handful of others around the state does nothing but represent illinois public school districts and special ed cooperatives my particular area of our practice has been in the area of special education and disability law since a really long time since the 1980s so i've been at this for a very very long time and i've seen these school district obligations and board compliance issues change over time as well but i'm happy to overview them for

019you and maybe answer any questions you get going forward sure okay if if you're comfortable i think it'll just help us no problem at all i've been invited to many schools for institute days and board meetings lately and everybody has preferred that i keep it on so i'm happy to have it i did a long webinar this afternoon with it with it actually okay so um if you take what has been now your decades and decades of federal law with its state law counterpart and you distill all these pages and pages and pages of law and regulations into overarching obligations that are imposed on public school districts under our idea as the afternoon the individuals with disabilities education act it's our federal law back in the day it was called public law 94 142 and

020then our state law counterpart is actually article 14 of the illinois school code and it's got a set of implemented regulations so we're literally talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of single space pages about the obligations that your school board has here in belmonder to children with known or suspected disabilities and if i could take all of those i would basically divide them into three overarching obligations so number one there is a so-called child find obligation where we seek out and find children with known or suspected disabilities there's a whole process for that then once we find children with disabilities who are eligible for special education and related services we offer them and we are obligated to actually make good on our offer by providing them what's called a faith a free and appropriate

021public education in the lre the least restrictive environment i've been saying for years that in education you folks use more acronyms per square inch than any other profession i know even my own and then in special one it's even more concentrated with acronyms so the next obligation is faith in the lre and then there's throughout the process a system of procedural safeguards that are afforded to parents of children with known or suspected disabilities and their children um their procedural rights and processes the right to participate in decision making of the likes so those are the three areas i would tell you that for all of these in terms of the procedural side the process side it's very black and white it's very prescriptive you have x number of days to do this you have x

022number of days to do that parents are entitled to this parents are entitled to that there's a really very prescribed process and that is kind of easy to determine compliance what's trickier is the substantive compliance right the the content of it because everything in special love land is kind of you know lawyer's favorite answer it depends everything you do in terms of how soon is soon enough to refer a child for intervention how soon is soon enough for a childhood intervention is it before you initiate an evaluation or a re-evaluation what really is a fake a proper iep and placement for any given child and that's always very gray area because it is so child specific so individualized um in terms of that child find obligation i'm really i'm not trying to do a semester

023especially on law 101 but just to give you a sense of the depth and the breadth of the kind of obligations that are imposed on your district under child fine which is its overarching name for what's really a three-part process so under child by this is where we seek out and find children with known or suspected disabilities who may be in need of special education services so the first part is the identification part there are a series of things i'll show you in just a moment that districts including yours have to do both at the building level the district office level outlet community and the like to find children who may have qualifying disabilities and maybe need special education services and then once we find children assuming we do it thoroughly and confidently once they

024find children who may be in need of special ed services we have to conduct evaluations in the day when i was a much younger lawyer we call those case study evaluations and now we call them fies full and individual evaluations and then once the evaluation is completed we determine based on the evaluation data and other information if any particular child has one of the qualifying areas of disability and if it does if it adversely affects educational performance and if the child needs special education and related services as a result so there are very specific timelines that apply once step one on identification is in play you begin to to notice either a parent may make a referral for an evaluation your building level staff may see that after classroom supports a child is just not

025developing an expected pace once a referral for an evaluation is made there are very specific timelines about when the team needs to meet with the parents to design the evaluation um what has to go into that process um how many days you have to complete the evaluation reconvene the team to determine eligibility so there's process wise a lot of black and white steps but this is your overarching obligation in this area and then just to give you a sense of how complex this all is just at the identification level at all right just at the very beginning of looking out and finding children who could have qualifying disabilities who could need special ed services there's a series of procedures and this is kind of a non-exhaustive list of the things that at the district office

026level at the building level you're no longer part of boone county co-op in the day i also work with you and the co-op sometimes districts rely on their cooperatives to support this so-called identification process so there's a number of pieces to it we do annual screenings this last one ongoing review of each child's performance in progress that's what i describe as the building level process every public school in illinois is required to have a building problem solving team districts call it different things it might be the pst it might be called a child review team i've seen it called a lot of different things but if it walks like a duck and it cracks like a duck that's a duck you've got to have this building level team where the team meets regularly and they

027and they talk about children who are either struggling learners kids are struggling with maybe behavior communication social emotional skills and troubleshoot how are we going to address that in a way that provides appropriate intervention lets us look at whether or not this might be a child with a disability or is this a child that just needs some support that's differentiated before we move on to the next level and start an evaluation and then there has to be ongoing coordination with the econ what we call the ei programs the early intervention programs also funded under our federal law and then through the state for children birth through two years of age who have qualified disabilities and that's determined a little differently believe it or not you also have to coordinate and consult with the private schools

028located within the geographic boundaries of your district so that was added to these requirements several years ago with the last reauthorization even as long as these kids are actually in schools within your geographic boundaries regardless of whether they're even residents of belvedere if there's a reason to suspect that children attending these schools may have qualifying disabilities it's your district not necessarily the district of residence that can be responsible for fulfilling these child find obligations and then developing and notifying all concerned persons about your referral process how do you do that well parent student handbook is one way notices out in the community training to your general education staff just so that they know how do i make a referral if i have a struggling student in my class either academically or functionally or both how

029does the process work what data what other records or information should i provide uh then we have a unique one that has been raised in your district many times in most districts that i work with around the state for years there has been lobbying around creating a separate and distinct a freestanding category of disability only for children with what we call them the 3ds dyslexia dysgraphia and this calculia okay now these children may well fall under the auspices of specific learning disability neither congress nor our illinois general assembly has agreed to actually add dyslexia as part as a separate distinct disability category but what illinois did do with the change to the school code and later the state board of education rules was to say if a child is identified as being dyslexic by anyone

030it might be a private uh evaluator it might be a child's physician it might be a reading tutor if the child is identified by anybody within or outside of your system but typically it's outside as having dyslexia that child must be referred for an evaluation in your district so that's kind of a special area referral process that's a little piece of your broader child find obligation here in the district so that's step one the identification piece of child mind and then as i mentioned the next part is getting together to design a full and individual evaluation sometimes it's known as the domain process because there's a form that we use based on federal and state law that is called a domain and consent form where the school personnel and the family sit down they talk

031about what we already know about the child what existing information do we have and then what additional data or other information do we need to gather in a number of different categories and you'll see it's for multiple purposes and that's the thing about evaluations the domain process has to be done correctly and specifically so that the the net is cast broadly enough so you're sure not only that you're ruling in or ruling out any potential disability areas and there could be more than one but if that child is idea eligible what are their present levels of educational performance and needs how does the disability adversely affect educational or functional performance what supports might the child need including that last knowledge i've always found very interesting when you're doing an initial evaluation you don't even know

032if the team will ultimately decide and that child is eligible for special education services but when your teams with the parents are designing those evaluations they have to say what information or data should we gather so that if terry ends up being determined to have a learning disability or traumatic brain disorder or an emotional disability whatever it may be what if any accommodations or modifications or supports are would be necessary to allow that student to be involved and progress in the general curriculum so even from the very early point where you're evaluating you may you don't even know if a child is eligible for special ed services your teams are required to gather information that will help them down the line look for ways to successfully include those children in the general ed curriculum and

033the general love environment um and i will tell you i've had lots of conversations with your teams over the years in various buildings and over various administrators and it's very easy for uh even the most experienced staff sometimes mostly the most experienced staff to have kind of a set idea of what this is what we do and this is how we do it and these are the evaluation tools we use when here like with every other aspect of idea compliance issues you need to be entirely individualized right so it really depends on the student the deficits they're showing or the struggles they're showing at school that lead you to this comprehensive fie full of individual evaluation this is just a handful i wanted you to see a number of things that are in the regulations

034both federal and state about the evaluation requirements there's a myriad of them again this is just a few but i wanted you to see especially this first two we have to use a variety of assessment tools and strategies and no single measure or assessment is ever enough to qualify a child for special education services and that can be very hard for your teens to explain to parents they may have a doctor's note or a private evaluation reports that's that's it you know terry has dyslexia as eligible for special education or they get an expanded you know psycho-educational evaluation report from an outside provider and they can become very upset when a school doesn't simply adopt that information determine eligibility and start writing an iep well these are just a few of the legal reasons why

035your teens can't do that they review and consider that information but that's just part of a much broader process of gathering data and other relevant information to determine a child's special and eligibility and their needs and this is just the legal version of my explanation about how when your teams design initial evaluations re-evaluations or supplemental testing in between they've got to cast that net broad enough so that they're really sure what they're looking at is this a child with an emotional disturbance or is this a child with other health impairment because of adhd and some of the impulsivity or the hyperactivity that goes with that is this a child who's really got a learning disability or is what we're seeing really other health impairment because she's got so many seasonal allergies she checks out a

036lot of the time of the school year because of some of the impact of either the allergies or the medication for the allergies or both that's what evaluations are all about and that's a that's a significant obligation right there and then we have special rules just so you were aware of determining a particular disability category that's sld specifically disability i only show you this just to explain the context in which your district commitment to using rti response to intervention processes is not only state of the art is required when we are looking to see if a child has or still has a specific learning disability your school system is required to as part of the process collect and consider so-called rti data so that you can really tease out are we sure this is a

037specific learning disability or are we thinking that this is about a child who's just learning differently who needs differentiated instruction or some other kind of support so if you ever wondered where your rti process comes in you can use mtss in other non-academic areas right for behavior or for communication skills for adaptive functioning skills most school systems do that as well but that rti piece that focuses on academics is actually the only one that's legally required as opposed to optional and that's specifically so that at some point we know if this child should be referred and considered for possible specific learning disability-based iep services um i know i just wanted to see you with the rules about reevaluation of children with disabilities that the bare minimum is at least every three years unless the district

038and the parents agree that no testing is needed after that time uh you have to be really careful about that as elaborate and expensive as the process of good email and maria val is they can really put a district at risk if you don't have data after every three years to support where the child is currently functioning it's very hard to show what not only current needs are with any level of specificity but have we seen growth over the last three years or not because that's what you're responsible right faith is showing not just um that you've offered a program that was appropriate but that it was and that you implemented it and that the child made expected growth as a result so looking at iep progress reports is great but re-evaluation is equally important

039there's a three-step process for determining whether children are going to be entitled to ieps i show you this only i'm going to have the iep teams in your schools but i show you this because a lot of times parents have a hard time and even our school staff have a hard time understanding if the child's got a disability the child has an emotional or mental health issue if a child has an autism spectrum disorder if a child has a speech and language impairment why don't we just make once we decide that or that's diagnosed why don't we write an iep well because the law requires a three-part determination and part of those evaluations and re-evaluations require us to gather information that will help your teams answer all three of those questions so the child has

040to fall into at least one of the 14 recognized categories of disability if they do the next question is whether that disability adversely affects educational performance and in our state based on what our hearing officers have to say that's not just academics it's not just passing grades or passing from grade to grade it also includes their functional performance right their social emotional adaptive skills and the like communication skills so we look at that that broadly when we look at adverse effect and educational performance if the answer to that is yes the last question is does the child need special ed and related services as a result so with the exception of speech and language impaired children who only need speech services which you would ordinarily think of as a related service that's why you may

041have children who have impairments or disabilities and that may impact them at school but if all the child needs is some pt physical therapy support or occupational therapy support or some other stand-alone related service they're not going to be eligible for an iep so that's a three-part process and both our staff can be disappointed when we try to explain this to them and often parents can feel that way as well but that's that's what the law has always required so second overarching obligation the faith in the lra obligation once we find them or identify children we evaluate them we go through the process of eligibility determination we write an iep the iep is your district's documentation of its offer of a faith to any given child with a disability okay um and there's a a

042lot of requirements that apply to this so i will just tell you that it's at that point we write the iep and there's a so-called four corners rule in the law so your district lives or dies by what's in the four corners of that document that the parent disagrees with something you have included or disagrees with something you have not agreed to include or disagrees with the level of service or the placement or anything else if there's a complaint filed what everybody's going to look at via the state of illinois hearing officer or the state board of education on the state complaint what they're going to look at is what's in the four corners of the docket not what you could have done or meant to do or would have done if you only knew

043the parent was requesting it or wanted it we have to make sure that everything a child needs in order to receive a faith is in fact encompassing that iep and then there's a lot of very specific i mean a myriad of requirements about what has to be done and what has to be included in an iep individualized education program document the process by which you review it periodically this is all with the parents of the child and the process for which you um revise it very expensive and very complex and i will say um in a unit district um it can be really tricky i mean your administration really has a lot of buildings to cover and a lot of teams to cover and a lot of times it really requires some honing in an

044oversight to ensure that steps are followed that we talk about these things in the proper way that we document them and that all decisions are data driven and supported by the data here's just i'm just going to fly through this is just a long list of the things that districts have to evaluate for gather data for and document as they start the process of iep development for any given child we do take a look at the second item this is actually in the order in which this appears in the law we do have to consider the concerns of the parents for enhancing the student's education and that's a really critical piece right because we're no we know that parents are equal members of the iep team and one of the things that is a big

045compliance issue is a lot of times schools will ask parents or teens will ask parents to get their parent concern input but then you don't see anywhere in the iep that was actually discussed and addressed by the team well the parent may have no concerns or their parent may say i think the math program has been going great but i'm worried that my child's progress in reading and language arts is still really delayed the rest of the documents somewhere needs to show that the team addressed that concern so that's not just kind of a throwaway item that's kind of a critical part of iek team development and it gives you a sense of the level of partnering that's expected between parents of children with disabilities and their school personnel we look at evaluation results we

046look at the child's needs across the board academic developmental and functional this is stemming from the disability that is for any child regardless of their disability classification for every meeting we ever have with the iep team we ask does this student demonstrate behavior that impedes learning of self or others and if the answer is yes the team has to address that in the iep and with specificity we talk about any special needs that a child whose lep may have a limited english proficient we have special needs that we consider for children who are blind or visually impaired children with communication needs and we always have to ask at every iep meeting whether the child needs assistive technology devices or services as in order to receive a faith and that's it's defined very very broadly assistive

047technology services can also be assisted technology evaluations or competitive communication evaluations and assistive technology devices can be very high technically very low tech as well and the team is supposed to consider that and if the answer is to any of those questions yes there's a need we have to show that the need was addressed specifically in the iep so those kind of compliance pieces are really critical sometimes teams identify yes there's a need and then i can't find where it's addressed or theresa can't find where it's explicitly addressed in young people so that's one thing you look at you're probably or maybe you're aware maybe not about 15 years ago a parent of a young woman with an autism spectrum disorder he's actually a parent in a district that i worked in and i was

048involved in his daughter's case from very early on he became a board member eventually it was really long and fantastic relationship he was instrumental in getting that lobby done that allows and shirt requires insurance carriers in illinois to cover services specialized services like applied behavior analysis special therapy for children with autism he also got this added to the school code so this is unique to our school code and for any child who's got an autism diagnosis there are seven additional needs that are typical of children on the spectrum that our team also needs to evaluate for and then discuss and document in the iep so there's seven more just for any child with that particular medical diagnosis um and then we start writing the idp once we look at all those needs we have goals

049and objectives and present levels we have to do periodic iep goal reporting we have to talk about supplementary aids and services that will be provided for the child in the gen ed setting in particular that will help the child meet iep goals and help that child really make progress in the general curriculum both academic and non-academic the idea being what do we need to do to support this child so that on a day-to-day basis to the maximum extent appropriate not possible to the maximum extent appropriate that child can be educated and participate with same age same grade non-disabled peers and then for kids who demonstrate behavior that impedes learning of self or others one approach a district can take what is a more formal approach is to initiate what's called a functional behavior assessment and

050fba which is a real deep dive analysis of what do those behaviors tell us in what settings do they occur occur what triggers them what interventions have been tried unsuccessfully what interventions have been tried more successfully how might we you know shape that behavior up going forward based on building on what is successful and once we do that for a child with problematic behavior we have to write these complex bips behavior intervention plans so that we can really have a very targeted research-based approach to dealing with the child's problematic behaviors or behavioral dysregulation and for communicating that information to try to coordinate with families so that we are consistent in approaches to the extent that that's possible between home and school then for kids who are uh 13 and a half and one day or

051older right if you're writing or revising an iep that will be in effect when the student turns 14 and a half and every year after that now your school system has what i always say is two jobs for the price of one you have an obligation to educate a child and get them through your high school curriculum right like you would any other child and get them ready for post-secondary life but you also have an obligation to do this deeper dive transition planning so that you are helping them move in the direction and or successfully be in a position to achieve their post-secondary goals in the areas of education or training of post-secondary employment and in the areas of independent living skills so there's a process for that including age-appropriate transition assessments we write transition

052goals we have there's actually a two-page plan uh that lays out all of this post-secondary uh transition planning so that's an added requirement and a really significant one i will tell you i've seen trends in special ed due process state complaints and litigation over the last 40 years this one is really the one that we see year in year out because i think you're aware um national research shows the outcomes are still not as good as we'd like them to be for children with disabilities once they leave public school systems and they get into post-secondary life and that's really designed to help improve those outcomes not just get them out of high school but to improve those transitions to the post-secondary world and that's the point in which the your teams get to make placement

053decisions right so it's all those other things that i just kind of outlined super quickly that drive your discussions and decisions in your teams about the most appropriate and least restrictive placement in which the child can be educated and that's the phrase appropriate according to the words of the federal court in our jurisdiction here in the seventh circuit comes first and then comes these prescriptions right so we focus on what's appropriate i wanted you to see just some of the key provisions under federal and state law about this and i want to show you the first one especially because it appears first in both federal and state law and what it does is articulate what i call a rebuttable presumption the presumption is when your team start discussion of placement for any child with any

054disability no matter how complex or severe no matter where they're currently placed you always have to start with the presumption this iep will be implemented in the same school the child would attend at the same grade level in the same gem ed schedule as that student would have if he or she didn't have a disability with push in services or supports unless and here's the rebuttable part of that presumption unless the team can articulate why that can't be done successfully and what data or other information do you have to show that so there is a presumption in favor of the least restrictive environment and i think a problem our teams often have especially the gen ed members of our team sometimes unions as well i think there's a misconception that if you try classroom based

055interventions before referring a child for a special educational evaluation maybe an iep by the time the child is determined eligible and they get an iep they must need to be in some special ed class somewhere not in gen ed anymore or not in gen ed as much and i just want you to see that's really not what the law requires or the law intends at all really the law requires that we look at how can we support that student in the gen ed environment and if it can't be done why not why not only then can we consider more restrictive placement options so again the message is hard to sell sometimes to the building level folks that special education is a service it's not a place it's not a class so just because a child

056is eligible for special ed doesn't mean they go out to a resource class necessarily or an instructional or self-insane class to a day school et cetera et cetera kids with disabilities when we look at placement are all entitled to participate if they're qualified in your other district program so that could be bilingual it could be career or tech ed it could be gifted it could be title 1 programs in the day much earlier on when the law was passed there was a misconception that you couldn't be in both you had an iep then you couldn't participate in any of the other districts programs especially if they had any federal funding attached that's not true and our state law reminds our staff of that and i just wanted you to see this this is from a

057guidance document it's one of many from the us department of education's osap office of special ed programs it's an internal office at the department of ed and it's just a really important reminder about placement we just can't be making categorical decisions we cannot say all kids with learning disabilities need to be in a resource program to work on their academic skills it's just not true or all kids with moderate or severe disabilities or deficits need to be an ex kind of program more restrictive or some such thing and we fit programs to kids not kids to existing programs right and that's the whole point of that i the individual is part of an iep um and that's really critical i think a lot of times again there's a sort of a misconception if you've got

058ev and we've tried to address your behaviors with positive behavior interventions in gen ed well if you're an iep in a bib you're going to be in the ed self-contained classroom not necessarily that's just not the case and then this is the lre the least restrictive environment mandate i showed you the placement rules first because they appear first in the law for a reason so we start with what's appropriate and then when it comes to least restrictive environment we look to include children in gen ed academic non-academic and extracurriculars to the maximum extent appropriate not possible but appropriate and that means with appropriate supports and then we're back to my refundable presumption that we don't put children with disabilities in separate classes schools or otherwise remove them from gen ed only unless their needs cannot

059be met satisfactorily we cannot support them with services supports and so-called s-a-s supplementary aids and services in a less restrictive environment and just a reminder and i know i've tried to explain that sometimes to some of your gen ed staff it's not uncommon i do that everywhere i go but a lot of times i think gen ed teachers pour their heart and soul uh into working with children with special needs and so by the time a child is determined to be eligible um if they remain in the gen ed class sometimes it might be with even more iep directed services or supports and sometimes you get a boy i can't do any more than i'm already doing just because a child needs some or a lot of modifications or accommodations in gen ed is never

060supposed to be the reason why we place a child more restrictively outside of a gen ed classroom and then iep said to have provisions about children who might need services beyond the regular school year we call those esy or extended school year services again this is supposed to be based on that i and iep it's individualized to meet student needs so it's great that your district may offer what a five-week program four days a week from eight to 11 a.m but there may be some children who need 11 weeks or they need a full day or they need something different just like like during the regular school year although services tend to be more and resources tend to be more limited during the summer period it may be we have to plan for more or

061different for a child and then back circling back to compliance just a reminder an iep is a legally binding document and your school system has a mandatory obligation a strict obligation to implement every nook and cranny of it with fidelity and teachers don't get to pick and choose and service providers don't get to pick and choose and the student and the parents don't get to pick and choose i just don't want that accommodation today i don't want this if the team says the child needs instruction related services or supplementary aids and services accommodations modifications whatever those have to be delivered as written in the iep and there's a whole body of case law about districts that right after all these things i've described these pitch perfect ieps that address every single aspect of a child's

062needs stemming directly or indirectly from their disability and then somebody drops the ball often completely unintentionally and they just don't fully implement and that can come back and form the district in terms of violation of the child's right to faith as well i mentioned earlier the third overarching obligation is a whole series a system of procedural safeguards to protect the rights of parents of children with disabilities and to protect the children themselves there's a long list of these rights i'm not going to go through it frankly any given day you can take a look at the parents rights document that's published by the state board of education and that we give to families at once a year and then sometimes more frequently and it gives you a much longer list but there's a number of

063things this is very black and white as i mentioned in the beginning this is not about this is all process these are very rigid rules and they apply no matter what so there's no room for error in this or individualization this applies across the board no matter who the child is and who the parents are so you've got your list there now that's that also you're probably aware as board members we can apply generally the rules of discipline for misconduct that we do for all children or non-disabled children to children with disabilities as well there are however some special rules and special limitations that apply once you have you exceed 10 days of removal disciplinary removal of a child with a disability from misconduct during the school year so there's a whole scheme about that

064that's a whole training day by itself um and then we have um some specific timelines that apply as part of those procedural safeguards i mean i i've had parents ask and really be you know very distressed about the reality if you give me consent to an individual evaluation on september 1st you may feel so strongly that your child's evaluation needs to get done sooner rather than later but the truth is your school system has 60 school days which is nearly three months which is hard for some parents to hear understandably to complete the process of the evaluation and bring that team back together to discuss that's just one of a number of examples of things that apply and timelines that apply so um back to the overarching discussion that i started having your administration and

065allison especially over the summer it's just you know what are compliance issues that you need to be aware of so so much of what i've described virtually all of it really falls under the auspices of what your special education administrator who is a state approved director of special education is responsible for she's responsible for making sure that your teams are doing this that they understand the rules and requirements that they follow the requirements that they honor the procedural safeguard but they're comprehensive enough that they're detailed enough that they don't predetermine things i think sometimes a lot of places i go the staff is is upset when a special ed administrator says wait wait slow down don't walk into that iep meeting telling me that you expect the child to be in the self-contained program back

066it up number one we don't predetermine that ever number two i don't see the data the supported number of the things you put into the iep where is that well those day-to-day operational issues and general oversight aspects of idea compliance fall to in your case it's teresa with dr westman's oversight but the policy aspects of all of this and the funding support that your administration needs to implement all of these compliance requirements really are within your province as the board of education so every board of education has to have a policy about education of children with disabilities and special education procedures there's kind of a long list uh uniquely anytime you revise either one you have to have a public hearing you need public input whereas for any other administrative procedure you don't you're required

067to have a policy about misconduct of students with disabilities you do those are the kind of things that the board is responsible for making sure you have in place that is updated as rules and requirements change and they do over time for example and one thing that has led to our conversation tonight is that it's been a while since your district last had a chance to review these special education procedures that are actually not required by the state they're required by federal by idea itself our federal law and some things have changed and those need to be updated and revised and those are going to come to your attention that's an example of the policy aspects of your compliance and then some other policy and funding issues that i put in that i thought would

068be useful for you to just kind of be refreshed on i mean in addition to developing and periodically reviewing policy and procedure obviously figuring out in terms of the budgetary and funding support for the for the costs associated with all of these myriads of requirements uh for special education compliance that you've got to establish with the state board of education and then they submit on your behalf to the u.s department of education so for example i know in your district i've been out there a long time one issue that has been prevalent is the districts implementing the so-called 70-30 rule of gen ed classes and that rule requires that in any class the child of an individual student with a disability is placed if it's called a gen ed classroom on the iep of that

069child that class could not be comprised of more than 30 of the children who have iep so if you had 10 kids only three of them could have ieps okay otherwise you got to find another class you might have to break the class up to change up the numbers well that costs money doesn't it and you've got to have space you've got to have staff to be able to do that that would be one example by the way children who have ieps only for speech they don't fall in that 30 rule or limitation for genetic classes then you're probably aware also just from years of communications with your administration and with your unions as board members that the state periodically sets or revises rules about how many children can be in any given special education

070class resource or instructional right and it's done to which you have to have a lead teacher and whether you can increase your numbers by increasing paraprofessional support for the classroom so obviously class sizes cost money i know you know that when you look at your gem ed class sizes that is absolutely true and special ed you're required as a district to maintain what's called the continual placement options from least restrictive which is all tied in gen ed without supports pushed in to most restrictive which arguably is home or hospital instruction right where kids are alone they're not getting taught with anybody with disabled children non-disabled children well um you either have to provide the continuum services here in district or pay right for a child to find a spot if for in the continuum that

071you don't offer so for example if you have a child who's the for whom the most appropriate least restrictive environment is a private therapeutic day school or it might even be a residential school the district has to pay for that who signs off on those contracts well that's that's not all of you it doesn't require board approval at that level the idea says it's the district administrator right in our case in illinois it's referred to as the state director of special education who then signs off on those contracts for placements in non-public special ed facilities day schools or residential schools but that's why continually you got to look at your numbers you got to look at your student needs your administration will talk to you about maybe needing more resource level support in one building

072or a self-contained classes exclusively for kids with an autism spectrum disorder because you've got a number of elementary age kids who have that particular disability and really need those unique research-based interventions that are out there for children on the spectrum so that's the kind of thing that you can expect will come to you um just ensuring that you have sufficient staffing levels both your special ed teachers your service providers others that might be paraprofessionals and others i will tell you that when you look at that and when you hear either anybody's request be it your administration or your union for more paraprofessional support for our gen ed teachers um it's great if you decide that you know if you find yourself facing larger class sizes for example then a teacher might need another adult in

073the classroom to support classroom management to facilitate more differentiated instruction in the life when it comes to writing paraprofessionals into ieps as a needed support for a child with a disability um there's a process for that sometimes gen ed teachers say well you're gonna have to write a paraprofessional with if you're gonna place this kick in the microgen class well not necessarily that's a team decision based on a number of factors and criteria we're just actually going to do some updated training for your staff on that because it tends to be kind of a quick reaction this kid's going to be in general education we need an extra classroom para or a one-to-one sometimes that true sometimes it's not obviously the cost of maintaining evidence-based testing materials rti and mts materials curriculum and related service

074services for children with disabilities and then obviously through your idea grant but also through your local funds we have to make sure that there's sufficient amounts available for professional development and consultation and then i know that every year there's a requirement that districts work with their collective marketing units to discuss workload plans for special educators i know in your district the process is that your administration meets annually with the union they come to you with a recommendation for board approval there's a lot of different ways to do it but that's one example where the board really has oversight into compliance issues and involvement through the approval process some other areas where you might become involved i don't know if this has happened during your tenure as board members sometimes you can get a child with

075a disability who engages in what you would call an illinois gross disobedience or misconduct the child may be eligible for either suspension or expulsion uh you're either you know that there's going to be an extension expulsion review hearing or there's going to be an expulsion hearing and then suddenly it's no longer on your agenda and usually that's because in the interval sometimes there's a requirement always for expulsion sometimes for suspension that the iep team including the paris has to come together first and determine if the kids misconduct was or was not a manifestation of their disability and if the answer is yes lots of things can happen the placement may change there are some situations in which a child with a disability can be transferred to an inner replacement but it's not going to come

076to you so you you've given the date you're holding the date um to address this either in closed session and then take action and open or in some other you know you're going to have a special meeting to do it and then suddenly you're told uh we don't we don't need to do that anymore that's because the iep team's decision trumps and it must come first and then obviously if your district finds itself it's i shouldn't i should not would as i the good news is you have had very few requests for mediation due process requests uh state complaints filed or ocr complaints filed against your district and it's been quite wonderful and it's a real testament to the work you do here but typically if what parents and districts are disagreeing about is programmatic

077in nature or placement often that that doesn't rise to the board level that's something your state approved director your superintendent will look at in terms of settlement if however if what's at stake is payment of taxpayer resources for other things reimbursing parents for private programs or services or for placement in a non-approved facility that they may have made or some such thing that's when you will find at the board level you'll be asked to weigh in and provide your approval for those kind of resolutions um any questions i can i can answer for you just about your role as board members or anything generally or specifically about idea compliance i i know because you are um the public facing members of the of your constituents in a different way than your administration you may very

078well find yourself in a meeting in the community at church and wherever it may be with a parent who's got a concern about a special education issue for their child a compliance issue or program issue i know that that's a tough position to begin i would remind you you have a forward policy on this eight colon one one zero uh as in any parent stated complaint or concern we direct them up the chain of country administrators to address their concern i will tell you the last thing you want and i've talked to board members a lot about this is once you find yourself involved as a non-iep team member who's trying to problem-solve a legitimate concern the more likely it is you're going to be drawn into money limitation that may ensue so i try

079to keep my boards out of that and that's not really what's contemplated in terms of your role um as the ones who are responsible for the stewardship of your district when it comes to special education requirements i know that's easier said than done and i know sometimes even staff or the union will come to you all individually rather than talking to administration because they're not happy with the answers they receive i you know you've got a chain of command policy and you've got the policy about parent complaints and concerns and how those will be addressed and so um i think when it comes to that piece of compliance oversight that's probably left um best to how the policy lays out you'll address those things i just have one question as it relates to iep it's

080odd because we find ourselves in this situation and the state of illinois may not have addressed it yet but we're beginning to see issues or questions about the continuation of iep services for students who are on quarantine well here's some things we know that under uh even the most by the way you may know that by the way we got a new executive order dropped by the governor's office late friday evening so now we don't even have to call quarantine it can be called exclusion right quarantine or isolation is what our global department of public health does we exclude for non-compliance with certain requirements according to this new eo but what we do know from both the governor's executive order and from guidance from the state board of education is that kids who are excluded

081from school um because of exposure to covet are entitled to remote learning they're entitled you're required to provide it's the only time you are still required to provide if it's discretionary otherwise um and many districts have decided we're just not continuing with that this year we don't have to it's an option that a mandate under the school code to maintain a remote learning program however for kids who are excluded or quarantined they are entitled to remote learning and that includes our kids with disabilities and that has been and continues to be incredibly tricky because if that child is quarantined for 10 days and that child was supposed to receive 60 minutes of speech and language support and and 30 minutes times two of group social work services we're going to have to find a way

082to provide it remotely or make it up when they come back so iep what we've gotten is when covin started in spring of 2020 both our u.s department of education agencies and our state board said just do your best give it your reasonable and good faith effort because we all know it's so hard to suddenly morph into a system where we're providing services virtually or remotely they they got past that last fall of 20 21 and i'm telling you any kind of non-compliance really comes back to haunt the eighth day u.s department of event and isb has been very clear one way or another if kids are on remote we need to provide them with full iep services thank you yeah other questions terry how often do you get involved with a particular idea in

083your district a couple times near max and i take it that's a good sign it's a great sign for you i'd say but you know i will say i my experience has been um over 40 years of practice is that districts i for some reason seem to go with cycles and they have quiet years where i may get phone calls about new executive order or a new state law and so what should we do do we need a form for this or there may be just a series of cases unconnected to one another that seem to pop up like a cluster um and i think the most i've ever had one school year here has been maybe two maybe three of the most i think there's like nothing or just to call about a tough

084disciplinary situation involving three kids and two have ieps and are we following the right procedures but i'm not at the manifestation determination so i will tell you that if there is such a thing i mean your your district which is good for you is kind of a low user when it comes to special education um not a lot of disputes with parents and um and the ones we have been really pretty easily resolved whether they were attorneys or advocates or in some cases where you know parents were advocating on their own but it was difficult for the team to be able to have kind of a rational and legally compliant discussion and sometimes that's a role a lawyer can play anything else i've addressed any questions you have or concerns you have i'm happy to

085work with you you know another another thing that's always available is you know sometimes boards actually use their school lawyers to actually audit individual cases if a parent comes to you and just won't follow the chain of command and or has done that and is not happy with the outcome i can't just say we just look at the file and tell our administration not you individually right are there holes here did we miss something is the parent correct should we have done this would have been better if we had done that so sometimes that's a way to bring in somebody thank you for having me out thank you at this time we have our board of education committee reports policy committee meetings on august 18th and september 13th this is wait time if you have

086anything you would like to add or highlight from either of your policy committee reports uh just a little bit later tonight we will talk specifically about the cpa in that particular policy now also called to hold uh [Music] expulsion in advance but now and then there's just two policies that are here for first year mr [Music] about the undesignated medication policy um i understand and appreciate that we're sort of putting that unfold because a lot of the other challenges our staff has right now is that fair to say was there any discussion of sort of a um i don't know sort of thing i worry we're letting the perfectly the enemy of the goodyear is there any discussion of a policy that said we'll have these undesignated medications it will be in the school nurse's

087office the school nurse is the only person who's going to administer these medications and if that will only happen during the hours of the school nurses in the building under her regular economic dollars but we did have a discussion around that the committee [Music] i guess just figuring out all of the components of the availability plan um this the stipulation without making the modifications in the footnoted version from press advises that the medication needs to be available before during and after school and you in order to operate outside of that you have to develop what we've titled i don't think it was specifically called that but an availability plan because bill dr uh uh information advised that uh after conversation with the attorney well we can operate outside of that we don't have to have

088it before during and after school however you have to come up with a plan for its implementation and it was in that as i understand it and you could certainly speak further to it um that that became a very labor intensive process necessary to a lot of components at the part is you have to specify [Music] but one of the things that we did talk about was that if it was available if the nurses are before school and after school we could uh that that would be considered before during and after school but um we the deeper we got into it uh the more steps and the more things that involve these different forms have to be completed uh you know if uh at the end of the day or administered um there's training involved

089the more we got into it and we were kind of going through this without him too the more we thought uh with as long as everybody did right now and the nurses felt like it ruins the situation so from that standpoint because the nurses felt like they could still help the kids and have not uh you know be a major issue it'll be best just to kind of pause so we can do it right and then the talk was because there's several tasks involved the community would probably try to tackle [Music] one task at [Music] of the undesignated medications but i'm not sure i understand why well specifically it was because of the narrow nature of which the medication could be used the policy itself even in its expanded form indicated that it can be

090used only when the only four students who have a diabetic care plan and only by the nurse or diabetic care aid and that the use of the glucagon would be included within the diabetic care plan and could be used only if their supply was expired and so making it uh so so there was discussion with the nurses who came to the meeting and or kept kelly initially and then um jody who came before who indicated uh that they felt uh they have a good um plan in place for ensuring that we don't find ourselves in that position um that the shelf life is such that and their uh medication monitoring of the meds they have for any given student especially those that have more sensitive conditions such as diabetes have they have a good handle

091on not allowing that to occur not being in a situation where there would be um an expired medication and um so for a non-existent [Music] it needs to be available or for whom it is included in their care plan uh diabetic care plan my concern would be that there would be a parent who doesn't provide right when will this policy oh well they're related to google gun no just uh well that's going to be determined by bill and his team and how quickly they're able to you know it's going to take time i think all right [Music] january possibly similar to that but i think that's fair on the everyday side you're probably looking at early early years as it relates to your availability and ability to undertake some of the other tasks okay do

092you want me to specifically let you know when it's going to be or you'll just follow the board uh like to point out first reading of policy two one two zero board member development and first reading of policy three five zero administration administrative personnel other than the superintendent business services committee meeting occurred in september september 7th mr booker do you have anything to add or highlight in the business services committee report does anyone have questions for the board next on the agenda is consent agenda items are there any items on the consent agenda any members of the board would like to take out for separate consideration before you do that ask the question can we go back to the comments and stores yeah well i just wanted to ask because it came up several times

093in there that we're setting aside the first 20 days of school what kind of clarity on what that means exactly yeah so uh first 20 days is a phrase that's moved off sometimes in schools just talk about the first month of school and generally education teachers are encouraged to use that first month of school to look at to make sure students understand procedures practices behavior expectations so it's a recognition that in addition to reading writing music we're also setting up the year and making sure kids understand that building relationships uh to make sure there's a classroom culture for the year so it's kind of a it's kind of a term that we use i just came up here again and i've heard from several people in the first 20 days at the k through 6

094level maybe in academics for the person yes again there's still academics um in addition but there uh there's a higher emphasis placed on procedures practices clarifying expectations um [Music] why [Music] message the focus definitely is on building expectations your expectations behavior but there's still should be and this is something you do every year the first 20 days but generally it's every year we just really did ask the teachers to make sure you were focusing on this there was a little bit of concern on uh with the pressure of uh covered loss that was happening that teachers would forego that and try to start making up academic content right away and they wanted to forget about [Music] two weeks of school with the principals just to make sure that that was a big part okay so

095the question was are there any items on the consent agenda any members of the board would like to take out for separate consideration [Music] state member booker requested to have items number five which is district handbook addendums from schools and number eight board protocols revisited removed for separate consideration do i have a motion to approve consent agenda items one through four and six seven [Music] nine ten eleven [Music] herrera seconded the motion to approve consent agenda items number one two three four six seven nine ten and 11 as presented discussion you have one question regarding the succession plan and it's the building level succession plan do all buildings have so is that something that will be done just during that circumstance any other discussion mr zickert mr herrera mr cooker hi mrs whitcomb aye ms

096maybe hi this is how this is renemic i motion cast is consent agenda item five do i have a joy of emotion to approve the remainder or excuse me the consent agenda item number five as presented number five the district handbook addendums from schools saying no second we would move on to um do i have a motion to prove we'll see no second the motion to approve consent agenda item number five as presented discussion also the reason i ask this is under grading on here when i read this but it says on here that as you go through the semester we're using the launcher through collaborating system and the student never community access with their letter gradients that's obviously the semester i just don't think so we do send home progress report cards on a

097regular basis it's true that at the end of the course that's when the final grade is determined [Music] families students what uh what their grade or what their scores need to be in order to receive the needs for that i don't know if dr person can add to that i think that is in the high schools we will be saying home virus reports uh several times during the semester with letter grades based on their performances because the number of my kids or anybody but i don't ask in the past they can't get a determination they cannot get a determination for their greatness you know with reference to your letter part of that is the changing nature of where they're at if they're early on a standard um but it may be appropriate for those two

098they have a one or two content standard which with our conversion chart depending on whether it's one or two uh the resultant student have an attack and we want to avoid the perception that having a one means you're failing at course because it depends on where the student is at in the learning process so if it's early on then that one's probably appropriate whereas it's the end of construction around that standard that's going to be a concern so what we are including in power is that the teachers hopefully tomorrow should be able to see this uh they identify what the expected level of performance is by standards you can see that as of today your son or daughter should be at a let's say two and their sport right now is at 2.5 so you

099know that they're they're doing exactly what you need to do so that information be given by standard and then again several times throughout the semester and go back to the entire three early in the semester sure absolutely so i was told that um a lot of times it's gonna take some time to get to a 3d i mean normal to expect it's fantastic but it will be possible earlier you couldn't get a power would handle three was defaulting back to two and a half you could manually go back in and put it in through here that is correct the teachers have to indicate that the student's downstream and we know that all teachers are doing that you know all teachers are really great and going back and adjusting the third five and then three like

100it's that and that's what we're training to do so what this even person can ask at a given time um there's preset so it'll be basically mid quarter quarter midway through the second quarter that they'll be getting buttercreams is the conversion chart that you refer to is that the same across classes it's not like this that says this one and do the kids have access to that so they could figure it out if they wanted to uh yeah yeah we actually have posters that we produce to put up in all the questions it's fairly available on the website i'm just i'm just curious because i mean i just heard about it that's what i'm curious was it power set off that was supposed to fall to a 2.5 yeah so the normal uh the setup

101that's more out of the box approaches youth memorization score estimator which uses three different calculations and then it picks the best fit for the students uh we tried using that last year and teachers it also really closely matches in our elementary schools in the middle school up to last year is the most recent assignment so it is the most student's most recent score on evidence that impacts what the overall extended score is so it's it was a combination of not trying this new system last year and futures not uh at all for their expectations and trying to vary with what the practice had in middle school for instance in order to get a 4.0 you have to have all threes and fours to get a three at that majority most people would say 51 are

102over but that's not always true even though i believe that i'm not sure everybody else can use that even though that would be my my thing but i look at it if you're a parent and you look at it and say depending on how many there are in the past if you had let's just say 20 standards i know it's not going to happen if you have 20 standards and you had 20 that were 4.0 if you had one levels of two you were getting stoked in the name and you're stuck with a class unless it was a major assignment or a major test or something like that so i guess i'm concerned with your edu why this system optically may work different than what they're used to in the past and because when i

103saw that i'm like well that'd be a for kids that are used to being high achievers that's going to be a real thing of a contention maybe for somebody 4.0 on you know 90 4.0 that's part of the point of moving this system is going to be highly reliable we don't allow students to have a gap they miss the concept and they're given the average of all the other scores and that's one of the fundamentals of this type of system is that on the flip side you know the student is going to show you a little bit of knowledge um [Music] the name of the calculation system um what they're saying is marzano conceptually says that one way you can provide grades in this way that need get to marzano and they try to implement

104a calculation of that um i don't know if i would say marzano was the godfather of this education okay so just so we're clear we're voting on the district handbook addendums if there's things in there that people can vote one way or another so i just have a question about point of education for myself we we the district spends a lot of time putting together the district handbook right and so i'm wondering why we have 11 independent additional districts and whose responsibility it is to ensure that they in no way contradict or um act in opposition to the district campus yeah great question so generally the reason why we have uh the addendums is because there's information or procedures that are interesting mostly at different grade levels so an elementary school might talk about or

105discipline differently for not dressing for pe or i have different procedures for pick up and drop off then high school or i definitely think that the possibility of overlap unnecessary overlap or i think congruence is probably pretty powerful with our process right now if somebody's not paying with full attention um and it outlines a district 100 reading philosophy and i don't find that anywhere in the district handbook the grading philosophy i look forward policies by a policy so that's just where i come down and say i'm a little bit concerned about these 11 standalone documents and as a board voting on them and having them be because i'll be honest there was a lot of things to look at and read and i went through as many of them as i could and looked for

106high points of things and newark seems to have things a little bit different than than the vhs and south has things different than and you know so i'd probably fall on the side of saying i hate to sanction 11 additional documents that you know i don't know maybe everyone else had time to you know fully read them and compare them back i just did it on the highest points i could figure out for that reason i probably just have concerns about knowing whether or not you know there's anything in any of them that is stands in opposition to something that at the district level that could put us in you know a situation where we have a parent that would say well you know do they all i guess so maybe we get around that

107do all of them say if there's any difference or any issue that the district handbook prevails don't know i'm just i don't know maybe everyone else had time to read them all and evaluate them and you know i feel like in voting on them [Music] we're saying that these are in no way incongruent with the district and i just personally i don't know that and the district you know the brilliant philosophy jumped the grainy philosophy jumped out on the one not so much at the end of lunches i mean again i can only sample a couple of them um i didn't see as many issues that i thought could be substantive in nature um but the differences between seven the two gymnasium middle schools give me pause for some concern if there's 11 additional documents

108as well i'm just asking a quick question because i'm curious knowing that this heartbreak so i'm just wondering what's the downside is there a downside because the biggest changes are fairly low consequence kind of downside generally is if you have major changes in discipline sorry if you have major changes in discipline that's usually where you've i'm not saying that i think that's the staff's job to review them all if you send them to us because we should review them for the purposes of voting that's fair i'm not saying it's not or that you know you guys should be spending time you know pouring through these documents but at the very least i i guess i would say do we consider an indication in in all of them that's congruent that says you know what if

109there's any difference here to the district handbook now maybe that opens up another can of worms i don't know why would you put out a document that you knew was incongruent with the master document i so this is the follow-up policy six to eight philosophy it says we'll adapt right the common green velocity sorry i'm trying yeah so it doesn't outline what the breeding philosophy is so we what's um one for approved submit there's a motion on the floor currently to approve consent agenda item number five district handbook addendums from schools is there any additional discussion season or we could just make a motion eleven addendum right now i moved to my [Music] school addendums to add a disclaimer the wording of which will be [Music] decided by our school district attorney but the nature

110of that additional language will be that the district handbook control should be in the conflict with the individual schools a question for just clarity so remember may will moved to amend the 11 school addendums to include the nature of additional language as decided by administration that district that the district handbook handbook will control if a question arises between the two okay do i have a second [Music] remember herrera seconded never made those motion discussion just the motion on the floor is to amending language um you have discussions regarding it okay roll call please miss maineville okay mr herrera all right this is vidcom i don't know what i'm voting on dance because i thought we had a motion and now we so amen 11 school handbook addendums to include nature of language as determined by

111administration that district handbook will control if a question arises between the handbook of the school handbook and the district handbook and is there an additional additional both and after that yes so we are voting on motion passes six one amendment motion passes six one now there is a motion on the floor the motion on the floor is the amended motion originally made by members of hurt and seconded by mrs and that is to approve the 11 school handbook addendums as amended if we vote for that for clarity purposes then we are voting to approve the granting language in there which you just said was never approved by other than us approving the handbooks over here so there yeah there's no board policy specific to their [Music] based on current policy that the grading policy correctly

112this is the correctness is that rating policies could ever go down anywhere currently [Music] based on policy as it is now currently there isn't anything to vote on that anyway exactly right so your your policy now states that you'll vote on ukrainian policy in november right so the assumption from school administration would be that absent in november change would start the year with whatever you need to have or not and nobody had an opportunity to get feedback we've [Music] started with the assumption that this was separate i would like to add in regards to the academic eligibility that is indicated in especially the heist primarily the high school ones that refer to policy 274 all which is the eligibility and extracurriculars is that the policy says the student must be passing five courses [Music] handbooks

113addendums say that they need to be on pace behind case or ahead of pace and that's not defining policy for what that is so they don't quite learn yes um so the reason we did that in the schools because we worked with ihsa to talk through how ihsa would interpret passing grades in a particular competency-based environment we work for different languages in this language my plan is this language they said would work for their interpretation of past then okay i'm not sure that i understand what you just said yeah so i just say requires they have their own language that says students need to be passing defined they have to be passing five courses in order to play um more to be eligible to play just kind of generally what what what the rule is

114if uh if a tft team or any other ihsa school or the public wants to contest a student's eligibility they can make a complaint type just saying i just say we'll come in and look at recruiting practices and the eligibility of those in that individual student question and so we worked we met with ihsa to make sure that the interpretation of passing a class is a procrastinating class somewhere as being on base that would align their their policy which is the same i mean our policy is basically pulled through so it is the words are different uh this is our attempt to marry but it doesn't so what you're saying is it doesn't currently match our policy language the handbook language doesn't match the policy language i don't it's not the same words i think

115it's the same in practice because we're using proficiency terminology here in the word policy and i just say uses a generic i guess i would just say i don't i don't feel like i would be making a responsible decision i didn't know that i was in there i didn't realize that we had that incongruency so i would probably be voting now but um okay so any other discussion at this time i would like to acknowledge the following donations max and treats for me and elementary staff cindy coulter and tammy bailey coffee and snacks for me and elementary staff from the sears because we sell some wordpress they are yeah backpacks with supplies from physicians immediate care development year for me and elementary school students in need lunch for staff at caledonia elementary school grand canyon

116university tiffany foreign 350 from caledonia community church for caledonia elementary school one thousand dollars from susan frederick rhodes paul frederick roads memorial for belvedere high school band department and 2004 mazda tribute from rob rob wesselpot for bellevier high school automotive department currently are voting on consent agenda item number five as amended mr zuckert yes this may be mrs hope mr herrera mr bucher mrs whitcomb no this is read nemo no motion passes four to three and do i have a motion to approve consent agenda item number eight as presented and member herrera seconded the motion to approve consent agenda item number eight four protocols visited as presented any discussion i wanted to ask for number four communication staff 4a board members will communicate directly only with the superintendent for board of business why would we

117only give a communicate with the superintendent this was something that was previously discussed i didn't notice numbers and when the discussion did happen they sent him up for correct me at the moment this discussion happened um but it was decided that it would streamline the ability to ask after lisa and he couldn't hand it off to whoever would answer that question back to the board member and we came up with ourselves we discussed them yes in our post executive session uh poor training yes or soft variations doesn't that mean you open for kind of the phone tree effect and the more people the message travels through it allows for information and come back directly through dr easton so he knows if you know if he needs to follow up on something like followed up on

118because they're the specific experts in their little area of their area of the district why would any member of the sport not be allowed to go and ask them a question that seems crazy you're allowed to do it i mean anyone no one has to follow these okay um that's what that's my question and i'm i'm assuming maybe you're talking about asking you're like something for the world no we don't need the word he's right well i think the rest i mean that's what we're voting on for board committee business or conference will communicate with the appropriate administrator on the committee so like if you're thinking as business services that you would contact greg with a question because it's business services that is part of four feed the protocol right we're not held well the

119intention is that four numbers once they go down it would follow the protocols that were set for board members otherwise there wouldn't be a reason i would have is that happens knowing knowing situational people like i know i call that i recall that's that's the question when there's also some testing contact technically i guess i shouldn't have done that i think that was a tip i mean i don't think that's a big deal i i'll admit the protocols but to me in the real world that that kind of stuff happens more than often so i get i guess looking at little ones is to know this is a smaller district this is [Music] is something that the seven but i'm sure i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one to stop the administrators i can

120tell you that i don't um probably to my own carol because i'm you know again i but i have very strictly adhered to the policy um which has probably created its own level of issues but um i i completely understand what you're saying about this is a priorly you know litigated issue if you will um but i also know we're here to discuss the other item as it relates to this particular change so it can come up to be revised or changed i mean maybe at some point again in the future um and you know i i don't think we knew what we were doing i mean let's be honest we were five minutes old board members some of us were new or not but but i accept that we're having conversation tonight about a

121different issue on this particular protocol but to me opening up the protocol conversation again to have that conversation would be an indication that it could be something that was realistic tell me if i'm wrong [Music] so the reason why the protocol is on this evening is to add language in regards to um the media and who is communicating with the media number seven the one that was originally approved earlier this summer said the superintendent it's a spokesperson for the district to the media and that does stand in opposition to a policy that says that building principles or individuals that are designated by the superintendent and talk to the media for specific reasons and for specific topics so in making that um jive with our board policy adding his or her appointee after the superintendent um

122just makes those two combined so we're not in the opposition our protocols are not positioned in policy so making that decision tonight doesn't mean that someone couldn't open up a conversation by requesting that protocols come back at a future date but their efficiency tonight that's illegal but it could come up officially correct or an amendment could be made to change it at this point um and then there would be discussion on that it could be done either way so right now the motion on the floor is to accept or accept the board protocols revisited consent item number eight as presented that presentation being adding or his or her appointment on seven b can i move so then that we removed you are moving to delete the entire ah okay so direction is [Music] to delete

123or so your motion is to amend [Music] as presented the board protoces presented to delete 4a is there a second during none we would go back to the original motion the original motion being the motion on the floor to approve or protocols revisited consent item number eight as presented roll call please ms mayville hi mr herrera right mrs help mr zicker mr bucher this is whitcomb um this is read it motion passes next we have our roll call action items do i have a motion district final budget for july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 as presented motion to approve final version of july 1st 2013 the motion to approve the district 100 final budget for july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 as presented discussion i have a question about outpace services specifically i

124know the end of the ad fund and again thank you very much dr brown for the time you spent with me i guess left before last week's meeting to go through whatever one of the head funds were i had some questions and dr wiestman provided information about the general about the budget item i didn't know if that was last year or this year that was a figure for those 46 students at about 3.1 million dollars that was last time that last okay and so i'm trying to what is the budgeted amount for 2.85 million and how much of that because i think i must have phrased my question incorrectly and i i apologize i knew i don't know the right subtle ways to ask the question um apparently there's a portion of that that's reimbursed

125um and i'm trying to determine um i'm just trying to figure the raw dollar amount because um that's a lot of money for 46 kids right and of course we want those kids to be receiving a very robust education but that's about 67 000 a kid at last year's numbers right so that doesn't actually go through that line that's actually revenue that's reimbursed from the state and the reimbursement from the state would be if you just look kind of the general budget uh figure not the esb if you look on the revenue side under state funding the line item right under the base funding allocation has uh amounts for special education of 1.45 million within that is reimbursement for you know what they commonly refer to as like ex-fund students which are you know exceptionally

126expensive students uh i can't tell you off the top of the head exactly what we're gonna get because it's really dependent on that one moment how many days the student actually attends there so on any given year you know we probably will receive maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in the reimbursements so the 3.1 million dollars we spent last year approximately not not looking at you know we might have getting two three hundred thousand dollars back in that so we're still still spending upwards of 2.8 to 2.9 months i don't know when the appropriate time is for those conversations or and i don't think it's now so i'm just asking because it's a budgetary item to talk about um in greater detail because that's a staggeringly high amount of money again i i

127have profoundly disabled children so i'm not i'm not saying i don't want children to be educated because this has nothing to do with that um but that is um that's a you know roughly three times the amount of you know the per student you know cost um so what when is the time it's not now i know i'm just looking for some guidance it doesn't even have to be during the meeting but i guess i would look for follow-up from someone about when's the appropriate time to unpack that role further so uh i mean we're the iap team really determine the placement yeah so yeah you know really the estimates that i come up with are based on those students with decisions like that i guess i'm not really sure what you want to know

128well i'm just thinking more and i get it this is this is not a per kid decision i'm thinking more of the is there any programming that we could evaluate looking at and that's why i say this is not the time i'm so people we can follow up about it later is there programming we could bring in district where we could bring some of those dollars back in district and keeping those kids here thereby reducing our outputs you know again the iep teams ultimately make the decision i get that but are there gaps in the programming we have available that make it impossible for us to provide the services for students that's requiring at a rate of you know three times the amount and again that's not the conversation for them so someone you know

129when you look back probably three or four years ago we'd probably get closer to 75 or 80 students that were outplays so we have done an exceptional job of actually getting kids back into the district where we were able to provide those services it's just the ones that we have outplaced right now to be very honest with you our one so you know that really drives us so specific these two specific facilities and we may only have one student in one facility but the cost of that one student could be in excess of 250 000 a year from one student so those are the kinds of things that kind of come into play you know these kinds of things and so you know you can't just kind of do a blanket we've got 46 kits

130and it's 70 000 bucks we could have you know a bunch of them maybe 20 or 30 but then a couple that are like way way off to kind of like throw off the averages so you know i would say we've done a really really deep look on bringing students back most of the students that are out there now are the ones that we really don't feel like we can contend with also the rates that are charged by the outpost facilities are set by the state it's not like the private facility is to determine how much they want to charge they actually have to go through a process with the on the state board of education they have the yeah my my question is not an indictment of the district it's not an indication that

131i don't think we've done a robust job of trying to keep students in the district when necessary my question was just only and specifically thanks for clarifying that we have had higher numbers than that and that there's been some additional programming i'll do some retroactive research on my own to kind of determine and evaluate you know how all that's to happen and i appreciate very much that you've indicated that um and it just is um you know i think it's it's big picture it's a lot of money and i'm just trying yeah well absolutely one program that we did look at bringing back several years ago was with some students at the center of rockford for you know some hearing services that we were able to offer and we were seriously considering that when we

132to the students that qualify for that program and i think we're down to two or three right now and it just doesn't make sense for us to ramp up the program and work on the two or three students and brockton provides more economic so you know we are evaluating that and i do challenge those guys to look for moves back as we can support because this is a high cost you know so when we can do it [Music] yeah i'll do some research and then i'll follow up with you through the budget process no nothing specific i just want to yeah that's fine got it thank you so much i appreciate you clarifying your over year any other discussion i'd like to see dr brown you have done a stellar job yet again this year

133preparing the budget and especially in response to copenhagen last year that really kind of throws monkey branch i think in budget preparations thank you mr zucker yes ms mayva hi mr herrera hi this is whitcomb hi mr cooker hi this is hope this is read me mix hi motion passes 7-0 do i have a motion to improve the district improvement plan and goals as presented member naval made the motion that member herrera seconded the motion to approve the district improvement planning goals as presented discussion so i think everybody has um [Music] kind of outlines similarities between the strategic planning process and our scorecard process so years ago five and a half years ago uh the board through the strategic plan it had five pillars um students people should be employing resources that each had a

134goal statement they also have indicators to measure progress and strategies overarching strategies strategic planning recommended school the district me and myself and our team here as well schools go through called school caring process and they end up with a scorecard uh like the one that you have from here for the district the scorecard also has five pillars it also has the same goal statements and i think what we call targets on page two targets are different uh because they they from the strategic plan because they have an annual end goal for the year and they include specific strategies that are going to be implemented at each school we asked them to go through and align their just school improvement plans and district company plan to the strategic plan on page three you'll see this improvement

135cycle that we try to go through uh every year for right now in the april to october portion of the meeting which is where we develop and present school first school board district scorecard and the next month and then in february and june we report progress to the school board and maybe they can kind of talk through sure so the report that we've provided uh the last couple of years there's a sample of what we use to share where we're at our status so green means we're on track or we've accomplished that goal still means that we need to make some adjustments so we're not where we want to be but with adjustments we should be able to get there and write this really concerning significant adjustments and we provide a recent synopsis for each

136of the targets that we've set and what the progress is that you need um during that time period whether it's fall winter or spring uh in addition and your handout page five we do have key metrics indicators that we track uh some of these are long-term indicators some are the short-term indicators that we've adapted just for that year of the scorecarding again they're aligning back to the pillar and the goals that we've established in the strategic plan starting on page six you have several pages of the documents all this is also available on the website that we published last year that defines what each of these short-term metrics and long-term metrics are so there's a list of the long-term metrics that's provided on page six um you can put the page and the others that

137will give you the same feel of what this provides is it defines how that measures determined so literally how is it calculated is the first item that's included in that report and that explanation about why that is important metric to us what it means to us an explanation of what benchmarks we're using so what are we measuring ourselves against as it pertains to that that growth measure and then there's actual data that provides report so that's what you'll find uh the next several pages up to page 15 again all those are also available on the website um so we provide that uh three times a year an update of what our statuses and those targets that dr lee's gonna explain in the last part of our report is where we dig into a particular strategy

138so we give you an update on what our targets are our progress is to date on those and then we give an update on strategies we will identify if we change the strategy or finish working on a strategy you added new strategies and then in addition that we we dig deep into a handful of strategies to get the board together that's the folks of how we're implementing a particular strategy uh just to give some opportunity to get deep preparing for each of those reports to you if we're doing a similar interaction with our principals and their school teams where they're looking at their score card a valuable priority and then comparing notes across the school district looking at how uh approaching those uh targets and what success foreign i think comparing the district support card

139for 2020 2021 so the year that we just finished out that's on the website currently um there were some targets that were not met on there how did those that were not met filter into the ones that are on the 21 scorecard for example like the second like the first one indicates that you know we met that so we've now increased the percentage it looks like so that one stayed the same um the second one being students approach proficiency for all prioritized standards in each grade level and in each subject that one i think has changed so could you speak to try to keep track of something because i'm just looking at can you had indicated long-term key indicators in looking at the last five years if we don't meet a goal but yet we

140don't continue on with that goal and do a different goal now we're starting from a new benchmark because we're not comparing apples to apples um so i guess that's my question is like we're we're creating new goals even though we haven't met the previous ones instead of sticking with the previous ones maybe tweaking them possibly just a little bit but in comparison to c you know the board the board is responsible for monitoring progress of student achievement and you know monitoring that progress and accountability but yet we don't have apples to apples from here to here to compare generally the way we approach uh targets is they are annual um we set those in order to reach kind of a long-term measure so overall we want graduation to increase overall we want students to need

141expected growth sometimes the target will be the same one target might be the same as a long-term measure but sometimes they're in support of so depending on what the target is some of them we do regardless of if we need the goal or not after working with the target for a year internally we determine if that target does it allows conversations that we want to have does it focus our energy in the right areas and in the death we'll probably keep the target internally but maybe play with the numbers last year so i think you mentioned um seoul self assessment is something like that for a couple of years now students approaching proficiency something that was new last year generally kept the same idea but i've changed the numbers on that because it was the

142first time to do that employee engagement is something that we we've kept you over here apparent satisfaction something we've kept year over year so if something is allowing us to have the types of conversations if it's been hard to have improvement conversations around a given target we might change is there one last year that we don't have for example the secondary students receiving er special education whether it be secondary or all students services will improve from 68 on track rate to 75 and the final percentage in spring was 59.9 percent then there is not anything necessarily here unless it was melded into something as a different target yeah no that's fine so we that's an example we do have a similar we're just a general high school on track rates um so we did tweak

143kind of the way that we're approaching that i share allison's concerns i'm going to be honest because it just i i don't know from year to year i went back and looked um and it just seems that that many seem to change with some sub substantially um and again it could be that i just haven't done enough research yet to find the final update um that was mentioned that is it is available but it seems like if we have not met a goal to the robust degree to the maximum degree we are capable of making you know progress as a district i.e that just had decreased product absenteeism from 11.5 to you know 9.5 okay we met that do we believe that that's the best we can do and i don't i'm not asking to

144answer that question specifically but if not then why would that not come forward into the next year and you would say okay well now we've gotten to that point some of them do but some of them seem to just drop away and not have any continued focus and [Music] not sure why we start our words so frequently or it appears that we start over so frequently you know kind of new i would call them goals but that's the wrong word [Music] i remember this stuck out from the last time because it was a big deal for me was the one that i remember whatever it was the last time when the guy presented was the 41 of prioritized standards and 100 was the goal i honestly couldn't care what my penalty care was about that's

145not true the 41 didn't bother me what i would have wanted to see was an analysis of why we got 41 when we thought we're the other problem i have with this is that so i'm not in johnny come lately out of this i've talked to many board meetings in the past about the difference between qualitative goals the qualitative information quantitative if you look at this scorecard four out of nine surveys which is qualitative basically qualitative information i could make an argument over half of the work but in theory my mind over half of survey things that i'm finally using that as one element of looking at stuff but i think it's terry angler talked about spec yet you need more than one element you need you look at multiple factors as you look at

146that stuff not just one we're looking at the social emotional well-being of our kids one survey where they didn't do any differently they actually had a little better vote than they were in person may have reflected what reality is but it gives you a positive thing how much fidelity was with that we're that's our main one of our main ones and the other two are you know just as examples of them you employ engagement one we're talking about hundreds of percent i mean i'm looking at in reality we got we went from 4.15 our goals go up to 4.2 in general a couple hundreds of a percent i i i finally was doing better i understand that part and some we've actually haven't in the past we haven't done as well back in the world

147but my main emphasis is we would do the information you know if we got a four we got a 4.15 we've got 3.9 what we what we have done differently anyway and what what was our plan based on the results of all that stuff that's what i'm more toward like like i said like the ones like high school on track i think that's that's you know i like that because it gives you there's an actual way to look at there and looking at the um personally the highest high school on track rate for me it would be wonderful proficiency-based instruction solving those problems i'm not sure that i haven't done this a long time i'm not sure that's reality i think there's a lot of other factors that have to go into it besides just

148that i hope because it was that easy everybody would do it and they were so great to prove it and i don't think that's necessarily true um so that's that's just some of the issues i have with him is looking at it and like i said i don't want to you know say this it's a big surprise i've been saying this thing for five years now i agree employment should be taken on its own so what the way that we've done in the past and we can definitely uh alternate before i have just conversations because we don't want to set goals or targets and report back on things that aren't so we would say that the employee engagement score is we go through that process set the target and then connect that to some strategies

149because we want to improve our teacher retention teacher retention is a long-term measure it was identified during the strategic planning process of an important long-term indicator measure and so we set an annual target on something that we can have on we have control over the employee engagement survey we get feedback we can respond to it multiple times a year the school does have a low employee engagement score they're able to make some changes during the year and then implement those changes and read themselves or do another survey but long-term i agree with long-term goals to employ engagement score employee engagement is one of the things that we do and help us when we put them forward as the you know plan it looks that's how it reads it reads like those are the goals get

150the survey done and improve by point you know five for um so i have a question on the community um submit an implementation review of uh policy 7-10 equal education opportunities for the board of education is that just another word from the necklace exactly which we've gone over like three or four or five times and we've gone over what we wanted done and i'll be on it and just be brought back to us more information but that's it's the same thing and it keeps showing up and it doesn't effect yeah so is a project that we would do if you don't want me to do it but we've already gone over it multiple times right right isn't that correct yes okay so you haven't told me not to do it um so i'm bringing you

151a framework that we would use to self-assess instead of i think previously what we talked about training the third party at this point in the year i don't think it's worthwhile during third party i think one of the things we talked about is the possibility of maybe this pre-work before we pay somebody to come in so this will allow us to do some pre-work and it's focused on a policy review that never exists so i'm i'm if you don't want me to do anything with equity or any type of review you can tell me not to do that what i feel like i had construction from in the past was to not bring a third party into doing that good audit on a contract unless you have ample time contract and find out from that

152third party do you feel there's a problem with the policy we have regarding this what i would be measuring there is whether or not to what degree we're implementing that policy i generally do believe that at the school district we need to have more conversations about equity and our students are impacted by our system our education so whether you call that an equity audit is the responsible ability for implementing the policies near your staffs right correct yeah okay but you're saying they're not policies that policy can exist without it being implemented well i think it's the what dr reesman wants to look to see whether there's a disconnect between the policy the goal and whether the district is is implementing that policy to meet the goal of fpu to me it seems like we keep

153coming back and we need the same thing why is it the first time i've renamed anything i don't think i've really needed anything dude do we have a disparity in achievement based on socio-economics in our district we have a disparity in achievement based on english language learners and native language english speakers yes do you have a disparity in our district um based on disability status yes do we have a disability in our do we have a disparity in our logistic district based on race yes okay so let's do it and how we can address them because i assume our policy is to provide a quality education to all students i just think that for a lot of reasons um but i also think that if we thought we were missing this an audit this is

154dr lisa and internally discussing where we are and what we can go forward is there what's the problem with that i think the problem is if we really recognize these problems why aren't we doing anything about [Music] apparently has a problem with directing him to do it what are we talking about here yep it appears we all would like all of our students to achieve without um you know disparity based on race socioeconomic circumstance english language learning disability and i appreciate that's absolutely true i i've never heard it said successfully like that in my time i'm sure it's come up many times before but i think that's data i'd love to see you you you were able to answer in the affirmative with each and every one of those do we have a yeah each

155of us see it every year we ask the question i appreciate that i just like please just point me in the direction of where i would see what those percentage of discrepancies are because i'd love to do something some research on that and and have the information um and i'm happy to do that so um i just think that i agree with math if these are known issues and we say okay it's identified in the district and it's known issues then surely we're already doing this right surely we're already doing um an analysis of how this would be implemented in the district or how these would um how we would be working on the implementation of the policy is already occurring and would we therefore need to take up real estate on the goals are

156there i don't i'm just saying i i think you you acknowledge that they all exist so clearly these these same deficiencies probably exist in other issues how do we compare to other districts to know that we're not doing they might be doing a really good job even though they're still a deficiency right no but the question here is equal educational opportunities policy 710 is the question here and it's that the opportunity shall be available for all students not necessarily how our students are doing when those are available to them is are we making them available to all students not that there's a discrepancy social economically because we're not making it available to all students maybe that discrepancy is because it is available to students but they are not performing at the level that we would

157expect them to perform so is there a problem with just being from the district's workforce i think in regards to having a problem having the implementation review of a specific policy when that policy says that educational and extracurricular opportunities shall be available for all students is where is it not if we already know that information then that is the review of that policy so we already know that information to the policy really wouldn't be necessary so right now the target is indicated as an implementation review of policy 710 and is that equal educational and extracurricular opportunities shall be available to all students without regard to color raised nationality religion sex sexual uh orientation ancestry age physical mental physical and mental disability gender identity the status of the homeless integration studies where the infections is it

158continues on so if we can answer the question of do you have a discrepancy is that discrepancy that we're not making it available to all students because if we can already answer that question then we have already done the review of this policy i don't know like as we sit here dr lee can you tell me whether or not there's a discrepancy and similarly situated children um as to what their placement is going from elementary school to middle school or math and for exported language arts i've never seen that we've done that sort of analysis which i think does lead to sort of a tracking going forward so that would be one example that i not educated this district come up off the top of my head where we might find internal review to see

159if um what we're doing is adequately adequately addressing the policy i i don't think that all the reports that we've done sustainably i do think the complexity of this is that if we do find the data the data does say that a group of students is not successful as another group of students if we really believe the opportunities are the same and the question is why the outcome difference and so i think that word opportunity probably has a lot the opportunity is simply that courses are available to all students regardless of race color nationality religious sexual orientation just having a class available you could argue that that's not necessarily true because their prerequisites for classes you could argue that generally every class is available but i don't know if they come let's say that the

160here has a lot of things in here that are surveys i mean and you keep the word scorecard like use that as an example number one i'm not against doing that i'm gonna guess how to do that because they need to score i mean you do this you look at it and you don't look at it it's a or b it's not like uh like one two three four and approaching you to get it right or whatever but i'm still looking still going back to the fact that it's a policy why do we need to have it on the score i think you should be doing that anyway i mean this should be something i mean if it's really true that we're really deficient on that we shouldn't need the board to have to put

161that on the sport guard you're doing that to be doing right by kids we should have been doing that a long time ago i hope there seemed to be a differing opinion on that i mean it what i'm hearing here is that if the classes are out there and available for everyone to take we've done our job um we're meeting that policy nobody said that nobody and no one said so about words i said we have a policy in place and if we're adhering to that policy then we should be doing well this is this is like he said this should be addressed already and we have a policy in place okay we're starting from now okay we're starting from now going forward is it useful to assess whether we are making educational opportunities available

162on an equal basis to our students oh okay we hope but today oh my god starting now starting now okay we've had all these years the kids are going to school including mine and now all of a sudden we're worried about whether we're getting equal opportunities or not i hope we've been worried about that for a long period of time and i agree we need to look at those and we should be cognizant of that because they all deserve it every single kid every single one no matter what i'm just arguing that not even hardly just pointed out that i don't think that's a scorecard kind of thing anyway for one two i hope there's no reason i'd love to know why we haven't been doing that before then so um i think an example

163of where we just tried to do a little bit better last year was we realized after last last year was a tumultuous summer in terms of race and discussions of race and between her in the country so as a superintendent when that was happening i sat down actually it was a video i invited all of our black employees to talk with me because i wanted to find out how this would impact them and i asked them what could we do better and it was just what could we do better and they said you don't require all of your staff to do implicit bias training you should do that with your staff that would be meaningful for us and it would be meaningful for lots of other people so we did that in an effort to

164do a little bit better and at some point during last year i don't remember who it was but somebody on the board i said is there something that we could do to also contribute to this effort to do better and we said well how about when we get through the training we come back with a couple ideas so we came back with a couple ideas in february and we said our staff has gone through all this training because we realized that we need to do better two things that you could do with the board are you could participate in the same training and we could do some type of equity audit to just look overall at the district how can you do better i don't know if i don't i don't think we're at any

165time saying we're not doing this i think the idea of putting something on the scorecard is that it prioritizes our efforts and prioritizes our resources this is talking about equity is difficult we we don't necessarily do as good as we could talking about equity as a school district so i had a place on the support part that would emphasize at the board that you would like us to do better i see absolutely no downfall to it i think every school district [Music] because you know what five years i've been going on about how come we don't use data to look at math how can we have a look at the ela scores how come we haven't looked at why we got 41 percent and that seems to fall on deaf ears for quite a long

166time so i agree with you on the fact that quantitative data i absolutely do but for somebody who's gotten up here and talked about that many many times in front of you guys back to you in particular what happened at least a couple of times we haven't seen too interested in that before and now all of a sudden on this one we are that's my only issue is that you look at this i agree i think it needs to be a combination of a lot of that stuff but over almost 50 percent of this is surveys to me and one of them is the hrs one level one we've been doing we've been doing the hrs stuff for a long time that's six years that's the first step i'm out of five we're ready to

167move to personalized learning and we're gonna measure step one now after five years so do we want dr reespin to completely scrap his district scorecard and come back next month with something maybe you can meet with dr wiesman and tell him what we've been doing wrong for the past five years and next month he can bring something that we can approve so do we vote on this is that what we're doing there is a motion on the floor to approve the district improvement plan doctor we've when the approaching proficiency repair under students is that would that be equal to two so students would be at a two or five yes roll call please ms mango mr herrera this is how mr zicker mr booker no this is whitcomb no this is read nemic no motion

168fails is it is this required by policy that we do this okay then no i don't i mean what you're supposed to just why yes like no why why did we vote on it tonight can i ask that question why did we do that tonight if it wasn't required i don't know how i'm just looking for how it came to this there is a policy that says district uh plan submit school improvement plans um i think in most cases the if applicable for the united states requirements some years we have a school or multiple schools that that's required by the state so we just have a system improvement method like i said but we're just gonna uh submit one every year um approval also allows it's really it's really hard an organization if you don't

169know what the top-level organization wants in terms of annually long-term goals this is the way forward from the boardroom to the classroom make sure everybody understands that [Music] so it came to the board to vote because it was always come to the war to vote on [Music] in regards to that wording more than likely it refers to and um [Music] last i think probably uh that's an important policy though is that this is an opportunity for the board to give the district overall direction for the year and so without approving for whether it's formal or informal without giving us direction for the year we don't know what he wants to work on what those targets or strategies should be it's some of it's symbolic right so if you or say yes this is definitely what

170we want you to work on then i'm able to say to everybody hey top five the board has requested ela and math information standards every month so that's already the theory would be no knowledge because it wasn't by somebody they wouldn't put it out last week that's yeah i think so that's probably referring to i think there's a couple things going on there probably generally we do have uh schools working on a draft of their improvement plans starting in the spring they they have drafts of these and generally because they've been approved every year we have them working on them they don't need to be approved they're still working on them the request for math and ela data is probably more specific to professor conversations i think i've come in such a clear direction i'm

171going to provide monitoring updates to the school board i know one of the um indicators that i provided in the esser update for the conversation you could provide these types of things to the board on a monthly or multiple times a year basis to start doing that this wouldn't require us necessarily in regards to resources in using resources to achieve the mission vision and goals that has always been like a financial goal for an application to a financial goal so in regards to finances whether it be finances for the year as management of us or appropriate management investor funding they're coming in within you know 10 of what was budgeted for esser um you know financially um you know to that area yeah so would you i don't think carla wanted us to put it

172back into the draft would you like me to bring back another draft or come up with a different way to propose priorities for the year how much time did you spend on this i mean uh a lot yeah yeah so how many people saw this and went to dr lisa and said this is terrible this is not i'm not going to vote in favor of this um these are my problems with it x y and z i mean come on the time wasted while he guesses what he might get four people to approve is absurd you guys can direct him to bring another one back and he can take another stab at it but unbelievable it's 9 30. oops don't know we want to move on so dr lee in regards to this it does

173not have to be voted on necessarily but data in regards to being able to measure progress the data from in regards to increasing percentages or you know those areas can be measured but it's very difficult to determine for the board to be able to measure progress when there's not a measure of building so for me i would say in regards to um you know resources you know a financial measure needing a financial measure for me the students looking at the student targets um the student targets from last year that weren't met is what i would like to see i would think just saying if we thought we were at a maximum and we achieved the maximum potential we could in those areas from last year's goals and there it is and that's a retired goal

174and i think right that's look that's as good as we're going to get 9.5 or 10.8 on attendance or some of those secondary um pl and special education um you know that's it and we report that as we believe that we move the needle as far as we can and we're going to move forward with something different otherwise i'm not you know sure why we change it every year again i don't have all the historical data would you like to not use perception surveys we we consider perception surveys to be quantitative because they're like based they also include voluntary response but we haven't included those on this quicker but i can take out reception surveys this is a good conversation and it helps me know what you want me to measure would you like me

175to take out the perception surveys the perception the perception surveys looking at the long-term goal of teacher retention so what we're using there we mentioned the long-term goal of teaching potential correct like what we have in that square so employee engagement scores are exactly reflective of our teacher retention or would allow us to reflect on teacher retention by what how our scores will offer now that's the assumption that with course high or increasing attention there are also i think that would be measured throughout the year that's really hard the end goal is teacher attention it's we just haven't thought about like figuring out a way to measure multiple times throughout the year and using the engagement score is how you determine the practice of it that's how we've been doing progress that is something that

176we do have longitudinal information for so for me even though it's a survey in regards to that that's longitudinal and we have four years so we can look at what was our attention initially this is what we use to measure our retention and this is where we would expect our retention to be because our scores are this so if it can point back to the long term then it will work in regards to community services students families and community you know making sure that we're that we're meeting that our long-term our long-term goal in regards to community so you know if our long-term key measure for community is relationship to community parents or you know whatever our long term is you know if the parent satisfaction score measures that umbrella then i would say that

177it's appropriate um if we're hitting on all of you know all of those pillars if we're hitting or excuse me all of the indications and the pillars students families i don't know what our long-term measure or i don't know what our long-term goal is necessarily outside of that service for students so that is something that we do have you know longitudinal data from in regards to the parent satisfaction surveys that we've done in the past but there's not confidence in those scores i don't i don't want to get in a situation i would like to just like make sure that what i'm focused on is what you want me to focus on [Music] the 500 percent if we go from 415 to 5 to 420 what does that tell us other than you know maybe

178a handful of people at the moment change the response over the year before what do we what are we you know and if we add another thing along with that that would be one factor maybe one other one better if it wasn't by itself yeah there's another type of retention or staff do you want me to bring back last year's goal under community was develop a shared definition of equity that is inclusive of all forms of diversity in the 2012 school year do we have that definition so bringing that forward then is an excellent way to show continuity as well as to be a first step if everyone understands what the shared definition of equity is then to me the national next step is to say but we've identified it we know what it is

179now where are we at in meeting the definition of that shared principle and philosophy surrounding what is equity so i do believe that we did the steps that we identified last year we went through the implicit implicit bias we put together a handful of structural resources what we decided last year was in order to make progress um at least the discussion was last year in order to continue to make progress on shared definition of equity we needed the board to go through a similar type of training and we wanted to do some type of audit of our current practices that is in an effort i could i could move it i could put it i'll share a definition of equity and then submit an implementation review over i would say if we didn't get to

180a shared dimension then that's then that would be a goal that needs to come forward because that goal is the benchmark so moving items forward that were met last year for more the reason that we have a modified quality goal target is because everyone hrs really has to do with safe productive environments for staff and for students and so we thought that because everybody had been out of school from a lot of our students have been out of school for 18 months time members during this year it would be healthy for us to go back and revisit foundational principles we've always had hrs we've always had aspects like hrs in the school support so this was just a way for us to make sure that our school improvement teams were focused on some of those

181foundational elements of here's how teams work uh here's how adults need to work together here's how to make sure kids feel safe in the schools it wasn't necessarily uh that we were backtracking it was just a recognition that it was pretty crazy last year so let's focus on basic foundational i think in the past we've done uh work order tickets the tech team we've been doing that for a good number of years and that might be in an area where we're not sure and last year we also had a health safety check that was specific section so i can go back to if those weren't met your regard regarding the type work order that was met that each time last year it was not the year before no it was not the year before that

182so that one wouldn't be one necessarily because it's it's been coming forward safety checks is something that we could definitely do this year i've got a little notice on everything here so here's what we brought forward or you know brought forward from last time in regards to and then the ones that were met last year yes so whether you want as a board to prove it you can to your agenda you cannot approve it it's easier for me as a leader to know but i think it would necessarily require the next one do i have a motion to approve the online by 7 tutoring service agreement with paper education company as presented move on do i have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding without your education association regarding 14 tutors as presented [Music]

183member white cup made a motion member herrera seconded the motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with the healthcare education association regarding quarantined tutors as presented discussion motion i have a motion to approve the revisions to existing board of education policies 7 colon 215 conditional probation folding expulsion recommendations board of education policy two colon excuse me seven colon two one five conditional probation and holding expulsion recommendation advanced as presented discussion roll call please this is whitcomb hi mr herrera mr hooker mr zickert this is maybelle this is how this is ready anemic hi motion passes six one the following discussion items will be coming up for further review in or possible action in the future background information has been provided and the board may ask questions and or request clarification at this time capital projects

184mr booper or dr brown do you have anything to offer in regards to capital projects and discussion i think the goal here is to they still have to come back to the board for approval but until we get a good set of plans for this work we can't uh so the ones that have jumped up on the priority list are technically work at thunder high school and we believe that can be paid out of the health life safety fund um we do need to do some track resurfacing work at central middle school in north high school and that could get paid out of the normal cycle but one thing that really i got this year being this tough hot dry summer was how bad of shape a lot of our chillers are better and so

185genres really are last legs well i we would try to paint these through health life safety but health life safety isn't oddball when it gets to chores they actually don't like to approve exposure on how fights they do so they actually fail well they're trying to get jaw right now they're about 16 weeks out we've be past the the season and so the the reason that we think we may end up having to pay for that over them is because unless they you know dump them uh hvc work with some of that customer money and the award that we have talked about that we think so really this is to just get going on doing plans for the first four for sure and then we would like to go ahead and [Music] you know when

186when boeing engineers you know some of these techniques these people are putting in like the airline industry and things like that and the boeing engineers kind of had to pause a little bit and said you know we're not sure that we're gonna upgrade our entire free you know because looking to keep kids in school with really works it seems like a good thing yeah but there's doubts about whether the effectiveness of it is worthwhile or not then six hundred thousand or whatever that's that's how do you know yeah and the the filtration system that our humans can handle the filters of equipment are you know in line and others are perfectly adequate to catch them right now and so that's actually what we're looking for and again we just have okay moving on to property

187casualty liability insurance yep this is one reason so we talked about this one a little bit at the business services committee and realized that this is a big discussion really what we're looking at is trying to get a good strategy to go up to the market so you know when we talked about it a little bit the business services committee you know we talked about a couple of things a big scattered approach where we just kind of like throw it out to whoever broker wants it and we really need to target maybe a couple brokers what's going to happen is none of the carriers are going to take it seriously [Music] that we might not get a real honest number you know that would lead us to believe that we can do well you're right

188i think that's a very valid point when you take that static approach because typically what will happen is uh multiple carriers multiple agencies rather will start to approach the same carriers and they will lock out other carriers from getting a rate and so let's say this side of the table is all different agents and they're coming to this side of the table all the same companies the first one there might get a rate and the rest of everybody else might get you can't right now we're in negotiation with someone else for that so you could end up completely getting not a whole lot um you know i i look at it from the perspective of being very grateful that it's coming up for discussion and that we evaluate whether or not we can do better

189and that part of the way to do that is as i see it would be to open up a conversation and have some initial conversation with um districts that are currently not really identifying someone saying how did it work for you what were your timelines um they may well say you're behind you know or they may say oh you're way too early um but if they are first dollar carrier uh obtaining competitive quotes that are keeping them outside of the pool or outside of click um you know that might be a good place to start um to see what they're you know and then maybe what they would consider to be some of their key takeaways for what caused them to land on the agency with whom they were right because ultimately you know carriers

190are going to provide quotes basis so you're looking at having an agency relationship because we would be managing things differently than we would be in the you know the consortium with a larger group so those are a couple things so do you guys have any recommendations on you know obviously agencies are going to make make a difference right because some people are going to have a school of business they're probably going to tend to be paper type uh agencies or or even directly going to you know people that maybe write a piece of the business themselves so do you have recommendations districts that are not clicked is finding out who their agents are um you will probably find more than likely one or two agencies you'll hear that would be the best place to find

191the agency to find an agency that does work with schools instead of just throwing a dart for the jar board i think those non-click districts are going to be a good upcoming conversation renewals and reports have any questions in regards to the rvc running start agreement is coming up for review this year um school safety plans are being reviewed annually anybody have any questions on it okay administrative report superintendent a portion of my comments to ask for clarity around the tutoring contract since we didn't have discussion on it we had to talk about the tutoring contract contract services recommended for a possible vote used to support students that are in quarantine so they have access to a generalist instructor or tutor when you submitted the grant for it if that was approved dollars in the

192grant and then look for another vendor i can come back and make changes after the change of contract um so i don't know how i would necessarily say whether or not there was another vendor or not the issues i had that led me to not even know that i would vote no and therefore not make the motion to bring it forward were um there were a number of them um the first of which was that the quote that was and had them attacked a couple of months so i didn't know if they would still honor that pricing because it expired july 21st of 2020. it's about it's budgeted at 7 500 kids at a per student rate per month we don't have 7 500 kids in the district um it's a chat based system um

193so you need to be able to independently type into a chat box and you know we've got k2 kids included there that are those kids going to be able to very independently manage that on their own the contract itself um indicated in that it was subject to california law and how does that line up with what we would be looking you know to do here um would we have any did we have any sample testing the online reviews that i read for that were that were the tutors only right i didn't see parent reviews um but the online reviews for this particular company um were that it was a good company to work for but that it was oftentimes difficult because there were so many kids coming in looking for help that they couldn't get

194to so um and then lastly uh we manage the consents so we have to mention that we're responsible for that waiting leadership how much staff times that date to input all the data that they need they needed you know names addresses and emails student ids things like that that are listed within them within the contract um and then lastly on the remote learning uh or not like not remote sorry from work anyway quarantine whatever we're probably um you know we only have kids you know according to the numbers that we got um of those rostered um as being available i think the number we got was 196 and 76 are you know keeping those appointments so 50 less than 50 percent of of students are you know engaging in that way in that sort of

195you know virtual tutorial sort of situation so uh you know there were some local school districts that i mean relatively local state of illinois our region um but they're all very united as well and they didn't seem to have any you know i didn't call the district but i you know they didn't have anything out there that was indicating they were [Music] i would say um i also had the issue where it's kind of a chat based space and so if there's another vendor explorer it does have some kind of direction using something somewhere that requires less k2 even like up to k3 or k4 since it was chat based having a student having to articulate in writing what their question was and then be able to understand the articulation back to them without somebody

196having to sit next to them which kind of kind of part of the purpose of having tutor tutoring availability um was based only like me in that so looking for something that either either is available for six through twelve and then we've got a different vendor or something else for for the k5 population since they have possibly different needs um and also what's working best for kids or what kids feel like works best for them um you know sampling of kids will even do something like that um you know i i don't like to use my only child i don't like to use my kids as examples but i did ask i asked my high schooler what would you if you had a question and you needed help and you weren't at school what would

197you do and the first answer was i would email my teacher okay what if you don't get that email what if you don't get an email back and you need to complete your work i would wait until the next day to ask my teacher because they were the one that taught me and that's the way like that's the way that i understand so if somebody else taught me a different way it would be more confusing than just waiting until the next day so i'm not saying that all students are going to be able to articulate that for you or be able to to answer something like that but just just pulling kids to you know find out you know the kindergartners through fifth graders do you like talking to a person or you know would

198you rather take a picture of what you did and send it to somebody and have them you know whatever and that's where you know but because the kids are the ones that are going to have to lose and the parents are the ones that are going to have to feel um that it's working or that there's value at by using them so my final question whether we have issues with this or not it may be the best thing out there i'm just curious why why do we think this one and what would it what did this have advantages over other ones we saw what that would have been they did have a demo on the website that looks like it was obviously more district facing you know the district personnel did we do the demo

199yes [Music] so the demos available i think that's a great you know for whoever else if you do decide to explore it or let's say you go back and out of the cabinet decide we'd rather take the recommendation to the district to do something different with that money then you know so you would like me to look for another vendor i'd like to know how broadly how broadly we think it would be utilized necessarily before we necessarily have your staff spend a whole lot more time and the team spending time to figure out is you know this is being paid for on a first per pupil basis you know per student per month and if that cost goes up substantially and again 7 500 is nowhere near how many kids we have you know especially

200if we take out the outsourced kids that we take out you know early childhood and you know so we got to get a tighter number of exactly what we would pay for the first student rates um but if you did decide to say look we believe there's enough utilization to make sense for us to explore another vendor then you know it might make sense to do that but if you legitimately said okay there's a couple benchmarks we could take on the 50 of the kids who are eligible for even the 15 minutes of online teaching aren't availing themselves of it and we have you know the building levels at junior middle school and high school evaluate you know ask kids would you use it and we get a you know 40 the cost goes up

201substantially if you're paying for every pupil and less than a third of them use it you know now you're not looking at three dollars and 82 cents or whatever it was per k per day you're you know on a multiplier substantially but so this is grant funded right absolutely sm3 cash for three times paid for this um in the day it's still a resource for uh students there i still think we should provide some resources for those um so looking for another vendor that we may have to be in favor of uh it would work better than just the taxpayers in the chat basis there's some author [Music] are there local tutoring providers that could you know be utilized as a resource i don't know the answer to that question but if we're looking at

202a tutorial based approach which we are are there local tutoring vendors who would come in anywhere near budget that would give us the saturation of the students who might avail themselves of it that you know would be a you know maybe a video based or even an in-person i don't know maybe you know i don't know the answer to that but finding way to have it be money so what we're trying to do is based on experiences so when we generally thought of the idea and did a curse on that are not text-based um so generally my comments let's see what else i have here so opening day or the first day of school i just wanted to give a shout out to what i would consider are often are unsung heroes these are people

203that once the students get to school they don't always realize how much work has been going and to get them ready for that this would include and i'm grateful for our custodians the grounds crew our maintenance crews other bus drivers who learn the routes before the kids get on for the first time our food service and our tech teams i think it's ready for those kids to come back and obviously uh on day one all the people that were ready they've interacted with their kids throughout their first day the teachers the paraprofessionals the office professionals and secretaries and our administrators i think that it was a wonderful first day to have all the kids back we're grateful that they're back and that was in some ways also an emotional first day of school i'm grateful

204for all of those people generally on the first day of school our central office um splits up schools and each of us try to go visit one and just be there when students are coming in so there's another adult person there to help direct comfort guide greet parents sometimes the parents are talking about so we'll try to do that again this year we have six day enrollment figures this is not necessarily the official submission of the default housing report which is what shows up from the state but we haven't provided six day reports for a number of years let's see uh craig has a gaspi accounting report on there we're required to provide this that we need um compensation number six uh we might want to talk about so um i listed i believe what

205are the changes from last month that we've seen since we started something tonight um support for at-home students it's definitely been a hurdle uh we did you know back in july and august when we were looking at the plan generally the status of the pandemic was in a different spot we put almost all of our resources in personality the gentleman is accurate so we are providing some level of support to students that are at home it is a very minimal amount of support and you know that's frustrating for some families uh when we chose the strategy was that the biggest thing for our buck from our employees uh wouldn't allow them to focus on students as frustrated i think there's a frustration a community around a desire from parents to get their kids back into

206school earlier we have started implementing a 10-day early return process of our other districts in our counties returns students haven't tested positive and it's willing to test on a regular basis so they might have a seven-day return or what's called a test of a charm strategy students are testing day one three and five so that option isn't available in our county i think because the state doesn't have a statewide approach but tries to give guidance to local health departments to make decisions based on their local data it can be frustrating for parents who've seen with a different county that is doing things differently so that's been frustrating i think another hurdle my third hurdle the amount of work that it's taking administrators nurses at the school level for paperwork required by the state contract tracing

207and just setting up the tutoring support for students it's pretty significant uh you know last year there was some contact traces that we had to do but because we didn't have all the students back and and we're running the hybrid schedule non-contract tracing was significantly less so instead of having to think about high school kids who test positive last year they might have had three classes that the administrators have contactors for um and now they've got seven or eight so just there's a lot more contact racing that's happened there's a lot more reporting to the state now for each case can stay well reported on both contacts and adding an early return is just another layer of complexity that i need to attract so that's been a lot more work than we thought was going

208to be making us rethink some of the other next steps for us are staff testing we right now we have verified vaccination status for 55 of our staff so we've verified that 55 of our staff have been fully vaccinated we're going to keep collecting that this week i'm thinking it's not going to get higher than 65 um so we're going to look at our testing strategy we were assuming that that vaccination rate would be higher and staff would be able to test at the schools by just slipping in with uh testing for students but with that high number of staff staff can also get tested elsewhere and just witness the results um and then i i we've talked about shield testing a couple for once now i kind of wanted to wait and see how

209that was going um in august we did get the thumbs up for the board to go ahead and move forward with that we got on that right away and you gave us an october first start date um i'm very doubtful that that's actually going to happen um it doesn't look like that's happening across the state and the north boom they've been on the list uh since late spring early summer and they still don't have police out of last week based on they have that testing so i think that's probably good intentions from the state but it's not likely to happen a question i have before probably is in regards to drug testing um i followed up with the athletic directors we did it students signed on the waivers that they would submit to drug testing

210but there is a lot going on for our administrative team that drug testing takes a significant amount of time from we will do it [Music] but we will be open tonight this year [Music] other than that um altering guardians on the testing organization i know the request for the drug testing policy when it was implemented a few years ago came from the athletic director's request yes are the athletic directors ones that are asking to pause the show they um i don't think they they said they're just waiting on directions i i think it would come from me so usually our office sets up and just make sure that we've got someone to come and do the testing every year so i reached out to them just last week and it does look like both of

211the athletic directors are saying that there's a lot going on in schools um demands both on the kids and the administrators they would like to get back on scheduled tests because they aren't worried about possible dependence on substances based on just an increased concern about mental health becomes we have a policy right so how do we i mean with a policy that says that we do it we also have a policy that says here in that same policy um you know we developed a plan and all those things so if we were going to seek relief from the policy in order to be able to push pause on that what's the what's the proper way to go about that this policy is a non-press policy though so that we wouldn't be violating any state statutes

212or anything with that regard the court does have the right to suspend a policy obviously less time or you can do it it's not [Music] i think yeah i think the reason i think the reason why it's eight or nine times is so that it's enough regularity but this the is thing is the policy doesn't specifically state that we do this it's just that we have a program to do this and that each student and his or her parent have to consent to having them tested but as long as they consented they have fulfilled their obligation yes that is true so i think it matters bring that back to us [Music] um you would just have i think you could just tell me a pause on this and if somebody had a problem with that

213in the future we would just refer back to the minutes that could be next yeah because if they if it's three to five times it's the procedure is it possible to do it three times you know yeah [Music] so we've it was goofy because their their system is not set up to track and grab past two fiscal years since they started it in march of 2020 the end of that first fiscal year was june 30th 2020 and then the end of the second schedule was june 30th 2021 even though it happened in [Music] support increase probably specifically we'll start as the semester goes on we'll start to have a pulse on freshmen on drug rate efficiency levels if you would like if you would not like me or you'd like me to not collect this

214data i think the teachers some of the teachers are making their i know i mean the elementary teachers i think think it's more problematic for them than they become secondaries okay um whether that's true evaluation system with some at least a few changes in canvas empowered not different yes the power being different some of them are not looking at things in the brightest are any of these handwritten data points where you have to actually sit down and or are all these things that can be pulled from reporting systems that we have data trackers or whatever thing it's not like they made it sound to me like i said i'm not trying to have like an experience i'm not but it wasn't they didn't make it to me like but i just made this a common

215form of assessment what that single common form of assessment was so the tool uses the same number five one was reported back the same for all five but i think they were that was i think the other part is is it possible to go back to the committee and ask if they modify the amount of time or the frequency of of reporting when we do we do that yeah and just like i mean i'm just saying if it's becoming oppressive to them to try and manage then is it something you know a team of people were assembled and have input and they might say yeah now we're in the trenches then we get it and we want to say we'll do it once a quarter or i don't know i mean that's just the thought

216we're going to we originally proposed at trimester and then just through some of these meetings because the more frequent data was requested which is what happened to chief monthly but trimester was the original somebody [Music] not everybody may choose the same aspect for that things that put into them and then as the year progresses you have more data for the 10 prioritized so the object isn't to pile on one more or people that are or everybody that already has work on top of that is to monitor progress on a system that isn't gonna drown people so quarterly make again something that the people that the teachers that are would you like us [Music] quarantine um education would go on for following that [Music] this evening exactly the executive order that came down on friday and

217she said remote instructions required for for students that are being excluded so it's not quarantined anymore it's six years okay what we're currently providing will that change what we're currently providing if they're saying that we have to provide result construction right for instruction remote instruction um and how i guess how quickly we could pivot to change sure so um i thought i did think her bringing that up was a good perspective the when i had read the order and i just read it on friday what i thought it was more doing was changing that were required to keep things out as opposed to some school districts that determine when they answered but that that the governor put out takes some of the question away from that department gives it to the schools instead of school

218students regardless so i'm still looking and trying to figure that out my understanding at this point has been that while i wasn't in the governor's mandate the female state board of education told us that we needed to be providing five hours of work for students at home in the same way that they would be providing those five hours of construction so that's what we've been doing has been asking teachers to send report plans for the students to do the lessons for students to do and they have the tutorial online for them for check-in if the board would like us to pivot impose some in-person resources out of the school and allocate them towards in-person for the remote learning we can [Music] so we don't have synchronous learning opportunities okay so all of our students are

219in first students maybe with the exception of one or two that are something like that because we don't have a remote option for them so whether they're at home or whether they're in school they still would be considered an in-person student because we don't have any other option so to me i consider those students at home they're still in-person learners they would be in their seat if we didn't send them home so to me in-person learning resources apply to those students when they are being excluded as quarantined isolated excluded whatever is used that they are still our in-person students and we are responsible for their education so just so to say to to say only focus on in-person students means that we can focus on all of them whether they're at one quarantine or in

220school okay that's that's the way that i will get it since we don't have other options every student that is enrolled is a personal student commissioner that's true um so i would like to see a more robust plan for students that are at home are wanting um because 15 minutes while they move the allocated 15 minutes they may not be using the 15 minutes the tutors may be getting their two three four five minutes late into their sessions so it's not really 15 minutes um and it doesn't provide a good continuous learning environment i would echo that i have significant concerns about the the frequent the increase the frequency of emails we're getting from parents that are and again not talking about any individual students but that it is symptomatic of um there is no

221good answer here there isn't there's no good answer splitting the baby and having more servant you know more synchronous learning for the kids who are currently being required to learn from home depletes people who are killing themselves to try and vanish with the kids in the classroom and yet we have kids like we have to stand and talk tonight about the fact that probably due to multiple quarantine situations you know we know they're not getting an education at home right now they're on their own it just so happens that they're getting a you know 15-minute check-in to say hey how you doing and that that's that's just i don't know it's not enough and yet it's all we can do and i i hear that and i get that but how do we manage the

222fact that the numbers are going up every week and that doesn't seem to be turning the tide doesn't seem to be stemming yet that we're not going to continue to see that number fine and you know when i had some conversation with you dr lee smith we're not requiring teachers to turn in lesson plans and god knows i don't want to make them do that but we don't even know if all of these kids at home are even getting five hours of material maybe it takes them three i'm not saying it has to take every minute of five hours but we don't even know if we've got parents reporting there was nothing there my student had nothing i don't have anything yet and you know especially if we get into situations where we have multiple

223quarantines these kids could go weeks nothing and then the second second week we've had a single and i've had a couple of calls as well and just directed them as i told you back to the building level um to have conversations but you know finding a way to be sure that when kids are coming back that are iep that students who have ieps that we're finding a way to get to that place where we are either providing those services remote which is probably very very unrealistic but that those minutes are being given those services are getting made up when they come back because i don't i don't how are you going to answer that and i know i'm just one voice but i'm saying we had 288 thousand dollars that we were talking about spending

224i'm not saying we should do this but 288 thousand dollars that we were talking about spending on online tutors that some students might use i would be a proponent to say let's use every real dollar we have to make sure that every currently enrolled student is getting as well boston education even while at home and i don't know what the answer is to that and i'm not saying that but you know i don't want to theoretically look at an online service that a kid might tap into on occasion over the next six months and say we got 290 some kids at home or 280 kids at home or however many given week to week and they're just on their own i'm an island even if all that did was say let's give them 30 minutes

225a day and be sure that that they have the lesson plan in hand and that the teacher goes oh i don't know but it's not enough uh yeah we talked a little bit about that you know about the experience for the kids and some there's less there's something a little bit more i mean maybe it is maybe it is i don't know i don't know we don't know you don't know what the resources will be to accomplish that but yes i would we have dollars sitting there for things that we want to do that we think are going to help but then we have this this group over here that we know needs help right now and it's growing so if our dollars need to be reallocated then you know let's make sure that we're

226providing what we need to provide right now and that's not an indication that any of those goals that sit out there are are not important and that they weren't valuable when they were looked at and all of those that all the time and energy people spent to to come up with those was not valuable it absolutely was but we find ourselves in a matter of saying we can either continue to use a garden hose to put out a forest fire or we can get more get more trucks and and pump more water and [Music] you know we've got kids that spend 18 months at home or that in for 18 months or even when they were in buildings receiving some sort of altered education and now we're creating another cycle of that for a building

227number every single every single week would you like me to what do you think timeline is here um it does seem like there's a strong voice majority to do that would you like us to put together a plan and start implementing that mid-october would you like us to bring up and back to you for a review dr [Music] immediately start putting something together if you want to update the board and here's what we've done since last month then that gets something together because according to attorney angler it sounds like that when you are backed immediately or so on friday in regards to well when we left another that modifications to the plan could be made in discretion and we're providing input so i think that's a collective voice of saying we value and respect the

228plan that was put in place and we understand a critical need to pivot and that absent even a vote for that in october we're saying we sanction the idea that the i don't think i've got anything else in my head hey um there are there is a list of potential agenda items for october as well as upcoming district events um i point out the principal appreciation week october 18th through the 22nd red ribbon week october 31st and also american education week november 15th through the 19th and this time the board will be going back into close executive session to continue our discussions from earlier there will be action to follow do i have a motion to go into close executive session regarding section two heading c exclusion sub number one of the open meetings act

229to discuss the appointment employment compensation discipline performance for dismissal of specific employees of the public body [Music] okay remember herrera made a motion and member secret second into motion to go into executive session mr herrera mr zicker mr cooker mrs howell this is whitcomb hi miss mango no this is reanemic we take a break [Music] okay thank you i'm gonna get myself okay good night um okay does that work with that things like that [Music] i'll be curious um [Music] supposedly [Music] my [Music] is and nobody's watching well at least it looks like maybe they are and we don't know they could be hiding themselves all right you're open it is now 12 50 a.m on the 21st of september and we are out of post executive session roll call please mr cooper mr herrera

230here this is help ms mayville mrs reed neman here this is whitcomb here mr zipper hey do i have a motion to approve nine month administrative contracts of 180 days for the following administrators andrew miller and andrew nelson come on remember whitcomb made the motion and remember rupert seconded the motion to approve the nine months administrative contracts of 180 days for andrew miller and andrew nelson roll paul please this is whitcomb aye mr buker mr herrera mr zucker mrs reed neiman aye motion passed five zero do i have a motion to approve the ten month administrative contracts of 211 days for the following individuals the following administrators that marchini kelly cotter teresa lestowski frank mandera bo smith jenny sakura chris wiloca heather novak chris nichols nicholas [Music] linda colson jessica larson casey getty julie scott

231shannon wilsinski and michelle athlete remember whitcomb made the motion and number zikr seconded the motion to approve 10 months 211 day contracts for the administrators listed well confidence this is vidcon aye mr speaker mr herrera mr booker this is reid nemec hi motion pass is 5-0 do i have a motion to approve the 11-month administrative of 221 days for the following administrators ben comer brett mcpherson jody flynn josh sternwest matt fry brian swanson and sarah brenner hopefully the motion to approve the 11 month administrative contracts of 221 days for the administrators listed roll call please mr zuckert mr booker mr herrera this is whitcomb hi this is reid nemech aye motion passes 5-0 do i have a motion to approve the 12-month administrative contracts of 261 days for the following administrators bill 80 joy balman

232nick boutenhoff dave carson jim friesman megan johnson mike liscola billy lewis renee madigano teresa montabano owen kim ramsey ramsey and megan zimaco made the motion and member whitcomb seconded the motion to approve 12 month administrative contracts at 261 days for the individual's name roll call please mr zickert this is whitcomb all right mr herrera mr buker this is reading i motion passes 5-0 do i have a motion to approve the 12-month director contracts at 261 days for the following directors greg brown tyler bell [Music] member booker made the motion and remember zickert seconded the motion to approve 12-month director contracts at 261 days for the two directors named roll call please mr booker mr zucker mr herrera this is whitcomb hi this is reid nimak hi do i have a motion to adjourn the meeting

233member zickert made the motion and number remember which comes up i'm sorry sorry remember herrera made the motion and member whitcomb adjourned on september 21st at 12 56 a.m friends today is actually oh i'll be here at 6 30 if you want to go oh i'm not going to be back at 6 30. but i will say upstairs actually [Music] please let me know it okay