MGSD Board of Education Meeting

001changes [Music] changes [Music] yes [Music] you know i need your love you got that hold of me long as i got your love you know i know how much i'll lean on you only you can see the changes that have been true [Music] the brightest light that shines you everything i could never say you before every day i'm loving you so you much me into the light through those crazy dreams it was me i just wanna see this is so yeah when i wanted you to shave [Music] i used to say that [Music] i know just [Music] way down the street there's a lot in his place he's got this dream about buying some land he's gonna give up the blues but you know he'll always keep never moving stop moving [Music] the sun is

002shining [Music] so [Music] where are you minutes sing a song for the broken hearted [Music] out [Music] is [Music] is [Music] it's my [Music] my heart is [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] my heart is [Music] yes [Music] i'm alive [Music] is [Music] [Applause] so [Music] it's all the [Music] same will [Music] seems we're change away from the place where the faces are so cold i'll drive all night just to get back [Music] who is [Music] sometimes [Music] all you do i'm a [Music] cowboy we wanted to [Music] cowboys [Music] cause i might not make it [Music] back cause i'm a cowboys okay good evening everyone welcome to this monthly meeting of your board of education i'll call our festivities to order if everyone please find a seat back in 1926 a gentleman named carter g

003woodson who was a scholar and historian promoted the second week of february as negro history week and he picked the second week of february because it coincided with the birth dates of frederick and abraham lincoln two key people in the history of the united states and especially in the african-american community in 1976 negro history week was changed to black history month during which we recognize the contributions of lots of african-american key figures in our history and i often wondered why we only do it then we should be doing it all the time but that's a conversation for another time i would make a quote this evening from an individual that i was not aware of a month or two ago as i dare say many of you were not aware of a young lady named

004amanda gorman you may have seen her prior to the super bowl just this past sunday and i'm sure you have seen or heard of her recitation during the presidential inauguration back in january and i will quote from some of her writings she says the new dawn blooms as we free it for there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it and only if we're bro friends if you'll now join me for a moment of silence thank you now if you'll please rise as we honor america with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we typically have public comment early in the agenda but because

005of some of the items for our consideration the time for public comment is pushed a little later in the agenda if you have an agenda you'll see where it is and speaking of that agenda members of the board you received a copy of the agenda in your planning packet hopefully you've had a chance to review it are there any considerations for concern or a lot adjustments hearing none is there a motion to approve the agenda as published second all in favor aye any opposed then the agenda is approved as published also in that packet members of the board you received a copy of the minutes from our january the 12th regular meeting any questions about those minutes hearing none is there a motion to approve the minutes from january 12. second all in favor any

006opposed then those minutes are approved and dr mooney i think we've arrived at a time to have a spotlight on people yes mr height of you and i would go down to the front mr hyatt members of the board before we begin our official spotlight on people recognition i want to take a minute to recognize a valuable member of our executive team just want to be sure she is here who is miss hass is enjoying her last official board meeting prior to her retirement she is our chief financial officer and is retiring at the end of the month and i want to take this opportunity to publicly thank her for her many many many years of service to public education and her commitment to the student staff in mooresville community over the last decade playing

007mooresville and for the last 33 years in public education miss hass has done great work in her role as our chief financial officer and has done so while keeping the most valuable assets of our district which are our people our students and our staff at the forefront of what she done miss miss has not just for her professional competence but for her true devotion to each one of us members if they would like to make any comments uh to do so to congratulate and recognize miss hass in her retirement well i'll start i think we we talk a lot about mooresville mgsd being a family and with that being said i consider terry our our mother in that she has guided us through some really challenging and difficult times if you think about it while

008she's been cfo we did digital conversion had a major recession we're in a pandemic and our finances are very strong and that's not the case in a lot of places a lot of districts in our state and that's all due to terry's expertise and because being a good parent she has taught us all a valuable lesson that no means no and we've learned that lesson very well have we not dr moon but thank you so much for all that you've done for mooresville graded and especially for our kids because that's what we're all here for terry um i was told i was going to be giving about 15 minutes you were totally wrong i also had an opportunity to uh also had an opportunity to speak with your husband and he said hallelujah thank goodness

009it's about time but no seriously um i think a mother is probably you know an app description but more than that for many different reasons i have a lady that's worked for me for a long time in my my law practice and there's there's never been a day that i haven't or that i'm worried about anything that's that deal with the finances he's steadfast he's there all the time she's doing exactly what she's supposed to she's going above and beyond you go above and beyond every day in what you do for this for this community and for the school district and you've taught me so much uh how to be a how to be a leader how to be a good leader how to be a great leader how to uh make sure that you're

010physically responsible uh and in all that you do and that you can do that and still serve your community the right way and do a wonderful job you always had wonderful levity in in what you do especially considering you know the accounting side has always seemed to be kind of dry but you've always approached it with with good humor and made uh our moments together um while we're going through budgets and that sort of thing um very simple you've laid it out so that we can understand it at an elementary level um and also at a more you know at a higher level uh i'm gonna miss you dearly uh i everybody always wants more time and more opportunities to to talk and get to know and that's my that's my only regret as it

011relates to to you leaving is that i i wish i could have had more time with you um time is so precious and i'm so happy for you i'm sad for our district but also happy for the new beginning um and i wish you all the most wonderful time and success in the future and we'll dearly miss you well thank greggs thank you w thank you terry um there have been a number of times i said okay we're going to say something tonight what i'm going to say i want to write this down i'm going to put some words together put words to paper because how do you find superlatives to express excellence the character in which you've handled yourself the job that you have done for us is undercut by the person and the

012human being and the character that you bring to that uh each day i'm grateful that for the times i've had to sit down and look over numbers and budgets and as exciting as that is i was glad i was able to share that with you um we cannot express enough gratitude for the 33 years that you've given to public schools particularly the 13 years that you've given to us like i said it is great and it's an honor just to know that when somebody comes to do an audit you've ever been audited i don't know anybody who smiles but the folks that come here to audit us have a smile on their face because they know that everything that they're going to look at they're going to get it's going to be and that they

013don't have any question um extremely grateful for your friendship my best to you and your family when we say retire there's a lot of people who drop tears and go through those moments but it's only because of the joy that you have brought to us i want to thank you so i'll keep it short and sweet because my fellow board members like to talk a lot so um but i want to say thank you i'm one of the newer members of the board of education and and your patience and kindness and willingness to take the time to explain things you've explained a million times i can't thank you enough for that we may not have known each other for a very long period of time but my children have definitely benefited from the way you've

014set this district up for success set us up for success to continue long after you're gone i hope you enjoy the time with your family and i thank you for everything you've done for us miss hass if anyone in this room can really appreciate what you do it's me because at one time about oh gosh 30 years ago i thought i wanted to be you and i tried it for a couple of years and i thought get me the hell out of here because there's no way we could print enough money to do all the things we needed to do and juggle such a complex and complicated thing that school finance is and i was wise enough to get back into a school building and i've never regretted making that choice terry you i won't

015go back and reiterate what they've said but the only thing i want to say is in that you are a cpa with a sense of humor and to work amongst this class of cl uh this family one has to have a sense of humor but you also because as someone told me once in order to succeed let's see i'll get my quote wrong never mind i usually get tongue tied when i'm around terry because she throws so many facts and figures that i just try to keep up but she's serious when she needs to be she has a sense of humor when she needs to be and we will miss you and that's not to say that you're irreplaceable because someone else is coming i'm not sure they can take your place but maybe they'll

016walk in your shoes for a while and we'll see terry thank you very much for all you've done and remember we know where you are when questions come up does she need to come forward yes she would come forward [Applause] speech hope your next cfo's a little taller it's just been an honor to be part of this wonderful family it's bittersweet for me to retire and go home but it's time every day being here and being part of this wonderful group the staff has more than welcomed me not just at the central office but at all our schools and it's just been a privilege to share time here with mooresville y'all hold a special place in my heart and you always will and thank y'all so much for the very kind words that mean a

017lot to me right now so thank you all [Applause] already next on our agenda is our spotlight on people and tonight we recognize a group that is often overlooked in public schools but we wanted to shine a light on them and thank seven extraordinary individuals in our district they are so vital to our students every day from administering medications to dealing with tummy aches asthma attacks fevers falls bumps and bruises and the list goes on and on however for the last year they have also had the responsibili the responsibility of dealing with i can say i have no doubts that our school nurses have handled this pandemic and strongly that they are the best team of nurses in the state i can also speak from first-hand experience to the thoroughness and care that's ms tanay

018mclean our chief communications officer to come up she works very closely with our school nurses especially during this time and she's going to share some words and some comments from our principals thank you dr mooney so from dr rogers at parkview elementary nurse shannon's bedside manner and customer service is exceptionally exceptional and we are beyond lucky to have her professional experience and calm demeanor at phone with parents or following up on class dojo messages with parents she is reassuring staff members whenever they reach out to her i am so thankful that she has been by my side helping me explain things to parents when i am making phone calls and keeping me updated on everything i need to jump into help with anything to support our school dr larusso had the following to say about

019nurse ashley shane nurshane is an invaluable member of rocky river while she is always knowledgeable and job and this year that has certainly taken to the forefront of how she spends her day she is also a critical resource for our staff and students intending to the well-being of each racer she provides students and staff with wellness education mindful activities and caring for the social emotional needs of all she is greatly appreciated south elementary school's dr catone said nurse rachel has been a wealth of knowledge during these times she has also worked around the clock to be sure information is sent to staff and families in a timely manner we so appreciate nurse rachel at south and don't know what we would have done without her during this whole pandemic thank you nurse rachel your south

020family appreciates you dr pratt said the following about nurse simpson at mis we appreciate nurse simpson for her hard work and dedication to the student served at mooresville intermediate she always provided guidance and care to make sure everyone was safe and healthy thank you nurse simpson for all you did and do miss evans shared that emis is lucky to have miss johnson as their school nurse and although this pandemic has been difficult for all staff and students miss johnson continues to rise to the occasion she always works become better and continue to grow thanks for all you do for us miss johnson from miss robinson dana is our own personal wonder woman she goes above and beyond to meet the needs of our students and their parents she keeps detailed nurses notes and takes pride

021in ensuring mms is following all safety protocols she is willing to conduct training with staff and has really made our staff aware of how to deal with students health concerns she is comfortable speaking up emailing staff and speaking with administrators we are blessed to have nurse dana at mms and mr brown said these kind words about nurse ashley c morrisville high school nerfed in success of our school during the first semester she works day and night to ensure that contact tracing is completed to perfection her guidance has been timely and concise each time i've reached out to her for suggestions or requirements our athletic and band programs have worked hand in hand within our sports and band practices she has consulted daily with administration to assure that any event we plan is done with all

022correct covered protocols implemented she is a key member of the mhs staff and we can't show our appreciating appreciation enough for everything she's done to keep us safe during this most difficult of times and for me i would just like to say as someone who has been dealing with the kovid 19 pandemic effort to say my hat goes off to each of you ladies the constant contact tracing screenings track all of it on our staff and students it's overwhelming it's frustrating and something nobody was prepared for but each of you have handled it with so much grace whether it is spending a saturday on the phone with one of you attempting to contact trace or a friday afternoon right before going home dealing with a new positive case you have been amazing responsive and a

023source of support for me throughout this pandemic pandemic mgsd is certainly fortunate to have this group of nurses every day but i am even more blessed to be able to work closely with all of you throughout this pandemic so thank you so much and if you come down we have a little something for you [Applause] of education oh administrative staff recognizing each of you for your outstanding dedication and for going above and we have a beyond for each one and we have a goody bag as well uh yes [Applause] each month we also have the honor to recognize an employee who exhibits exceptional professionalism quality of work and dedication to our district and to those we serve with our above and beyond the call of duty award tonight we honor miss rosie marie granda a

024custodian at mooresville intermediate school miss gronda was nominated by the mis administrative team and here's what they had to say about what she means to mis miss granda is amazing and we are thankful that she is part of our mis family her contributions are vital as a member of the custodial team and teachers often complement her and notice the care she puts into ensuring classrooms are clean daily she is self-confident and comes to work with a positive attitude each day she is always courteous towards staff students and members of the community she greets everyone each morning with a smile and a how are you today she shows concern for others and is sensitive to the needs and feelings of all her positive attitude is contagious and it practical it practically lights up the room whenever

025she enters she is passionate about her job she embodies the characteristics of a hard-working employee dependable reliable responsible and always looking for ways to improve her skills she is constantly exceeding expectations and happily accepts any task however difficult it may be she is proactive and does not wait until she is asked to make sure our building remains sanitized for the health and safety of all lastly ms gronda works in collaboration with her team fostering relationships and ultimately to achieve a common goal meeting quality standards she is generous with her time and expertise and is always willing to help her fellow custodians whenever and wherever she is needed she is committed to the success of our school our staff and our students and deserves this recognition and so much more please join me in honoring miss

026granda as our abcd award recipient [Applause] okay and before we go too much further i would like to remind you that our next scheduled board meeting is march the 16th that's a little bit later than usual because of the spring break we don't typically meet during break time so march the 16th six o'clock in this room let's move along to our reports dr mooney yes we'll start off with our facilities and construction report with dr royal good evening mr hyatt dr mooney members of the board i have a few items to share tonight as you can see on the agenda i'll be back up here in a little bit to share a more in-depth report as far as our facilities and construction but a few items we want to mention that this week february 8th

027through 12th is love the bus week in north carolina so a special shout out to all of our school bus drivers our schools are treating them this week to some special treats as an appropriate as an as appreciation for all their hard work and dedication so again i'd just like to have uh just a shout out to all of our school bus drivers for all the hard work and their dedication uh not only during the pandemic but each and every day an announcement for march severe weather week in north carolina is scheduled for the first week of march all of our schools will continue their safety drills and included in that severe weather week is a tornado drill in north carolina and lastly we would like to report that our athletic programs are continuing to

028go fairly well at both mooresville high school and mooresville middle school one announcement from the middle school athletic department uh april 7th thank you sir thank you moving right along dr mooney instructional report dr smith and dr black dr smith thank you doctor mooney mr hyatt members of the board i come to you first with a few comments from technology department that's saying they are still extremely busy we have swapped out almost all of our laptops i think at earlier account today we were around 25 students that we still needed to get in to swap their machines and all staff have have been changed out they are still offering drive-through service and technical support every day from 8 to 4 and answering lots of phone calls from remote users so they are very busy from

029a curriculum and instruction standpoint i wanted to share that curriculum instruction diversity equity and inclusion mtss and ec exceptional children's mostly together for alignment and consistency across all different areas as for that we have all of our school administrators and our instructional coaches are reading the culturally responsive teaching book and the brain and we're working on on that with ms caesar our diversity equity and inclusion specialist in a small group of folks three administrators and two central office staff and miss caesar who are doing a book study with the actual author of the book mr retta hammond so that is a ongoing work that we are doing to inspire and work to create equitable classrooms across the district our stars pre-k program is getting ready to accept applications at the beginning of march this is

030our program that we run at rocky river for staff children and we'll be accepting applications on that starting march 1st at 7 30 at the central office information will be coming out later this week to announce that to our staff kindergarten registration it's going to look a little different this year kindergarten registration is going to be all online much like we do our power school registration for uh first through 12th grade and our families have to do every year before we start school we're going to do kindergarten that way and then the data managers at the three elementary schools will reach out to the parents to schedule appointments to get copies of birth certificates and proofs of residence and it's going to run through the month of march and more information will be coming out

031about that next week as well in addition as you will remember we had planned on doing a dual immersion program starting in kindergarten last year at all three of our elementary schools and with the pandemic that didn't happen our teachers couldn't get here from other countries however we are planning to do our dual immersion program this year in kindergarten and in first grade so those students that were slated or who had selected to be in the program in kindergarten last year they will start this year in first grade we sent out a survey last friday and it's due this coming friday of those that got a spot last year do you still want your spot this year and those will be in first grade this year and then we have a meeting tomorrow with the

032elementary principals to start the interview process the teachers that we're looking for for uh first grade uh that are coming from from other countries um excuse me um in addition to that um the the three teachers that were coming last year are still able to and planning to come this year so they'll be in kindergarten um and we'll be hiring for those for three first grade teachers that are coming from a k-6 instructional standpoint um miss conley our instructional coaches our administrators are still working and adjusting and pivoting uh and working to teach our power standards and like what is the most important thing um that to to teach that we're working through each each week on our uh pacing and adjusting that to meet the needs of our students so that's a continual process

033and we're working through it as we you know go through every every week of the the plans believe it or not we're also starting the discussions about summer planning and what kind of programs we're going to have this summer a lot of that is still up in the air we're not sure what dpi is going to require you know they used to have a requirement for the third grade read to achieve program and we're not sure what that's going to look like yet but we are starting to have those discussions about what summer planning might look like and if we're able to do something in the summer for the intermediate schools dr black is looking at same thing for middle and high school so those discussions are just getting started and last but not least

034i want to give a shout out to our school counselors our school counselors are doing so much in the schools to support our students especially from a social emotional standpoint our k-3 counselors especially have created a digital social emotional digital library for our teachers and our students and our parents but all across the the district our our counselors are doing julie we're working through all the different social emotional lessons that we have with our programs running at the elementary and the secondary schools so just want to give a huge shout out to our school counselors and last week was school counselor appreciation week so dr manny miss height members of the board that's all i have i have one question about dual immersion um if there are some students who opt out do we have

035a waiting list of folks you can feel those there is a waiting list we'll see what that list looks like um because a couple of the programs were right at the max anyway so but we will look at that list when we you know it's due this coming friday so then we'll take a look at that absolutely any other questions for dr smith thank you sir thank you dr black thank you dr mooney mr there are several things i want to talk to you about tonight from a secondary standpoint least of not is i want to echo what dr smith just mentioned about the high school and middle school counselors as well again sometimes they are the unsung heroes that in the schools are not seen publicly but are truly doing a lot behind the

036scenes and ours are no exception again they have made lots of home visits to students and again you keep hearing in the news and other media how much uh social emotional uh learning and how much social emotional impacts have occurred to our students our counselors our first line of defense on they are working extremely hard to do that so again i'll just pay kudos to the counselors as well i want to talk just a little bit about some and spotlight a few things from the middle school there are some things going on since we have been in our plan b and we are under covert that i felt like needed to be hit tonight for example you know the middle school had their awards program uh last maybe a week or two ago where they

037were able virtually to recognize students inside their classroom who had gone above and beyond they recognized their students who had exceeded beyond measure they also recognized their highest averages just like they would in a normal school year so they were able even online to recognize students inside of their classrooms via each teacher's class the middle school also became one of the only or actually the only traditional middle school and there is one other i think with a charter school to start what is called let's see the junior excel club and again if you maybe are familiar with other clubs around in the like this exchange club which partners with them very closely but this is the first time that the middle school has partake in a in a group that really focuses on community service

038and again the high school has always had those types of programs but the middle school was the first and they had their induction here in this room uh several weeks ago as well or no it was virtually a couple of weeks ago again there are 16 members in that club and they have already started doing their community service and hope to complete six community service projects within the year so again just kudos to the folks that made that happen at the middle school again providing some real meaningful life experience for our up and coming middle school students dr black i just have to add that they just completed their first service project and collected and packaged for the gavin sharp um what you would call it it's like a a community hutch for uh people

039who are in need in the community and they did just way beyond expectations so kudos to the to the kids and i think we're up to 19 or 20 now very good thank you also i want to talk of about a few meetups that the middle school created some extracurricular activities at the middle school level are there short for grit again they had their first meet up in about last week and they're scheduled for three or four more throughout the course of this year but they had a guest speaker when they met last week called alyssa carson and alyssa was the first person to complete the nasa passport program and is currently training to travel to mars in 2030. again we all talk about stem programs and we talk about the shortage out there of

040women in high technology jobs and other stem related jobs and this particular group is set to just meet with a group of diverse young ladies who want to focus on career possibilities in the stem field so again reaching out to another group of kids who may or may not have had that also they have a sign language club that's going very well again they're meeting regularly in a virtual setting they also have a gaming club again there are a lot of our students out there who now probably more than ever have had time to game and so they are actually making this educational and talking about it from a school perspective as well as gaming they also have an fca club that meets virtually uh meets about every other week and again inspirational speak how

041to handle yourself how to how to uh approach the the pandemic uh and to become young adults again very inspirational i also have yoga clubs that have uh been going on virtually and it's not one of those clubs where you have to be experienced in yoga you had to have you have to have any experience to be in this club and so there are some students now taking part in yoga virtually as well there are also some clubs in the media arts there's clubs in the band and there's clubs with drama and stage space again just wanted to quickly review some of those meetups that our middle school has put together for our students again also just wanted to briefly mention about the middle school we have our data review session or meeting with them

042for the year coming up on thursday we also have nf woods data meeting coming up on wednesday we had the high school about a week and a half ago and then what i would like to also spotlight just briefly will be what we talked about last board meeting with our high school end of course exam and so what i want to do is give you a brief overview of the eocs again while we're in the middle of a pandemic it's not like we were speaking to the schools about the the critically important part of of doing well on the eocs we knew we were in the middle of a pandemic we knew our teachers were working hard what i think we got from the results of our eocs will really bear out what we have

043been doing overall at the high school and and the middle school as well for that matter but you have a packet that i placed in front of you and it will also be on the screen that will kind of review some of the information that i just briefly want to share if you look at the historical eoc performance again 2018 2019 was the last full year of eoc data that we had again the fall of 2019 we had our fall eocs but then the pandemic hit shortly after and we did not test in the spring of so we just completed the fall of 2020 and what i want to point out is that if you look across the board of biology from 2017-18 where they were 70 proficient 2018-19 the last full year they were

04452 proficient but if you remember we had a resequencing of biology beginning that year so in 2018-19 there were no honors courses whatsoever they were only our regular courses who tested so about half the students tested and then if you look at the fall of 19 uh when 18 that was down to a final class of biology that was left in that re-sequencing organization of just some complete people who didn't complete maybe some retake students and again it was 18 and then you see the fall of 20 where they posted a 61 proficiency rate and then what i have out beside of that for fall of 2020 projected we use what's called evas to measure teachers growth and students growth and so evos which is education value added assessment system gave us the data that

045says okay so these students should be proficient on your exam or these students are not likely to be proficient based on past tests and past scores that they had made and so we found that we had a projected number of students of about 70 percent and we were actually 61 percent proficient in the fall english 2 the same way i'm going to run through that quickly fall of 2019 was 81 which again it's hard to judge just a semester because you can never tell what classes you have grouped whether you have an inordinate amount of honors classes versus regular classes et cetera but nevertheless 71 percent of our students scored proficient and we were projected to have 70 percent of our students proficient math one is the other little anomaly that lays out there a

046little bit in that you can tell in fall of 2019 we had 79 percent of our students proficient again that was an outstanding number and sometimes cohort has to do with that but also if you remember with math 1 most of our math 1 students actually take math in the middle school and so those students actually now take the the eoc in the middle school and it counts toward the middle school proficiency and not the high school so the only students when they get to the high school that are testing math one are all of those students who did not take it in eighth grade which are the more math oriented type students so even given that the numbers dropped a bit to 42 percent and there are a couple things that we talked about

047as the possibilities of why even beyond that why that may have happened number one we have a transition year and it's a huge transition from eighth grade to ninth grade and we have a group of students who have never stepped in the high school they never had a true high school orientation so you have students who came to us they're testing a high stakes test really for the first time now they've always taken eogs but the eogs do not have the same weight or the same um behind it as it does when it gets to the high school because those count as grades the state of north carolina requires that in high school end of course tested subjects count 20 percent of their course grade there are no grades given technically uh up to that

048point so i think that has a lot to do with the transition i think the um it was the first truly high stakes test and then all students again who had would have been in honors sections would have taken that at the middle school so again those are the reasons we kind of surmised that the math one scores were a bit lower but 42 scored proficient and dr black i would add also we are seeing similar data at our earlier grades as well particularly with math which has traditionally been a stronger point for us at the at the lower grades but we think it is very much due to the to the disruptions that we were currently teaching under and so i would open it up to any questions that you may have in regards

049to the eoc test at this time i'm just glad that you are analyzing the the reasons for the dips um personally i think that um we need to give everyone some grace given the situation that we've been in i certainly hope the state sees it that way and to your point dr mooney i think that the the inability to teach math concepts with manipulatives and the things that we are used to using in the classroom that doesn't translate as well in a virtual environment and some of the things that you have been talking about also tell me that our students who are who struggle some academically under normal circumstances have been even greater they've been impacted in a much much greater way and i think that's something that we'll need to be looking at strategically

050as we look at summer programs and moving forward but absolutely and that is a top priority for us to do that are there any other questions thank you sir if not that concludes my report dr manny thank you dr black next item on the agenda dr mooney is business services report all right short timer thank you dr mooney mr hype members of the board last month we did some work toward the financing package for parkview and south elementary and i thought that at this point we would have approval from the lgc the local government commission however in their due diligence they have asked that we get firm bids before they will approve that project for us so you will have another meeting in march at the end of march to approve those bids and then

051in april the lgc will approve that and the financing will go through for that project at your seats i left you a packet of information per uh house bill 75 from session law 2019 we are to report to you by february the 15th uh the school mental health support personnel report to share with you the categories and if there's been an increase or decrease in positions uh i'll just go over the summary page but the rest of the detail is there for you if you'll flip over to page four of 18 i've highlighted mooresville graded to reflect that the positions that they consider are our psychologists our guidance counselors our social workers and our nurses and as you can see we've been able in this school year to increase the number of psychologists available to

052our students we've also increased our guidance positions available to our students we've maintained we've increased our social worker by half a position and we've maintained our seven nurses one for each school so we've been very blessed to have all those positions here within the moorsville graduate school district we still have work to do but so do 114 other school districts across the state and that concludes my report i'll be glad to answer any questions any questions thank you ma'am thank you next item on the agenda dr mooney is human resources report yes dr medlock thank you dr mooney mr hyatt board members we've had great beginning teacher and mentor meetings as we collectively are diving into the second semester of the 2021 school year be reflective of their instructional practice and are intentional about developing

053innovative ideas on how to best meet the needs of all of our students the mentors have been doing a fantastic job they've provided tremendous support to our beginning teachers even in the midst of this global pandemic they've been documenting their coaching sessions and meeting with their beginning teachers either virtual in person special thanks goes out to ms latoya caesar who's our dei specialist she led the third training sessions with our bts and our mentors and she's now connecting with them on a voluntary basis to provide virtual coaching they're working individually on increasing the implementation of diverse equitable and inclusive instructional practices in the classroom it is that time of year where we begin our recruiting season we are trying to recruit the best and the brightest to the mooresville graded school district and this year

054all of our recruitment fairs are being held on virtual platforms that allows for us to have several mgsd staff representatives participate in the recruitment process this year our school and district leaders will be in attendance at the following virtual education recruitment fairs unc wellington east carolina university unc greensboro appalachian state university campbell university elon unc charlotte and unc pembroke we're looking forward to recruiting the best and the brightest and if you have any one that you would recommend please feel free to have them forward their resume to me we are having our spring substitute teacher training this thursday february 11th at 3 30 p.m right here in the performing arts center we are hoping that we are going to have a great turnout for this training we know that we need to beef up our

055substitute teaching staff so if there are any substitutes that still need to be trained this year please make sure that they are in attendance or you can recommend them to me via email and now it is time for our covet staff reports update since our last board meeting on january 12 2021 we've had a total of 84 covid19 staff reports that have been made bringing the total to 490 staff reports that is approximately 70 percent of our entire staff in the district out of the 84 new covet 19 reports 43 of those reports are staff who were exposed to someone who was either symptomatic or tested positive that brings the total number of our exposure cases to out of 490 staff reports so that's about 45 of our total staff out of the 84 new

056covet 19 reports 23 of those reports uh are where our staff members actually tested positive that brings the total number of positive cases in our district to 105 out of 490 reports that is now 15 of the total staff a total of 84 staff members have had to quarantine since our last board meeting and that brings the total quarantines in our district to 474. that's approximately 68 percent of our total staff and that is all i have for you this evening members of the board do you have any questions hearing none thank you thank you next item public communications report yes ms mclean good evening dr mooney chairman hyatt and members of the board i will start with our covet update first for the student portion and actually for the entire district portion so currently

057right now as of today at about four o'clock we have 136 individuals quarantined staff and 111 are students we have 98 who are being quarantined due to being a close contact 15 of those are staff and 73 are students we have 23 being quarantined due to showing symptoms of covid19 six of those are staff 17 are students and we have 15 positive individuals 4 of those are staff and 11 of those are students february 22nd we will be having our parent advisory committee and teacher advisory committee meetings those will be virtual and we are going to be sharing information about our dei program and how we can get parents involved next year for the parent advisory committee and we'll also be going over construction updates so we're excited about sharing some of the the great

058things going on at those construction sites i was honored along with miss latoya caesar our dei specialist to present at nc asbo it was virtual and we presented on focusing on the root of discrepancies in our public school systems we did that february 2nd and we will do that again on february 18th and we had some really positive feedback just also so that you know our mhs diversity ambassador students have been partnering with the mooresville public library and holding courageous conversations for teens the january topic was allyship when it comes to diversity and inclusion and this thursday they will discuss the importance of celebrating black history so if you'd ever like to drop in on one of those zooms and check it out the information is posted on our district website and there then you

059can contact the library to kind of get your to get the space it's free and finally as the vice chair of the mayor's task force for diversity equity inclusion i'm proud to say that for black history month we are featuring people within our community and their reflections on black history and on february 22nd our own morrisville high school assistant principal of the year ms simone graham will be one of the people being featured so she will be um featured on the town's media outlets beginning february 22nd and i'll also share that on the district social media outlet so please keep your eye out for miss graham are there any questions thank you thank you dr mooney time for the superintendent's report yes sir one of the the biggest points of information that i have to

060share tonight will will come later in our meeting with our presentation of options related to our instructional offerings moving forward along those lines though i do know that providing vaccinations to our staff is of great concern for many of our staff members when considering increasing the time that we will be in the building with our students and while there have been no official changes regarding moving school employees to a higher priority the north carolina school superintendents association did submit a formal request to governor cooper and his administration along with the department of health and human services to prioritize teachers and staff in group three of the state's vaccination plan i think this is an extremely important thing for the vaccinations to be available to district staff who are working in person with our students and

061so i hope that this will create some some interest around that and possible changes with the with the vaccination plan and mr height this concludes my initial report to the board as we have quite a bit to to get into thank you dr mooney members of the board we normally talk about board events and announcements but because of covet restrictions there aren't too many opportunities for us right now we do have a couple of board meetings listed and some other school events please consult the calendar that was given to you in your packet that completes our staff reports dr mooney the next item on the agenda is an approval requested of the revised mgsd beginning teacher support program yes sir dr medlock thank you so much um you were presented the beginning teacher support plan

062that was revised so that it could be in alignment with our new uh policy and it included the fact that our beginning teachers and our principals will have to complete a graduate survey it basically assesses the effectiveness of our educator preparation programs you have had an opportunity to read that portion and i am asking tonight if that plan can be approved so that i can submit it to the state members of the board you've had an opportunity to review this plan uh and now is the time to ask clarifying questions if you have them hearing no questions is there a motion to approve the plan as presented any opposed dr medlock thank you very much you have a plan thank you next item on the agenda dr mooney is facility construction presentation from dr royal

063yes dr royal good evening again mr hyatt dr mooney members of the board i'm very excited this evening to give a formal presentation on our facilities and construction projects going on in mgsd i was i provided you with a digital copy uh last week miss martinez sent that with the board report but then i did give you an up-to-date version on your tables and i'll be going through that slideshow here this evening before we get started with our construction projects i do want to give an update on the 2020-21 dpi facilities needs survey this is a survey that is conducted every five years for each district in north carolina so mr martin and i had the uh the privilege to fill out this survey which is an extensive look at all of our facilities the

064needs that we'll have over the next five to ten years and we submit that to the state again they examine the current facilities versus our projected needs they also estimate the cost of renovations and or new construction projects formula that dpi has for spending the survey results are shared with the mooresville graded school district board of education and also the irondale county commissioners and just prior to this meeting this evening i did receive the signed letter from commissioner chairman mallory and so the iredell county commissioners do approve of our survey results that are submitted to dpi what did the survey results reveal without getting too in depth into the survey and i can provide a copy of those for you if you'd like but it did show that our capacity needs will be relieved when

065salmonberg middle school opens and the grade reconfiguration occurs so we're very excited that the data backs up you know what we are doing and what we're moving forward with in mgsd another positive note from the the survey it does show based on their formula uh the budgets that we are operating under for both the renovations at parkview and south as well as seminberg middle school are aligned with their calculations from the state so again very anxious and excited to send that survey in and check that off the list again that's a task that is completed every five years across the state any questions before i move forward to the construction and renovation projects okay i think that yellow screen has everyone's attention there we do have two construction projects really it's it's three but we

066do have parkview and south uh are undergoing some renovations as well as an addition on each campus and that includes an upgrade to our hvac system uh kitchen and dining areas in both parkview and south as well as a new gymatorium that new genetorium space is modeled after the gymatorium that we have at rocky river and so we will be having all three of our elementary schools have comparable facilities as well as upgraded systems and dining and kitchen areas in addition to the renovations we have our new construction which you're very familiar with selma burke middle school be located out on reinhardt road and so again we have two projects but really involving three schools if you look at it that way so first i'll start with parkview and south i just wanted to show

067the partnership that we have here remember for parkview and south we are using the delivery method known as a design build and so we're working with performance services and the architect on the project is a firm out of charlotte macmillan passing and smith and then the builders are local here in iredell county gl wilson will be our contractors i give some quick overviews of the floor plans for both parkview and south as well as an exterior rendering these designs are are pretty much solidified for both parkview and south we're still tweaking a few of the details here but you'll see parkview as well as south when i get to that in a few slides the gematorium is pretty much identical and for the location here for parkview this is actually going to be on the

068lower parking lot if you're standing in the parking lot you'll see a view here and i'll show that to you in a couple slides that gymatorium is actually on one of their playgrounds right now so we will be relocating the playgrounds i'm still providing the playground opportunities for our students and staff as well as adequate green space for them for recess pe and other activities again we've modeled these gyms as far as capacity size features after our gymnasium at rocky river these are going to be significant upgrades to the gym facilities that they currently have at parkview and south because they'll add a stage area and now also the gym floor itself will be a one would consider a traditional wooden gym floor seating capacity as well is that that's comparable to rocky river on

069the right it says physical education we will actually be cutting a hole in that wall and opening up a doorway and so that that will expand the dining into the current gym from park view so again adding quite a bit more seating to help with the capacity needs at parkview this is a an artist rendering obviously of the exterior of the entrance again this would be coming down from that staff parking lot of oak street and so the existing building is kind of that grayed out building again this will connect there where the current playground is and the the playground will be repositioned to sit behind this building so that's one rendering next i'll move to the south floor plan again if you take this gymnasium and place it just directly on top of the

070parkview gymnasium they're going to be just about identical this gymnasium here will be located on top of the current staff parking lot you can see there the the kitchen area is going to be in the upper left-hand corner of your screen and i'll get into the kitchen and dining area renovations here in just a second but again you'll have the basp office you'll have your stage bleachers they'll be able to have a whole school assembly we have the restrooms out front and the awning is in the bottom of the page there at the bottom of the screen with the circle cut out that tree is there that awning will remain and so you can see where the location of south will be and you can see kind of in the right-hand side of that drawing

071we do have our buses loaded there and obviously with both of our south and parkview projects we do understand some obstacles with being land locked and rerouting bus traffic car rider traffic but obviously the architects and builders are well aware of that obstacle this is the floor plan for the kitchen and dining area expansion for south and on the right hand side you can see the kitchen area it's actually going to come out into the current dining area and the current dining area then is going to take over the entire old gymnasium on the far left so again the dining area is going to more than double in size as well as keeps most of the current existing dining area as well and so again very excited to be able to provide not only kitchen

072upgrades but also ads capacity in both dining areas for parkview and south here's an exterior render rendering of south elementary school so you can see on the left hand side of the picture the current on from an architectural standpoint trying to keep the the facade and the general overall look of south and again the bus lot and and staff parking lot will be shifted there it's kind of on the right hand side of the screen it will move closer to magnolia street than it currently sits and a timeline want to provide a timeline for everyone for parkview and south the bids are due march 17th we're scheduled to break ground on both campuses sometime in april of 21 and project completion total completion will be february of 22 they are hoping hoping for a december

073january completion but obviously we'll have a punch list and complete that project to fine-tune but again scheduled for february of 22 at the current time all right next we'll move on to selma burke middle school and this project we are doing a cm at risk construction manager at risk delivery method and you can see on the either your page or the screen we are announcing this evening the mascot for selma burke middle school will be the bears and we will be black and gold for the school colors so the selma burke bears we are using a barn hill contracting company as our cm at risk in ls3p as the architect group again out of charlotte very excited to work with this group very pleased with their hard work and dedication and and really the their

074hit their research not only on selma burke and her contributions but also their research on the town of mooresville so we're very excited uh to work with this group here's an overall floor plan i'm not going to go into great detail on every single room here but just to give you a quick idea this will be a two story middle school there will be one wing in the upper right hand corner the upper right hand corner is the seventh grade wing those green classrooms and then directly above that which will be on the next slide that will be the eighth grade wing so there will be a two story level there just again in the upper right hand corner remember we will have a great reconfiguration so the green classrooms in the upper left hand

075corner will be our sixth grade hallway so i have six and seventh on the first floor eighth grade will be separated on the top floor as far as their core classrooms you can see the green the light green area in the middle there is our media center as you come through the front doors at the top center you walk in and see a grand entrance of the media center you can split off to the left and the right as you move down the page from the center you see that grayish blue color that will be our performing arts in our visual arts classrooms we have our dance classroom on the left down below that would be our art classroom the large classroom there to the right is our band classroom and then we also have

076chorus there already designated again continuing down the center of the page the purple area the dark purple is the kitchen and the light kit the light purple would be our dining area the cafeteria on the right hand side towards the bottom the pinkish color classrooms are a lot of our cte and elective classrooms and then on the far left on the bottom would be the athletic area we will have a full gymnasium almost a thousand seats in the bleachers and then we will have an auxiliary gym in the kind of the upper left orange there again here's a second floor floor plan that is our eighth grade wing again above the seventh grade there in the upper right hand corner obviously we'll have two stairwells and then an elevator in that facility i have three

077pictures of the exterior as far as architectural renderings of selma burke middle school again this is located off reinhardt road this is a rendering of our front doors this will be car rider drop off pickup we'll have the awning that covers the front doors and again you can see on the left hand side there that would be the two-story portion of the building on the far right it is one story and so you can just kind of get an idea of what that will look like from the front this is a view here from the west side and so right in front of you to the left would be the 6th grade classroom wing and then the back right you can see the auxiliary gym has the words salmonberg middle school on the exterior and

078then the athletic entrance would be down to the right and you'd see the gym kind of there in the background and then you very faintly off in the distance you can see the track and field as well as the stadium and here's a view from the south side of the campus that would be the loading dock for the kitchen area directly in the center the dining area just to the left of that and again we would have the the gymnasium far left with the windows that you can see on that facade just kind of gives you an aerial view of the backside as well as the track and field and the stadium the campus layout i'll try to go through this pretty quickly again this is a black and white drawing here so i've tried

079to do some highlighting for you so that you can kind of get an idea of where you are and where each of the components of the campus are laid out so the actual middle school itself you can see here we just went over those floor drawings so the middle school sits right directly off reinhardt we'll have two entrances the car rider and main entrance will be on the west side of reinhardt road and the bus entrance will be at the northern side of reinhardt road we have two parking lots uh obviously the larger parking lot will be mainly for our visitors the back parking lot or to the right will be for our buses as well as some of our cafeteria and other staff members tennis courts will be right there we have right now

080slated for four and we'll have space for six we have a pe and practice field an auxiliary field there to the left of the parking lot our track and field and stadium will sit down just below the back end of the school our softball field will be tiered down from the stadium and then our baseball field will be just up that service road as well and so again the campus and the building itself we're finalizing the design phase we're meeting almost on a daily basis to finalize those plans so again the timeline for selma burke middle school the bids will be due in july mid july break ground in august of 1 and the school is projected to complete sometime in july the fall of 23. i want to give a huge shout out this

081has been an exciting process in many ways it's also been a learning process um and some opportunities for growth and character development as miss haas says but would like to publicly thank our mgsd exec team for adding their input giving guidance as well as david martin i think he's been on just about every zoom call and every meeting with me so thank david also some of our directors who have been directly involved in the calls and and the planning uh kim mccall and mooney cindy carricker and then also the staffs from each of our schools from a k-6 standpoint as well as our middle school a special shout out to miss robinson and her staff again i think ayan has been in just about every meeting with us as well so kudos and hats off

082to everybody for for their input and their feedback it's very much appreciative and the design teams are very appreciative of the input as well so just a public thank you to everyone for their assistance in the process as we continue down this journey any questions um just one i know that there are recommendations in terms of the orientation of baseball and softball fields and football fields sign into consideration was that done here yes yes obviously with the architects of the design uh you're david martin having background background in baseball and softball yes ma'am about the safety uh features for the new middle school i assume that those were placed in yeah we're still working on that process but as as in all of our campuses we'll have security cameras not only inside the building outside

083the building exterior lighting so that we can be sure that that we have walkways that are safe parking lots that are safe also badge access control so that we can control which doors and put them on a timer so that staff members can come in and out like we have at all of our campuses and in terms of the gymnasiums for all three campuses um well they will be set up in a way that if the public is using it the wreck department or whomever um access to the rest of the building will correct correct yes ma'am they'll be open so that we can open them to an outside source just for the weekend and they won't be able to access the rest of the building yes ma'am any other questions for dr royal just

084curious as far as just something out there way in the future but future expansion in case we needed more room does the middle school lend itself to that to expansion as far as adding on to selma burke middle school yes we do have if we came off the sixth grade wing uh would be that direction as well as kind of just just north of the athletic wing would be the the i guess the preferred location for expansion uh but we did look at that we also have looked at plans for the lot itself for a future elementary school if the need arises and so we do have some some forward thinking in that in that area as well very good other questions for dr oil a very ambitious project you've got your hands full for

085a while but thank you very much thank you okay dr mooney next item looking at some board policies for approval yes ms hass dr mooney mr hyatt members of the board tonight i bring to you for approval and second reading two board policies as we discuss each time the north carolina school boards association assists us in preparing our policies and reviewing them to make sure that we're meeting all the rules and regulations and laws that we should be meeting so tonight i bring to you these final two of the file series for approval members of the board these were presented last month and you've had a chance to review them and ask pertinent questions of mishas if necessary are there any questions remaining at this time then is there a motion to approve these two

086board policies uh as presented all in favor aye any opposed hearing none miss hass your policies have been approved thank you very much thank you very much if i can say whoop last policies and don't get too excited because we're going to move along to another interesting part of the agenda the next item on the agenda is approval of proposed 2021-20 budget ms has thank you mr hunt dr mooney members of the board first i would like to say thank you to each of you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come meet with myself and ms davis as we reviewed this with you as always our proposed budget is just that it's proposed and is subject to change at this time the general assembly is back in session however they've not begun

087their budget talks at this time so we don't have any preliminary information from them with which to do this proposed budget but the county as always and as they have in the past have asked that we present this to them by march the 10th so we are presenting it to you tonight for your approval and then once the state approves their budget once the county approves their funding then we will bring to you the adopted budget for approval by october 15th so at this time just briefly i will go over some of the key points that are in this budget again we had to make some assumptions as we did this and so we assumed potentially a three percent across the board raised four staff a two percent increase in retirement and a 200 a

088year increase in the health insurance that was across the board for all of the local current expense budget our streaming looked at also as we talked about earlier the dual immersion program being part of what we're doing uh with the 2122 school year so we did take that into consideration as we looked at this last year we adopted a memorandum of understanding with the county so therefore we do know what the county is looking at funding those for current expense increase and that is reflected in this budget at this time we really don't have a lot of other increases in our current expense budget again once the state plans their budget and we know how that impacts us we will look again at this budget to see what changes need to be made the other

089item that is in here for your approval is our capital outlay budget the appropriation from the county reflects the same amount we received this year at this time they've not determined what our appropriation will be for 21-22 this also includes the debt financing for the loan that we will accrue when we do the parkview and south project as well as other projects that mr martin and dr royal have reviewed that are necessary to maintain our facilities for the upcoming year the other item that's in here is our public safety funds the county has designated public safety funds for us next year we would request that those would be used for cameras at the high school classrooms as well as some lighting at mooresville intermediate and then the last pages are informational for the county so

090that they see where we are it's our fund balance history for the last 10 to 11 years both current expense and capital outlay and a five year history of our revenue by fund so at this time i'll be glad to answer any other questions that you may have about this members of the board you have any questions from his house just so the folks in the audience understand this is not the first time we've seen this document we've each had a chance to sit down with miss hass and look at this line by line and concept by concept it is a proposal it is early in the budget season as you've heard through the process of amendments this will be this plan of spending will be modified as the year unfolds and uh at this

091time uh ms hass do you need a approval proposal yes sir members of the board is there a motion to approve the proposed budget second all in favor i love the enthusiasm any opposed ms hass one more budget you have thank you very much for your work on our behalf and while we're talking about budgets we'll come back to this year and we talked about amendments uh we have some budget amendments to approve so would you share with with us the specifics of those thank you again mr hyde talking remaining members of the board as i said our budget is not written in stone we do change it based on what is happening and it does change during the year we get additional allocations from the state we get additional federal allocations as well as

092local funds so tonight i bring to you a series of budget amendments the first one and if i can do it all as a group as we usually do the first one is a budget amendment for the state public school fund increasing three million three hundred twenty six thousand eighty three dollars if you flip to the second page after that you'll see a lot of detail of showing that you know the increases some of them are abc transfers a lot of it is the cares funds that we received from the state that were for specific items whether it be our summer learning program our non-digital resources student computers community wi-fi those funds were part of that increase the second amendment you see is not a dollar increase but it does change within the purpose codes

093and as you adopt your budget by purpose then we are required to bring back to you when we make changes within that purpose code so while there were no increases in funds there were some shifts within the purpose codes and which then resulted also in some shifts within the different program report codes the pots of money that we have for local current expense the next one is federal programs uh it was an increase of ninety five thousand six dollars if you flip to the next page you'll see the increases were from our excuse me for the old term the vocad the cte program improvement our mckinney-vento grant was approved there was a slight decrease in the carryover for improving teacher quality a slight increase in our educational tech competitive grant carryover and then new funds

094from the state the ursa digital curriculum funds were approved as well as the canvas learning system but were approved the final amendment is for our fund 8 or other local fund an increase of 48 799 dollars from a variety of revenue sources one of which was our cte program received a five thousand dollar grant for their cube sat grant we also received some indirect costs and some donations which allowed us to buy a new box truck for school nutrition and i think a lot of the executing will second the notion that we certainly needed a new box truck after we utilized it this summer moving coolers around and so that was a much needed item if the board would so approve we wish approval on these amendments members of the board you've heard the presentation

095on budget amendments do you have any additional questions hearing none is there a motion to approve these amendments as presented second all in favor aye any opposed miss hass your budget amendments are approved thank you very much next item on my agenda dr mooney is a presentation of school reopening options you get to proceed or do you like a point of personal privilege or well those of us at a certain age from time to time need a point of personal privilege which means we need to go to the restroom and this might be a good opportunity to do that before we go forward i promise you will only be a few minutes we've got some pretty heavy stuff that we need to consider and i'm sure that's why a lot of you are with us

096this evening so uh please use the opportunity to go to the restrooms out in the hallway but be quick and come back so we can continue with the budget excuse me the the business of the evening so we'll stand adjourned for just a few minutes out of the tree of life i just picked me a plum you came along and everything started into humble still it's a real good bet the best is yet to come best is yet to come and babe won't that be fine [Music] you think you've seen the sun but you ain't seen it shine i'll wait till the warm-ups underway wait till our lips have met and wait till you see that sunshine day you ain't seen nothing yet [Music] the best is yet to come and babe won't it be

097fine best is yet to come come the day your mind come the day your mind [Music] i'm gonna teach you to fly [Music] we've only tasted the wine we're gonna drain the cup dry [Music] you think you've flown before but baby you ain't left the ground i'll wait till you're locked in my embrace wait till i draw you near i wait till you see that sunshine place ain't nothing like it here the best is yet to come and babe won't it be fine the best is yet to come come the day your [Music] mind and you're gonna be mine [Music] you make me feel so young you make me feel so spring and sprung and every time i see you grin i'm such a happy individual the moment that you speak i wanna go play

098hide and seek i wanna go and bounce the moon just like a toy balloon you and i are just like a couple of tots [Music] running across a meadow picking up lots of forget me nuts you make me feel so young you make me feel there are songs to be sung bells to be wrong and a wonderful fling to be flung and even when i'm old and gray i'm gonna feel the way i do today cause you make me feel so young you make me feel so young you make me feel so spring has sprung and every time i see you grin i'm such a happy if i may call you back to order please thank you very much for your consideration dr mooney the next item on the agenda is presentation of school reopening

099options yes mr hyatt members of the board as many of you are aware governor cooper's press conference last week along with the introduction of senate bill 37 have laid out some opportunities for school districts to evaluate their current their current learning plans and you know as you know um our board voted to move to our current plan through the end of the third quarter and during the the last uh portion or last several months while we've been in the the third quarter we've been consistently monitoring our data to determine what if any adjustments need to be made moving forward and with that in mind tonight our team is going to thoroughly review three options for the board to consider for our learning plan moving forward there are a couple of important factors to keep in

100mind while we review these options dr smith if you'd move to the [Music] 612 safety limitations first the first thing that we need to keep in mind as will be reflected in all of these options that we present is that we still must adhere to the safety limitations and guidelines that the state has put forward these were not relaxed by the state and are still in place uh specifically those are masking hygiene practices and social distancing while the six feet social distancing is not required in k through 5th grades it is still mandated in grades 6 through 12 whenever students are what they call stationary so that means when they are in their classrooms in the cafeteria standing in line etc that we must maintain the six foot social distancing at all times for our

101sixth to twelfth grade students so as a result of the social distancing requirement in grades six through twelve we will have to limit capacity in our sixth grade classrooms at our intermediate schools uh the seventh and eighth grade classrooms at our middle school and in our nine to nine through 12th grade classrooms at our high school on a daily basis so basically board what this means is that we cannot have a hundred percent of our sixth through twelfth grade students on campus five days a week and comply with the state requirements so that's one thing to remember also based upon these safety requirements if the board decides to bring our 6th to 12th grade students back on campus more than we currently are offering at this point we do not know how many days a

102week our students will be able to attend in person in building learning and the reason for that is that we will not have this information until we send out a request to our students and parents to select the learning plan that they wish to follow for the remainder of the school year meaning we will send out something to our parents that will say do you want to participate in the in person in building learning or do you want to remain fully virtual and based upon that information that will be a binding commitment from our families then we'll be able to see okay this is how many students in grades 6 through 12 who want to come back in person in building for the remainder of the school year and then once we have that information

103we will be able to determine how many cohorts we need to create for our sixth through twelfth grade students is that we have you know just whatever percent so i would anticipate that what we will have now this is you know purely we don't have the information yet but i would anticipate that we would be able to have our sixth group twelfth grade students either in person one to two days per week for in-person in-building learning but that once again that is not in stone it will depend upon how many students opt to come into the school building on a regular basis each week so that's another thing to remember that kind of sets up a chicken and egg proposition for us because families understand not throwing out the options until you know think but

104by the same token it's hard for us to make a decision concerning that when we don't know what the options could look like because just one day a week might not be something that i personally would be in favor of but more than that i would yes i understand that but um it's hard to it's hard to get that information because i know that a lot of our parents will also want to know what do the you know what do the options look like what is the in-person in building um teaching going to be and that kind of thing um and so i you know i would i think that there could be based on some of the data that we'll present i think there is a a a fair chance uh for at least

105for two days in person but once again i cannot guarantee we just do not have that information if you for a second like if if we're gonna shift you're gonna shift if you believe that you want your kid back into a classroom you'll take one day if you've had none i would assume that you'd be happy to have one day versus no days whatsoever so i i personally really do prefer i hope i don't know i hope we're able to figure out a way to get more than two but i do more than one but i do understand that it is definitely just a numbers based decision there's nothing else to it other than square footage and number of children but um something would be better than nothing right um on the next slide it

106says how can we address the safety concerns this is just important to remember that you know our class sizes at six through 12 once again social distancing will be maintained in our buildings for six through twelve while potting is not possible kind of like we've done at our intermediate schools in fourth and fifth grade uh for the third quarter while that is not possible at grades 7 through 12 because of the the multiple class changes that our students go go to and you're in you're in class on for your first period or first block with certain number of kids and then your second block is is a significantly different set of of students and so potting is not possible we can control the cohort sizes you know how many kids are are on campus each

107day and of course masking will be enforced for high-risk students um you know we will offer the remote option and that we will ask you know for a commitment like i said earlier from our families of in person in building or to remain on the remote model um and that will be a binding commitment for the remainder of the school year dr betty depending on the number of sixth grade students who choose to remain virtual then we could do potting at sixth grade could we not it would be possible yes okay yes that's a good point dr marsh for high risk staff you know additional personal protective equipment can be made available and sanitizing will be provided as best we can as best we can offer other other options may be considered upon written requests

108but ultimately what's going to determine that as far as our staff is concerned is how many students that we have who are in person in the building and to be able to maintain the services that we need to provide for uh for those students and then of course i mentioned this earlier about vaccinations for k-12 teachers and all-school staff you know we understand that and we have been advocating for this with our county with our county manager our county health department like i mentioned earlier the north carolina superintendents association with with governor cooper and this has been something that we have been advocating for at the state and local level and hopefully we'll see that possibility move forward soon for our for our staff and dr smith the last one and then what you see

109there the last point that i have before we get to the review of the options is this a terminology clarification uh what you'll hear throughout the presentations is something called face-to-face remote which means that students are receiving live synchronous instruction from their teacher or another staff member via the computer now this could be in the classroom or it could be in your home but as when the the information that the student is receiving and you'll understand that a little bit better as we get into the into the presentations it's where the teacher and you are receiving the information from the teacher via the computer the other option is face-to-face in building in-person learning and that means that the student is receiving the live instruction from their teacher while in person in the school building that's

110what face to face in building means so with that i'm going to ask dr smith and our and our members of our exec team and our curriculum coordinators to to review three options for you so with that dr smith proceed thank you dr mooney at this time i'm going to review option one which is cur our current situation this is where we are right now across the board in k3 we are in a aabb model where we have two days in the building we are socially distanced one virtual day with the whole class and then k3 since we have instructional assistants at k3 they are able to remote in with that teacher assistance when their kids are at home those other two days four or five two days in the building with the cohort not

111necessarily socially distant but we are potted um and they have one virtual day with their whole 6 12. 612 we have four days per week live virtual instruction over the computer and one optional day in the building per month on average and that's by invitation on on a win wednesday so looking at that k5 option overview again it's that two days um and three days a week synchronous uh instruction or face-to-face wednesdays would remain the way they are right now with having that face-to-face uh remote for all cohorts k-3 out of the three days a week um of the synchronous face-to-face remote with we would be with a teacher assistant and then four or five they're working on independent work and participating in synchronous check-ins social-emotional curriculum etc again this is what we're currently doing

112in k5 what's working in the option that we have right now in k5 what's working small cohort sizes this is enabling our teachers to build relationships with the kids and have a sense of community those smaller cohorts have really helped knock on wood it's also helped with discipline teachers are also able to provide engaging and targeting and targeted instruction for students and they're able to move through the content a little bit faster with the smaller groups our k3 instructional assistants have been amazing i mentioned this at the last board meeting but they're able since we've issued them a computer they're able to remote in with the kids they're able to spy world review they're working with samford harmony which is our social emotional curriculum for the the remote students so that's been a great blessing

113for them to be able to do that our 4-5 school support staff our counselors and others in the school they're providing the samford harmony which is our social emotional curriculum for our remote students students are able to socially distance k3 and then as dr mindy mentioned and we said earlier they we are able to pod in fourth and fifth grade to limited exposures and we have had issues where we've had to quarantine some some students and luckily with that model it's not the whole class it keeps those numbers down we do have our exceptional children students uh are attending two to four days a week um with a face-to-face small group or first focus on their iep goals and that really is dependent upon their iep and their remote learning contingency plan let's say that

114right dr albert all right good very good okay sixth grade um what's our current situation in this overview this is the four days of face-to-face remote instruction with all of our learners it's two hours a day that students are on the computer with their teacher they're attending math and reading each day for four days a week each class is an hour long with a 15-minute break in between and then students have two to three total hours of independent work out synchronously on their own we do have the uh optional win wednesday where we're inviting approximately 25 of our students in and in talking with dr pratt and ms evans we have anywhere from 70 to 95 of the kids that we invite actually come in on those those win wednesdays um when they're there they're

115receiving hands-on learning extra help with current lessons they're working on you know to catch up on asynchronous work or opportunities for social interaction there is no new instruction on wednesdays again most students are invited about one day a month and then some of our ec students again depending on their iep and rlpc attend more frequent students at home are working on those independent assignments in terms of academic achievement for sixth grade we are seeing that our teachers are doing amazing work they are doing engaging collaborative and internet interactive instruction we are limiting those out of class assignments so that most of the work is done in class when they're with the teacher and we can offer support we are having time to build those relationships with students and uh with high frequency classes meeting all

116you know four days a week um we're prioritizing instructional content as i said earlier um in my board report you know hitting those power standards um and and to make sure we're addressing the specific things that we need to because of that shorter instructional day targeted instruction for students who are invited on that win wednesday so we're looking at our remediation enrichment small group anything we can to help support kids for that extra stuff that they may need we did have our first and second nc check-ins these were our benchmark assessments and it was on par with previous year as dr mooney mentioned earlier it was slightly lower in math we did see that but otherwise it's it's close to on par as we were in years past from a social emotional standpoint the daily

117check-in opportunities with pre-recorded enhancements clubs tutoring in addition to seeing their teacher that's been great for the kids to be able to connect they're connecting with those teachers four days a week at minimum and then that optional wins wednesday our teens and tweens you know and throughout middle school and high school they crave social connection and they're receiving it even if it's virtual we have learned that students depend on these with their teachers and seeing students more frequently this fall versus last spring has really been a celebration that that inner ins much interaction as we can has been really important so we are trying to limit asynchronous day to no more uh than one has been beneficial to check in with students and again we've implemented the social emotional curriculum we're addressing diversity inclusion empathy

118critical thinking communication problem solving and peer relationships are all of the enhancements pre-recorded at both schools no for for remote for students well for all the grades but for sixth grade no it's a combination okay yeah all right and i'll turn it over to dr black for continuation of option one can we stop there before we move on to the next grade level just for a second sure um sorry i would like to ask just a little bit about attendance um with regard to k3 on their asynchronous days i'd like to know maybe a little bit about how often these kids are showing up on their asynchronous days when they're supposed to check in with their teacher assistants that's the first question i have uh it also goes along the lines of four or five

119a little bit about attendance with to that seo day how um how successful is it i mean are you that's not a mandatory thing it's highly suggested are those kids signing in or not i'm going to defer to one of our principals if they would like to i'll pick on you dr larussa yeah come on up here and really what i'm looking for really is is are those kids coming to your teacher since it's on the day they're not in the building are they taking the initiative to sign in and yeah mr doctor if you come to the mic so i'm sorry i don't have the statistics exactly in front of me but i certainly can give you a good understanding of what's happening on those asynchronous days first of all the attendance is surprisingly

120very good we do have teacher assistants who will quickly follow up with a student if they don't attend they'll call parents they'll check in the teacher also will do the same i will do the same as well if we have a student who's not attending the meets for some reason we'll reach out do you need a hot spot do you need a you know as a connectivity issue are you having to go to grandparents you know uh during the day so when those situations come up we try our best to troubleshoot them i also think because they're back in the building two days a week every week they're able to touch base with the kids quickly i don't know a day or two where they don't attend but i don't have the exact numbers okay

121is that true with the other schools as well we're getting thumbs up from the other principals yes and the sel meetings on four five level i think um to the intermediate schools are you seeing a high number of kiddos show up i know it's a 20 minute type of at least at mis it's a 20-minute type of situation so right i'll let mrs evans answer that question hi good evening um as you know eastmore's latter media school is kind of split we're running two schools simultaneously so our attendance for asynchronous work with fourth and fifth grade looks very different than that of sixth grade um as sixth grade is 100 virtual they have a little bit more accountability seeing their teacher live four days a week so they're they're honestly completing much more asynchronous work

122than our fourth and fifth grade students however if our fourth and fifth grade students are not completing their asynchronous work on the days they are learning from home we are holding them accountable when they return to that building the next two days but i'm talking about those check-ins those sel check-ins where you have to log on and meet with the counselor the specific sel check-in are you having those kids i mean i know one for example starts at nine o'clock in the morning it's 20 minutes are you seeing a large amount of the kids show up to that sel check-in or not i would i would honestly say maybe 70 attendance definitely not 100 um it's hard to tell some classrooms look better than others they are happening consistently every day um but i would

123definitely say maybe seventy percent attendance fourth and fifth grade miss pannell we are collecting that uh attendance data we can look it up and get back to you yeah i'm just my point is is there's a lot more asynchronous work on that day i get the point of an seo check-in but i'm just trying to find out if kids are showing up for that brief 20 minutes that they're just getting their social emotional and then they're going on to do their homework i'm just gotcha we'll have to determine that and get that information from uh from our counselors and and the staff at each one of those schools so please do that dr smith yeah and that that is one of the limitations of the the current program that plan we're on yeah i'd like

124to add one more thing about for the k3 specifically with the instructional sent assistance our attendance is very really good as well because we've been with the k3 communicating with parents how important that time is the instructional coaches and i work each week to develop slides for our instructional approximately 45 minutes thank you so from a review of our current situation in 712 again under option one in your slide presentation we are currently of course following a four day remote instruction plan again that is for all learners and that's roughly four hours per day the day begins at 8 30 and ends at 2 30 and there are roughly 5 or 10 minutes between virtual classes students will attend class each day of the four with a teacher and the class periods range from 30

125minutes to 60 minutes of course our elective classes at the middle school run 30 minutes while our core classes at the middle school in the high school run 60 minutes and then of course there's a total of from approximately four to eight hours of independent out of class work per week for the students on our when wednesday which is optional runs from 7 30 to 2 30 following our normal bell schedule students attend all of their classes when they are on campus they receive hands-on learning they receive extra help they receive time to work on asynchronous work that they may have gotten behind on and then there's also opportunity for social interactions the key for those days is that no new instruction is given to students it's a catch-up kind of day for students as

126well also most students are invited one day a month based on our cohorting and the fact that we can only get approximately 25 percent of our students in the building at one time but particular attention is paid to our exceptional children's our 504s our el students and those students are invited multiple times a month if not every wednesday again a lot of that is depending on their iep plans or their remote learning plans just a quick example of what option one looks like at the middle school level again you can tell the one thing that sets the middle school apart from the high school is that there are six classes that our students attend so for example they start at 8 30 on our monday tuesday thursday friday schedule and go from 8 30 to

1279 in an ensemble that would be an elective period of 30 minutes then you can see they move into core areas which lasts one hour as they move through the schedule again there's basically five minutes of virtual time between each class session i'm not going to go through each part of that you have a copy of it and then i want to make sure you see the win wednesday the difference there is that on win wednesdays they start at a normal time schedule at 7 30 so students do have to get up considerably early earlier than they do on monday tuesday thursday friday you can see they follow the same schedule it's a bit abbreviated and then of course there's three minutes built-in for class changes there again just to note that there are six

128classes at the middle school so just briefly what are some of the things that are working at the 712 level as it pertains to academic achievement again our teachers over the course of the last semester and into this semester have really started to perfect their lessons and so those lessons have become way more engaging and way more collaborative and way more interactive where teachers are learning to use new programs and new ways of doing breakout rooms and that kind of thing within their classrooms there's limited one of the benefits to it as well is that there's limited class assignments outside of the day because they are spending face-to-face time with every student four days a week there is time to build relationships again teachers have learned to perfect that to a degree over time when

129we first started the school year teachers were having to figure a lot of this out they have perfected it over time and they have started to build great relationships with students as much as possible in a virtual environment again we have the luxury of popping in the classrooms and mimicking a teacher so we can just pop in and we can hear what teachers are doing we can see the kids in the classrooms and again there's an amazing amount of relationship building going on from our teachers to our students during that time period we are also prioritizing instruction it has required our plcs to work very closely together in making sure that we're teaching the most critical information because we are in a condensed time frame and so that has really helped our teachers break down

130the information also as i mentioned earlier in my presentation then the mooresville high school fall eoc data was pretty much on par there were some declines in some areas again you couldn't really detect detect whether that was just a cohort difference or whether it wasn't again not saying that the virtual scenario is our perfect situation again our teachers did do an exceptional job in that regard and our first semester course failures were about nine to ten percent higher acting with those teachers there is an option for five days it's not perfect every student would have an option of about one day per month based on our cohorting situation uh secondary students do depend on strong relationships just like the elementary does so our teachers have tried to engage them academically and start to build relationships

131in a virtual setting as well also again i want to mention uh we have had a lot more face time this fall than we did last spring when we first started the covid situation again that was an even worse scenario and we did improve that dramatically and it shows and what we were sharing with our students and how our students were taking the information so it's limited asynchronous days one day a week on wednesday uh other than that students are face to face and then finally we did start rolling out our maui cell curriculum uh 712 and that does take place during our virtual classes again it's trying to reach out to kids from a social emotional level which we know at this time is having an impact on kids now does that happen every

132day or is that on when wednesdays right so no there's basically one curriculum topic covered a week and so they choose from the schools like for example the middle school chooses to have their core provide a program so like math will do it this week in their in their lessons social studies the next week science the next and so on the high school has dedicated time uh that it allows for those lessons to be shared from teachers so it's just a little bit different scenario but it is but not daily that is mandatory it is mandatory absolutely okay so it's daily but in a certain subject per week is that what you're saying it's daily it is not daily it's weekly but it is shared by core curriculum area like at the middle school this

133week will be math sharing it next week it would be science sharing etc and so again it is not the perfect situation to try to unroll uh unveil a uh sale program virtually but our teachers are doing a really good job of it and we're still perfect and it's getting better and better each week i'd like to ask a little bit about the win wednesday we had the opportunity to look at some of the numbers of people attending and of course they're decent but i wondered how many i've heard in a few instances from people in the community that their children don't go because sometimes they show up and their teachers are at home teaching and and there are many causes for that they might be high risk we might have granted an accommodation do

134you know approximately how many teachers we have not teaching from the middle school on a win wednesday right now right i am aware of the ones that applied for uh accommodations that we met those accommodations and that is roughly four or five at the high school and maybe five or six at the middle school that i'm aware of four at the middle school and the high school four so again the other situation may be is if a teacher for whatever reason had to take a day or something and maybe there's i do understand that or maybe it was quarantined or something like that i understand that but there are that number that are that they knew if they went their teacher wasn't going to be there anyway their teacher had been granted an accommodation for

135a medical purpose and was at home so they weren't going to get that one-on-one contact with that teacher that teacher was still remaining at their house i find the when wednesday data disappointing because looking at it from the fall to [Music] to now the we are inviting more kids but we have a much lower percentage of kids coming and you know several of the things that have been presented so far talking about the opportunity to the opportunity to but if if kids aren't taking advantage of that i think that's a problem yeah and two i think a couple of the part of the reasons are too i mean we start on when wednesday at 7 30 in the morning so students are having to get up at 5 30 6 o'clock go to the bus

136get to the that's normal normal life should be you know it was normal that was well we want to get back there they have to they can make a decision yeah they can make a decision to either get up early and come on when wednesday or they can make a decision not to because it's an optional day at the way it's currently set up and so again no doubt some of the students i mean look i'm disappointed that more parents haven't encouraged their children to take advantage of that opportunity i mean if i'm being honest with you i'm i'm upset because if you want your child to have interaction then take what we are offering we're trying to offer something to you it's nice but we are putting ourselves out there to give you an

137opportunity to engage um but a couple other things tracy i was gathering some numbers from our principals while you were chatting about this earlier so just to give you some context on this at the high school they have a specific opt-out list where students and families could say you know what don't waste my invite i'm not going to come as of this morning there were 985 of our 1900 students who were on that list that is more than 50 percent of the high school population that has already said we're not interested in coming on when wednesday on wednesday that is correct and that number has continued to grow since it was first implemented and the high school did require that families opt out again at the start of second quarter no third quarter pardon me

138so they had to fill it out again in january on average at the high school now remember they don't invite the students who have opted out so their average attendance of those they invite on the wednesday is on average 55 to 60 percent of those a week and so even of that group who hasn't opted out that the attendance is low the middle school doesn't have an opt-out list per se they have continued to steadily increase their number of in cohort a quarter at a time and their attendance on when wednesday averages about 40 percent of those who are invited and those numbers are calculated each of our principals have prepared those numbers um several when wednesdays basically since we started and so those numbers have stayed pretty consistent i will say there was a

139definite decline after winter break when we were in our um our high spike those were some of our lowest numbers as well so that's just to give you some concrete data i think it would be valuable to find what we are currently offering uh technically we do meet the um the recommendation by the state um and uh with the pending legislation senate bill 37 we would technically meet that so option one is a is a as an option on the table and so let's go move to option number two i'd like to ask tracy waite the secondary curriculum coordinator to kind of open up all right so before each of these new options you'll see a brief overview like you saw on the first option so at option two k3 stays the same as you

140just heard for option one will stay exactly the same four six will be aligned in a new model where students would see their teacher every day and 712 would also be in a new model that would allow students to see their teacher every day and would shift that virtual schedule we were just discussing that starts at 8 30 to everyone starting at 7 30 so the 7 30 point becomes a little less problematic for those teenagers who like their sleep so the reason excuse me ms wade the reason for that is because of transportation and things like that we have to we have to start the the day for our secondary students at 7 30. and for the audience it's always been the case the lunch schedule and transportation drive everything so we will go

141into more depth on all of these options here um we'll start first with k3 which actually we're not going to go in depth on because again it's the same as what we've been doing students see their teacher every day or their instructional assistant every day and social distancing is maintained so under option 2k3 would stay exactly the same so i was nominated by our group to explain and set the stage for the next set of options which are very untraditional good luck thank you so these next options are a new model that we have not tried before and they may require you to wrap your brain around them a little differently than how we've spoken before so when this first happened a lot of districts moved to what we are calling the simultaneous model and

142this is what we observed when we went to visit other middle schools and high schools when we first prepared to move to plan b in this simultaneous model the teacher teaches the face-to-face kids in the classroom and the remote students at the exact same time students log in from home they watch class go and the kids are in the building are getting their instruction in class what we saw when we visited these other schools was that teachers were teaching from their podium from their desk from a cart because they are having a lot of difficulty managing the kids who are at home and the kids are in their building it's very difficult to manage both of those populations at one time and that was happening for the entire period so if your family needs to

143have your students stay remote in this case your student would be online from 7 30 to 2 30 which is a significant increase in screen time than what we currently have for our students and we believe perhaps even less engaging than what we have right now because as a remote learner you don't have a lot of opportunity to engage with the instruction uh if you can observations in october end of september i believe it was that we went to visit uh schools in iredell statesville schools so not that long ago well but but they were new to that model and yet when we tested it we tested it in an intermediate school we did because we don't have uh 712 students in the building at the same numbers as they do at the end i

144would argue that that's not a valid reason for saying that we tested it and it didn't work because that's not the population that would be taking advantage of that i have a son and a daughter-in-law who teach this way and yeah it's not perf does work and it does provide us the opportunity to get secondary students in the building more without giving up the synchronous contact with the teacher i hear what you're saying there dr martian i would i would probably say that the the option that we have developed for this is is probably the best i think would be more effective than that current model and one of the reasons is for i mean it i mean right now one of the biggest concerns that we hear from our parents is that the amount

145of screen time that the kids are required to have is very difficult for them not just the the younger kids but for the older kids as well and that's you know roughly looking at if we were to to do fully would you call it simultaneous learning there would be instead of four hours a day our kids would really be six hours a day so it's a significant increase in the in the screen time but it's just two days a week no it would be five days a week well now you're you're in class two days a week for our students who would remain fully remote who would not have an option to come in the building which based on our numbers we anticipate to be a very large number the only option for them would

146be to do this five days a week because we do not have a uh an moa for 912 or even 712 where potentially we could make it work our middle school team looked at that and ultimately to the to the students there was too many but at the high school level in particular you're talking over 400 different classes and we just don't have the teaching staff to be able to offer every kid who would need to be a remote full live instruction so this way you're you talked about a significant increase in time on on the screen currently my high schooler is on the screen from 8 30 to 2 30. so the way the new schedule works um he's he's got a a pretty big portion of his time in the middle of the

147day that has shifted to get some tutoring and stuff so you're talking about an increase of one hour essentially if i mean so if if i were to walk through um a schedule of a typical high school student with four blocks a day if i'm getting my instruction fully remote and i'm following the in-bell schedule i would have four 90-minute blocks which is six hours of instruction that i would need to watch from start to finish currently of that sixth span that's right so why couldn't we follow a model like that in the building we're getting there i'm just trying to set the stage of what the two options that we considered were okay the the other concern that was brought up again by our teachers was um it is very difficult to manage that

148when you've been doing something else for so long to your point those other school districts have started that way and they've been doing that all year so that's what their students are used to at uh if i were to use a two day a week example i believe south iredell is on two days a week so i would go two days a week and i would have my live instruction in the building my six hours or 12 hours for over my two days but then those other three days i am potentially asynchronous some schools are doing it asynchronous whereas now as dr black mentioned our students are connecting with their teachers oculus or pre-calculus on their own they have a time built in with their teacher four days a week out of five and this

149would the the options that we are going to preview would now what we are proposing in place of simultaneous for an entire block is that we limit that simultaneous teaching to a portion of the period we would still have to simultaneously teach in a way 45 minutes potentially or if you're on a high school block a little bit less if you are at the middle school but what we would basically do is take that win wednesday that is in person that our students are not taking advantage of and we would sprinkle it and spread it out to all the days all the blocks and so this would involve part of my class i would be teaching as a teacher both my remote and my face-to-face kids at the same time in the classroom but after

150about half of the period my remote learners would now log off and i as a teacher would be fully able to focus on those students who are in front of me and be able to give them the face-to-face interaction the re-teaching the the re um remediation maybe i'm going to pull out some manipulatives and we're going to work on some math remediation we're going to do instruction style and so the the next options rely on that as the as the premise that the teacher is teaching all of the kids part of the day and some of the kids the rest of the day i'm sure there are more questions before i move on i said they're going to teach all of the kids for a portion of the block or the period and then the

151the kids who are in the building the second part of the the second half of the block or the period so the blocks the break between the blocks become longer correct correct you're talking about high school kids you lose them you're gone if i'm if i calculate it correctly you're talking about 45 minutes pro possibly in between blocks you're going to have a kid log on for a first block for 45 minutes and then log off i guess in a perfect world and do some homework these are high school children they go back to sleep they go somewhere to run an errand for their parents they never come back you're seeing if i'm understanding and maybe i've heard from teachers a little bit of a problem with the lag in the new schedule at the

152high school some kids not coming back to fourth block okay because of that lag at the end of the day you're going to create this multiple times throughout the whole entire day that's right um it's horribly uh i mean it's just there consistently don't let them go for 45 minutes they'll i mean they'll never come back it'd only take i mean it takes one good pretty spring day and they're gone after first block for the rest of the day they're never logging back on again so i don't understand how it bringing our children back into the building i don't understand how it would be easier to ask them to break up their day like that a high school environment is a lecture type environment i hope not well hold on a second though but you

153can you're gonna have to maintain six feet so your that teacher is not going to be traveling up around all the time because they're going to need to maintain maintain six feet from students so it doesn't necessarily look like the classroom that it looked like free pandemic oh i would agree yes it does not so to me it restricts you to that desk front area a little bit more anyway it absolutely will for the first portion of your lesson and that would maintain the same amount of instruction as what they're currently getting remote just for comparison i gave you our win wednesday attendance numbers our attendance numbers for our virtual classes even since the schedule change remain 90 to 95 our students log in and our students enjoy their face-to-face instruction time with their peers

154and their teachers so it's a significant difference in attendance that we see so they would enjoy law i mean in my opinion they'd enjoy logging yeah if if the attendance rate is that high then i don't understand the concern if it just doesn't make any sense that we would be that concerned about the screen time the concern that when we shared these plans with our t school they went to three different classrooms and the teachers there were teaching great lessons they were teacher was teaching math with manipulatives they were looking at different fraction cards hanging them on the window when we looked at the video the students who were logging in from home could not see what was on the screen or on the board and so it was very difficult for me even sitting

155in the back of the room or in the side of the room or the front of the room if i was only looking at my computer to follow the lesson it was also very difficult to hear but these are fifth grade children right that test is meaningless it it has no validity whatsoever in this discussion because it we're talking about complete a completely different age group and i really think that the problems that were we're talking about are ones that if teachers just think about it a little bit they'll be able to overcome i'll tell you i asked my son and daughter-in-law point blank i said give me the down and dirty with what your experience has been doing this model and they said yes the students who are streaming have trouble hearing other students

156in class if they ask a question and they said so we just repeat the question which is a sound instructional strategy anyway it can get a little challenging if they're if you're trying to carry on a um a discussion about something but it they can overcome those situations and i don't think they're running if i'm correct if i'm mistaken i'm not sure that or i haven't heard of any iron deal states well school's running this model at the fifth grade level it's more of a 9 12 grade so i can't imagine this even being a possibility for our fourth fifth and sixth grade students they're not there developmentally they ask too many questions the the day i mean they're still fun getting their fundamentals so it would be so hard for a teacher to navigate

157with that aged children anyway your 912 students are older and i hear i i hear what you're both of the concerns uh that you're that you're raising and and i would like to to try to you know to to present the options and then we can tag more questions but but i'll say this also is that i do believe from talking with our staff and from talking with other teachers in other districts and districts that what we would be able to do with with this option of half the class period being the virtual class with the kids at home and the kids in the classroom they would be with their earbuds and focusing on the computer for the first half of class just like they would be doing if they were at home and the

158teacher is working with through the computer no sound issues all that kind of stuff that we are missing a very valuable opportunity that we have for bringing the kids back into class i mean you know one reason might be for that i want to come back to class and i hear this from the emails that i've received from parents is the social part of school if kids although they will be socially distanced if they are focused on the computer screen and maintaining what the what they're doing on the computer and they don't necessarily then then i think that we're missing a big opportunity or if our teachers are not able to use the manipulatives to because they we can't really do that because we're teaching to the we're kind of we're tied to the screen

159as well because we want to provide a and our teachers going to do this they want to provide a quality education for the kids that they have on the screen and they want to provide a quality education for the ones that they have in front of them but splitting that is taking away a great opportunity i think that with this with this option option number two the amount of synchronous face-to-face time that our kids have with our teachers is going to increase from what it is right now the computer with their teacher four days a week secondary all right with this plan what they're going to have miss wade the numbers they would have 16 points a week with these 12 kids in my block and we can do the hands-on i can work a

160lot more effectively with those 12 kids and we've seen this at the elementary school with the reduced class numbers what they're able to cover and the the attention that they're able to give their kids in person is is much greater than what we've been able to see in the past and i think that that will hold true with our kids and i think it's you know if we're going to make the investment and ask our teachers to come in then i want to be sure that we give the teachers the best chance to be successful with the kids that they have in front of them and to get the biggest bang for our buck with the time that we have in person in building with our with our kids how do you handle an ap

161class ap class would be the exact same they're getting the same amount of instruction as they are currently our ap teachers have done a phenomenal job of again trying to pare down what are those must-know standards because many of our ap classes actually started for the first time in january some are year long especially our freshman ap but for our upperclassmen those ap classes just started in january and their exams begin the first week of may they are covering a year's worth of content and what we have told them is half the time as they normally have and by the way we're in a pandemic so good luck with that and our teachers have really risen to the situation and have done a phenomenal job of preparing our students many of our ap classes we

162were running these numbers today our ap teachers on average have 36 to 40 kids in their classes and they are making it work they have 40 little heads on there and so they are doing everything they can to meet those kids and they would still get that same amount of instruction if a family has to stay remote what they would probably do i'm going to speak perhaps on perception is they would use a facetime to do some additional modeling in math classrooms some additional hands-on simulations that might make the concepts come clear in our advanced placement history or science classes this might involve hands-on labs which we can't currently offer they might involve document analysis and dbq questions where students are really digging into that rich text where the teacher can be annotating on the

163document camera and yes coming over and not you know socially distancing but being able to look at their graphic organizer while they're writing and help them craft those pieces that are so critical and scoring well on our ap exams thank you you're welcome dr mooney that first 45 minutes when it sounds like that's when the core instruction takes place they're still going to be wedded to the computer they i'm tied to the computer i'm tied to it because i got not just the 12 kids in front of me or however many there are but i also have the 12 or 14 or 20 other kids that are that are virtual and i am teaching just like i have for for the for this entire school year for for those kids during that 45 minutes for

164half the time for half the time then at 45 minutes of the high school class i'm going to say all right all you kids at home thank you very much it was great to see you i hope that i'll see you all on whatever day you come into school and if for the kids that don't choose to come in person they're not losing anything either they are actually gaining time synchronous time with their with their teacher but then at 45 minutes the teacher says all right everybody at home have a great day i'll see you tomorrow they log off and now the teacher is not necessarily tethered to the computer but can work individually differentiate personalize where are you struggling in this what are you doing let me help you here if we want to

165if there's something particular that has happened in in the school or that we see that hey this is a a social emotional issue now i have face time which is going to be much more effective to to do those kinds of things with the kids that i have in front of me rather than through the computer and so i see this really as a a best of both scenarios or best of both situations to where we're increasing the amount of synchronous time um that we that we have with our kids remotely and we're also now taking a significant period of time depending on how many times the kids can come in the building and i'm able to maximize that time that i have in person and face with my kids when are the children who

166are streaming going to get the extra help the social emotional so they would have social emotional time as part of advisory which would still continue at the high school and as part of their core class at the middle school as dr black mentioned they rotate the maui curriculum through a different core curriculum each week not going to monitor the chat or you know if there's questions she he or she may be able to get to it or may not but once again the focus is going to be the kids that are in front of me for that for that period of that class they're probably going to be doing homework it sounds like it could very easily be study hall they're going to be doing homework you know the teacher can chat with them that

167they can check in and that kind of thing but um that well the the i think that would also be a waste of the opportunity and so the expectation is no that is not a study hall where the kid for the second half of class is going to is just going to sit there and and doodle or whatever or work on homework that is not the that's not the intention once again i mean they can do that but that's what the kids are doing their homework in during school you can't introduce any new and you can't introduce new materials so they might be doing a lab i mean and that's what i'm trying to ask you is they could just be doing a lab or i mean i don't understand i don't there are some

168more descriptions later on in the presentation about what the what each group of kids might be doing would you like me to advance to that now dr mooney let's just keep going with what you and we'll try to get through options well this is my last slide i'm supposed to turn it over to miss conley so to talk about fourth through sixth grade options now that i have appropriately set the stage miss calling how are you good evening so let me go ahead all right so thank you so much miss wade for setting the stage for us so just a little bit of what it would look like in more detail for four six so what this would look like is that we would be currently following the schedule is what four or five is

169currently doing in regards to it would be an a a virtual wednesday and then a bb that would be let me just say if we could manage the two cohorts at sixth grade which right now looking at our numbers that that looks to be the case so what that would mean is that our students would um just like dr mooney and miss wade have explained um they would come in they would have their core class they would our students at home would log on for the first 45 minutes of class and then the the kids at home would then log off and our teachers would be able to really this is kind of their station time if you will so they would be doing small group instruction they would be doing remediation enrichment of whatever

170the skills have been taught one thing we were able to speak with are intermediate administrators today and one of the things as well is what will be different from secondary versus for four or six would be that excuse me that they would be finished with remote instruction by 10 30. so our fourth fifth and sixth graders that would be at home will be finished at 10 by 10 30. so it's not really that break in classes they would sign on for 45 minutes for math and 45 minutes for ela so they would have 90 minutes of synchronous instruction with their teacher on their remote at home days back to that back back to back um i think the biggest break was maybe fifth grade had like 20 minutes in between okay so with that um

171miss conley real quick so we're gonna go back to asking parents to make sure their kids log on every single day unless they're in the building yes but one of the things i think would be different and and would be helpful is 90 minutes it's all finished by 10 30. our google meets would be recorded just like they are currently so if students did were not able to attend or log on they would be able to watch the recording but obviously it would be best if they could attend live so that they can interact and engage with the teacher one of the benefits of our asynchronous days right now is for parents that work those kids can get that work done at their own pace while their parents are at work so that would be

172a shift you would have to make sure if you work that your child was once again logging on twice a day for fourth and fifth grade fourth and fifth grade yes and for sixth grade when you're looking at the screen time currently there they are roughly about nine and a half hours for the week and this shift would be around seven and a half hours so it'd be less screen time and also allowing them two days in the building and the difference that the big difference in this plan for our current fourth and fifth grade teachers is that currently our fourth and fifth graders they come for two days they have a whole class virtual day where they're meeting with their entire class and then yes ms pannell they have the two days that are

173remote and asynchronous where they do not have to log on with their teacher they are logging on though for an um social emotional lesson for 20 minutes during the day but they're not there is not a required time to meet with their teacher so they're not having that ability to have the five days of instruction so i'm kind of going through the presentation a little bit and i might be getting a little bit ahead if you're asking them to log in twice a day the current legislation allows k5 or are proposed could come back five days into the building um well they can now well they can nail you why why couldn't why couldn't we do like a aaabb type of situation i think we could and i mean i think that you know we'll

174get into option three a little bit i'm just i'm looking i'm reading okay sorry so the different to your to your question um miss pinnell currently with our if we're looking at fourth quarter currently our fourth and fifth graders will be coming approximately 20 days each so cohort a would be coming around 20 days cohort b 20 days and then we'd have eight virtual days as is now if we stayed in the current plan for fourth and fifth so that would look very similar for sixth grade that it would be 20 days in the building and then the eighth wednesday or the eight virtual days um the difference of doing the as you mentioned the a a b b b or the rotating the three the two on the three off would be that they

175would have four more days in the building but they would lose the opportunity to be with their classmates on whole class on wednesdays and then also it would take away the one block of time that teachers do have a couple of hours to be able to plan for both the kids at home and the kids in class as well we would be taking that away so the question just becomes do we value face-to-face remote more than we do face-to-face in building a little bit it would be yeah i guess four days right okay the four extra days any other questions about this particular plan okay all right thank you miss connor so i'm back we've talked a little bit about uh all of this already but again um one priority for us as we were

176crafting these plans with our administrative counselor and teacher leader teams was that we felt very strongly given our previous history of lots of remote learners that maintaining a high quality robust program that still allowed remote learners who are not able to attend to have valuable instruction so this would allow this option while none of the options are perfect as we've already addressed it would allow five days of interaction for all learners whether they are at home or at school would be approximately three and a quarter hours per day for those remote days following the 7 30 to 2 30 schedule and again that first half of the period would be the same style lesson that our teachers have been offering for the past six months our inbuilding learners are accessing that google meet from the

177classroom and our remote learners are logging in from home and then logging off after their traditional 45 minutes or 40 minutes at the middle school to be able to allow the teacher to focus on those students sitting in the room in front of them so what some of the questions we had would be you know what would be the benefit to me coming in school what exactly would i be doing during that second part of of my class and that is where our teachers would work on providing the academic support that we would like to see more students take advantage of on wednesday that they are not currently taking advantage of to be able to provide additional ec or esl small group services which we don't currently have a lot of time for that built

178into our schedule we would continue those social emotional learning skills and social activities socialization particularly at the middle school is very important we need our students to learn how to be valuable contributing members of society and they learn to do that in our schools even socially distanced and we would of course remember to build those relationships and continue to provide physical options outdoor mass breaks supervised outdoor mass breaks and such students would choose if they choose the remote plan in building at all if they are attending in the building again the that day could be anywhere from one to three depending on how the cohorts are designed if it were an aaa bbbaa for example i might have three days in the in the building one week other weeks i might have two if we

179are unable to do two cohorts and have to do four cohorts it would likely look like one day a week in the building for most learners but that is still an improvement as you said miss pannell one day a week versus one day a month students who might attend all five days would be continuing our learning lab max resource ocs students and if the legislation sb 37 should pass then it would be those students would have an option to attend five days as well and as i mentioned what our goal here was to try and redistribute the win wednesday which we believe has some positive merits to it but to redistribute it among every day so for example if i were a high school student this is a freshman student schedule who would be if

180we were to have four cohorts in cohort d so on monday tuesday wednesday and friday the student would follow the face-to-face remote schedule they would start with band at 7 30 for 45 minutes and then he would have 45 minutes to work either on his band assignment or some other options that we'll present on the next slide then in this example again our high school and middle school teams have not finalized their schedules this is just an example for talking points they would go for the first half of advisory now instead of having advisory one day a week as our students currently have they would likely have to have advisory every day and so we would spread that advisory out maybe today monday is blue devil update day and maybe on tuesday is the first

181portion of our maui lesson and maybe on wednesday it is our counselors coming in to talk about registration etc then they would have another small break on that remote day before they would go to remote class from home and their schedule would continue like that till the end of the day you asked earlier where does my remote student get that one-on-one time that would come at 2 30 to 3 o'clock in the after-school tutoring when our face-to-face students would be on the bus home so our teachers would then log in to um to do that yes miss panel quick question what if looking at the schedule you were able to do this live portion at the end of the first block and then do a live portion at the beginning of the second block you

182don't lose the kids and then you have your lunch break and then you do it at the end of the third block in the beginning of the fourth block so it is entirely possible at least for the third block and fourth block that it may end up that way because we have to do multiple lunches to be able to feed our students and so i know the middle school has shared a sample schedule in which that time would vary based on the block as to when the face-to-face person is we discussed this also about potentially moving that to the second portion there was a few pieces of concern number one if i'm the teacher i'm supposed to be using that time to reteach portions of the lesson say i was teaching um sine cosine cosine

183cosine sine sine cosine cosine cosine that formula that they learn in in math actually they do in math one two and three if i have my lesson after my face-to-face time am i truly able to take advantage of that face-to-face time at the beginning of the class to re-teach the student who didn't quite get it the first time because i haven't taught the lesson yet so i don't necessarily know that that my child who's sitting there or my student who's sitting right there didn't learn the lesson we are also potentially wondering if that would and this may be okay students may say oh if i can start my day 45 minutes later sign me up for a remote and that may unintentionally cause some students to decide they don't want to opt in to the

184in-building learning because they get to start 45 minutes early much like we are seeing currently on when wednesday where students are saying i don't want to come in early i'd rather start my day at 8 30. and so not to say we couldn't do that and as i mentioned earlier our school teams will be tasked with developing those schedules that work best for their learners and and for their grade level type learners so that's not off the table and i would say what we have traditionally done in situations like this is you know once we get into the program or whatever plan that we are under we will constantly monitor how is it going what adjustments do we need to make hey this is not working how we thought would work and so we need

185to make this adjustment i'm very confident in our in our folks to be able to to do that and make the the tweaks to the schedule that we might need to make uh to better serve the kids i understand that that's a big piece that that 45 minute disappearing where you're supposed to be doing your homework when you're at home is a big piece of it for me and i will say the break is not as long for the middle school students because again we have six classes plus a imp time that we're trying to sure get in there so their time offline is a little bit less as well this also would allow our students who are fully remote time to drive to a building to pick up lunch because again if they are

186fully remote they would not necessarily have option for lunch in the building and we anticipate that many of our students who might need lunch need a long enough break to be able to drive to the school building to pick it up because as i understand it with transportation delivery in the neighborhoods may not be an option anymore if we are back five days a week is that correct dr minnie that is correct if this student were attending face-to-face they would follow the same schedule but they would have their enrichment slash win time after that 45 minutes of instruction if our students chose fully remote they would simply follow the schedule that was on the left on all days versus their assigned in-person day and i will add two particular things the high school has had

187great success with implementing an exam exemption policy tied to attendance and that may be one reason why our attendance is so high but i see no reason why that would change our attendance would still be taken every day whether they are logging in by me or whether they are logging in in person and so there is still an attendance piece that would be expected and required so if i choose not to log into my class i'm going to have to take my exam which is very motivating well actually that's rather demotivating that i have to take my exam for many high school learners as well so you asked about what would i be doing during that offline time and so again we have looked at a couple different options with our teacher leader admin and

188counselor teams to create some ideas around academic social physical and emotional so that no matter what i'm doing whether i'm at home or whether i'm at school i'm continuing to work on those areas so for example in that offline time i might be working on my assignments for this week or i might be working on missing work from last week i might be scheduling my virtual teach my virtual tea virtual tutoring with my gen ed teacher or if i qualify for ec services i might be checking in with my ec case manager receiving small small group instruction during that time our teachers have done a great job of providing remediation and enrichment activities and those students would have those as academic options as well from a social standpoint some of the things that we were

189advocating for our mindful monday initiative that was apparently now short-lived but things like checking in with our counselors you heard about how important our counselors are and the amount of one-to-ones that they are having and support they are providing this is a busy time for them as we prepare to transition for registration as well as prepare for graduation again checking in with friends or family virtually and following up on their maui lesson to practice their skills and lessons there is a small assignment that's associated with that each week and then of course it would give them time to unplug from screens for an hour which you know we heard the complaints earlier that it's a lot of time for our students to be online it is important for everyone to step away from their computer

190at some time and unplug go for a walk read a book write in a journal and so on if i'm in the building what might that time look like for me well my teacher might be providing like i said clarifications on the lesson that i just taught i didn't really get it can you tell me that again can you show me so an opportunity for those students who are not learning well in the virtual style to have a re-explanation to have an in-person demonstration to do some of those hands-on lesson extensions that we just cannot recreate completely in the virtual environment yes labs but learning how to use scientific equipment is a huge part of our science standards at this great doing enrichment going above and beyond for those students who are ready for it

191and trying a different instructional method for a student who might just not be getting it in the virtual environment it provides the teacher time to personalize that instruction to give the students who are there what they are able to do and again we would look at using this time for specially designed instruction for ec or esl students who might have additional pull-outs during this time obviously social activities as we've discussed would be very limited in terms of social distancing but our teachers had some great ideas and are already doing this on when wednesday taking mass breaks doing their shack time outside hopefully as the weather gets better there'll be more opportunities for that as well again continuing to follow up on their maui lessons and then we would also use this time to build in

192some of our time with counselors social workers or therapists right now if our students have to have that they are often missing core instruction because our counselors and physical therapists and therapists cannot meet with everyone during that same one and a half window so it would open up that window for them to meet with more students throughout the day it would also allow us to open up things like our media center and some of our other large space areas where our students could engage in other types of social and academic learning as well so option number two so all students would have the option to decide if they want to be remote or person in building yeah i mean we're not going to force any children to come to school is this completely optional so

193as i understand it in the legislation we are required to provide a remote option for those students who do not wish to come back in the building and so students and families would have to choose either i want to stay fully remote in which case i would not come in the building at all or i would like to come in the building and i'll take as many days of the week as you can give me knowing that i can't tell you right now whether that would be one two or three the idea is we want to hold on to secretary so this what this would be is it would be a commitment by the families that no i'm going to continue to do what we're doing now and staying fully virtual the difference is i'm

194going to be virtual five days a week i'm not having that win wednesday because we're going to you know we're going to five days of of instruction um so i i choose that i'm going virtual or i'm going to stay 100 virtual or i'm choosing that i'm going to take one two however many days we can offer for in-person instruction in-person in-building instruction so the the parent and the student would commit to in-person in building or virtual and so one thing no so it would not be optional for kids who selected and families who selected to be in person in building to say i don't think i'm coming today yeah they will be counted absent if they are not in the classroom on their assigned day they will be counted absent and the reason that

195we're that we're doing that is that we want to maximize an option number two we want to maximize the number of days that our kids can be in school and if we leave that as an optional then we might have parents say well you know i don't really know right now but maybe later on i want my kid to come in school you know to be in school in person and and so where we could be going two days a week because we had more people say they wanted to be in the building we could only go one day a week but 25 percent of the folks that said that they wanted to be in building are not coming so that that negatively impacts it so we're if you choose the in building in person

196option then your attendance is tied to being in building in person on your assigned day or days during the week i do believe option two makes it harder for four or five students um i believe the sorry i said i believe option two makes it harder for four or five students for fourth and fifth grade students um so the good news is is that option two stays the same for 712 and option three but there's different options for the other grade levels so we can do option 3.5 um i'm just as laid out now but yes all right let's look at option three and the precursor is to that option two and option three are the same for seven twelve okay so we're doing k5 k6 for option three sorry about that all right so

197for option three option three would be that k-5 would be in the building for five days a week so essentially that plan a they would not be socially distanced they would be in five days a week though for six for let me go back for 7 12 it's exactly the same plan that you just heard miss wade talk about an option two and i'm sorry for and for k5 it's plan a which is what we implemented on november 2nd yeah and so we do have some experience with plan a as well so sixth grade is going to be the the kind of the different factor here in plan three yes sir so i'm going to kind of freeze over k5 and secondary and spend a little bit more time on sixth grade but for k5

198it would be the plan that we have already done um we would be 100 five days in in person we would not be able to social distance we would possibly be able to do some potting in k3 just because of our lower class size number the other kind of downside i guess you could say for this particular option is that we wouldn't necessarily have the ability to provide that synchronous instruction for when we do go have kids on quarantine so currently with the plan now they would be able to sign on multiple days with their instructional assistant or their teacher on when wednesday or have opportunities for that synchronous instruction so the biggest difference would be for sixth grade so for sixth grade they would not follow the aaa virtual bb they would essentially have

199an opportunity depending on their cohort size to come in to two um two to three days a week so what that would look like is that they'd come to the building on for instance maybe an a a and then they would have that bbb day and that it would be rotating so there would be no virtual whole class day in this particular model so again this will be looking at approximately those 24 face-to-face that would be about what it would be if it would be two cohorts and what this model would look like is very similar to what we talked about an option two for sixth grade and that our sixth graders would log on for the first the students that are at home would log on for the first 45 minutes with their teacher

200receive that whole group mini lesson then they would sign off and then they would have the ability to have about a 15-minute break or so and then sign back on for a course subject so that just as the dr mooney had explained this would give an opportunity then for the teacher is i have all my students with me for the first 45 minutes for that core explicit instruction that i have um the smaller cohort the 12 to 14 students in the building with me to be able to do that small group instruction the remediation as miss wade explained in some of the observations that she was able to go to mis and see kids up and moving you know interacting with number lines having those manipulatives those would be the opportunities for our students to

201be able to do that during that 45 minutes of small group time miss conley why can't we bring the sixth grade under a four or five why can't we bring them uh back at an aabb potted socially distance i mean what this still would be um a two cohort model of and still would be potted so this is still socially distanced um but in terms of why we can't bring them back a hundred percent no no why can't they do an aaa a virtual on wednesday and then a bb that would be an option i i would say that the difference then in that case would be um wouldn't it be easier to have the 4 6 at the same model well in this particular plan k5 would be going back 100 oh okay so

202i'm getting ahead i'm getting ahead of myself yeah so i did the same thing because there's so many different plans between the cases i'll wait till we get to that option okay so the difference in in in this plan for the k-6 aspect is the last plan okay k3 was staying the same 4 6 was the aaa virtual bb seeing their teacher synchronously five days a week for four six this plan is k5 100 in the building no social distance sixth grade now entering the building still being able to see their teachers five days a week but teachers would be having to log on with their remote students as well as having their students in class if we can only put a maximum of 12 kids in a classroom and maintain social distancing then we

203can't do an aabb with sixth grade they have more than 24 kids in a class but you're assuming that we have something something that i've seen is you know i would anticipate a fair percentage of our parents selecting the full virtual option um which would especially at the sixth grade level which would make multiple days a week more likely to to happen did you to speak because it was 12 to 10. right the comment was that our sixth grade classes range from 22 students in a class to 27 students in the class but like you said you can assume you're going to have some wanted off then one other thing that you have to remember there is well it's easier at the sixth grade level to to cohort kids because they pretty much stay in

204their class at the seventh through twelfth level just because we say a through h is going to be cohort number one that does not necessarily mean that we're not going to have classes at the 7 12 level that aren't going to have for cohort one they might have 15 kids on on on that fall under a through h one day and may only have six kids that fall through i through z you know it's just not easy it's not as easy to to cohort the kids i would also say in in this plan for sixth grade one thing would be different is is we would be able to be socially distanced and still co cohorted as well but they wouldn't have to change classes that's what we've been doing at the 4-5 so the teachers

205are actually the ones that change the classes so you know different from the middle and high school where they have class changes and you know kiddos in the hall and things like that kids will be able to remain in their class which we've seen a lot of success with that with four or five yes okay is there a reason why each configuration has been grouped into the plans the way they have i mean is there could we not do um k5 actually k6 with the aabb assuming that sixth grade will have numbers that allow us to do that and then do something different with 7-12 say that one more time could we not do k 6. aabb which would be the same thing that k five is doing just bring sixth grade in and allow

206them to do that assuming that they're very similar to option two correct i would ask without the half streaming portion like i would assume that you would take they would get that on wednesday you'd have a you're a cohort no people coming in from home on monday tuesday you'd all be cohort would be there thursday friday why can't the sixth grade go that to that model so i will say the only thing that i that i can think of right now is for our as ms wade said about giving the remote option for sixth grade specifically if if we went that route there there wouldn't necessarily be a way to give that remote option for them because they're not having that five days a week of synchronous instruction and so that would be one of

207the reasons why one of the options would be a little bit more appealing to sixth grade because you wouldn't have to read to do at the k5 level based on kids that wanted to opt out for the fully remote option i understand that but i keep hearing computer computer computer i'm it's got a we have we're trying to get back to where we were and and it's not like we can't get back 100 but we've got to get off this you're saying face-to-face remote interaction is better i mean so mr hyde i know that um in the audience we've heard quite a bit of information that next slide on there you know what to do with with pre-k it would be pretty much to follow [Music] you know whichever option the board goes with there

208and then the the next slide is just a kind of a condensed version of the the three options um that you have there and mr hyde i believe now would be a good time to to move to the the public comment portion of the agenda and then we can come back for further discussion from the board related to the various options after we've had the opportunity to hear from the parents that want to speak very good sir we typically have a public comment at every board meeting the rules will be the same and i will defer to our learned council who will go through the rules of the road for the next section do notice the microphone is here please speak slowly i'm not sure about everybody else in the order which their names are

209written down here i'll call your name hopefully i'll get it mostly correct there's one that's a little hard for me to read if you don't if you've decided you don't want to speak you can let us know that also and then when you do get down the mic i would ask that you repeat your name so that if i said it incorrectly it'll be correctly for the record so that being said the first name on the list is laura irvin hi thank you members of the board for allowing parents to have this time to address you um today they're not getting educational help they're talking to their they're they're about games or video or you know music or they're not getting educational help because i asked my students hey what'd you do and my eighth

210grader will come back and be like we talked about call of duty all day how is that educational help it's not um you know we are currently spending hours and i'm talking mo i'm talking this past weekend i spent at least 10 hours with my seventh grader trying to complete work that he was missing because he had over 30 assignments not turned in they were spending their entire weekends hearing parents who are frustrated because they're not able to do the assignments and classes with their teacher and so we're getting onto them and then we sound like the bad guy because our our students just can't do the asynchronous work when they can't do it in class and that's really what i wanted to address is that our students are struggling my children are both you

211know displaying time okay thank you [Applause] next name on the list is sarah everhart thank you i just wanted to share my experience with the two week quarantine period my child is in second grade with the current model he his only option for interaction with the teacher was to attend the second half of the class with like the tuesday thursday is his normal day so he had to attend monday and tuesday and it was the same exact lesson as he got on the other days so it wasn't a value add for him we had to request work from the teacher for that two-week period it wasn't offered to us and the teacher has taught them to work from a checklist on their asynchronous days so this extra work did not have a checklist so he

212wasn't sure what to compete on which days so when he returned to school and some of the assignments weren't done the teacher's expectations were like well why wasn't this done we gave you the work but you didn't provide a clear road map for him for when to complete his assignments this two-week period it felt like okay see you in two weeks you gotta be home sorry that's the need to keep everyone safe but there was no support for getting him his work done because he didn't have that connection with his teacher we didn't know what work he was supposed to work on it was just a pile of papers it was really frustrating so if you move to option three for the k-5 group there really needs to be a plan for how you're going

213to support these students when they don't have that teacher interaction because it's very frustrating especially when my husband and i both work from home remotely all day it's very difficult to also make sure he's staying engaged in his schoolwork he's in second grade he can't maintain that on his own he needs someone to guide him through that and when we're trying to work we can't do both it's it's really challenging so just just keep that in mind as you're making your decisions that when kids are at home for this two-week period it's not ideal i get that but there needs to be some more support for them so thank you thank you next on the list is heather durkee good evening i've been here before already most of you know that i have three kids

214in the district a kindergartner who's doing fine a ninth grader who's also doing fine and a seventh grader that's failing my seventh grader constantly cries she can't keep up with any of her stuff we've gotten to the point where she's like the one lady said 30 things in a weekend that we're trying to do she's still behind she's failing four classes right now we can't get her caught up she gets to go one day a month she was quarantined because her father got covered she got covered then we had to quarantine for 17 days she couldn't keep up with anything during that time i understand we had to quarantine don't it's not its fault but i think we need to do better for our middle school students and high school students that are struggling they

215get nothing in person one day a month is nothing for them i really would like my child to go more she has a 504 plan almost everything on her plan virtually we went through another meeting last week nothing can be done virtually for her her teachers are exempting her from things that are asynchronous but even her in-school stuff that she's supposed to be doing in class she can't focus she stares at the screen for all i know i'm at work my husband's at work we need more for those kids it is not fair to them when the other side of town gets in-person instruction what's gonna happen my ninth grader's transcript shows her seventh grade grades my kid has all f's what's going to happen to her i just really hope that while you're going

216through all of this you think of these older kids that don't thrive on virtual they need more help thank you [Applause] next speaker is lisa neckemeier good evening dr moni mr hyatt and members of the board my name is lisa neckemeyer and i come before you this evening to respectfully request that you return our elementary age students to their classrooms five days a week for the remainder of the school year our neighbors have proven it can be done our leaders have requested that it be done and the cdc has acknowledged it needs to be done for the mental social and emotional well-being of our kids my nine-year-old begged me to come before you tonight he wanted to come he told him he couldn't good thing he didn't because he's late but he wanted his voice

217to be heard and his plea is as follows dear bored me and my brother were wondering if we could go back to school for five days a week here are a few reasons why one school is a lot more fun in person two we get to see our classmates three it's easier to learn four you don't stare at a screen all day five there is a lot less distractions thank you for reading my letter for any questions please visit class dojo mrs elliott's class may you please use my idea from two desperate kids brian third grade and lucas kindergarten you see those are his words not mine they were words written by a third grader who claims that quote unquote hates school but he's now begging to go to school a kid who despises writing

218took it upon himself to find a paper and a pencil and write a letter on his own what am i supposed to tell him what do i tell him when he hears our governor say k-5 belongs in person five days a week what do i tell him when he hears that our neighbors are going in person five days a week and what do i tell him when he sees crowds of masculist people gathered on tv for a sporting event but he's upset because with the mask it defies logic so please i stand before you tonight begging that you return our elementary students our littlest learners back to five-day in-person learning as quickly as possible thank you for your time and consideration [Applause] all right our next speaker is ashley bhagavad ma'am i'm sorry i probably

219did say your name wrong so you can correct me when you get there it's ashley bogard um thank you school board members again my name is ashley bulgard i have three children two are in the district and one will be in kindergarten next year i'm just glad that i did not send him this year being the foundation of his academic career mainly e-learning i would like to thank and applaud the staff and teachers are navigating this new territory of virtual learning they are trying to make remote work but it's not working this isn't working the kids are failing their home in isolation i don't know if we're providing everyone a watch an alexa to tell the time they're in they're out there in this meeting it's 20 minutes at 45 minutes these little kids don't

220know how to navigate and and handle all that time especially when it's several throughout the day it's been 331 days since it was announced our kids will not go back after spring break i hope we're not standing here in another year asking what's the plan will we go back my seventh grader has stepped in a building three times in a year almost three times she's in the aig program she just got her math scores she said she had a 73 it was the end of quarter it said 73 she gets great grades she said mom i was well above everyone else the average score was 45 as evident in all those scores that you put up there they're not just numbers we see their faces every day we see their lights dimming they're not just

221numbers to us we ask you to send them back to school we know it can be done it's been shown that it's done she's also one of the ones in the junior excel program she's in the iig program and a lot of the kids in that class are failing like i said as an evident in all the numbers you guys put up um this has damaged our kids emotionally physically socially academically we know that when they get behind it's hard to get back on track eighty percent kid of kids nationwide are failing and we see why you want to know why people don't want to show up on those wednesdays i think the attitude is what's the point why do i want to go her first day she went back the next day wasn't for

222six weeks there's some holidays in between the stuff they feel like it doesn't matter if i go for that one day they want to go hold it i did not realize until this year how much kids want to be in school i would have maybe thought they would love to be in home in their pajamas kicking back they want to be in school they don't want to be a square on a screen it's hard for my fourth grader i've seen her try to ask a question if you're not if you're missed in that sea of of squares you're not getting that sometimes they don't want to put their hand up they're embarrassed they're missed over like i said they are navigating when to get on when to get off another 20 minutes i don't know

223anyone else's household but we have alexa going off every 10 minutes it has been shown that it can be done please send our kids back to school [Applause] next speaker is jennifer franco hello my name is jennifer franco my husband and i have been residents of mooresville for over 15 years when deciding where to live way before we had children we were both adamant about being within the mgsd district um because of the incredible things we had heard about it to this day when my husband and i talk about moving because we're busting at the seams with six kids or six people in a three-bedroom house we're in agreement that we want to stay in mgsd i currently have two children in the moorsville public schools and two more starting this coming august my daughter

224is in sixth grade at emis and my son is in second grade at parkview i have been extremely happy and thankful for my children's education education at mooresville graded my daughter was a great student always a or a be honorable she was outgoing loved by her friends and teachers and it's always had a kind heart my once honorable state student failed second quarter this year and the worst part was she didn't care my daughter who was a happy person and a top student could care less what's going on around her she has become numb to the outside world she is desperate for human connection again with her friends and teachers she needs a normal routine and a reason to get out of her room and out of her bed every day at this age school

225does this for many kids and i know it would do it for her as well going to school one day a month is more of a slap in the face for these children who so desperately just want to go be with their peers in back in school unfortunately my incredible son has not had it that easy he has struggled and schooled academically since day one he has a speech delay since two and was diagnosed with autism in april 22 or 2020 right after the pandemic hit he has been on an iep which has not been hasn't been getting anything he struggles a lot at home with behavior but whenever i have ever sat down and spoke to his teachers they always say the same thing he's a great listener he is helpful to and kind

226to his peers he wants to do extra work and he's just a wonderful student virtu virtual learning is nearly impossible him and i have never cried so much together i've never gotten to see this incredible kid time all right thank you [Applause] next speaker is janet mccann hi my name is janet mccann and i'm i'm a another parent of a morrisville grade 2 students we've lived in this district for 10 years love this area but my one older one my seventh grader trevor is another student that was an a b honor roll student cried at rocky river when he made his first bee and he is just not doing good he is failing i've tried everything i've taken xbox i've taken phone [Music] everything and it's nothing is working and he goes to those win

227wednesdays he's like mom i love them i want more of them his friends don't even attend them so he's just he's isolated in his room my relationship with him is just is also been affected since he's been isolated in his room like i i just i i keep pushing him like i want him to pass seventh grade but it's just a constant struggle and then i have my other child is mckenzie is a first grader at rocky river and she loves going to school she loves that there were there's two days but when we went for two weeks for five days she was crying she's like mommy why can't i go five days and she was just recently diagnosed with adhd and cannot sit behind a computer like i'm having her teachers suggesting sit next

228to her and have her do this instruction and i work my husband is works we cannot just physically sit next to her and make her do this work when she just cannot do it and she's even getting off of her instruction as found how to go on to youtube i've been talk to tech and they've even helped try to help me to keep her there's a way you can keep them on there without going on to the youtube but it's just she's becoming addicted to this ipad we're having to hide it and that's not something that i want my six-year-old to be addicted to an ipad i want her to go back to rocky river and be able to go to school with her friends she's missing out on her childhood just being stuck at

229home isolated i mean even being in her backyard we're jumping on a trampoline and she's talking to kids through a fence i mean that's not what any of us want as a parent to see our children be isolated for so long thank you [Applause] next speaker is chad greene chad green all right mr hyatt that concludes the list of speakers thank you and thank you all for coming forward and speaking we do appreciate it and now members of the board it's our turn and we'll start at this end of the table with miss pinnell thank you very much um there's a lot to think about um i hear a lot of people asking all the time what other places can do things why aren't we doing what other places are doing and it's very simple

230in my in my mind it's a it's a numbers and a square footage issue we have a lot of kids and not so much room we have shown success in the model that we're in our teachers have done an amazing job this year i appreciate their flexibility the parents flexibility everybody's flexibility the k5 group of students have had to change a lot the benefit of staying in the model we're in is is we don't have to fear any interruption they have shown great growth i do currently worry about the options we have at the at the 4 6 level i believe that the long logging on and off model won't work as one of the speakers said kids have a lot of trouble navigating time it's clear in the options you presented us you believe

231that those kids need some more instructional time if that's the case i would like for us to look at an opportunity of an aabb model assuming that the sixth grade could have that type of model depending on their numbers i don't believe that we're ready for an a yet not with the quarantine rules in place and not without the opportunity for our teachers to be vaccinated but i do feel like we could we should we should seek out um for our k5 our k-6 children more time in the building face-to-face not a face-to-face remote option with regard to the 712 i'm torn a little bit because we cannot guarantee the number of days that this would all happen um i would like to propose if we could take the opportunity and time i'm assuming that

232none of these changes would take place immediately i'm assuming we would look at trying to implement them sometime after spring break with regard to the 712 model i wonder if we could take the time to ask for a commitment from our parents maybe have a called meeting to revisit that once we get the results uh just seems like it's a lot of work for one day if that's all we end up getting that's where my thoughts are right now and i would like to revisit my thoughts after i hear the change or some of the change to to go from what we're doing yeah it's in 7-12 just one day is a lot of work it seems like it would be a lot of work um i understand that our kids need to be in

233the building and i don't like the thought of our seven through 12 children not enter the building consistently for the remainder of the year however i'm not a fan of that with all due respect i'm just not a fan of the of the half and half i don't i don't like it and so um i don't know maybe if we could survey our parents and then revisit the 712 model at a call a special call meeting uh soon within a week or two but i would like to revisit it after i hear my other board members uh speak again she said he said what did you suggest that the lower level i'm here what i heard was an aaa bb aabpb so five days a week maintaining social justice and maintaining social distancing kind of

234like we're doing right now but adding an additional day taking out the virtual day and adding that as an in-person day for our kids yes sir and i do understand that that's going to create an issue with our teachers i do understand that that's asking a lot of them and that is asking and we've asked a lot of them already i struggle with their loss of planning time i'm sure dr marshall i do worry about that but if we believe those kids to need more instructional time and we cannot do 100 at five days i would like for us to try to look at an aabb model that's my thoughts for this very moment did that answer your question mr whitfield yeah i just i couldn't hear you sorry because the reverb is hard mr

235bridget um first and foremost i would like to thank everybody for their participation in options being presented there's a lot of hurt and a lot of pain uh from families and what they're experiencing with their children and we certainly hear you um ideally would love to be able to get more students back in school as much as possible that being said we still have the parameters in which we have to operate and can we safely do that for a lot of people their thought is hey i want my kids back in school the state said we can have it there five days a week but it is under certain conditions certain ways that we have to accommodate that for [Music] me personally i'm conflicted uh because of my personal concerns for human beings there are

236a lot of people who don't believe that the covet threat is as significant as it is for other people um i talk to somebody they got a cold they get a fever i got a cousin they get death every meeting that we have i can count not just one person who's passed as a result of kovit my family personally has been impacted by a number of deaths each meeting i've got a tabulation of body counts so i'm conflicted about saying hey we're just going to get everybody back in school we still have to figure out how can we do that as safely as possible so that we're protecting all people whether they're educators whether they're their children whether the extended families that the children go back to but i do agree i would love to

237see our students in school as much as we possibly can and that's ultimately where we're iphone still processing but [Music] just wanted to share my thoughts mr whitfield thank you um i i too would like to uh thank the parents for uh speaking up um speaking out for advocating for the children which you know i certainly expect that i'd like to thank the admin team and the teachers for working so hard and trying to prepare options uh that would benefit our children in this community and their creative plans i'd also like to applaud the students for their um fortitude their dedication through this pandemic i know it's been extremely difficult as being a parent of two now college age students it's uh it's extremely difficult and uh i i pray for them and i think

238about them and i hope that things will get better as my other colleagues indicated we all want um our children to be in the classroom uh that's that's paramount we know that it has a lot of benefits not only academically but socially and emotionally i too am concerned though with the plans as laid out option option one option two and three maybe some sort of hybrid i i just i feel a little bit hot tied because we don't know the numbers um if whatever we can do that will maximize the students in the classroom um and can be done in a safe manner is um what i would advocate for i don't know that i necessarily at this point in time see the answer on any one of option two or three specifically but there

239may be some hybrid form of that of those two options that might work best for the the grade levels but again i think it's necessary to know how many students are going to opt out so that we know what those those real numbers are so that we can decide if we're going to do as carrie said at the um i guess the k5 level or k6 level we're going to do triple a double b uh type scenario and at the seventh or twelfth grade level we have bigger issues because we have bigger class sizes and bigger kids and less space but um i know we can try to work something out that would allow them hopefully to get into in the classroom more than um certainly they are now but uh more than one day

240a week given the the numbers that i would assume that we're projecting so i'm sounding like a politician and i don't mean to be but i i feel a little bit limited not knowing what those numbers are going to be as to who's going to not be in class i think once we have that i think we can make a more informed and educated decision as to which option would be best but uh and then that may be in my mind a hybrid of option uh two and three yeah so i think i think one thing i understand what you're what you're saying and the the concerns and you said hog tied um you know with not knowing what the numbers are i miss manel and mr whitfield um and you know and we can

241definitely do a survey which we have ready to um to go out uh we may need to tweak that a little bit but you know understanding too that we're at that point we're putting our our parents in a in a tough situation too that you're asking me to commit to something and you can't tell me what you're committing to yeah what i'm committing to i understand and uh and so you know and then holding holding our parents accountable to that um will be you know just it's a it's another challenge that we'll have to face uh and so that's kind of the you know the the pickle that we're that we find ourselves in with not knowing the numbers but it's hard to ask parents what they want when we don't know what that's going

242to look like exactly right dr marsh oh boy i think it's clear we all want kids back in school and this pandemic has if it's done nothing else i think it's reinforced the importance of school and the professionals that we have who staff them we have learned a whole lot about this virus the recommendations have changed over time and i think we have to um remember that the devil is always in the details people have been citing these studies that have been done that's just a handful they are [Music] very small they are a small group with no control group and the the recommendations that have come out of those and this is the where the details come in the schools that are able to bring kids back successfully they aren't doing it a hundred

243percent without social distancing not in these studies that were cited they are uh they are social distancing they are masking they are hand washing they have adequate ventilation which means that they are bringing fresh air in and not just recirculating air and um you know those are the things that enable them to bring kids back to school i am disheartened when i look on social media and i see staff and parents and families advocating one way or the other but their behavior is not consistent with what they advocate for um who are you know taking vacations going to dance competitions going to sporting events and posting pictures where they're not masking and then asking us to you know make decisions that are difficulties and that the um occurrence of the of the spread of the

244virus is not caused by contact within the school then it's coming from the community and the onus then is on all of us in the community to do what we can let our kids come back to school safely i feel strongly at the k-3 configuration that just needs to stay the same they have already changed plans three times with the exception of south that has had to change five times i have spoken with each of the principals and they have all said that the consensuses things are working people are set in their in their routines families and children know what to expect and they are now because of that stability seeing growth in academic achievement [Music] i'm torn with the other grades i would prefer to let fourth and fifth remain the same sixth grade

245is that outlier because of our configurations i think all of our kids should have the opportunity to come into the building so it's how do we bring maximize that for six through 12. um and again it kind of you know just as has already been said you know we don't know what kind of opportunity we'll be able to provide them the option for those students where they have the 45 minutes on and 45 minutes off but i have some of the same concerns that ms pennell shared in terms of a fear that we will lose kids with that large chunk of time but you know we we took a risk with k5 trying to go back a hundred percent it didn't work but we tried and we've learned some lessons from that and i would

246be okay with us trying that gets more of our older children in the building because i cannot fathom the thought that kids would go a whole school year and never set foot in the building and i don't think the win-win [Music] to me that's worthless it doesn't count i know technically you know we may be able to get by with that but i just i don't like that so yeah that's that's kind of where i stand okay thank you and the chair always speaks last and really i have very little to say because my colleagues have said it all you've heard me say before i'm an old school kind of guy i believe every kid needs to be in school with a good teacher with all the tools doing the best they can in a

247perfect world that might work but ladies and gentlemen this is far from being a perfect world and we at this dais have to follow the guidelines that we didn't create but we've got to make work the linchpin is health and safety we'd love to bring them all back but we're not we're not able to and that's something that we didn't make up these rules have been cascaded down from the state to us and we have to we have to figure out how to do the best we can with what we have um i too think k-3 as much as possible would love to keep them in school um i agree with dr marsh we've had to make some changes we tried some things didn't work uh we had to make some changes i'm a believer

248in routines doing the same thing over and over we get comfortable in that process some of our options allow that uh i would get lost with an aaa bbb pretty soon i figured out where where's monday and wednesday uh and maybe that's just my limitation but to me that's a bit confusing that's not to say we couldn't work it out but for another school we must figure it out as my colleagues have said i want to get as many kids back in the building with our teachers as we can and i think that's what our teachers want and i know that's what parents want we've just got to figure out how to make it work please i think i might have been turned off um to your point debbie and roger a little bit the

249k-3 kids um they're younger they don't adjust to change as well so i agree they could stay the same in the same model they're in but those four six children i do think they should be afforded an opportunity of an extra day roger to your point about getting confused i know that we get good messages every single sunday that says hey your days are monday tuesday wednesday thursday so there is a way around there there are is good communication that comes that helps us remember what day we're supposed to be there when we do have a shift in the week i again say that in option two you were looking for more instructional time for that specific group of children and i argue or i respectfully submit to you that face-to-face instructional time in the

250building is better than face-to-face remote time and i know it's not much i know it may only be four versus eight days but i think we we need to try to make that face-to-face time in the building happen for those four or six children okay dr mooney you've heard us it's back to you yes sir well thank you very much board members for for that and and i think that we can um take all that into uh consideration and come up with a a workable model you know first and foremost i want everyone to know that i recognize that this has been a very difficult time for all involved and that for many the lack of normal school has created many hardships for our students and their families and for our staff and their families

251i mean there's there's no denying that unfortunately um you know regardless of the option that we choose um we are not going to be able to fully meet the needs of of every family and every child i mean it's just it's just not possible for us to do uh however that does not mean that we do not need to do the best that we can and try to come up with a plan uh that best meets the needs uh there are numerous items that i've carefully considered when deciding you know what my recommendation to the board would be and for how we should proceed uh for the final quarter of the the school year and and here are here are the some some of the things that i've that i've really put a lot of

252consideration into first like everyone has said our students need to be in school and are suffering as a result of being in a virtual setting this is in no way a criticize a criticism of our teachers or our staff and the work that they're doing actually i see it as quite the opposite the reduction of in-person in-building interaction with our staff has resulted in a void in many for many of our students and this is most true for for those students who who currently have no time available for in person in building learning and so i think it's just a testament to what our teachers do during the normal course of the the school year uh that has shown that when we do not have that same amount of time that there is a avoid

253a vacuum there that our that our students and our families have second for the safety of our students and staff the safety of our students and staff is vitally important and i know that many of the recent studies this kind of goes along with what dr marsh was saying release say that schools are safe and that our students do not contract spread or suffer severely from covid because they're young you know while i understand this claim i know that our schools are full of adults who are at risk for more severe effects from covet and that almost every student goes home to someone who's considered to be more vulnerable and at risk for severe effects of covet and so this creates for us a very difficult task of balancing those risks versus what the needs

254of our of our kids and our families are the fact that the majority of our staff have not had the opportunity to receive the vaccine is particularly is particularly concerning third many of the studies referenced by the governor and the general assembly reinforced the importance of the safety mitigation measures of masking socially distancing and good hygiene and we have experienced first hand in our district the impact of not being able to adequately socially distance when we moved to plan a with our kindergarten through fifth grade students in late september and early november at that time when we moved to plan a that percent positive test rate in iredell county was 5.3 percent currently our percent positive test rate in iredell county is 13.4 percent now it has come down significantly over the last couple weeks

255we were above 20 percent positive test rate several weeks ago and that we are on a good trajectory there for a decline but we are still close to three times as high in our percent positive test rate currently than we were when we went to plan a in in late september within one month from november the second to november the 30th within one month of moving to plan a we had quarantined 508 pre-k through fifth classrooms and we had closed south elementary school because of exposures and the impact of coven in the two months from december the first to january the 29th since we reverted back to plan b for pre-k through fifth grade we have quarantined 526 pre-k through fifth grade students while that is a little bit higher than the number i mentioned

256earlier it's over a two two-month period rather than a one-month period we have quarantined two classrooms in that two-month period compared to ten classrooms when we were in plan a and we have closed no schools in addition we have seen a 50 reduction in the average quarantines per day under plan b than we saw under plan a under plan a during that that month period we were quarantining an average of 18 students or 18 folks a day compared to december the 1st through january the 29th we were quarantining 9 individuals a day in pre-k through 5th grade that is a significant reduction i do believe that if we were to turn to plan a for our k through fifth grade based upon our current data and our historical experience i do believe that there's a

257very strong likelihood that we will have to adjust our plan yet again at some point during the fourth quarter to move back to a plan b or a virtual plan i do not believe that that change in the plan yet again is what's best for our students or our staff and for these reasons my recommendation is that we do move to option number two and i am i'm very interested to hear what a what some slight additions to option number two might be but especially for our k3 students to be to remain on their current schedule and for because we can maintain the social distancing which uh k-5 students because we could maintain the social distancing and i do believe that in order to make the change especially at the sixth through twelfth grade level

258uh that the start date for that should be monday march the 15th which is the monday excuse me after after spring break the odds of march was that the odds of march and that's them beware something yeah and so i mean there are a lot of logistical things that must take place the the outstanding status of senate bill 37 uh could have an impact on this with bringing our ec and 504 students that would have the ability or the the chance to be in school for five days a week um that has a that could have an impact on on what we do and so uh mr hyatt that is my recommendation to the board and you know we can discuss what um 4-6 might look like you know if we did want to go

259to a aaa a three-day or a you know take out the win wednesday which we will do at the seventh through twelfth grade level with this plan when wednesday will be no longer and we'll we will maximize the number of kids in in our in our schools those days we could look at doing something similar with our uh fourth through fifth grade um and moving to something like you were talking about miss panel with a uh you know taking out the virtual day i mean that would be an option that we could look at feelings on the board i with with a change with regard to the 4-6 level i could i could support it i just i just don't want to have those four or six students in and out off of that computer

260in my mind it works one of two ways we we add an aabb or we just stay like we are a a virtual bb and no plan does that coming in for 45 minutes going out thing ever work for me um i don't i don't support that at all so even at the 7th through 12th grade level i really would like to table that i still feel like we should do a survey i still feel like we should ask ask the parents i just i it's a whole lot of bang for your buck i mean if we're only going to get one day in then we are seeing something so you're saying what are you saying that if we were only going to get one day in for seven through 12 a week that we

261need to stay the way we are i do think so okay um to counter that i would say that that even at one day a week what what i heard many of the parents say was you know my child has been in in school three times or or four times the entire year so far and even if it is one day a week that's still going to be over the course of the nine weeks now given that the last week of school there's going to be testing that schedule's going to be is going to be crazy you know it might only be eight days if it's worst case scenario and it's only one day a week but that's still based on what they've seen so far that would still be almost three times as many

262days in a quarter that they've had so far for the year and um and then you know once again i would say that i really feel that the model of and i hear what you're saying about the the down time between between classes um with with my eighth grader and my 10th grader i think that will work very well for them my 8th grader is is on top of things my 10th grader is not so much on top of things as far as as far as schoolwork goes and buddy if you're watching this i love you but at the same time you know having that having a more than a ten minute break between would give him an opportunity to to to refocus and whether it's adhd or whatever and so i i see that

263but i would also commit to the board that like we have done previously with with these options and that we are flexible with them and that we will closely monitor and and i can i know i'll speak for for dr black and dr smith and and miss wade and miss connolly is that if in our principles is that if if that's not working then we're not going to continue to no we got to do it we will make adjustments to that and then we're asking for another shift again though and then we're knocking on the end of the end of the quarter i mean by the time we get through this we're almost to the end of the year and and if you if it's not working and we shift three weeks into nine week

264quarter i mean we're knocking on the door testing and end of the year and you've got a break for spring break and you've got a break for easter so you don't have a lot of time for shifts we've already asked for a lot of shifts from these from these kids i mean and it's it's not fair to ask them to shift at the end of the last quarter in the middle of it so i i would say we need to be real sure it's going to work i mean well i i am i'm i'm i am confident that this will work and a shift would not be a wholesale change and you know it's not going to be a wholesale change that we're going to go back to what we were doing we might adjust

265the schedule to to reduce that amount of time that the kids are are logging off before their next class i mean those would be the kind of we would make minor minor changes to to that kind of schedule and not a wholesale nope this didn't work we're going back to so what are your thoughts at the 4-6 level 4-6 i mean i would one of the reasons why we looked at fourth and fifth grade with with this schedule was is that miss connolly was it under option three that fourth and fifth grade was the only group not meeting not me not having time with their teacher five days a week is that right so option number two i mean if we wanted to go to i still believe that in option two that we use

266that same model that we're using for 712 because it gives our kids contact with their teacher every day whereas they currently do not they currently they do not have that is that that would be four five and six so four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve would all be the same what you just said yes what's that well if we if we if we did away with a with a virtual day which is kind of what you're saying that you you want to do i don't want to log in whole class at the 4 at the 4 or 5 level i don't think those kids are i don't think they can handle that i don't think they get one of the reasons the asynchronous computer lessons worked so well so when we were

267at plan c is because the groups were small and and the teachers weren't looking at groups of of 28 kids on the computer at once they were looking at 12 kids at a time so i think one of the things the reason that model was successful is because those groups were small and you could have some personalized interaction with them okay so what you would what you would propose is that k3 stay the way they are now yes sir actually k-5 stay the way that they are now k3 stay with the way they are now four i'll take six out of the equation for you for a second four or five have an a a a b b do away with the virtual day and aaa so if i'm an a kid i would come

268to school monday tuesday wednesday yes sir okay thursday and friday if i'm an a kid i have asynchronous like they do right now like we do right now i lose the virtual i lose the that a child loses their virtual on wednesday they get four extra oh they get points for live days and then the following week if i'm an a kid i'm going monday tuesday a yeah in person in building yep and then wednesday thursday friday i'm going to be asynchronous i'm not going to have contact with my well i mean you're you're calling contact right now an seo meeting on thursday and friday so throw in another seo meeting on wednesday i don't know that it's going to be that easy to do but i mean you see what i'm saying i mean

269it there there if if contact as we define it right now at that age is sel on friday then i would but basically the kids are our students who are in their off days when they're not in building in person then they are going to have asynchronous work and not necessarily be required to log in with their with their teacher or i'm losing an hour and 30 minutes of teacher instruction if i'm that if you lose that mod that model because i'm losing the wednesday the only day i'm losing is wednesday so for a fourth and fifth grade child right now they're on 45 minutes with their reading teacher in 45 minutes with their math teacher on wednesday they see no teacher on thursday and friday so i'll be losing that hour and 45 minutes

270on wednesday and it will be replaced with asynchronous work i might miss conley am i you got this again this rider lunch it's the type of instructions two weeks two weeks the type of instruction as opposed to it would be i would see them on wednesday virtually and then i wouldn't see them until monday and then sixth grade i guess it depends on the cohorts right how many people you have opt out and stay in which i think the the possibility for two days a week or to have two cohorts in sixth grade is more likely than it is for 712 not that it's that it's not going to happen for 712 but because the the sixth grade classrooms are smaller to begin with as far as numbers of kids then the likelihood of being

271able to have two cohorts where we could do the same thing with them that we're doing with fourth and fifth which i think would be great to keep consistency at the school would be would be good so and they haven't been in the building all year so my thought with that is is you were you'd be able to keep them socially distanced in small groups small learning groups like we know has been successful at our k5 model but it but i would imagine they would welcome the additional day to try to make up for some of that time they haven't had because they've been completely virtuous so um thank you yeah come up to the microphone just two other possible negatives with having um sixth grade specifically follow that plan would be one the remote

272option we wouldn't necessarily be able to offer that remote option within them staying in their class would want to opt in for remote which could mean some class changes possibly so that would be one and we might have to move a teacher correct who is currently teaching in the building and their classrooms of kids to other teachers to create more moa teachers for the sixth grade correct within the building so that that would be one and then i'm going to be honest i just forgot the other one but it will come to me in just a minute that wasn't it and that is i mean and i know that our our teachers feel very strongly about the the redistribution of kids at this late period during the year um that i'm now having to to

273leave my teacher who at least you know i've been interacting with every week multiple days a week for this entire school year now i'm going to do the same thing with a with a different teacher for the last nine weeks of school yeah and that that was fairly messy when we did that earlier with k5 the other thing that came to me i told you would come back is just to advocate i guess too for our teachers and thinking about planning for an a a b b b a a is if the kids are not logging on and um synchronously for that five days i'm just thinking of how if i were a teacher would i plan a lesson for for my a group for two days and then i have my b group for

274three days versus right now with our a a win or wednesday remote bb i'm able to basically teach the same lesson for my a group as i am my b group but wednesday i'm able to go back and spiral standards or sprinkle standards so in terms of seek sequence and pacing it's much more manageable whereas then if you're having kind of that constant rotation it's going to be a lot more challenging for our teachers with instruction in that in that regards so i understand i'm just simply trying to advocate for as much face to face in building time for these children as possible and if if it doesn't work and it's too hard then of course and our teachers are amazing so they would make it work so please don't think that i'm just you

275know i'm just thinking about pacing and and logistics so for instance you know we dr smith shared that we did meet with our k-5 groups and actually sixth grade separately but to look at our priority standards so we already have it set in our pacing of how do we tackle the rest of the semester of basically having two and a half days if you will of new instruction so i feel like we're ready ready to tackle that let's kick back to the to the beginning what is your recommendation option two uh my recommendation is yes is option two which is k three four five six seven twelve yeah but yes based on the chart i'm looking at looking at that chart it would be k3 would do what we are currently doing fourth and fifth

276grade would be two days a week in person and three days a week synchronous instruction so basically the model of half the class being taught virtually to all kids and then the second half of the class being focused on the students who are in person in front of the teacher that day and that's four five and six yes yes that's fourth fifth and sixth they're all following the same wednesday would remain synchronous for all cohorts and so there would be no students in the building on wednesdays it would be very similar to what we are doing currently right for fourth and fifth grade but there would be no particular cohort of students in clat or in the school building on wednesdays and that time would be fully the full class synchronous lesson like we are

277currently like we're currently doing at the at the high school level got it in the in the middle school and then for seven through 12 excuse me for seven through twelve it would be five days a week so no when wednesday seven through twelve it would be five days a week of virtual and and whole class instructions so the teacher would teach for half the period like they are currently doing they would dismiss the virtual kids now if they if the kids wanted to stay on i mean that's that's a you know that's a minor thing that we can work out if some kids wanted to remain on but then the focus would be uh for those kids who are in person in the building the second half of the the class period and that

278would take place every day and so where it says zero to five in the building days per week based on the cohort zero would be for the kids who selected to to remain 100 virtual so they're going to be no days in the building the five days a week would be pending the senate bill 37 legislation if we had if we were to offer 504 and ec children five days a week opportunity and then in between there would be based upon the number of students who opted for and how many cohorts we could use accommodation how many days we could get them in the building right and that would be um kind of on a rotating basis if it's if it's two cohorts then one week a cohort would have three days in the building

279and cohort b would have two days in the building and then the following week cohort a would have two days in the building yeah it would it would flip-flop yes dr mooney i'm sorry so let me make sure i got this clear option two does not exist at the 4-6 at the 4-6 level without the kids logging in for half the class correct and one of the biggest things about that is that it takes care of the virtual option that we have to provide without having to redistribute kids and add more teachers to the moa at sixth grade and then it also allows for the kids to have contact with their teachers five days a week regardless of which option i choose in person in building or fully virtual then i still see my teacher

280five days a week if that's sick support staying where we are okay five excuse me i think that i think that type of a behavior is too much to ask of children of that age i think asking them to come in i think that's asking a lot of the teachers first of all at that level at a very difficult age with children they're still learning their fundamentals and i think that's just too much that's too much to ask so your your proposal would be option number two would be a modified option number two with k5 staying as we are currently i don't even think sixth grade should do it okay so k-6 staying as we are and 7-12 moving to what is moving k-6 moving sixth grade into our current model k5 which is k5

281should be k6 yeah moving moving k moving sixth grade into the current k-5 model which would result in correct me if i'm wrong miss connolly and dr smith but that would require us probably to redistribute kids at the sixth grade level yeah depending on who chooses to stay all virtual from please come to the microphone also add that one thing about the kids logging in every day virtually also kind of speaks to what miss everhart was talking about when her child's quarantined when you have that virtual and in person going on simultaneously kids who are quarantined can log in easily and take part in class that way and so mr hyde i would say that um if the board wishes to to modify the recommendation then maybe there should be a motion or a proposal

282for discussion okay so we would be talking about sixth grade then not even having the opportunity you're talking not having the opportunity to what never mind no okay what's the what's the sixth grade option that's not gonna uproot the teacher and the students from being moa it one more time i'm sorry what's the option that's not going to prevent the students and the teachers from being disconnected because of the moa requirement for sixth grade what would be that what's this that will not require the the reconfiguring of classes correct the option would be for the sixth grade to to follow the what i'll call the half and half model where the where the teacher and the student whether they're in person in the building or at home virtually where they are all logged in to

283their computers at the same time for the first half of the period okay okay then the second half of the period the virtual students would log off or if they wanted to stay logged on they could but the teacher is going to turn his or her attention to the kids that are in the classroom for the second half of the period and will teach and go through the activities all those different options or of things that could happen during that time to maximize the the in person in building time that we had with our kids so at that point if i were a parent who said nope i don't like that i want the fully virtual option and i am in miss conley's class then i am still going to be in miss conley's class

284five days a week i'm going to see her five days a week is going to be for 45 minutes between 8 30 and 10 30 that's what you know two 45 minute sessions between 8 30 and 10 30 and i'm gonna see her five days a week and so if i were if i if i was a student in class and i was exposed or something to covet and i had to go out then and i was quarantined i would still access that virtually every day five days a week with miss conley i would miss my in-person day or days each week because i had to be quarantined but i would still be in touch with my teacher five days a week to get the new instruction and so if we if we follow the

285the current model of of k5 for sixth grade then we are going to have parents i would foresee who are going to opt for the virtual fully virtual and they then we will need to possibly redistribute some teachers to to cover the fully virtual option that we have to provide us as called for by the state which would then mean that i'm going to have to take kids in miss conley's class who she's going to be the virtual teacher now i'm going to have to take all the kids that are assigned to miss conley and move them to the other five or six sixth grade teachers at the school and i think from for for me personally and my professional opinion and also from what we've talked with our teachers that is particularly concerning at

286this point during the year for a for a short period of time well with testing and everything the last quarter is usually the shorter one yeah correct so what's the option on the table i keep we keep coming back to option two i think the the current option the recommendation that's on the table which there has not been a motion to approve is option number two and so if the board would wish to alter that or go in a modified direction from that recommendation then i think there would need to be a an option presented okay that the board would then choose to consider or donaldson that's correct yes either the board needs to make a motion to accept the superintendent's recommendation or come up with another some other motion for a different for a

287different recommendation very different different okay i'd like to start with the easy stuff can we agree that k3 should stay the same i'm sorry i can't can we agree that k3 can stay the same yes can we agree that k through 3 stays the same i see a lot of affirmation nods i believe that there should be a change to the current option two with regard to the four six model and what would that change be it would be either stay in the plan that we're in currently in the plan that we're in currently for fourth and fifth for fourth and fifth which is also the same as k3 i don't correct i think what i heard you say miss bonnell was stay the same k5 and make sixth grade mirror fourth and fifth grade

288yeah that's the the same redistribution grade you're going to make a split and sixth grade would still have the option for the five days so they still will be following the two days two day cohort virtual wednesday two-day cohorts yeah come to the mic i can hear better without it i i thought it was i thought i'm sorry what i was hearing is that k5 would stay what they currently are correct so they would have two days in the building virtual two days they wouldn't log on and off as you mentioned sixth grade though would follow what option two is in terms of there would be a cohort a a remote day bb but they would be logging on for that 45 minutes so that we would have the capability to do the full remote

289option for kids that chose it they would have the option to do what say that last sentence again to do fully remote sixth grade under option two which doesn't redistribute the teachers correct because basically you would have two different options for six well one would be stay as we are but then the other would be that they either go the a a b b b so there's no virtual day or you keep as option two what we had it's just they were to see their teacher every day but they would be following their time in the building the way k5 does that and wednesday would still be stay the same for sixth grade and the fact that you would have two smaller groups so you're just the same as it is now it would be

290online so you would have your virtual day on wednesday and you'd have your 12 to 14 kids in the morning and 12 to in the afternoon for that small group on wednesdays that's the same as it is now again i don't support them logging on half the half and half model it's waiting but they're not logging on during their off days correct for sixth grade if if they don't then we have to reassign teachers assuming that folks would choose to stay virtual that's the drawback so if we don't log on if we don't require the log on then we have to redistribute yeah assuming that that a fair number of our families want to stay completely virtual yes that's the that's the trade-off so i hear you say that we don't favor option two purely

291as it's listed is that what i'm hearing you say or not i'm not hearing you say anything i do not know sir and the reason you don't is because of the logging on and logging off i do not like the house the possible redistribution of kids is going to be to require the logging on because we have to provide that virtual option right and so the way that we will do that is to provide five days of opportunities for our kids to log on with their with their teacher right so i guess that's the that's the that's the as you said just right the lynch pin for that is if we don't want to require the login then we have to redistribute exactly and if we don't want to redistribute then we have to provide

292the law log on that seems to be the choice i think we're okay with 712 and we're okay with k5 it's the sixth graders that we're still hanging on is that am i reading you correctly miss connie yeah um we just wanted to clarify exactly sixth grade when we spoke with dr pratt and miss evans today um the example from their schedule what it would look like for sixth grade if they were to do the log on so if i was at home my remote day i would log on from 8 20 to 905 and receive my math instructions math instruction 820-905 yes sir then i would have essentially 35 minutes in between and then i would go from 9 40 to 10 25 and i would be done for the day also these would

293be recorded because our needs are recorded so we do understand here you know that there that there are some parents you know that might not be able to log on for because of child care or things they already so they would be recorded that they could still watch on their own time but like i said you know obviously we would want them to be live so that they could interact and answer questions with the teacher but i just wanted to make sure to kind of give that example that so if if i was a cohort a kid i would go to school monday and tuesday i would receive small group instruction from my teacher i would have recess i would have lunch i would go to enhancements like the good old days okay then i

294would have wednesday i would remain at home i would log on to my regular time whatever that is either the morning time or the afternoon time where i would log on and i would have a small 12 to 14 [Music] kids in the group for my online synchronous instruction just as i always have then on thursday and friday that's when i would remain home and i would essentially be tied to my computer or have my my classroom time from 8 20 to 10 25 but i would not have asynchronous work so you're swapping out essentially the 60 to 90 minutes asynchronous work for two 45-minute chunks with the teacher and we wouldn't have to redistribute kids good and that's pure that's only for sixth grade is that palatable i see some heads nodding i don't

295see heads moving on this end of the table i'm not the only one up here i mean it's not you know i mean what do we what do we call that 2.5 the modified option too modified option two is is that for k five jim and scott be sure you hear this modified option 2 is k5 would continue to do what we are currently doing 6 7 through 12 would follow the option number two plan as reviewed and listed on the slide under option two seven twelve seven twelve but follow that sixth grade that's the kicker miss conley one more time come to the mic and explain sixth grade sixth grade would be two days in person one day remote two days logging in from home to attend with the teacher for ninety minutes they

296would be attending approximately from 8 20 to 905 they would have their math block for yelli and then 9 40 to 10 25 so on their off remote days they would log on they would be finished by 10 30. on their wednesday nothing changes for them they follow the same schedule that they're currently following and then the other days they would have in-person experience enhancements lunch two 45-minute times where they're still logging in but they would have the opportunity for small group remediation enrichment after that 45 minutes in both math and ela and then also we have a 30 minute bobcat or eagle time at our intermediate schools that are specifically for enrichment intervention that they would be able to participate in as well and if if there was an issue with logging in during

297the the time during my off days during my if i'm an a kid during my b day during the b cohort on my thursday and friday if i had an issue then i could log in when it was more convenient for me and or my parents because those lessons would be recorded and placed in kansas canvas yes sir that's correct are we going to be looking at the potential of a redistribution anyway at the sixth grade level for teachers that aren't comfortable coming back as of right now i think dr medlock would have to correct me on this one but as of right now i only know of one teacher in question but all the others have said that they would return but we are sending out a survey according to document and that would

298also be dependent i mean with with coming back in i mean that is if we are not able to make accommodations then i mean it's based on the number of kids who are in the building and we cannot there's a strong possibility that we will not be able to honor all the requests for accommodations at 6th through 12th greg and one other thing that i did neglect to say is that this would require for what we would look at here is for all all teachers to to be on campus all non-moa teachers to be on campus five days a week okay members of the board you've heard a modified option too that seems to be the direction that we're going is there a motion to accept option modified option two so moved second it's been

299moved and seconded from modified option two all in favor aye any opposed we have modified option two thank you i do appreciate everyone's patience this is uh this is hard work because we all want to achieve the same thing but it's it's difficult to get there and i very much appreciate your patience and your understanding and mr height just to just a point of clarification um that this would be to start the fourth quarter beginning monday march the 15th march the 15th following the uh the quarterback yes sir and all this excitement i've lost my agenda so bear with me we have reached that point in the agenda where members of the board it's time for us to go into a closed session under the north carolina general statutes 143-318.11 section a6 and also section

300a3 the board will need to go into closed session to review personnel [Music] thank you for being with available and as always as you go out into the community www thank you very much