001all right it is now 6 p.m i'm call uh calling to order the big hollow special board of education meeting on thursday march 18th 2021 it is currently 6 p.m uh can i roll call please here here here here here all right can everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the blood of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice four members are nostal and mazer here next item is public comment we have some public comment statements to read so i'm going to read them and who sent them mr gold we just want to send a huge shout out to you and your staff you have been doing an amazi amazing over the past year pandemic
002we support any decision you make because we see how great you are as our superintendent this has had to be one of the worst things all of us have been through and it made your job that much harder so thank you so much the grisco's this message is from lori pena hi i have a few things i would like to say to the board in administration at tonight's special board meeting my son is in seventh grade he has always loved school and he loves big hollow up until this year he was on the b honor roll now all his classes are c's and d's remote hybrid learning is just not for him he is not engaged he needs more than 10 hours a week on campus when he gets home he has zoom classes for
003two days a week for an hour the rest of the time is asynchronous and it's not working for him i feel like the district is more concerned right now with the full-time remote students than with the students who need to be in school full-time there seems to be a reluctance to return to full time because it would be detrimental to the full-time remote students who make up a smaller percentage of the students and it does not seem to matter that not returning full time is detrimental to the other students my son needs help in pre-algebra for example he says there is no time during class to get help and his teacher only has a short zoom period on friday where he can ask for help but when we went to hybrid learning we were told
004that the friday zoom periods were to focus on the remote students my son could really benefit from his epic period every day he would be able to ask for extra help but there is no epic right now i know people are still still concerned about covid i am an icu nurse i've seen what kovit does and i've also had coven myself i was pretty sick for almost two months and even spent several nights in the hospital as a patient despite this i still want my son in school full time good morning we would like to reque we would like to request the board read our statement regarding return to in-person instruction please find our statement below good evening first and foremost we would like to thank the board for taking the time to hear us
005this evening we know this past year has been challenging for teachers staff administrators parents and especially our students we would like to begin with a quote from our sixth grade son from a few weeks back mom it's starting to feel like school again he said this in response to being back in the classroom again we begin with that quote because we think it gives a picture of where our children's mentality has been at over the past year my son has been and is still a high honor roll student however to say it's as if he's taken two steps back with his education is an understatement he's not challenged on any level even by a little bit the work he's been given has been some par sub par and he completes his asynchronous work by nine
006am every morning this is unacceptable we understand it's been a challenging year but it's been an entire year the district has hit a year to try and figure out this along with the other fallout plans as necessary moving along to our fourth grade daughter this has had the biggest impact on her her learning style is very hands-on and so when the district moved to e-learning it was a huge challenge one which we've overcome but now without many steps forward and then many many steps back that being said because she has had trouble understanding work on her own reading from a computer screen the first half of the school year was spent with one of us sitting with her about 95 of the time to teach computers and to help her understand the directions etc it
007truly broke our heart to see her struggle so much she needed us to be the teacher and explain things to her as the months went by we started noticing a lack of motivation even to not want to do the school work and it wasn't until she started back at hop back hybrid in person that we immediately noticed a difference she smiles more which was lacking she finished her work without a push from us her overall demeanor has changed we say all this in hopes the board sees the impact this has had on our children we can't speak for all children this is strictly from our perspective in our household our children truly need to be back in the classroom full-time each for different reasons if for some reason the board chooses to keep things as
008is we are begging for a change in how the e-learning asynchronous work is run it is not working for our family two and a half hours of instruction per day is not a quality education i would rush much rather my children be in school where they should be full time doing work then finishing by 9 a.m and asking for something to do one final note if you're going to keep remote learning as an option then you need to make this a level playing field there's there absolutely needs to be teachers dedicated strictly to those remote students we know our children especially our sixth grader can see the struggle this is where the district has dropped the ball and while we feel the quality aspect of education is lacking for our children thank you adam and
009sarah nivolas hi melissa i am hoping to have the following comment read tonight at the board meeting about 60 of big hollow parents want their children to return to full day of school i am part of that 60 percent of parents however we have to remember that 40 of families want to remain in the current schedule that is a really big number of students those students need to be supported too we cannot give sixty percent of our students a better education at the cost of the other forty percent of students that is not equity in education that will not close the educational gap tonight i am asking you to only vote to approve a plan to return to full day school as if that pla plan benefits and supports all of our big hollow students
010please help us find a way to get our students back in school full days while equally supporting our students soaring from home tara for the school board meeting tonight i am a parent of a second grader at big hollow regardless of the survey survey results which i feel will be relatively close decision i would still hope you keep the three biggest factors in mind that were identified at the last school board meeting when making the decision for big hollow all of these are still true statements even the social distancing has changed to three to six feet i worry about the education of our full remote learners and the impact on them if trying to learn alongside the in-person ones or being shoved to the side for a completely asynchronous experience i like every parent and
011teacher want my daughter back in school but not at the expense of another child's education i feel like remaining in the hybrid model for the remainder of the year lets us proactively plan for the fall instead of doing things reactively now thank you for your time sarah ostrowski for three points our family students staff have finally adjusted to consistent schedule and are in a group so another disruption is not necessarily welcome right now there will be increased quarantine issues for students given that six feet social distance cannot be established in all classrooms if class sizes increase our current remote learners about 40 of our current population could negatively impacted by a change at this time of the year and the last one is from amanda bilbray miss morley on my behalf thank you thank you
012thank you for all that you've done to keep your staff and our children safe in a completely unpredictable school year whatever you choose i support thank you from the billbray family that's it do we have anything else okay item four update for mr gold on the new idph isbe guidance okay i'm gonna go through uh if you've got a handout in front of you um just gonna quickly touch on a few topics on this on the handout page three this is the the guidance that came out the the day after our last board meeting so and this this is the guidance from illinois department of public health and illinois state board of education so we were basing our discussions last month on the cdc guidance and then uh this guidance trump that the next day
013so on page three what i've done is highlighted a few changes that i'm going to talk about so page three uh the capacity limits for in-person learning including non-academic school hour activities such as lunch are now determined by the space's ability to accommodate social distancing and not a set capacity limit number of percent or percentage bus capacity no more than 50. so uh the the guidance before was this room here could only have 50 people no matter how big this room was now we can uh as long as like if they're eating lunch we just have to have them six feet apart if this is a classroom they just need to be three feet apart and it could be a hundred kids so that that's just how that's the new guidance so that has uh
014helped some schools uh um lunch was a was a hang up for some districts because lunch rooms and not being able to socially distance but uh that's helped some but i will tell you i say that but lunch still we'd have to have six feet because they have their mask off so but we we can we can do that here it says additionally idph is revising the recommendation for social discipline for in-person learning social distance for in-person learning is now defined as three to six feet for students and fully vaccinated staff maintaining six feet is safest distance but schools can operate at no less than three feet in order to provide in-person learning so that was the really the big new piece of the guidance if you skip over to page seven again i'm just
015highlighting some of the changes some of the new things so but page seven i've highlighted this sentence says quarantine is still required for close exposure to a confirmed case within six feet of the confirmed case for a cumulative period of 15 minutes over over 24 hours and not fully vaccinated so and then i'll jump down school should evaluate the burden this could place on in-person learning with social distancing less than six feet is employed so basically what they're highlighting is that even though three to six feet is now okay uh we still have to quarantine for kids that are within six feet so uh so that didn't that didn't go away just wanna make sure you know that and then same page ensure ensure that all individuals maintain social distance at least six feet when
016masks are removed for eating so that's the cafeteria page eight is the next one and the last one really basically on page eight what they're saying is that we no longer they no longer recommend screenings upon arrival so you know we we just purchased the temperature screeners and now they pulled that out so that we don't need to do that we can continue to do it we will continue to do it it's not holding us up or anything so we'll continue to do a bit we haven't been catching kids with the temperature screeners like we haven't had kids coming with fevers so i can but anyway that's part of the guidance there so um i'm going to touch on a few other topics related to this and then i want to just take questions from
017the board the our current covet data in our you know we talked about it last week as well it's it's definitely on a downward trend we're still in uh the same sections that we were last time but it's definitely a downward trend that when i talked to lake county health department really they're because i can say pretty pretty confidently here we have not had any instances that i know of of transmission on campus we've had kids come here with covid but as far as transferring covid from one student to another or staff to another i we don't have any evidence that yet when i talked to the health department they said the main issue they're seeing is in sports they're starting to see with high school sports starting they're seeing some some issues with high
018school sports but with the six feet social distancing we've not seen it in schools in the education setting as much um the survey results did i and i apologize i meant to print this off for you um i'll get you a copy of this the survey results that i sent out from last week it was a we had almost 900 almost 900 respondents and the two sides they're asked to choose do we do you prefer that we be continue with the blended hybrid or shift to a more full schedule for students for the remainder of the year so it's just two options and those there are almost 900 respondents and the two sides are separated by three votes so it's just completely split down the middle i really wasn't expecting it to be that close
019but it is truly split right down the middle so and i'll get i meant to print that off for you and i'll get that to you tonight before we leave the our staff i also surveyed staff same survey they overwhelmingly want to continue in the same model i would say in my conversations with staff it's not i i want i don't want people to feel like it's for uh health reasons i don't think there's i personally don't feel the that is the the driver of how we feel on campus i don't think there's a real health concern with us as far because our teachers are vaccinated i think it's more staff is more that we're in a they feel like they're able to serve all their kids well right now and that's that's their feeling
020so um but i don't want people to think that uh that their their just their opinions are driven by health reasons i don't think that's overwhelming for the staff i think it's more the logistics and scheduling right now i want to share just a little a little bit about local districts i know once the new guidance came out last tuesday it some districts districts did pivot and have have moved from the hybrid to more full in person in in april and you know pretty much most districts around us uh are moving are moving that direction so i would say wakanda mchenry johnsburg richmond fox lake lake villa like zurich i think grace lake is considering it round lake is not yet to my knowledge i think ron lake is still they just got their teachers
021on campus this week so they're they're still working on getting the hybrid started but but with the new guidance i don't know they may pivot as well so that but i want to give you an update on what other districts are doing around here i have a few thoughts to consider as we are you know we're weighing these two options again and just just going through it if if we if we are considering a full return um i would recommend that it be on the 12th as a start date if we consider that initially we were thinking the fifth last monday um we have there's for several reasons but one one is that we've scheduled that week of the fifth we've scheduled uh uh the prime elementary scheduled map testing on site for remote learners
022to come we've got them all scheduled we'd have to reschedule all that if we if we if we start school in the fifth um two weeks after spring break would give us at least the quarantine for travel and then also uh give us a one extra week to get some scheduling done there's a it's not just a flip of the switch there's a lot of things that have to happen which we've put in place a lot of things already we've already got our bus routes going just in case we you know we're not you know we're prepared but i i would recommend the 12th if we do make this the switch there's been concern about impact on remote learners and you know i'm going to say that that that concern doesn't go away and i
023think that what's unique about our district is that we have such a high percentage of students in remote learning right now we have over you know over 40 percent um so uh so there's concern and i i you know i was asked the other day by somebody if because we do our middle school is doing concurrent teaching um so we have full remote learners in middle school they're doing getting concurrent teaching we have four classes at primary elementary that are doing concurrent teaching and i will say that i have not heard complaints from the remote parents the parents in those of the remote students in those concurrent classrooms so i i don't want to say that we can't do it we can and i know that it's it will be a a tough change with
024seven eight weeks to go a tough adjustment for people i don't want you to think that we can't do it and but i it will be a tough transition the people who are doing it now i think are doing it well so the something else i was going to say on that i'll come back to that the i would encourage if we were to if we were to go back to full i would still want to keep the fridays the way they are because first one we can devote some extra time in the friday mornings for remote learners we can we have students with special services that we're doing giving special services on fridays it's an important time and i think there's also time in the afternoon where i'm going to need because it's this
025is a different kind of planning when you're teaching this in this model right now and i i think our teachers need that time in the on the afternoons to team plan for the following week so those are that's consideration if we do if we do go back i want everybody to be aware everybody who's might be listening to this to be aware that when we do return after spring break whatever model we're in we are we're mandated to do the state testing this year that's recently announced it's several days for third grade through eighth grade so a concern is that for those that are familiar with how that works uh in a normal school year when you're doing state testing your entire school schedule gets jumbled up for the whole time you're doing state testing
026you just have to uh you have to kind of mess up your whole schedule to do it so that's going to happen no matter what if we come back and we've adjusted kids schedules and kind of got we get we're going to get into a little bit of a groove and then we're going to mess it up again for a week or so to do testing we have the state the science assessment and we've got the iar we also have our own internal map assessment that we we we feel we really need to do that's the most important data for us it's the one test we don't have to do but we feel like it's our most important assessment the state assessment we're only going to give to the parent to the kids that are
027here and to the remote learners who want to come take it they don't have to the state's not requiring that we give it to all kids they're just requiring it that we offer it to all kids which means the data from the state assessment is really going to mean nothing and so they're doing it the state did ask for a waiver but the federal government's not allowing a waiver on state assessments so so we basically are having to comply uh with that and we push that date back as far as we could in may but i just want everybody where that's going to be an issue either way it's going to be an issue um we do have some long-term initiatives uh that we're working on uh that i don't want to go too deep
028into but i want you to know like we've got some pretty important things we're working on right now with staff just for next year there's some important trainings coming up we feel like if we go back full we will have to put a pause on some of those things because our staff the capacity of our staff right now we will is a lot is uh is going to be limited if we're going to make another change so so we're going to put a pause on some of that but if we go back to full return i like i said i would ask that we keep friday as a remote day i mentioned a reason for the k4 staff an opportunity to check in the remote learners i also we do a lot of i know
029this is going to sound trivial but we we are delivering a lot of food to our remote families as well and that's on fridays and so that would be a time we could do deliveries we have our students with special needs an extra court and extra time for coordination for teachers so those are just some things to consider i we talked about a lot of those last last week too and right now i just want to take some time to i know some of you some of you visited classrooms last couple days i would like to hear your thoughts um i'd like to take questions concerns whatever you got but and spoke with administrators teachers all all great levels the first thought was that the tension is so strong as you can cut it with
030a knife but listening to kids and and you know they're very happy the ones that are in school as well as the ones that i saw that were virtual and and the teachers were very engaged with both groups the ones that have them the safe center kids were very well preoccupied one particular teacher and she was kind of describing her class and so on and it just it felt like she was ready to cry because she felt that she's got virtual and she has home class and she's trying to do both and she feels she's not performing at the best that she feels she should or can and i just i don't i don't know how they do it and you know all the teachers do a great job but you know several of the
031teachers the long time teachers newer teachers um they're really engaged with the neat bar and the ones that have them um with the virtual they talk to parents and i'm just concerned in about the virtual and the kids that are at home i don't i don't want any kid to suffer or to miss out on something and i if full day happens i just some things could happen i think that would not benefit them as well yeah i was very impressed with the the dual remote and the hybrid student teaching because it takes a lot of work to manage two different environments at the same time and the teachers did it very well especially the teachers with the little bar i think it was easier for them because they can move around the kids can
032hear them one class when you went to where the teacher didn't have it she seemed a little shuffled a little because she's like showing the paper on the computer camera and then she's trying to show the paper to the class so i think technology plays a big part in how the teachers can do their job well without a lot of stress on their part and also with doing both at the same time the teachers definitely has to sit down more at their desk so they're not up and moving around which is good too because we're in a pandemic and it's keeping the social distancing going well i think it's easier transition for middle school students to be in dual and remote or hybrid and remote at the same time i think the lower grades that
033we went to it seemed a little more challenging for the teachers to manage she almost needed another person to we help that topic one thing we've explored with the principles at k4 was uh if there's any we're trying to find any extra adults that are available to provide support in those rooms if we're going to if we do this the we have everybody who's running the safe centers right now but if we go full in the safe centers will no longer be but those those peras will now be doing their regular job as supporting classrooms so we we can't uh we can't guaran we can't put an extra adult in every room we'll have people floating and we'll like the administrators have told me we will make it work but it's it's uh our goal
034will be to try to give those teachers support in times where they can uh kind of do dual action there have you thought about reaching out to retired teachers to come it's a good idea i was definitely gonna if we if we go this route we're gonna definitely post a uh opportunity to to help in the next final eight weeks of school because with adults 65 and over all being vaccinated too you might find some you know people who want to come out the house more since they've been in the house for a year julia are you visiting yes so i came to school today i'm just going to preface this by saying there obviously is not a good choice because someone's going to be unhappy since we're split right down the middle yeah and
035you know our school district is different than others because we are on one campus yeah i feel that it's my understanding that if we went back to everybody here then middle school the whole schedule's going to change because the way that it's set up now is that accurate it would go back to a regular full regular schedule yeah a regular schedule yep just the same schedule we would have had in a non-pandemic year okay but it's different than what it is yes yes versus at primary elementary it's basically the same except you're in school longer no there's a those will be a little different too okay yeah they'll have to rebuild their schedules as well okay yeah if students get sick and they have to stay home and we were back full time then how
036would they you know they would fall into the remote learners and they can just easily transition to that yep okay my concern with coming back full time and the teachers having to teach both remote and uh the in person kids i think the classes i saw today they had help they had the paras but that's not gonna be possible and it's like managing two classrooms at once yeah um you know i want kids back in school i really do but i feel if we bring everybody back for a full day it's like shaking up a snow globe you know everybody's kind of in their groove like i said at the last meeting i'd like to focus on our energy on making the last eight weeks better and improve that asynchronous learning that you know people
037are complaining about for some students um and focus on coming back full-time next year you know i i'm upset that i hear out in the community that they don't have faith in our school district that we're going to even come back in the fall yeah i so i'll say like from my perspective i know it's just me but i can't say it loud enough that i mean that to me it's not even a question that we're you know if the uh if we're going to you know the the fall to me is we're planning a full return unless the governor shuts the state down again but and i don't see that happening again but the obstacles that we're facing right now we will because i know i've heard had the question well what's going to
038be different the fall than now right now we've got structures built all year to support all these learners that we won't have next year we are looking at a remote option next year but it's going to be an option that's completely separate from what so our staff will we'll have we'll be doing full in-person learning and then if there are families that still want a remote option we're going to we're going to try to provide something in this guidance that just came this was new the guidance says and we could and i should have pointed this out because we could make this decision i would not recommend it the guidance for the first time says that we only have to provide remote learning to students with a health reason but that's that's to me that's
039not fair to pull that with eight weeks to go now to start next year what this is saying is we don't have to provide a two completely different environments i think it's value for us to do that if we've still got some families if we can do it and not impact our in-person learning then we're going to try to do that but it's going to be like a separate remote school and i have talked to local districts about maybe teaming up with that project too but but yeah that will not hinder us in the fall so i i i've been trying to emphasize people when they ask me that too like no in the fall we are honestly our jobs would all be a lot easier if we were in full in person this is
040this is wearing a lot of people out and uh um but so julia i'm glad you brought it up because to me it's not even a question it's but i get i understand why people would think it yeah i understand why they think if we're not going back now why would we go back in august what's going to be different i get it totally understand why they think that but people i've told i hope i don't have to eat my words but like i said to me it's not even a question unless like unless we are told we absolutely can't open schools but i think everybody's learned a lot over the last year in this pandemic of how to do this and we're at a point where i don't want you to feel like we
041can't do this because we totally can we can we can pull it we can flip the switch and get it done we can make it work and make it happen i just um you know uh but uh it comes down to is it best for everybody and uh and and can we do it well yeah that's my biggest thing right if we do this yeah you know are we just like you said shaking things up and and can you do it well i guess that's that's my biggest concern is based on all these emails about the asynchronous learning work we are doing it but are we doing it well i don't think everybody is i think everything the teacher no i don't know right right i mean that's my biggest concern so if we if
042we don't go back full in person how can asynchronous be better right like what can be done when these kids come back from spring break on day one that we can tell parents right because that's the biggest complaint we have yeah kids are either if they have morning club if they have afternoon session they're done by 9 a.m when they get up in the morning so is this is your what you're hearing is more middle school than k4 are you hearing it correct okay yes yeah because the way the schedule's set up is nothing can change nothing could be better because the teachers are doing the in person in the morning and then the opposite or the the next group of in person in the afternoon yeah that's just how do we improve okay i
043mean friday's the day off they have maybe one one in-person half-hour session okay i guess right how do we reassure families that they can get more education for their kids yeah and have their kids get the help that they need because that message was unacceptable that a student cannot get the help that he needs right that friday and that needs to be addressed for anyone that is so i'm gonna i've heard the same thing you're telling me too i've heard it uh mr whipple's heard it and we you know and i think that i want to answer that question in a second i also want to tell you like just even two weeks ago i got an email personally from a student because i think there's just like there's parents on both sides of this
044issue there's also students feeling taking this differently i had an email directly from a student that was just like i can't take this anymore there's too much work i'm up all night doing homework i can't and it was middle school students so some students are feeling overwhelmed but and also because i it could be depending on which class you know it could be it could be different teachers are doing this differently and could be that too but i think that to answer your question how can i assure you i think what i can assure you is that if we if we don't go back 100 percent then the middle school admin and myself and our directors we're going to have to uh we have to come up with a plan to address these issues and
045uh i don't have the answer right now but we'll have to we'll have to develop in the next two weeks isn't the first time you've heard about these issues how come we're going to develop a plan now how come you guys haven't developed it or has been started working on it it's a good question the because i've i've heard it but i've also heard we've got kids that are on the other end of it too so it's but if it's continuing to come up and you want me to develop a plan we will we will do it and uh we're gonna have to figure out how to find the balance with our kids that's a consistency issue we've had for years and that's what we try to develop these rubrics and everything else with data
046and curriculum that to avoid that one teacher does something completely different than the other that was the goal yeah i know that a lot of that work had to stop and switch to learning a whole new platform to teach but yeah is there a reason we can't do it as a teacher-led virtual and in person the same exact time kids sitting in on live classes with teachers as grant does because grant does full classes all day that's what we're doing here but it's it's not we're not running the same schedule so we're uh and that's something that we can we'll talk about when we if we if we got if we're going to make a switch with that we could talk about it but we are doing the same thing they're they're running a live
047class with uh kids uh uh also in remotely so they're doing they're doing the concurrent teaching here at middle school yeah and then and all the classrooms at middle school are concerned am i wrong on that scott all classrooms middle school are doing concurrent teaching right yeah yeah right that's it and then yeah is it all day long though or is it just like half day they're doing both like my kids come in the morning and then in the afternoon they've got their asynchronous i think so that's what we're seeing why can't they log on again in the afternoon to the teacher well not just attend school from home just have your whole day from home i watch my son sit in his room all day on classes all day long and honestly it's not
048doing him any good but i mean i've had he's paying attention so then they uh that's at the high school level yeah doing you can't do a k through four their attention span to be on zoom all day they can't because it was nice to see at the k through four how engaged the kids were and the teachers and it was i was really impressed in how they were doing everything and i know they're very overloaded so but they're doing you know the best they can and i see you know there's room in the safe center so if the parents and families need from k-4 if they need the extra help i'm assuming there's room in the safe center to yeah for the kids that need to be there full day yep are people taking
049you guys up on the office are people taking you up on the offer for safe center space and scott you said no yep uh i just want to make sure families know that they have that option you know because i know families were struggling with i want my kid in full day or schedules and so for them to know that they have that option that they can sign up for a safe center i think is important for families to know that it's out there for them for help if it's kindergarten first grade that they could send their school yeah send their kids to school a full day and then just going back to the guidelines that were released will our entire staff be fully vaccinated by the time spring break is over anyone who wanted
050to be vaccinated will be done yeah by the end of the first week of april i think we're closing down the pod the first week of april in round lake so they said they'll have everybody done but i didn't i couldn't force we didn't force all the staff to get vaccinated so if they uh but i would say strong i mean most of the time can we follow these guidelines if the staff is not fully vaccinated yeah yeah the teacher themselves has to be uh if they're not fully vaccinated they have to they have to keep themselves six feet social distanced but that's not that's not an issue so when i saw when i visited the schools yesterday and when i saw on primary elementary it's because they're there they don't have time to sit
051and like on the rug and kind of it's still a a different type of school i think that you know there's not you know it's just everyone has to sit in the chairs there's the flexible seating's not as flexible anymore that it's they very much have to sit in their in their in their seats and i think that is probably really hard on some of the students there too it's old school it's old school and they got they'll have to wear their masks all day that's one thing that i've had some parents concerned about but kids seem to be pretty resilient with that but i mean we have the capacity to do three feet apart for the primary elementary yeah yeah because the kids that are there right now um like for the half day
052they're there those are the same kids that would be there in that room for the full day they'll just be there longer so uh and we have room we're we're actually i was talking with one teacher the other day and uh you know her concern was like there's she had empty seats and she had she's had families that she's begging to come in because she feels like she can help them more if they're here but they just don't feel safe coming in yet and her concern to me was if we go she goes right now i can work with those students in the afternoon and i can give them a lot of attention if we go you know and they're my some of my most vulnerable students right now in this class and her concern
053was i i don't know if i'll be able to give them the attention i'm giving them now if i have the whole class here all day so again it's not a safety or health issue for some it's more trying to help those kids but that gives us my concern the transition is what i'm worried about from going to hybrid to full what that's going to look like and for the kids and is there going to be a gap in education is going to be lack of support for for all not just for some that's a hard one to answer i mean i think it's anytime we make a change it's going to be there's going to be a week or two of just trying to adjust but uh everybody's been pretty resilient this year too
054so uh so you know it's hard to measure what the impact of that would be but yeah i think there'll be some families that would that are in remote that would choose to come back full because they might be in remote because of the current schedules it doesn't work with their schedule and they'll be some families that we have been finally able to get here and they finally feel safe in the way we're doing it that we'll now go back to remote if we come back so there's going to be a little bit of shifting back and forth on those but i think it'll probably even out the number of students but so i get i get emails every day on this and everybody's all over the board on it people that said they feel
055safe with their kids here and but maybe not necessarily if we if we bring them back full but i i'm not concerned about that i feel like we can we have with 60 of our population it's not going to be a crowded building that's not a concern of mine it's more of the other issues but one other thing bob if we do move from hybrid to you know full back this year students whether they're at home or here are going to be on their chromebooks on zoom for that whole day correct if so if we come back full yeah there would be a lot um i might have to defer the principles on that question i would say yes because because they're still teaching the remote learners as well so they're going to have to
056be involved but i would say they'd probably be on their computers most a day i know that's how it is for my high school students when they go right they're they're sitting in the class and the teachers teaching the zoom class just like they were teaching from home so but i don't i don't know if that will you know i would hope it won't be fully the case here but i know that they're going to have to keep those students at home engaged in the class as well and so there's going to have to be computer involvement and there's no way to have just like say the middle school full and then the primary element oh so that's a that's a good question is there no way could we figure out a way you want
057to say that question again if they didn't hear you is it possible for middle school to to go to the full-time schedule because they're already sitting in the classroom on zoom and keep the middle school or the i'm sorry keep the primary and elementary school hybrid um so so honestly we could middle school would be really easy switch really easy switch for us um the challenges were then it turns into a more of a logistical issue because we're all on the same campus and uh we have one business fleet one bus fleet it would require i'd still only be able to devote seven buses to bus now the entire middle school right now we're only busing half of them at a time we'd only have seven buses to bus the entire middle school i couldn't
058put the whole fleet out because those buses have to go out and pick up the prime elementary and the times won't coordinate uh we'd have to coordinate the drop off the the end date for middle school we'd have to coordinate it so that everybody was out of here before we got them out too which that could probably be coordinated but um it's the busing is my biggest issue we'd have to we'd only be able to offer seven buses and uh i mean i can have 50 on the bus right we can have 50 on a bus yeah i don't know what kind of uh um union issues we might have with that i don't know because we'd have half the district doing one thing after i don't know if that would be an issue but
059i can tell you i don't know scott i might be speaking out but i think for some more middle school teachers they would probably like it but some would not but i know that right now they're teaching multiple times a day the same thing over and over and uh but i know there's also a lot of concern at the middle school about uh having they're able to manage the numbers now because they only have half the students at a time so it's much easier to manage the the concurrent teaching but so i don't know if i answered a question could we we could make it work probably but it would be uh limited busing probably and which would then increase the traffic on campus if we do that if we were on a separate campus
060i think we could probably be easier to make it work i have another question about lunch yeah and being do we have enough room at all the different schools to have the kids six feet apart uh plan we do um i'm gonna i'm gonna defer to our three principles i know they've been talking about how to do it we do it's not ideal but it's gonna you know we can make it work it's not gonna be something that stops us from doing it because we're no longer limited to 50 in here we can put more uh do uh i'll let i'll let the principals answer on how you how you think lunches might look go ahead scott you can kind of answer how you think oh all right so currently i think i haven't set
061this the cafeteria up yet but i tried to play with half of it but i don't know where all this stuff would go we're kind of limited on space and room where our extra stuff some of these would go back to the classroom if we had more kids but right now the plan would use the push the cafeteria tables into the gym because they're foldable and they're quickly easily be able to remove them so we'd have the gym set up and this room set up to try to have six feet possible but not knowing how much room or space would need for kids to walk in pick up their stuff because instead of being behind the serving line we'd have to set up a station sack lunch for them to kind of make sure we're
062moving through quickly but so it's it's doable not ideal but we'd have two spaces that we'd have to work with and at primary and elementary we've talked a lot about what it could be like and we we kind of have in our heads plan a b c d um some of our biggest concerns and for me especially with five-year-olds that haven't been allowed to be in a space sitting by a friend it's going to be really hard for them to stay six feet away from each other they're going to naturally want to move closer together so we've talked about ways we can set it up with sit spots so they know where to sit and to stay in their spot like i said we have plan a b c and d we can make it
063work absolutely we'll find a way we have much to add but i think that we definitely with the numbers staying consistent to what they are now if it looks like it's still about 50 of those kids coming in we we would have room in our cafeterias and it'd be you know assigned seating they'd have to be obviously you know the six feet away as they're eating and we we had a set up we set up a system for cleaning and getting maybe having them they would face one direction they'd be on some one side of the table then the next group that would come in because we'd have basically half of the grade level eat for a certain amount of time and then they would leave and then the other half would come in and
064they'd sit on the opposite side of the table and so we could quickly clean in in between and they would fit they would fit and the the one concern that we do have though is that currently our cafeteria is our isolation room and so when you consider the thought that we have that six feet of social distancing where we might have to quarantine students and if we have six or eight students that are waiting to be picked up we no longer have our isolation room space available to have them waiting for their parents so that's just one more hurdle that we would have to overcome is figuring out where those students have a safe place to wait while they're waiting to be picked up because our cafeteria would be used for lunch other feedback from
065your visits that i know kevin and tiffany both visited and i didn't give you a chance to say anything i did a little earlier okay i i mean we saw that it was neat seeing the neat board bars and how that works i i do think that without the same technology being in every classroom it's going to be hard i think as a district we need to make sure we have the same technology in each classroom in the fall um i think it has at this point it has to be a priority so if you talk about that too that's i'm glad you brought it up um so we bought the neat bars were like a test we bought uh 10 of them they were 2 000 a piece just to try them out and
066then that was we bought those not knowing that was a while ago not knowing when we were if we when we might be going full in and uh mr mccullen i did reach out recently to see about a long term a purchase of several more units uh but everything's they're all backlogged and now and the concern with a neat bar and dumping a lot of investment in that was that they're only because they are the teachers who haven't really like them and the concern is that they're only compatible with zoom right now so if the zoom it's all that's all they can work with so we have the we have the federal grants coming now for that you've seen been passed the federal government level and there's money coming this way to help reopen schools
067and one of the issues one of the things we we're trying to address is exactly what kevin just brought up is equalizing the playing field in the classrooms with the technology in case something like this were to happen again so we are you know we're looking at new teacher desktops with webcams and sound systems so that at least uh even even an environment where a kit a student is home sick for a week might be able to stream into the classroom easier than what we have now um like i said we have the technology we can do it like what you saw today or in the rooms um really we have purchased we don't have them out of the box yet because we we're waiting to see what we're going to do here but we
068the rooms will be fitted with webcams and uh lapel mics for teachers because the the sound is the biggest issue for the teacher not having to be right near their computer and talking into it so we do have that taking care of the middle school they have that in place and uh we've done we've purchased everything from private elementary just in case we we decided to go full in but next year um you know we are trying to address the uh try to level it a little bit we thought about putting we looked at other products too about putting something like the neat bar in every room you know just to but um uh we're kind of going the route of just uh webcams and and uh sound systems in each room so yeah i
069think that i mean you can see there's there was one fourth grade teacher who was seamlessly going back and forth between the kids on there and it's like he it did not look like it overly stressed him out at all yeah but he was having fun with it yeah it was it was fun to see the the um kindergarten teacher was she was doing great it was the best you could tell she was giving it all giving it all but you can see on all the kindergarten teachers the stress on their faces was just yeah it was hard to see um yeah that's my my the early grade levels are my biggest concern this whole time it's just that's been my biggest concern i think they would need a lot of support yeah yes to
070switch and to change everything they would need they weren't even i mean the ones we talked to weren't concerned about that it was that they need help help well yeah they need support we could just give one thing it'd be help um and a lot of them lost their health to the safe school and stuff like that so it's tough i mean i think yeah definitely it's just the way the board chooses to go i think that help in all the classrooms has to be a priority okay absolutely just like every other school going back will want help in the classroom as well so where are all these people going to come from i don't know i know with all the sub shortages and teacher shortages and i i think i mean reading these today
071it's very similar as to what you hear out in the community and i i think we're currently doing works on sun levels and does not work on other levels and i think that's the biggest concern for families and i i mean do i think coming in full day fixes all of that no no do i think doing what we're currently doing fixes all of that now um so i for me i don't i don't know which way to go with it but it seems that i i'm not i am not for keeping it the same just for everybody's schedules i'm not for that i think education is bigger than that it's about supposed to be about the kids um and it sounds like right now that we've got quite a few of them that aren't
072getting what they should be what they deserve so that that's what's bothersome to me yeah oh i agree and i like i that's why i would rather focus the energy on improving improving rather than starting something new and it takes a couple you know but we i mean yeah we have to figure out how to improve it though yeah i think that's where we're at right yeah yeah so our decision is to keep it the same or to with maybe improving because we don't know what the improvements look like we don't know what they are we can't evaluate them and school starts back up again in two weeks or go to full day school which but improvements there too for the remote yeah we have the technology in the classrooms to do right um well
073that's the heart of like what's the most effective educational environment for all students i guess that's i mean we don't have the answer that encompasses everybody so we don't seem to for me we don't seem to hit that option like it's not what we're currently doing right yeah unless we if it was we wouldn't get i mean these are very well written emails right they spoke their truth from their hearts and i think that a lot of the people are doing that and yeah we can't ignore it um so the uh i can't pretend like what we're doing now is okay we can't pretend like going to eight hours is gonna fix every full days of school is gonna fix everything right it'll look good that's what i think that's what i think it would
074look good but i i i agree with you it doesn't it it's going to bring on a whole nother set of problems for people right we'll be dealing with different issues right and uh i'm i can't give you an answer tonight but i i would be committed to us really sitting down and nailing down what we can do to improve the uh and you're talking it's really a a 5 8 issue right yeah i mean i don't know if it's doing like something like joe talked about where these for middle school they can easily they're doing the same thing at home as they do in school right they all sit in front of their chromebooks whether they're in the desk i mean we all saw it from the tours sitting at a desk looking at
075a quote book right or they're at home sitting at their bed and looking at a chromebook yeah um i i don't i don't really understand how they couldn't just have their normal class schedule okay and be looking at a chromebook from whether they're home or i gotta say away and the way that the schedule's split up is there's you could still split up a yeah send half of them home for this time and half of them home for the other time right they just we we want them to be able to log in to get instruction too so that so not we'll we'll figure it out but i'll tell you it would it would be easier if we had gone to again this is i'm looking back at decisions that we made we went away
076from the if we would if we would have done the monday tuesday full day you know how we did we had that schedule yeah then we would have had a full day middle school schedule and we could have easily done what exactly you're talking about when we went to the ab schedule the monday morning afternoon afternoon that's what kind of that's what drove what we're doing now so that doesn't mean we can't fix it somehow but i won't we'll uh well i just have to sit i i can't think about it right now a solution but it doesn't mean we can't do it so we'll just have to figure out what we can do to make that better if we don't with these new guy with this new guidance you're going to be able to
077put more kids in the classroom yeah so if it's 60 percent of the kids want to come back and 40 percent want to stay home can you make 600 teachers have classes and 40 be remote learning have you looked at that option if but then we'd have to they'd have to change teachers at this point yeah if uh i wish i would talk about this today i wish at the beginning of the year we had if we'd had known it was going to be this high of a number this the remote learning has kind of grown a little bit yeah and uh we if it got closer to 50 we could have had a a remote house and an in-person house and we've been fine but i do think there's some things we can do
078with schedule i think that we can sit down and re-evaluate it's going to require a change and then that change you know then we got testing coming up it's gonna be another change but um i i think there's probably something we can do and i um will definitely be a it would be our highest priority you know the next two weeks to figure that out and by april 5th i think we would have something in place give us a week after spring break and i mean we're working next week too so um but can definitely like i said i wish i could give you an answer right now but if that's what if that's our highest priority that's what we will do for me that's what's hard that's the hardest thing is not it's not
079knowing that because now we're going to vote on something that we don't have all the answers to not that we ever have all the answers but right yes we at least have some semblance to defend whatever decision that we're trying to make and i for me i don't feel like i have that yeah i i don't think we have enough information to make a good decision we don't have all the details right of how the improvements would be yeah well you're talking about even if if we stay hybrid changing the middle school schedule to fix the problems you're talking about we'd either have to change the schedule or we'd have to just go back to the instruction and figure out where the where the troubles are so if it's not if it's not if it's
080just if it's not a trouble across the board then then we won't have to change the schedule if it's just an instructional issue maybe in certain areas where we're not uh providing enough work or whatever it is um and like i said i've heard both sides of this i've heard people say that their kids are just overwhelmed with too much work right what happens to those kids then what's that if we change that what happens to those kids that are overwhelmed the more time you do in class well and how are you going to change the schedule hybrid if they're here for two and a half hours then they miss i just don't understand how that's gonna again that's just changing something up again and we're really talking about the last seven weeks of school
081five weeks i mean our first focus would be our first focus will be to take what we're doing and make it better if we if we feel like we can make a change to their schedule we'll do it but uh i don't want to switch from a a b the current morning afternoon to like a whole right the whole shift over to two days then we might as well just come back up putting pressure on teachers and students yeah parents yes i agree yeah to change it up for that short of a time at the end of the year then i would just say just bring everybody back at that point because that's too much yeah if we can if we can improve on what we're currently doing then that'll be our focus for the
082next two weeks i just i you know i can't give you a direct answer now what that'll look like but i think we're going to need to bring teachers into the discussion and and just start talking about what can we do to make this better what are you seeing the flaws what can we do to help you what can do to support you i know we have the tools there so i don't understand why the why there's not the why some kids aren't getting challenged i guess and what i i realized we don't have all the information but what i also don't want to happen and i'm sure many out there would agree with me just the uncertainty or are they going to have another board meeting in two weeks to decide to bring everybody
083back another no one wants that no one wants to live with the uncertainty of what is going to happen the rest of the year no i know that's why i think people want consistency and stability some stability knowing that here's our plan this is what we're going to do sick by it and then like you said improve on stuff focus and then for the fall that we're ready to go because that's the biggest thing i don't feel like after tonight we can change course i think this is a point where we just got to move forward right and the fall is the fall we got a we got a 100 return but so you're recommending staying hybrid well so here's what i i pulled a tiffany and i typed up what i'm going to wrap
084up can i do that yes okay because i want to make sure i articulate it well so six years ago when i came to big hollow i chose to live in this community it was for reasons like this i want people to realize that i am as invested as everyone else's i pay taxes here i grocery shop here i buy my cars here my kids go to school here i'm not making a decision tonight and then getting my car and driving to barrington this is my community and i'm fully aware of the difficulty that this is this pandemic school year has caused our students and our families and our staff in fact i would say that i am probably more aware than most of you i hear it directly my email inbox is full of
085comments on both sides of the issue and it will probably fill up again tonight but for the record i do appreciate those who reach out to me directly and and have cordial conversation with their differences so i do appreciate it but i get people are pretty worn out right now i take very seriously the fact that i am here to serve this community and so considering these decisions it's i try to do it with a lens of of meeting the needs of all our kids that's what makes us difficult there's no clear consensus right now on how to do this and there are some some that think we're here tonight because of loud voices and and social media who have objected to our prior decisions but really that's not the case we're here because we
086we were given new guidance and we think it's fair to discuss that guidance after our last decision and board members i know this hasn't been easy for you i know you we talked about this meeting you've spent time visiting in classrooms and i know that some of you have told me you've had sleepless nights over this issue so agree or not with decisions are made i hope our staff and community can appreciate that you're all trying to make informed decisions a week ago you supported a recommendation remain in our current blended hybrid for the remainder of the year tonight we've talked about the impact of the new guidance i want to reiterate that we are fully prepared to do a full return if it's the desire of our board and our community and you guys
087are elected by the community and represent them um if i will say it this way that i feel like if any board members feel like strongly that we need to go this route i would just have you make a motion to do it and we're ready to do it if you um and then we can we can vote on it but if you um if there's another direction you want me to take at a minimum i can i hear that we need to reevaluate what's going on at the middle school to see what we can do to challenge to provide extra support for kids but but if there's a strong pull to to just see where everybody's at on a full return then then you know i would i would recommend you make a motion
088to do that with a i would recommend it be a monday through thursday with uh fridays being a um a a remote learning day uh there'll be asynchronous work and uh as well so but we're fully prepared to do that um we're also fully prepared though to just address issues that you shared tonight okay so that's what's the recommendation you're the one that is here day in day out if you're in the trenches you have your administrators and your teachers and your staff in the trenches what we're not here every day yeah you know we can't get a feel for coming in for an hour observing some classes we can see my recommendation hasn't changed from last week as well okay that's what i'm saying i mean what i'm saying is if but if you're
089feeling something different then i've then make a motion to to do it but i my the the guidance here doesn't impact what i what i said last week and we supported it and i'm hearing that we we need to do better in some areas and i will you know we'll address that but i'm writing a motion out here i would like to just say that i think as a board we're trying to look at all of the learners not just our students that are in the building you know when when we made the decision last week i tried taking account all the learners in the struggles and successes of the in person and the remote learners all right i think i've developed two motions here to kind of encompass what we've been struggling with this
090meeting so the first motion i'm going to read is can i please have a motion to maintain the superintendent's recommendation of a blended hybrid model for the remainder of this school year and then do you have to read your second then no we'll be two different motions should we vote on this so sorry there'll be two motions all right the first one can i please have a motion to maintain the superintendent's recommendation of a blended hybrid model for the remainder of this school year promotion second thank you i would need a vote yes yes all right my next motion to address the deficiencies that we've seen and the answers we're looking for is can i please have a motion to distribute a plan to enhance the blended hybrid model by april 5th to the board
091of education motion second motion eye motion yes yes yes all right anybody have anything else to add no i want to say to families and to everyone just this has been very difficult and i know this is not easy for anybody so we've thought really long and hard and to think about everybody in the community as a whole you know and it's kind of hard to i don't want to get emotional right we're making the best decisions with the information we have right for our whole population we understand that people want certain ways to meet their own families needs but our job is to meet all the needs with all the information that we have been given right at this point we feel like the decision we made will accommodate everyone but also with the
092right the motion to have the administration address all the other issues that have come about that we constantly hear about that have not been addressed yet yes thank you vivian i agree it's very emotional for all of us absolutely it's a hard decision to make we read all of these things that personally attack the way that we do things and we're up here trying to do the best that we can we know that everybody's trying to do the best that we can but people have the audacity to say the things that they do say um not these people these people who are very respectful yeah but we read it out there and all i all you have to say is if you offer something better then go get involved yeah um there's no one out
093there there's there's not a school in this area that doesn't need help well we heard it from everybody tonight from staff to administrators to the all the teacher tours everybody needs help if you want to make a difference go out there and make a difference just stop with the personal attacks because it's very hurtful it's very hurtful to us we all have families we have children that go here we have children that go here and there's no reason for a classmate of them to say something to my child in school because what decision that i made right so um just please i hope understand this decision is as difficult for us and is it emotionally charged is it for you so yeah i i just hope that i haven't like failed in leadership for you
094guys here i and i would say absolutely not i said that not at all i think like i said we've all dealt with this terrible hand the best way that we know how and did we all make mistakes sure we all have but yeah does that mean that we're a bad district no that means that we at least are able to recognize and admit when we make a mistake and not go on pretending like everything's okay okay i think that would be the worst thing we could do for kids none of us we've all said we can do better yeah um and i think that's important to acknowledge i agree i mean one thing i've always felt since i've lived here kids in school i just i just feel like big howl's a big family
095yeah whether you have kids in school you're part of the community kids have come and graduated and moved on yeah we're all in this together and we try to get it right when people ask where i live i say i love a big hollow right i just want us to all like stick together and just move forward we're at the end of this like be positive i just want to be on a positive note and just focus for the future and and we'll get there you know just we've got to trust in each other that we'll get there and we have to support each other this is the time where we need to support not divide each other yeah that's probably been the that's been the hardest thing for me in my it's been the
096hardest thing for me to see is in my six years here that it's the first time i've seen real division in the community yeah it's hard to see and and uh and it's 50 50. yeah yeah it's 50 and i want to say this though about that 50 because i you're it is 50 50 and and uh but of those each side of that 50 probably 30 of that 50 is expressing their opinion but they're they trust us like we they know that like we're gonna make the decision we're gonna we're we we get it and uh but they want you know but there yeah there's definitely people on each side that are really uh very vocal about it too but um but i think that people get it that this is hard this is
097this is hard and uh and while they may not agree they they're not gonna they're gonna trust us that we're we're trying to make an educated decision if you know so all right does anybody have anything else to add can you let the public know that we are going back to school full-time in the fall yeah but um how do you want me to message that because like i said i i don't see anything stopping us other than come hell or high water yeah right well i think that's a popular thing intention we have every intention to go back every every uh people don't i guess some maybe don't understand how horrible this has been for right everybody here everybody i mean it's it's nobody wants to do this again no exhausting no it's exhausting
098the hours and the time it is i look forward to being a superintendent again and not being trying to be a health expert and a safety expert and a logistics manager and i say that because i think there's a genuine people are generally scared that we're not going to risk well because they were just they're worried that if we're not if we're not going to go full day now though we're going to go full day in the future i think that's a small portion of the population you have to remember we typically hear from a small percent of parents and the rest of the parents out there trust us to make trust us and the best decision right for them right they just want to hear superintendents say it i'll say it i'll say it
099i think it has to be yeah i mean that's that's our plan right right that's our plan right that's our plan i did put it in the last i put in my last message that we're planning for a full return but uh i i understand why they're skeptics i understand why they'd be skeptical i mean i do get it because i figure if we can't go there now well we couldn't control what happened no the pandemic this is a year that's been like no other so you can't plan for this this is yes you learn as you go yes all that you've done yes thank you to all of the staff at big hollow everyone appreciate it for everything that you do and all the things that yeah all the so many people don't know
100you do exactly absolutely our teachers our staff everyone is amazing yes they can yes yes all right anybody have anything else can please have a motion to adjourn motion second going busy all in favor all right eyes have it good night you