001we're gonna have a call to order uh prior to the roll call i'm going to appoint asia johnson as secretary pro town asia thank you for subbing in tonight no problem mike davenport here christopher espinoza here jenny hackstrom here terry pivozic here joanna vasquez drexler present nancy kupka here scarlett o'hara here jay toledano here okay we have a quorum let's stand for 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 okay we're going to mix things up a little bit we're going to start with dr thiele's presentation on the return to in-person instruction plan and then we will have reception visitors thank you dr kupka i as we get
002started i've prepared a statement for the board in the community we have been following the guidance of our local state and federal agencies since the party start of the pandemic in march of 2020. the board voted to continue this practice on august 2nd 2021 which includes requiring masks during high and substantial transmission rates shortly after the board took action as you will hear tonight the governor took control of the pandemic response and took that control away from the local school board i believed then as i believe now that that was not the best course of action as schools should always be afforded as much local control as possible as you will hear tonight on february 4th a judge temporarily restricted the governor's executive orders for district 99 and other school districts named in the related
003lawsuit the board's policies which include requiring masks were then in effect school administrators must follow the local school local rules established by the board of education including those in place intended to maintain the health and safety of students and staff after the judge's ruling was released a flood of misinformation and frustration that had built up over the past year led to a fracturing in our school community we have called this meeting tonight based on the board now having the authority to discuss these matters i have been discussing this topic with members of the board throughout the pandemic and students actively violating school rules in protest are not the result of this meeting and should not be the result of the board changing their policies regardless of your views on the pandemic response the adults need
004to take the lead and start helping this community to heal rather than working to actively tear it apart our students will never heal from the pandemic until the adults step up and show some resilience in navigating the world by productively working through both the decisions we agree with and those we do not agree with i have tried to model this for our students as i shared in a message to the community yesterday and i shared with the board in july i believe that parents should be allowed to determine the specific measures they have their children follow at school when it comes to the pandemic i believed then and i believe now that schools should limit the mitigations that apply holistically to all students i do not believe in masking in the school setting or exclusions
005due to close contacts should be included as mitigations at this time because of the negative impacts they're currently having on learning and the school environment now that we have lived with these mitigations i feel our own experiences and the experiences in others in the education field should also weigh into our decisions even as my opinions have been misrepresented by a great number of individuals in this community i have not wavered in my approach i've remained professional i've responded to your emails and your questions and i have carried out my responsibilities to this community and to this board with fidelity i've tried to serve as as an example for how one can disagree with the rules and still disagree with others while remaining respectful and responsible i have encouraged changes within these rules behind the scenes
006with health officials and government officials with limited success throughout the pandemic after tonight it is possible that measures i disagree with still remain i appreciate the community's interest and involvement in our schools and i believe that it stems from everyone just wanting what's best for their children first the administration board of education and i need to make the best decisions for over six thousand students and staff members while also considering the needs of all of the individuals that make up our community i understand how difficult these times have been on our students and families in these times nobody can be 100 sure they're making the right decision and that uncertainty uncertainty causes anxiety and stress i also understand how difficult this has been on members of the board of education i appreciate their dedicated volunteer
007service to this community and the difficulties and challenges they face in making decisions in these times no matter what the board decides tonight whether to support my recommendation to make changes or to follow the protocols it established last august based on the advice of health experts the administration will follow their direction i ask and expect our students and the community to do the same i'll go now into my recommendation and some of the information behind why i'm making this recommendation so this is a officially our 2122 return to in-person instruction plan that we're addressing this evening all right so tonight i hope to provide an overview of how we got here including the recent court rulings and some background on how that impacts us i will propose an alternative set of mitigations based primarily on
008evidence from the educational field and i will ask the board to take action on mitigation measures related to the 2122 returned in in-person instruction plan really key factors to consider as we go through today really this is about the health and safety of students and staff and to provide a a safe learning environment in times of covid we have these layered mitigations that are in place some of that comes from idph guidance cdc and the dupage county health department so we call that the health experts right you know or the health agencies we have continued to prioritize in-person learning i've been advocating for that throughout the entire pandemic the board is well aware of that i believe that we need a path towards normalcy and over the course of this year because of the executive
009orders that have been in place that is limit our limited our ability at the board table to talk about what that path towards normalcy might look like it the local control as i mentioned in my opening statement was removed from us and i'll demonstrate that towards you demonstrate that again in a little bit but i think we need to to start getting back towards normal we have a goal of providing rigorous instructional opportunities we continue to do that we also have to balance in the social emotional needs of all students we need to support our students and staff and i as i said in july and i continue to say i value the parents role in the educational environment all right so lessons from the pandemic one state leaders haven't provided any path forward for
010this uh superintendents have been advocating uh since it started give us some ideas of what the off ramp is give us some ideas of what comes next quite often and once again recently we receive a superintendent's guidance at the same time that everybody else in the state does usually after 5 pm on a friday we understand that there are strong and legitimate views on all sides as i will demonstrate today in my presentation right now you can find any bit of data to back up whatever you believe right now okay um that doesn't make anything illegitimate right it makes it uncertain times where things are changing rapidly maybe we'll know 20 years from now that we made right or wrong decisions but right now it's really hard to see what is the correct path to
011take we know that right now communities because of this inaction at a variety of different levels above us are being torn apart we at the local level have nowhere to go the board and the superintendent have to make decisions to keep our students learning and to keep our students safe there is nowhere we can pass this to like leaders above us have and that has caused this to be firestorms in school districts around the chicagoland area students and staff are tired they are tired of everything they're tired of the pandemic the division they're tired of rules they're tired enforcing rules they'd like for all of this to go away and so would everybody and but it is it's wearing on everybody right now in school districts across the country there is a growing trend in
012hostility towards public boards and towards staff members take a look at any social media page and you will see once again a million different perspectives a lot of hostility and a lot of behavior that if it happened inside of our school building we would address it i once again call on the adults to start behaving in the way that they would hope that students in our hallways would behave the board and the staff here have continued to meet every challenge we realize that it hasn't been in the way that not er that everybody would like it to be met but we've had to step up and make decisions and we have and we know that right now there's no perfect answer to any of this obviously everybody has the answer that they believe is correct
013however we're trying to make the correct answer as i said for over six thousand people and factor that those decisions into our larger community as well all right so i'm going to quickly just review for the board how we ended up where we are now i don't want to spend a ton of time going over this but just to hit some key touch points july 2021 i came to the board and i presented that we were planning as an administrative team for as close to return to a normal school year as possible within that i talked about limiting the mitigations that apply holistically to students these are the slides that were presented to the board and the public in july we talked about a shift towards families managing risks that this is what the administration
014was working towards over the summer and you can see there was starting to be indications if you remember that there would be different sets of rules for fully vaccinated and unvaccinated we were working through that at the time but the administration spent the summer with the idea that we were coming back very close to what we had pre-covid except for we knew that coming soon was probably uh pieces related to isolation if you were sick and quarantined if you were a close contact all right the board knows that behind the scenes i was already advocating with the state at that point that i did not believe that close contact was a thing we should be doing at schools because our evidence from the first well for the second half of the first year of the
015pandemic was that we were not seeing a large number of students that were close contacts ending up ill that data trend has continued throughout this school year and then after that board meeting this thing called delta started making it in the news and you can see there in the data across dupage county the spike that happens between that meeting or starts to happen between that meeting and our next meeting on august 2nd in that time the board asked me to come back with please report back with what the health experts are recommending that we do in schools this was the updated guidance that we brought back this guidance was mirrored by the health agencies that are listed there so face coverings and masks was consistent across those three health agencies close contacts in quarantine was
016consistent with idph and dupage county health department the recommendation from the cdc at that time was that face coverings and masks would occur during times of substantial or high transmission the board adopted looking at case rates across the county is our indicator as to which one of those transmission levels we would be in and that would determine if masks were universally worn or were recommended or mask optional we laid out a return to plan a set of details we talked about close contacts and quarantine and then the board took action on that plan on august 2nd 2021 on august 5th 2021 the governor took control of what schools would be doing across the state in response to the pandemic so for three days the district 99 policies were in place we had no students in
017school at that time then you can see all of those dates in yellow were the entire time that the executive orders were in place then on february 4th about 5 5 30 pm so after that school day we received a judge's ruling which depending on which attorney you talk to right now they will tell you it means a different thing the board's attorneys recommended that it means that the board rules that were in place before the executive orders went into place are the rules of the district as a school administrator it is my responsibility to carry out those rules and policies as the superintendent i am the sole administrator the board hires to carry out those responsibilities so beginning on february 7th we defaulted back to the board's plan we were in periods of high
018actually high community transmission at that time which made masks universally required so where are we at now with covid in our in our schools okay you can see where this i bring the board a month at a time in these snapshots each time we meet you can see that omicron spike that occurred in society and here in our school districts about a month ago you can see we're down to last week seven positive cases in the school district one close contact so if we look at that trend over the school year you can see we're back down to where we lived for pretty much the entirety of the first semester right the the omicron spike began for us over winter break continued as we returned and now a month later or about six weeks later
019we have emerged i believe out of it so let's talk about the mitigations that are in place uh in response to this okay uh we have federal mitigations in place these are fed remember everybody goes back to their constitution right federal laws then state laws then local laws so right now uh universal masking is required on all public transportations including school buses and school transportation such as driver's ed vehicles that rule remains in fact in effect nothing has been touched with that that will need to be continued no matter what decision is made tonight state mitigations that were in place due to the executive orders in other school districts that weren't named in the lawsuit some of their attorneys are recommending that these are still in place right in our school district the district attorneys
020are recommending that these are not enforced within our school district and that the as i've said the district's uh policies that were put into place on august 2nd are now in effect and these are the district mitigations that remain in place now due to board action on august 2nd universal masking schools with limited exemptions isolation one sick that universal masking would change to optional if we dropped into the lowest two tiers of community transmission we also have isolation one sick when your sixth day home that's always been a school rule 24 hours fever-free close contact and exclusion policies are currently in fact and we still have staff level mitigations in effect i won't be talking tonight about those staff level mitigations we're still in discussions with the district attorneys about what the next steps with
021those would be all right so that's kind of the rules as they sit so let's take a look across the country and look at some data to see what should be in place right so uh where masks are mandated or recommended you can see it's a smattering of different policies across this the country as you know some of those have changed in the the last couple of weeks in a variety of states i think this this was from uh the new york times from just a couple of days ago so it may have even changed since i screen grabbed it we're going to take a look at some of these different mandates and kind of what's happening in some of the states with different levels of mandates so just sorry the last one that's masks
022are mandated or recommended by the state right so they're universally recommended by a health expert correct this is by the state governmental agencies right yeah they're still recommended by the cdc recommendation [Music] all right so here's a snapshot off the cdc's website for today now when we met uh superintendents last we're invited to we're last invited to a webinar with the idph we haven't been invited to many but we were invited to one uh the week before winter break on that call with the idph we asked them you know why are we still masking here when many other states are going away from this and to summarize the conversation from the idph the key data set that they pointed to was negative pediatric outcomes beginning with hospitalizations okay so what i went today was to
023the cdc website and i grabbed for for the states that are around us in population okay the the two states above us and the two states below us in population a couple of snapshots so you can see what has happened with uh admission of patients uh by age group i'll give you a summary of this at the end but it kind of interesting to just look at maybe just the graphs right and see how the trends have been similar i'll break down the numbers for you in a second in a table so it's easier to read but so the states that i'm giving you illinois which has a statewide mass mandate in some shape or for fashion as it works its way through the courts here new york which now is statewide masks recommended and
024it's in the process of transitioning to that state sticker that into that fashion statewide right now right so you can see kind of their graph we'll talk we'll take a look at some things in pennsylvania their mask recommended in some counties oh i don't know why that says seven i typed over the top of it but seven is ohio so this is ohio they have no mask guidance and georgia they have mandates are banned so you can't have covid mandates in your school okay so if we pull all that and put it together you can see we're ranging between four and eight in population centers in the state right so that's where the rank you can see the different mandates that they have in each of those places and as i said 80 idph said
025take a look at hospitalization cases that's a key data set that illinois is looking at at least that's what they shared with the superintendents as to why they believe the mask mandate should remain in effect and i pulled the data just to see okay you know they didn't have the data for us then but i went and pulled it using those charts that you saw today and i looked is this still the case because i pulled for the last seven days okay and i what idph told us in that webinar checks out right current seven-day pediatric cases average pediatric cases this is hospitalizations per hundred thousand is 11 in illinois in all of those other states that i pulled that are of similar population size of us those numbers are greater you can discuss whether
026or not they're significantly greater or not i mean that significance is a relative term however what the idph said was that they are greater they are okay and the peak pediatric cases so this would be over the two years of the pandemic what was the highest number of cases per 100 000 of pediatric cases in the hospital over the term of the pandemic and you can see that illinois never hit a number as high as the other states in similar population yeah now there's a lot of different ways you could interpret what that is but i'm telling you i verified what the idph told us and what they told us was accurate okay when i heard that i thought well you know illinois this is so i will show you earlier you remember i said
027you can find data to back up right now pretty much whatever you want it to do so when i heard that i said yeah but illinois is doing really well at vaccinations right now we know vaccinations have been proven to negate to reduce negative outcomes so maybe the difference between us and other states like this is things like vaccinations so i looked at vaccination rates across those and [Music] okay illinois new york are both way at the top in comparison to those other ones but it's not you know it's it's not driving the trend that we see there okay so you know it checks out to some extent what idph told us in december that they're looking at the data and a factor that they're looking at is statewide masks and the data that they
028showed us you know at least in comparison to like a vaccination rate would say okay maybe masks do check out that way and it makes sense why the idph is recommending these but then when we look at some other data sets this is uh cumulative cases per 100 000 this is from american academy of pediatrics this was in their study from february 10th where they break out the rate of pediatric cases versus adult cases illinois is not doing so well in that chart right the percentage of cases skews higher in illinois amongst children than children in other states so i don't know how to square this data right i don't pick the data set i can tell you what store you want me to tell you okay if we look at overall cases this is
029the last seven days from the cdc you can see the number of cases per hundred thousand in states with a variety of different mask mandates there's really no correlation between now this is all this is everybody this is adults and kids right but i know a lot a lot of the discussion is will the masks in schools prevent the community from having increased cases cdc and idph and dupage county health department say yes it should i i could probably pull together some data that might indicate that as well i'm just giving you the raw data from the top i'm saying that it's hard for me as a superintendent not a health expert to go pull data that would indicate to the board clearly you should take this direction so what we end up with are
030these differing professional perspectives and since the beginning of the pandemic i have heard from the health experts that they have a standard of care that when the answers aren't clear you should go towards the conservative direction you should pick the direction that you believe will keep people safe because you don't take risks with people's health and all of those health agencies are currently recommending universal indoor masking by all student staff teachers and visitors regardless of vaccination status and it's based on community transmission just like the board well for at least the cdc and dupage county health department it is both of those dependent on community transmission dupage county health department in a meeting on friday told a small number of us that that was the recommendation today they sent out a document that they're going
031to discuss with superintendents tomorrow that continues to recommend that during periods of high or substantial transmission that universal universal masking occurs in schools so that guidance from the health agencies that influence the board and making their decision in august has not changed what has changed since august is evidence from the educational field you saw on the map of the united states that different states and different counties across the u.s have taken different paths than and this all has happened since august when we met in august that that hadn't happened holistically you know all these different changes across the united states since then other school districts other counties other states have chosen to run an experiment with students in their locale around masking either making it so you can't make a mandate making it so the
032things that can be recommended making it so things are optional highly recommended there's all of these different things and for the last year i've been talking to my peers in different places around the country i don't have data here to tell you [Music] as i demonstrated that there's a right decision to make i can tell you that it is mixed from the educational field it's not mixed from the health agencies but i will tell you what i hear consistently from my peers is that making it so that masks are recommended and not required begins to change the culture of your school and the learning environment in your school in a better direction i can also tell you i have asked all of them why do you think that you can keep your kids healthy even
033though you're going against what the health agencies say and these are the things that i've heard from superintendents in arizona and iowa and indiana and wisconsin and different places in missouri and as i talk to my colleagues around how can you possibly keep your kids healthy and safe when you're not following the guidance of the health agencies and this is what they tell me is there's a couple of key things and it all comes down to the adults one is that parents they are fanatical in a lot of these school districts with parents about keeping your kids home when they are sick we talked about this in in the summer that uh keeping kids home and isolating home for those five days and for in past that if they still have symptoms or have fevers
034for 24 hours past those symptoms or fevers is essential i believe that this has been emphasized since the pandemic that people are keeping their kids home and that when we know that they're sick we keep them home as a school district something else that's different from schools than the community is that we have highly trained professional caring adults our teachers our support staff our nurses our administrators that are all there even our custodial staff that's keeping an eye out for our kids and for our environments and making sure that they're safe and we are working hard to take care of our kids just as we always do and our staff is always watching for students uh to for signs of illness if they're sick they're going to the nurse's office and and we work through
035the process there and we have been reminding students for the entirety of the school year to follow safety mitigations with masking at times that's been with limited success it's hard to constantly have people wearing masks appropriately however we still have students separated especially in classrooms with the physical distance we have hand sanitizer we have uh you know we're encouraging students to maintain a clean environment and then we have other layered mitigations in place obviously hand washing hand sanitizer is available hand sanitizer is available in every classroom in this district we've increased our ventilation and our flow of outside air uh greater than 20 percent um it it exceeds the expectations of the recommendations we've received we also have expectations of things like you cover your cough you cover your sneeze you know you do all
036of those kinds of things you stay home when you're sick and then we have increased cleaning protocols that have continued throughout the pandemic there is no evidence that i have seen of greater spread at school than in the overall community if you look at our charts you see that same graph just follows the overall community i don't think we're any different than the community that we serve and i believe we're safer because of all of those things those bullets up above on that sheet so at this point um i actually have asked principal schwartz to come forward and speak from the principal's point of view to just share his experience as a school leader because you hear from me as a district leader but ed and courtney they're in the buildings they're there working with
037students and teachers i i spend a lot of time there but you know ed and courtney are ultimately responsible for their buildings and i thought that it would be unfair for you only to hear my perspective and you needed to hear there so ed is has graciously volunteered to share that perspective with the board thank you good evening everyone happy valentine's day while you're going to hear my words and my thoughts dr demand and i have had conversations many times over the past month especially about this and so i my thoughts and opinions are representative of her as well i will tell you in hindsight in looking back masking at the start of the year may have helped us transition back to an all day in person school i i wasn't crazy thinking about it
038at the time but we probably needed that transition and i think that's where i'm at now and my thoughts over the last few weeks i'm going to just highlight a few big reasons i'm not going to get into everything that that we've talked about but first of all a few weeks ago the governor announced that he intends to remove the mask mandate for all indoor spaces at the end of the month so two weeks from now our kids will mask in school if we don't change anything but walk out and go to their jobs or to the gym or to a concert or a bulls game or wherever they want and not be wearing masks all of those places i think are probably less safe even without mask than what they experience at school so
039that inconsistency troubles me and makes it hard to communicate that to students secondly the recent dro their ruling we have schools now having different mitigations our students compete against other schools not only in sports but in chess and the math team and our students will be wearing masks and they may be sitting across the table from kids who don't have to wear masks so we're putting them in a position now and even if we made a rule of homeschool rules follow that still compromi compromises mitigations we would be trying to be doing here so those are a couple things our school climate our staff and our students have done amazing things this year to make the experience what it is for our kids but there's still too much predictability of our school climate based on
040outside forces and i mean that i've seen it in a positive way and negative last month when they reduced the mitigation measures from 10 days to 5 days for quarantine exclusion you could feel the collective excitement in our staff because now our kids are only going to miss two or two to five days depending if it's over a weekend instead of seven to ten hey we can work with that right we can really get behind our kids academically so that change from a health guidance had an impact on our climate and i'm going to tell you a story a week ago friday great weekend at our school i spent friday night going to the conference swim meet we hosted i left there and went to the girls basketball game who they not only won their
041game they raised thousands of dollars for the pat summitt foundation i left there and i went to our black history play we had a great black history play we had kids in that performance who have never been on a stage before the excitement was palpable and then they all released about the same time i spent about a half hour talking to parents in the lobby and the excitement and we talked about oh tomorrow it's bowling and wrestling and speech and so the excitement in the school we were kids were doing kid things then i walked back to my office and i had an email telling me about the temporary restaining order my heart sank because school was going to be different on monday and it had nothing to do with school so selfishly i want
042us to drive our school climate we've got two great student reps here so they tell you all the time i want our school climates to be driven by our students so finally i consider myself a steward of the district's resources and i've always been frugal with the district's resources i should probably be better with that with my own money but and one of the things i've noticed is the amount of resources we're pouring into managing covid and the mitigations right and you know several years ago i've been working with the police on traffic safety the last two weeks several years ago we did that safety study and somebody suggested we put a big parking garage on a campus now the cost of that was astronomical and we would never spend our district monies that way
043and get such a small gain i'm worried that the slight increase in safety we're getting from covid is not worth the resources we're putting into it much like we wouldn't put into a parking garage or something to that effect so i just wanted to share that and again i appreciated all we did first semester and throughout the school year to get us to this point and i think it's the next time to transition so i appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ideas and some of our thoughts and we won't extend it anymore thank you ed and courtney all right uh so this is my recommendation this evening and this is to be effective this friday in the i've received a lot of questions today about why friday this is a significant change
044for some students and staff especially those that are immunocompromised we need to provide them an opportunity to talk to their health practitioners to acquire the proper masks that they need to meet with our staff we already have meetings set up with families in anticipation that the board might pass this we have meetings set up with several families to discuss their concerns over the next several days i would like for it to be in place uh for friday that gives several days to adjust it's kind of equivalent to our neighbors district 58 that made the change and then it didn't go into effect for several days as well i would like for it to be effective on a friday just because we know that this will drastically change our school environment or has the potential to
045and administratively selfishly we would like to do it for a day and then have a weekend to work through whatever steps we need to take to adjust to any changes that happened before we come back on the 22nd we know come the 20 seconds just four more days until it's uh released across the state so we're just slightly ahead of that with this change so the recommendations the administration is making this evening is that we need to still follow all federal and state laws including enforceable executive orders as we know the tro that's out there that's restricting the enforcement of the current executive orders is in appeal right now and that is expected back by thursday at the latest which could change things and could put the executive orders back fully in effect we are
046required as a public school in illinois to follow those um universal masking on buses will continue as i outlined earlier uh there could be pending future litigation at many levels against us against the state against anything right that could uh ultimately result in some kind of a change occurring and we would follow those rules as interpreted by the district's attorneys and then move forward we still will of course expect that six students and staff will stay home from school it is for five days or until symptoms go away that won't change at all [Music] contact tracing will end and there will be no related exclusions to that as i said there's no evidence that we have here that indicates that there is a significant transmission of covid in close contacts here at school we'll move
047to an environment then that mask wearing is respectfully recommended i use the word respectfully intentionally there in the last week the level of respect in our halls in our classrooms in our community has hit an all-time low we need this to rebound back and we need if we move in this even if we don't move in this direction we need more respect back and i understand that stress and anxiety makes it hard to think of others because we're we're just you know not in a great spot but we need to get back there and if we move to this it will be the expectation that students and staff and parents respect each other's choices that we are making here and whether it's to wear a mask or to not wear a mask that we respect
048one another in that and as always any bullying harassment or negative impact on the environment that would happen because of this change will be addressed uh universal masking on transportation and health offices would continue we have to assume that in the health offices people are going there because they're sick so mask masks would be provided on the way in through the door if somebody didn't have one and then it would be required that it be worn we'll provide at least two k n 95 masks to students this week if we make this change uh in the next day or next day if the board adopts this recommendation we will then communicate those procedures to everybody as i mentioned this time frame allows for discussions at home and we want parents as i said in july
049and i said again tonight that parents need to have these conversations with their kids and outline what those expectations are for them while they're at school if parents want their kids wearing a mask all the time at school they need to tell them that and they need to make sure that their kids know that that's the expectation and then finally i think that we need to take this caring approach we talk all the time about being respectful responsible and engaged in our schools so i i expect that our students our our mission statement in district 99 starts with the word caring and i say this all the time to staff we need to care about those around us as we make this change and if somebody uh if we move to mask recommended if somebody
050says like i really need to keep your you need to keep your distance from me or wear a mask because i have a medical reason or i'm uncomfortable or whatever we should care about those other people and consider what their needs are around us and recognize that that might be the right thing to do because we're part of a community and care about those around us i will expect as the superintendent that our staff reflect that and that our students reflect that as well that is the end of my recommendation um dr kupka i'm not sure do you want to hear from the public first or do you want the board to discuss this first i think or just take questions i'm going to ask the board for their fee but i have one question
051about your slide sure so to be clear no more contact um tracy tracy so no student or teacher would be notified that our staff member would be notified that they were within uh whatever certainly three feet well with masks off at six feet yeah um they just wouldn't be notified and students would not be expected after return students or teachers or staff members who returned from um a having called it after five days would not be expected to wear a mask it's recommended that they wear a mask for days six through and it would still be recommended that they wear masks days six through ten yes but not required yeah at this point yeah we're we're not it would all be over yeah it would be recommended to everyone that they follow those guidelines yes
052so i think there are two questions to that i'm just gonna we're not voting but we're gonna just take a little little straw poll here we've got two questions would you like to discuss prior to hearing um public comments is the first question anybody wish to discuss it prior to hearing public comments okay we'll hear public comments first yeah and then the second question is we have how many how many comments are you like uh about 17 i think let me see what it's numbered too we'll go over our a lot of time is there any are people finding that 17 comments okay so we'll we're all 17 and we'll ask people to please be respectful of the three minutes thank you were there any other questions you wanted to answer before i went to
053public comment since i have the slides and everything right here yeah that's fine nope can you put the slide up with the numbers that we had from december to now okay i gotta go back a little ways bear with me i just want to get a sense of how many positive cases we've had in the last six to eight weeks so that we can you know those people are all immune right for the next 90 days so right up until about spring break right that group would be exempt from being a close contact so yeah you're you're looking at several hundred students right when you look over january yeah so around or less around ten percent of less than ten percent of our entire population correct just yeah but uh the recent you know we
054also know that in the county uh you're sitting around seventy percent of high school students are vaccinated right so very high staff percentage and 96 of our staff so you're going to say too that we we don't know this for the students but knowing we do know that a significant portion of the positive cases we had for cove among staff were among the unvaccinated correct i would say over the first semester that is correct yeah i don't know what how that breaks down though now i don't know how that breaks down for students right so you know it just seems to me though we're getting we're getting to a point where we've got almost everybody vaccinated and if you haven't been vaccinated you've probably had covet and you've probably recovered i think that was definitely
055true the trend you were talking about for delta i think omacron was a different animal okay yeah all right and i would just say everybody over five yeah correct but every one of our students that's right all of our students yeah yeah some of those students though would have been vaccinated and still ended up with kova though right so it's not like necessarily a unique group of ten percent no but it's a pretty no it's a large number yeah i i just don't want to misrepresent the understand the impact um try to keep skipping ahead here to get to the i need to get to my reception of visitors did was that your only question john or did you have anything else okay everybody else i'm fine okay all good all right perception of visitors
056oh i'm sorry this is my spiel the reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote there's only one agenda item comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment well have submitted a comment slip to ms johnson and will be invited to the microphone by dr thiele prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and are being streamed they're being taped recorded also for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant
057we appreciate your observation of these protocols all right so for those of you that are new i will call you up in the order in which we receive the slips once you begin speaking a timer will start when the timer stops i will cut you off no matter where you are in your presentation to allow everybody an equal amount of time to speak so please respect be respectful of the timer and uh that helps us move through this in an orderly fashion uh i will tell you who the speaker is and who the next speaker is we have found that that helps kind of cue things up a little bit better okay so our first speaker is debbie robertson and then followed by anna guido and of course the action item this evening is dr
058kupka said good evening thank you fellow board members and dr thiel for allowing us to speak tonight my name is debbie robertson i am a mother of two boys one that attends hillcrest school in district 58 and my other son is a sophomore at downers grove north on thursday night district 58 listened to the community and made the decision to make masks optional because they agreed that the time is now we implore you to do the same our children that attend your schools also have siblings as district 58 which is already caught using added divide you're right dr thiel we are a divided community already the social media bullying is at an all-time high on both sides hank you know and the deans know this you've seen examples of this and it's awful behavior we
059want it to stop and you board members have an opportunity to stop and unite this community by choosing both sides and allowing the parents and kids to make the best decisions for our own families you're also right dr thiel that this period in our lives will be judged by history by the actions we all took or maybe more importantly the ones that we didn't take to make our make things better our children have borne the brunt of this and have lost out on education sports school and social activities we've been overly cautious long enough through remote learning hybrid learning and masking while others went back full time and didn't miss out on their education like district 99 kids it is our jobs as parents to protect our children not the other way around over 400
060585 districts across our state have already voted to go mask optional for this very reason states across this country or including our bordering states do not have mass mandatories in place and have been able to keep their schools safely open without issue as you spoke to every time we are here for another vote this board has chosen a more restrictive approach that has set us backwards while we watch just schools around us including district 58 progress forward and who suffers the most our kids and their education at one time there may have been a reason to lock us in our homes shut down our schools mask ourselves and our children and live in fear of the unknown but that time is over enough is enough and our children in district of 99 including yours jen
061deserve better and are no longer going to follow a mandate that is illegal the time is now for you to lead this community forward and vote mask optional thank you for your time [Applause] uh anna guido is up and then followed by deb de vero hi sorry good evening board members of district i'd like to thank you for coming together with your community to hear our children's voice my name is anna and i am a mother to four boys ages 20 19 17 and 10 years old i am extremely nervous as i do not love public speaking but i am here tonight because i believe it is important that you hear from me as to why voting yes to mask optional is important i currently have a son who attends downers grove north as a
062senior my son has i'm sorry my son was a multi-sports student who along the way built friendships with his baseball team his wrestling team football team and where his coaches were his mentors the culture at north was one of a kind unfortunately covet 19 impacted our community and many sacrifices had to be made by all my son has always struggled with his academics however remote learning made things more difficult for him he became withdrawn sad and had no motivation he is not the boy he was two years ago and he's passed 650 plus days have impacted him in ways i do not know he will ever forget nor will i ever know and now due to the mass mandate he no longer participates in any of the sports he once did i am not sure
063how many of you are parents but as a mother i am here tonight to ask you to consider all the data in science evidence of the effectiveness of math mask proper fitting of masks recommended length of time of wearing masks and reality on how these masks are worn in our schools as a district and as the board you have the authority to be a beacon to our community and fight for our children as if they were your own we seek mass optional policy that would allow everyone the freedom of choice and the opportunity to unite our community thank you [Applause] next up deb devero followed by jordan raymond good evening board members i know this has got to be one of the most difficult meetings that you've had in a while uh maybe not um
064my name is deb devaro i'm a mother of a sophomore at north and i would first like to commend you all on the endeavor of holding these positions of authority during a tumultuous time with so much uncertainty where you are truly struggling with the community that's divided on many issues regarding the pandemic i do not envy you or the tasks you've been called to action on over the past years so thank you for your time and sacrifice you've heard many parents tonight and speak to to the issue of allowing the district to be masked optional and over the week i'm sorry i too am imploring you to consider voting in favor of that issue however i would like to share a perspective on just how life-changing your votes are going to be tonight with not
065only within the microcosm of the schools but will also significantly impact the community as a whole and as well as i believe facilitate beginning stages of healings healing this obvious divide amongst many for almost two years our country government schools and in some cases families have been divided pertaining to issues related to mass wearing vaccines testing and quarantine protocols excuse me there's an evidence split on perspectives now so more than ever we become a country and community that has adopted a dichotomous way of thinking which has become very isolating this is not about right or wrong red or blue parties vaccinated or unvaccinated masked or unmasked this must now be about getting back to respecting each other's differences without judgment whatever those opinions might be and allowing for our personal choice of freedom to return
066to our communities schools and families by voting in favor of allowing mass to be optional you will be helping the community to begin to evolve out of this pandemic and help to bridge the social gap that this crisis has created which in turn will begin to open doors to healing our children families businesses and precious downers grove community thank you for this time [Applause] jordan raymond followed by erica rauch good evening board thank you jordan good evening board my name is jordan raymond i'm a junior at north first off i want to thank you guys for calling this emergency meeting and giving me the platform to speak i want to focus on the legality of everything going on and one thing to bring that up is a similar court case that happened back in 1969
067that was tinkerbee des moines this case brought up was brought up by the supreme court because students wore black armbands and a silent protest against the vietnam war students were suspended because of their armbands and exercising their first amendment the supreme court ruled that as long as their silent protest does not disrupt the classroom learning process then they are allowed to continue their silent protest and return back to class however for some reason our small group of students are being treatedly treated terribly with no respect and being placed in a small room all day away from everyone and everything in the school building just because we decided to partake in a silent protest that is not affecting anything involving the classroom process the legal definition of segregation is the separation of individuals or groups from
068others and bored i would love to hear from you guys an argument as to why our group of massless kids being separated in a different room having a separate bathroom separate water fountain and a separate lunch time away from the mask kids is not segregation board why are we not allowed to silently sit in a classroom without a piece of paper on our face we're losing our right to an education and lastly i want to bring up last friday last friday the illinois court system ruled for the illinois mass mandate to have a temporary restraining order in schools in the case the court ruled that if you interfere with a student's attendance because of their mass decision then your school is liable for class a misdemeanor this is relevant due to the fact that downers
069grove north is now giving out unexcused absences and will and that will be detrimental to the students records because the absences can lead to suspensions and ruin kids chances of scholarships and or job opportunities that leads me to my final statement and question why are you guys allowed to illegally ruin your kids students opportunities to grow in life for what seems to be a money scam or just so your district can receive more funding and ford i thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to speak and i encourage you to rule in favor of freedom education the first and fourteenth amendment and most importantly unity thank you guys [Applause] next is erica roush followed by brooks johnson uh my name is erica roush and i would like to thank you for holding this meeting
070um i have an eighth grader and a junior at downers grove north and today was the best day for my eighth grader going into school mask free i would like to see the same for my junior i'm standing here today because as an american citizen it is my right to choose and i want my children to exercise their freedom of choice without being bullied and harassed by their fellow classmates and peers to date we have been wearing masks because we believe that it can help save lives but i can tell you a piece of cloth will not we recently lost my husband and my children have had to listen to kids say shouldn't you wear a mask your dad just died we have given society the false sense that wearing a mask will save your
071life there are other much more effective measures in place that allow us to protect the vulnerable but an ill-fitting improperly worn cloth mask students and teachers are wearing is not a mitigation strategy two years is enough so much damage has been done already and it must end we need to put our kids first the mental and emotional toll that we have put them through is unacceptable so i am begging you please vote for your freedom for our freedom for everyone's freedom that is what living in the united states is about give us a choice to unite us all you can go to a concert a sporting event a casino soon enough public spaces throughout our community where you are yelling singing bumping into people but in school where you spend most of the time quietly
072learning trying to listen to your teacher while they are three to six feet apart you have to wear a mask we are failing our children while many other states are living their lives without a mass mandate with no safety issues please unite our community and let our see our children smiling faces again we all need this thank you [Applause] next up is brooks johnson followed by kevin custer hello all my name is brooke johnson as dr daley just said currently a senior at dgn before i start i just want to quickly say thank you so much for giving your time and a chance to speak tonight a majority on behalf of the majority of the senior class even though on paper it may not seem like it there are many more students and staff members
073that are pro-choice than you are led to believe according to my own head count there were anywhere from 75 to 85 students masculine students i should stay held in the auditorium last week some might think 75 students was way more than they thought would be pro-choice that's just at north i'm here to tell you that's not even a fraction of the total number of students and staff that prefer to go mask optional kids and staff are scared to do what they believe in due to many reasons to begin with many kids are in sports and are unable to demonstrate their right of not wearing a mask as you all know the student the current student policy is that students are unable to attend after school sports as punishment because i am currently not in a
074sport i'm able to practice my right with no repercussions in terms of sports and activities however if it were football season it's a sport i play it would be the other way around and those not in the sport would be fighting for me i know this because i am thanked multiple times a day by my peers and other staff members also a very small percentage of kids in school have already committed to a university and don't have to worry about their grades as much my grades have already dropped since last week and this just adds on to the list of reasons why many kids still wear their masks and are forced to finally what i think is the biggest factor is bullying as the deans have seen and hopefully they've showed mrs demet and dr
075deeley there's been an extremely high number of bullying reports since last week and the past two years specifically because of masks and the students opposing views on the matter i think you would all agree that only a small portion of bullying actually gets reported to staff members and deans whether it's online or in person so as a student i can confirm that i constantly see fire from kids to other kids or staff members behind closed doors because we support going mask optional we appreciate and respect people's opinions to continue to wear a mask however this is not the case when you flip things around i can't speak for everybody who wants mass required because some people are very respectful however many mask required supporters have consistently delivered hate and threats to myself and others since
076last week there are pictures of people calling us derogatory words giving us hate and death threats i personally have received a death threat both directly and in general towards everyone who doesn't want to wear a mask this is obviously another problem in and of itself but it clearly shows why even more kids who want to are unable to not wear a mask as them now now as you know very few kids are able to sacrifice their grades time respect and clean records to practice what they believe in going mask optional thank you [Applause] kevin custer is next followed by noel manley good evening board my name is kevin custer i my son is a senior and i've been a resident downers grove since 1972. i've encouraged this board and individuals on this board several times
077to be leaders for all parents when discussing the mass optional proposal my words of encouragement have consistently fallen on deaf ears it was one time after the last board meetings when i realized my family's rights were not being protected or respected i also began to understand that governmental overreach is allowed to spread when good people do nothing i decided to act i am one of two district 99 parents named in the lawsuit governor pritzker and by extension this board denied my family process under the law due to the judge's ruling my son will no longer be forced to wear a mask he will wear a mask if he chooses to wear a mask because my family is exempt from wearing a mask you might ask why am i here tonight i am not here because
078of my son his rights are now protected i'm here tonight to fight for all parents each family member should be entitled to choose the best medical decisions to protect their family in the letter that was sent out last night it said masks are a symbol of division and disruption i agree if you continue to deny families the right to choose what is best for their lives you are fueling division and problems in the school students health should not be political this should not be a left issue or a right issue this issue alone is about freedom of choice my family and i will respect anyone who chooses to wear a mask i'm also asked asking you to respect people that choose not to i'm encouraging this board to respect the dignity and sovereignty of each
079individual to make their own collective choices now is your time to lead courageously and vote for mask optional i generally want each person on this board to be on the right side of history and correct for these divisive and illegal mandates [Applause] uh noel manley is next followed by barbara allen good evening my name is noel manley and i'm from darien illinois superintendents across illinois have been given a false sense of control by governor pritzker enhanced by prospects of receiving huge funds from the rescue esser fund money from the federal government in 2020 d 99 received 313 thousand dollars in esser funds for covid relief in 2021 d99 received almost eight times more esser funds four million dollars how much money is this per student what exactly is the money being used for students are
080at low risk for covid and always have been so one has to ask what kind of rescuing is going on to obtain this money d99 had to do something in return keep kids masked and muzzled provide locations for covet testing and vaccines surreptitiously placing sexually explicit materials on school libraries and to push boundaries of sex education in issuing his unilateral executive orders governor pritzker ignored and bypassed the do the duty elect the duly elected representatives of the people the governor is governed by fiat refusing to work with the legislature with tonight laws to obtain input he purposely disregarded the people's right to due process in so doing the governor has exceeded his authority violating his oath of office to uphold the constitution of the united states in the illinois constitution the illinois department of health
081was never authorized by the legislature to delegate authority to any other body of government including school districts thus none of the school districts in illinois ever had the authority to mask or quarantine our kids judge grishall's order confirmed this was an abuse of power and has gone on for the past two years d-99 board members which side are you on the people of district 99 or the federal government do you care about students and the psychological impact two years of masking have caused or are you politically motivated to keep kids masked in order to get more federal money are the yeser funds worth it is the damage to our children worth it thank you barbara allen is next followed by [Music] david pintinger hello dr thiel and members of the board my name is barbara
082allen i currently have a junior at downers grove north and two children at downers grove district 58. the burden of my mother's guilt has been heavy this school year as i have watched my sweet innocent third grader walk into school with a mask plastered over her beautiful face because we were told it is the law in illinois and she has been brainwashed to believe that if she did not have her mask properly fitted over her nose and mouth that someone's grandma is going to die last thursday district 58 voted for mass choice i hope you have the courage to do the same i was at that district 58 meeting and spoke at a board meeting it was the first time i had spoken at a board meeting in my life when the board voted for
083a vast recommended mask recommended policy the entire room burst out ensuring an applause board members i hope you will also vote for mask choice after the vote a heavy burden had been lifted my third and seventh graders would no longer be forced to wear a mask at school my focus quickly shifted to my daughter at downers grove north i will fight for her just the same i will fight for her rights and i will not give up until my daughter is given the choice to wear a mask or not in school a few facts fact k-12 schools across the state and country have been masked optional for this year with no significant difference the health and safety of staff and students compared to schools who require masking fact at downers grove north most students and
084some teachers too are not properly wearing masks over their nose and mouth i ask you how is this offering protection for anyone fact a properly fitted n95 is effective at protecting the wearer and does not rely on the behavior of others around you for protection high quality one-way masking is more effective at protecting the vulnerable than universal use of low-quality masks fact concert stadiums restaurants and bars are full of massless people with no significant rise in cases fact schools are not a high risk environment fact district 99 is currently following an illegal mandate by the governor for required mask wearing in schools we are well into our third year of living with the ramifications of cove 19 mandates it is time to give the students and staff of district 99 the choice on mask wearing
085it is time to give our students the chance to heal as members of the school board you have a great privilege to make decisions that support our school and our community the best decision for our school in our community is one that moves toward a past path toward normalcy the first step in that is to make maths optional thank you david pittinger is next followed by steve peters i'm going to ask that you need to put your mouth put your ass on please oh but he doesn't no but he's named in the lawsuit all right please so now i completely understand what the other folks were talking about when they feel like they're second-class citizens right in the definition by the other north student who was here who was talking about that as well but
086that's not why i actually came to talk to you guys the reason i came to talk to the board here was because what i see in the way boards public health officials hand are handling this pandemic is not consistent at all with how most people in risk management handle issues and i say that because i work in cyber security i run a global team of people who assess issues potential issues deal with what people perceive to be issues and then the other thing we do is put in place mitigation plans and prioritize those and one of the things that our biggest thing is to try to get the biggest bang for the dollar without having too many additional spillover costs or lost opportunity and the way that that works in a very risky uh business
087where there's there's billions of dollars to lose where everyone is trying to protect themselves their assets their business their employees jobs is not consistent at all with the way i see government school districts uh the health department at all dealing with this one of the things that i've that i spent a lot of my time doing certainly all the way through college like i have a math degree in addition to computer science degree and one of the things like and i study statistics a lot when i see that 100 cases and i'm talking about sick people we're talking about cases constitutes high on a statistical basis like unless it's actually extremely deadly that that's a rounding error in most statistical things that that i deal with that i've dealt with in the past and and
088and um mr feely you mentioned earlier that um what did you mention earlier you mentioned see i don't bring any notes um oh yes you mentioned that statistically you could go and you could find anything you wanted to support a data point is one of the things you said and that's exactly right you know because i've read i read a long time ago how to lie with statistics and you can do that the question though is if i can go out and if i can shorten the data periods of certain things i can grab different groups but i only compare certain numbers i can prove any point i want pretty much with numbers and the thing that i have seen though is that with the masks if there if there was true efficacy it would
089stand out in the numbers like crazy and it doesn't it doesn't at all so i'm asking you just to make a mandatory i mean make them optional because mandatory is certain out of time thank you all right thank you appreciate it i just asked everybody to bring their mask over their mouth and nose people's masks are slipping down thank you uh steve peters followers could i ask you to put your up please so we can continue steve over your nose steve peters ladies and gentlemen of the board thank you for taking the step of holding this emergency meeting steve steve give me a second we asked him to pull his mask up yes yes he did yes we explained that uh steve peters will be followed by ben pittenger go ahead steve thank you all
090for taking the step of holding this emergency meeting my name is steve peters none of you know me none of you have ever received an email from me or a voicemail or a phone call i wish it would continue to be that way i've never attended a board of education meeting and in fact i've never watched one the last time i watched for the first time ever was last month because you all were gracious enough to invite my son a junior at downers grove north to speak to you about his incubator class that was a classy gesture it was appreciated by everyone including him thank you all for doing that that same student who you lauded in january last week was forced to endure ridiculous treatment from your designated disciplinary reps at downers grove north
091why because for the first time since march of 2020 he went to school without a mask let me quickly read a civics lesson that i recently received via email we respect a student's right to participate or not participate in any demonstration while one might see a student's behavior as earn a civic action and therefore educational the full lesson requires students to accept the consequences both intended and unintended of their actions the civics lesson is compromised by reducing those consequences it is to put it mildly hard to believe that the same group of individuals who i praised in my first paragraph for the would are the same people responsible for those words last week used as an unveiled threat against a group of district 99 students i imagine you're all embarrassed that you allowed your lawyers
092to convince you to use that phrasing and if you're not yet you will be someday it's okay we all understand how pressure forces individuals and groups into making bad choices personally i thank you and i especially thank you for the timing of the message as it really helped me frame a discussion i was heading to that night so while pressure forces bad decisions fear leads to truly disastrous actions and your reprehensible message can only be taken as a disastrous act disastrous act born out of fear please understand though the students you're so desperately trying to punish and segregate fully understand the tactics you're employing and why you're doing it they know it's because you're afraid of them finally demonstrating who has the power in any school district the students do it's okay though as superintendent
093thiele began last night with his message his suggestion would be to remove the mass mandate it's not too late for this board to do the right thing damage has been done and i think it will take a long time for students impacted by your decisions to forgive you however america has an incredibly forgiving history it's true that recently our politics and culture have been less so but on this one fairly small issue it's okay for all of you to quote take the loss start the process of reconciliation superintendent thank you for doing it last night now it's the board's turn my name is steve peters none of you know me or most of the other parents with whom i've been in contact for the last week and i hope that remains the case thank you
094ben pittinger is next followed by hugh calif hi i'm ben pittenger a student at dgs i'm here because i believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed i'm not one for public speaking and i wouldn't be here unless i believed in what i'm about to say now for the past week i've spent my time at dgs locked in a room e233 us students call it purgatory because we are at school but not allowed to attend our classes we are stuck in a limbo now over this past week as mr thiele said we have seen a lot of disrespect for our stance on masks and just on the way to get lunch we would get yelled at multiple times by people sitting at a table mask list with all of their friends now i
095want to talk about choice it is my choice to choose to not wear a mask at school and i understand that i was put in that room because of my choice but it is also your choice to keep my education going and put me back in class masculists and i feel that every student has the choice to wear a mask or not wear a mask i respect everybody who chooses to wear one and everybody who chooses to not wear one and i feel that if you want to reduce your risk that you have you can get vaccinated your grandparents can be vaccinated me personally both of my grandparents are fully vaccinated and up to date on their boosters so i have no one in my family that i'm looking to protect everyone in my family
096is healthy and ready if the virus was to come their way and now to address some things mr thiele said in his presentation the high transmission rates that he quoted was a hundred plus per hundred thousand that is point one percent of the population in no other term besides right now talking about covid is point one percent high that is a rounding error and to talk about what he said proper masking it is frustrating as a student who chooses not to wear a mask in school and to be locked in a room to walk out of school at the end of the day to leave that room and walk through the hallway and see hundreds of kids wearing their mask improperly to see it below the nose below the mouth below the mouth or just
097resting below their chin i would say that at least 30 percent of the school in the hallways does not wear a mask properly thank you for your time uh hugh calif is next followed by isabella felice i believe it is hugh hello uh thank you for um having the meeting tonight um in october of 2020 i was at the downers grove park district and i had a heart attack and i died on the in the weight room and i was dead for about five minutes and there was a nurse there and she's actually a mom from downers grove north and she gave me the aed and brought me back to life wow i was in icu for 18 days and they changed it to the covid floor they brought all the covet patients in and
098i didn't i didn't have to wear a mask and when i got switched to another floor just i think it was the sixth floor i still didn't have to wear the mask and my my exercise was to walk around the floor and i would do that and i still did i got tested i didn't have covid i still haven't i haven't had a vaccine in 50 years the last vaccine i had was when i was 13 years old going into high school so the masks science has not proven that these masks are effective i'm not even sure that the uh that the virus is airborne because it's look how much space there is here there is here these masks should be optional and um i just i just think that until the there's too many
099too many scientists are giving too many different answers and that just tells me that nobody knows so you just got to keep going and you got to find out for sure what's going on and if you use the oxygen those little oxygen sensors if you're at 95 percent that means these kids these young kids their brains are still developing so in five years or 10 years is something going to happen that everybody is going to regret so for six or eight hours these kids are in school and they're going to have 95 percent oxygen when they should have a hundred percent oxygen because because we made a mistake we can't afford to make those kind of mistakes and if in the future we um if in the future we we can't take the chance of
100making a a regret like this so i think it's safer to not have the mask because covet is 99.95 percent mild and that's all i have to say isabella is next followed by sydney mccormick hello board of education dr thiele dr dement mr schwartz parents teachers and students my name is isabella felice and i'm a sophomore a sophomore at our north campus over the past week as i'm sure you know our schools have been fighting for a mass optional ruling and i'm in support over the past two years school has looked very different from normal and we thank you for continuing to support us through those times however i believe it is time for a change over the past week my peers and i have been painted as a distraction in this situation however when
101we asked what the distraction was it was that we were getting called out of class to be escorted by deans or security so i would like to ask how does this make us a distraction along with being called a distraction we have been degraded by faculty as well as students one teacher even went as far as to tell their class i hate all of them as we're respectfully exercising our rights as a student who continues to listen to my peers thoughts and opinions i believe it is unacceptable for teachers to be talking in such a degrading way that was just one example from teachers outside the classroom inside of our asynchronous learning classrooms on wednesday i personally was declined to lunge another example from inside of our asynchronous learning group groups was a group of
102students being yelled at by an administrator every day the blinds in the room got closed more and more and when a student asked if he could open the blinds he was yelled at being told that he couldn't learn if the blinds were open with all these factors given i would like you all to know that we aren't anti-mask we are pro-choice we believe that a mask optional ruling for our district can make us all feel happy healthy and safe thank you [Applause] next is sydney mccormick followed by carolyn quigliama greg limo i'm sorry i probably butchered that hello board my name is cindy mccormick i am a freshman at downers grove north and i would like to let you know or tell you about how it was like to be a student last week during
103all this um i have never really been good at like public speaking but i thought it was like necessary enough to come up here today and speak i've always been told by my parents no matter what your someone else's opinions are even if you do not agree with that you should always respect it and down in school north they send out emails telling us even if um whatever your opinions are you will be respected and even if you choose not to wear masks you'll be respected and like and you'll have a good learning environment all this stuff so i thought it was right like i wanted to like use my right not to wear a mask and they that it was not how they told us it would be students were posting photos of like
104kids like not wearing masks giving us death threats saying like they should be hospitalized and like a lot of stuff and i and many other students told their deans about it and i showed photos and all they told me is we're dealing with it which was not very like for kids saying death threats and having their names and stuff and not even getting punished i feel like that is kind of like and they also told us that our education like well you'll be in asynchronous room and you'll still have like the same education like you'll have like all the learning stuff you need and i have iep ip iepd so i've never like i've always kind of been behind in class and like i'm it's really hard like for me like like in some of
105my classes and stuff so it's always like been hard like doing like work so my being in the asynchronous room and learning like having a week without some of the learning has really put me behind and a lot of my grades like all my grades and each have gone down significantly and yeah so that's basically all i wanted to say thank you for your time [Applause] carolyn is next followed by lily roche thanks superintendent teal and um hey i'm going to repeat my last name i'll break it down gu yelmo and when i first addressed the school board back in july i appreciated the fact that you guys always like to try to get hard names right so my name is don't always succeed i know but you try and i appreciate that and i
106think you you des you should have a well-deserved vacation this has been a very difficult time for you as a superintendent and first i want to commend you um on having to deal with the politics and the fall of the united states and they are putting it on the school boards and public employees because all of the public employees in this nation are funded by working people tax dollars who don't have recession proof jobs and your school district teaches a lot of children who come from recession-proof families from skilled trades who don't have jobs a lot of school school children in the last 20 years their families lost jobs had to move out of illinois but first i want to commend you on your handling of this you didn't ask for this i know the
107school board didn't ask for this and i also wanted to commend you on your presentation tonight and as you know as i've spoken in the past i am a nationally recognized workplace safety and health expert who has a lot of peer-reviewed publications and respiratory protection and i heard this gentleman earlier talk about the risk management field and every protocol and policy coming out of the cdc has been countered to real science i have addressed many national uh public committees in the government on these things so i want to recommend to you one kudos for your recommendation tonight and i hope the board will follow suit in that recommendation but it would behoove you not one person in this school system is a certified safety professional a certified health and safety tax technician there's not been
108any air sampling done through certified industrial hygienists whether it be and there's a profession and you guys don't know that yeah so so anyways i would behoove you to perhaps reach out to me or perhaps this gentleman and um i've also worked on respiratory issues in another school system outside of washington it would behoove you to have an audience with us where we can explain the whole science of controlling hazards and i just wanted to correct you on your um presentation in in the business of hazards it's not mitigation measured it's called the control of hazards that's the proper term time thank you [Applause] lily hello board teachers parents my dad and everybody else who has joined us here today my name is lily rochet and i'm a junior at the our north campus along
109with many of my peers here today i'm in favor of a mass optional ruling i know that this brings fear to some people as well as discomfort but to some this is what they've been waiting for within downers grove there is such a split politically and it's very discouraging to me who's a student about to get ready to go to college and into the real world over the past almost two years there's been a lot of fear especially at the beginning as no one fully knew what to do but over the past couple of months this fear has been promoted one example could be cook county requiring people to be vaccinated or else they could not be allowed into the business while yes it has been proven that the vaccination can help lower the severity
110of symptoms people who are vaccinated are still getting sick along with that the kova death rate is significantly lower than when the virus first came out because it is no longer as unknown as it once was people are recovering from this virus this virus should no longer be causing people to live in fear there are many things that bring people fear that eventually they do have to face i know for many students it could be not getting into the college that they want to or maybe into the program that they're trying to get accepted into but even then they're still forced to make a choice for themselves i believe it is start to time it is time to start preparing people to face their fear of the removal of masks and choose what best fits
111them each day within many schools as you know they are granting students the choice to make them the most comfortable and confident inside of their learning environment and i think as a district we should follow their lead with that being said i think your plan to give students n95s is a fantastic idea as it's proved to be the only effective mask and that it does not let people around or does not require other people around you to wear a mask as well i believe that if you vote mask optional you're promoting a safe environment where people can have their opinions heard and cared for we are not anti-mask we are simply pro-choice once again my name is lily roche and i thank you all for giving us the opportunity to speak today [Applause] okay that
112closes our reception to visitors correct that's everybody who has submitted a form i want to go back to the recommendation here and then i have a couple more things before you continue okay your conversation um because we expected a large turnout of people that wish to speak and we realized with safety and coveted mitigations we wouldn't be able to even if we were in a larger venue hear from everybody right we opened up the forum for public comments immediately upon announcing tonight's board meeting the board has had access and has been reviewing those comments as they came in some came in while we were sitting here tonight and the board obviously has not had a chance to review those however everything that has been submitted will become part of the official board minutes at this
113point in time we have received 235 comments i've been asked before to summarize those and i can tell you the summary is they're all over the place right just as everybody's perception is right now as we know that we also the board and myself over the last week have also reviewed or received comments all from all perspectives from individuals that were concerned that they didn't want their point of view recorded in the board minutes because they were afraid of repercussions that would come from others in the community and that that's not one side or the other it was both sides it's unfortunate that that's the the point of time that we're in it was wonderful to hear from a respectful group of speakers that followed the protocols this evening we've heard from and the great
114majority of the comments is the public will eventually see as they become in our heller felt are well thought out people are sharing what they believe is their opinion on this at this point i believe that the board has heard my perspective they've heard the perspective from hundreds of people through the community i will turn it over at this point for the board to discuss i'm here to answer any questions that you have and then dr kupka will ultimately to ask the question okay we're going to open for discussion i think we'll start with there is does anybody want to even make a motion at this point and then we'll open to discussion for the recommendation okay so you have to read it i hope that we adopt the superintendent daley's recommendation to go mask
115optional okay is there anybody who is just assigned not a second okay can we just say as presented as presented so let's open discussion would either of you like to start go ahead all right well well first off i just want to say you know my fellow board members here know that i've been i've i started bringing little props with me to kind of keep me uh focused on why i'm really here because sometimes it's hard and so tonight i brought i brought a couple of shirts so south side pride right and better together and this was from a few years back but positively north right remember this one respectful responsible engaged and i i appreciate very much um the public comments this evening and and um and how respectful this has gone um so
116i have a statement i prepared so now i get to i get to speak right my three minutes of fame um attorneys and judges will continue to debate legal opinions regard relating to coveted mitigations just as they have always done for things non-code related while they do we have students who need to be educated and that's my concern in response to those who have threatened me with untold consequences know this i do not make board decisions based on what's best for me and never will i care about my kids and your kids i had four kids in this district the youngest of whom just graduated i currently have three nieces at downers grove south it's personal for me i'm thankful it's personal for you too your threats have consequences for not voting the way you
117want me to your threats of consequences for me not voting the way you want me to vote or at least a demonstration that you do care it's my sincere hope that one day soon we can set our differences aside we are one community as shirts i just showed you were better together respectful responsible engaged i recently read an article about our cove masking dilemma by journalist joe philippic that i found compelling here's an excerpt that really hit home for me if case rates are low the vaccinated should have more opportunities to live mask free because let's be honest masks do come with costs they can be uncomfortable especially when worn for long periods at a time they interrupt basic human communication so much of how we understand each other and send subtle cues is through
118our facial expressions which mask conceal when we can't see each other's faces we lose a primary means via which human animals connect and at least anecdotally we can become even more atomized and less empathetic to each other and while the impact of masking out on children is still being studied experts largely say that kids are flexible and can adapt or catch up many parents and some experts worry that prolonged masking could impair children's language skills and their social emotional development and argue that kids shouldn't have to continue catching up and be resilient as a society we have to balance competing interests and potential harms we do this all the time we set speed limits and mandate seat belts in cars we don't but we don't expect to have zero traffic fatalities and we don't even
119set highway speed limits low enough to radically reduce traffic deaths because we've essentially decided that we need people to be able to get to where they're going and that is worth the trade-off what we need is not just clear guidance for the here and now but a clear formula for when mass mandates should lift where they should lift and when they may need to be reinstated covet 19 is not a static disease and public health guidance should evolve as the disease does some experts have already weighed in on this on what this might look like and it seems to be based on a combination of case rates hospitalization rates vaccination rates and variant type and those will vary as dr ashish jah put it on twitter we should quote think of like think of this
120like the weather when it is bucketing rain umbrella raincoat boots all are essential when the storm turns into a drizzle those become less critical in other words tweedeja quote during periods of low infections restrictions come off during potential future surges public health measures may need to temporarily return one commonsense approach would be to require covert 19 vaccination in schools given that public schools in all 50 states already require a whole host of vaccinations before students can walk through the doors but in a country where there is a right-wing backlash to basic preventative public health measures though it's hard to see this happening but when case rates are significantly down hospitals aren't overwhelmed and community vaccination rates are high it's time for a reprieve students and staff should be able to unmask in these conditions this
121article captures a sentiment many of us share we need to evolve balancing competing interests in all potential harms indeed it's that sentiment that caused myself and another board member to call for this emergency meeting our guidelines based on cd and cdc and health department guidance have not evolved they were put in place at a time when most of us weren't vaccinated and or caught and recovered from covid society and our partner districts are unmasking recently enforcing our mask requirements has created a chaotic and device divisive environment in our buildings it has forced too many of our staff to spend more time on enforcement and student learning as we heard tonight from principal schwartz i support and encourage wearing masks in our schools however enforcing a requirement for masking isn't sustainable without broad community support in
122a time when nearly all of us are vaccinated or recovered from covid and no longer at risk of severe disease we now have kn 95 and n95 mass for staff and students who need them which wasn't the case several months ago there are also reliable treatments available for those who contract covet circumstances have evolved significantly since we approved our return to in-person instruction plan it's unfortunate that guidance from our political and health care leaders hasn't evolved as such it falls to me it's time to move to a mask optional phase which i believe should begin immediately i'm afraid that waiting until friday to allow staff and students to make arrangements to adjust to new protocols is preferable but may not be practical because i believe that our action this evening regardless of what action we
123take will only increase the level of masking disobedience and loss of learning focus tomorrow and that's all i have to say thank you can i ask you a question mike yes certainly when you talk about like you know your raincoat analogy yeah or your umbrella analogy at what definition does one put their umbrella back up who decides that that's the whole i think i you know that that actually the article that i quoted actually spoke to that and that we don't have that clear guidance and it has to it has to fall to us right so it's how you know it's the speed limit and how you know how how high how low do we set the speed as a society we ultimately have to decide what the risk and the rewards are and find
124a balance so high and substantial transmission is not that speed limit so the question would be how you define so somebody else is defined for us what high and substantial is right and that hasn't changed and it hasn't changed despite the fact that we've had vaccinations we've had so many of our public infected and recovered um and and we have now n95 mass which people can use to protect themselves and so i i i believe we've reached we've just reached a point where this makes sense and honestly even if i didn't think we did it we did okay we've got such disruption going on in the schools because we have so many so many students and parents that feel that way that it's our eyes are off the ball we can't we cannot continue this
125way the students need to be we need to get back to being together and we need to accept the risk as it is right now which i believe is acceptable risk i was in favor of our return to in-person instruction plan before and that was several months ago the conditions are different now and this is why i'm taking the position i am nancy i'd like to can i can i address your question just um i do i will still regardless of what the board decides tonight we'll still continue regular conversations with the dupage county health department they're still monitoring case activity in our schools and in the past with any other disease that's been like when the flu has been around i i even hesitate to use the flu because we know this isn't the
126flu but i'm going to um dupage county health department consistently monitors case activity of illness in schools and has made recommendations in the past that it is time to send kids home for an extended period of time so they can get away from one another you can do deep cleaning you can do all of those things are still at our disposal if the board accepts this recommendation tonight all of those practices will continue with the dupage county health department moving forward so if it is raining we still have the opportunity to open an umbrella and the board's resolution remains with if there are changes made at government or health official levels above us i have the authority based on the on the board's approval to put those changes in immediately if needed and then call
127a special board meeting to then vote on those things so i believe we do have the measures in place where if things do go the wrong direction here because of this change that i have the authority and the board obviously has the authority to step in and make changes so it's the health department did anyone say something i was just going to say think that part of that rain metaphor is that it is it might be different for any one of us but that's why it's kind of time for choice and you know i think it's just it's too disruptive we now have our elementary school district following a policy so within households they're going to be you know following different protocols it just doesn't make sense school has been way too disruptive you know
128they should be educating they should be in person learning shouldn't just be the minimum you know we want our educators educating we want our children thriving we want our classrooms engaged we don't want some in this room some in that room some on a monitor some in person we want them together they're better together [Applause] um do you wanna okay i i guess this has been like the most difficult decision for me i i go back and forth on it um i think you both you presented a wonderful i really appreciated what you said in dr thiele i think you make a very good argument however you know i guess my background as a social worker and i think first before i go on i want to commend all those students who came and said
129your views and um you i'm glad very happy you exercised your rights as citizens that made me i was very pleased whether i agree with you or not that's not the point but i will say being a member of the 60s i remember protesting vietnam and there are consequences for what we do and that kind of comes along with the territory so i just might want to add that but my background is as a social worker and i have worked with primarily the most disadvantaged of students and we have some students in our in our own community who are that way and if we had someone in our own family who was weak we would want to support and protect them and and i feel like we should be that same way in the school
130be kind i know that this is difficult for everyone i hate wearing this mask it's just awful but i feel it's a small sacrifice in order to keep those who are not as strong as others safe and so i'm still i gotta say i'm still not quite decided but um i just wanted to express you know that view that and this is a hard hard decision for all of us i mean and dr thiele has been the most fantastic leader and given us great guidance and information and i hate whenever i hear people detracting from him i just want to add that did i had a few comments did you want did you want to go first or it doesn't matter i can go next because i wrote some things down and i'm i'm sure
131there are many arguments for both sides of the situation and they're very extensive so what i have to say is to our 99 families in our community i understand your desire for choice that has been the american way [Music] for centuries but these are very unusual times if we make the wrong choice there could be devastating consequences for those choices keep going please let me let me make my my statement uh i would love to go without a mask it's uncomfortable we all know that but to keep our students teachers staff and community safe i think keeping them on is the right way to do that until our numbers go down and our health care professionals are asking us to continue to wear masks for a little while longer maybe just until the end of
132the month which is just two weeks away two weeks we've been at this for 18 months let's just go the distance it's it's like we were in the chicago marathon and we stopped at the 23rd mile let's finish the race and hopefully it will be a positive outcome on another note i'd like to address many of the comments that were emailed to myself and many of the board members to threaten board members does not accomplish anything in fact sometimes it makes us go completely opposite of what you want to say many of them have said that i have not been concerned about our students and that's very hurtful to me those statements couldn't be further from the truth our children are on the foremost of my thoughts and actions every time i come to this
133board and i have been an advocate for students in this district for almost 30 years more than most of you have been alive and i find that so offensive in many of the emails there's been threats in bullying we do not accept bullying from our students and we shouldn't accept bullying from their parents this has been very divisive and is very detrimental to our 99 culture which we have worked very very hard to create this is as much work to be done to repair the damage that has been done i am hoping that in the future we can work together to give tips on behavior and actions that will get your point across without animosity and detriment to our students that's important and there are many reasons for keeping the current path for just a
134little bit longer our health care professionals and organizations recommend it we made a commitment to our teachers and staff that we would follow cdc guidelines and most important i think is what we should do to deciding to give to the administration a direction on our positive rate positivity rate excuse me maybe if we went by that number rather than just a date it would be a better outcome and um we have lost many people in our community and to not encourage masks vaccinations and boosters would be uh the wrong move and when we work together to fight this virus the whole community wins so i'm if i could just counter i think one of the issues is that we are running the race but we don't know the finish line we don't know if this
135is 26.2 miles or 31.2 miles or may 1st miles or spring break miles we know that for the rest of the state for the indoor venues there's two weeks but we we aren't being told anything consistent for schools and and as hank pointed out schools are the last line here that are being forced to enforce this at a level that nobody else in the community is being is being subjected to you know you can see even in a room like this that it falls down when you talk people take drinks imagine with you know a school of 2 000 kids what the practical effect is in a day of people wearing what has you know cloth disposable whatever masks and we're just you know we're just asking for choice i understand that but i'm looking
136at our positivity rate in the community right now it's a little bit above six percent and i'm saying maybe what we should do is regulate that down to three percent and then we know that's where we want to hit our target to take off our masks and make it a choice terry can i can i say about there was a time when i really you know we used to say i remember hank saying several times you know the data is imperfect but it's the only it's all we've got in this and this is what we need to go by so uh we got a couple of those um uh the government sent us some uh some free tests okay oh did you get yours and put mine in the day before and haven't gotten a
137thing yet i got mine and in fact last week my wife had a cold she had some coveted symptoms so we used we used one of the tests and she was a negative okay so it occurred to me that now people can test on their own none of that data is getting reflected in any of the data that we see and people aren't aren't sharing the information because they don't want to get somebody else you know it's it's it's become it's become less reliable and i'm not i can't i can't look at it the same way i looked at it before right so um i i just i guess i get you know we're either we're either gonna apparently we're either in the camp of i'm just gonna do what this what the department of
138public health says no matter what that is even if if even if we have a significant population of people who are saying hey wait a minute this doesn't make any sense to me anymore you know or we're going to look at as hank presented tonight in addition to that data that we're getting from the health care professions we look we look at also the data that we've been able to collect within our own school community as well as other schools in general and we and we see that hey schools have been a safe place whether they've been masking or not masking and and that's that's the data and i i guess i'm i'm just i i suspect that our our our leaders you know here who have come to us with this recommendation are looking
139at the same way that i'm looking at it i wish the i wish that our experience was being reflected in the guidance that's being offered to our schools it's not happening it's not happening and i and there isn't any sign that's going to happen anytime soon and you know i i get better safe than sorry uh but uh i i just i'm just very fearful that we have we've got we're reaching a point where even if we think that we should keep wearing mass it's just it's becoming more and more it's difficult to enforce and it doesn't make sense to our students into our parents and so it's it to me it's almost a moot point you know we can do and say what we want and our staff is going to do their damnedest
140you know to uphold the rules and they should and they're obligated to but be aware that the the cost of that is going to be less learning more disruption and more divisiveness and it sucks that we're the ones that have to make this decision i mean honestly you know it really does flow downhill here we are okay we're the board members we are we don't have political ambitions we don't get paid a penny to do this okay there's no there's no risk or harm in throwing us to the wolves right so we're not going to see any of that leadership coming from above and it falls to us we've got it we've got to be the ones to make the decision and and i i have to weigh everything and i listen i we we've
141been we care about the kids we we want to be sitting here if we didn't okay um but um these are tough decisions and sometimes we're you know we're on our own and we have to do what we think is best and i and uh if if you're not if if we have board members who aren't going to support this um i think we need to decide tonight when and how we're going to okay because we seldom i mean i don't know remember the last time that that our staff came to us with a recommendation and we said no i don't think so okay i mean we we placed a ton of trust in our leadership who we've paid good money to bring to us recommendations right and and and they've got their reasons for
142doing it i think they've done made a good presentation tonight why you've heard from head as well and i i think we need we really need to do this so so i would just like to say we still have christopher and i i would also like to hear from our two student board members i'm gonna if our if either of our two board student board members would like to say something they certainly are welcome to or if they want to wait and see it later let's stop put them on the spot can i like take one second like if chris wants to go first i will i'm 100 willing to talk but if i could just have like a second to process my thoughts without you put on the spot real fast i didn't mean
143to i didn't need to do that too you know you don't feel like you you certainly you certainly can take whatever time you need but you also don't have to say anything like that i apologize no you're okay did you do you want a moment as well to think or go ahead yeah the microphone thank you yeah um this is tough uh because there's a lot of different moving parts and there's a lot of interest from parents and students and there's there is no direction there's no there's no guidance from the state there's no guidance from the health department specifically i mean there's we're being asked to make a decision that most of us are not really prepared or qualified to make a lot of ways and to suggest that any of us are not
144considering how this is going to impact no matter how this goes to suggest that any of us are not considering that's right the weight of this vote uh disregards our our presence on the board and no matter how this vote turns out all of us care about the students and the health and safety and well-being of our students all of us want our students to be in person in the safest environment possible it's i understand the desire to move to a mass optional environment because of you know the the divisiveness and the bullying and it's it's unfortunate that that has an impact in in a situation like this because it should uh it should strictly be about the health and safety of all the students and the community members you know we have immuno-compromised students
145and disabled students we have students under the age of five who come into our daycare centers and we have teachers and and staff who are immunocompromised who live with immunocompromised people yes and i think it's somebody's got to be looking out for those people and it's i think more attention needs to be brought towards the fact that it's my mask doesn't protect me from you it protects or my mask doesn't protect you from me it protects me from hold on there's no right thing to say it's been a long night so it's it's and and it doesn't work one way right like it doesn't work if if if half the students aren't wearing masks and the other half are it essentially nobody's wearing a mask like because we're all sharing the same error and and
146so it's like this optional to me is sort of kind of off because it's like in my head it's either we all we're all wearing a mask we're all not because it the guy like the mask doesn't work if half of us aren't wearing it so yeah i don't know if anybody else wants to either the doesn't work if half of us aren't wearing them is true because yeah they're not wearing them pro i mean does this work no you know and and you know does it work if we're 75 students sorry are in the building and and they're not wearing a mask they're in the building yeah yeah i mean precisely so if you have mask optional i mean i really think if you go mask optional that mo everybody else it's gonna it's
147like contagion i think all the masks will be off i i know it's gonna go that way i mean that's just our whole state is going that way that's not what we're hearing from other schools in the area that have made they're really keeping them out there no they're but it is still the majority of students are still choosing to wear masks they're especially choosing to wear masks and settings in which people tell them i i it would be better for me if you did kids care about one another and i think that's why i said respectfully recommended i think if we share those things i've heard from a lot of the students that were protesting that said you know i i just i want the choice if i go into a classroom and a
148teacher tells me that there's a reason for it when you're around me i need you that they're gonna consider that if a classmate says that to them that they're going to consider that i would hope that they would because that's what we believe in here but it's one thing to to say that that's the culture we want to build and then this other aspect of the forced compliance that it with no no hope of a history of it falling off that's creating this tension right i understand that and i know how disruptive it is in schools i've worked in schools before and and they've had protests and it is it's highly disruptive to what's going on and i feel for the staff and for the students but at the same time i really feel for
149those people who are vulnerable who as chris put it who is advocating for them whose families are voting their families maybe but does that prohibit them from coming to school and receiving their education they're as entitled to it as anyone else no we would definitely like i said we already have appointments set up with families today to work on what the mask options are for them what the learning environment setting things are for them so that we can do our best to meet their needs and we've had to do that for students with uh health related issues for a variety of things schools make those adaptions but we have as we say people many of our families have extended family members that live at home who are vulnerable and it and the community is i
150feel yes i care extremely much about kids that's been my whole life work but there is the community at large that we have to consider too can i say that you know it's one of the reasons why we got vaccinated right that's why we got vacations okay and boosted you know is because i i listen i i don't think you know i had coveted at labor day i had a breakthrough infection okay i i survived i you know i know that you know thanks to the vaccines my own personal immunity whatever you know my risk is very low going forward right and and so but i still got my booster shot right and i still continue to wear a mask especially if i'm if i go into a client's house that you know they've got
151small children you know i'm i'm doing that and so you know it occurs to me so two things that once again you know we didn't have kn 95 and n95 mass available to give to people before okay we do now so there is as much as you know we were i was wearing that quality mask right for you know in for you and you were wearing it for me and you know now i actually have the ability to wear a little bit better mask um that actually does provide a little bit more protection for me and so that's a difference right um i yeah i i i could go on um i do we all we we we absolutely need to look out out for the least amongst us we do and and we need
152to continue to be that voice but we're not going to get to a zero risk well it's going to be on our table forever yeah yeah it's good and who's the governor is willing to remove it in two weeks for everybody except schools right he said all right the cd you know also i want to point the cdc and the department of public health have made a recommendation that mass be worn in schools they haven't recommended that we mandate it well because i'd like to hear what nancy has to say because she's a health care professional she's a phd so thank you terry so i you know i agree with many things that other people that all of you have said here and i i get it but i i did have a few thoughts
153that i wanted to share with the group um and i i try to organize them based on a lot of the major points that i saw people in the hundreds of emails and the hundreds of comments that we got um but i do agree with with because i think we're all coming from the same place we're all coming from we really would like our kids to be back at normal we really would like them to maximize their school day and i cannot explain some of the decisions that have been made regarding why this group or why the i can i have assumptions because we're in a congregate setting sure as opposed to a restaurant it's a different it's a different setting from a public health perspective uh but i i'm not privy to those conversations
154so i can only has my guess but i did want to share some thoughts and i would remind our board members we have two new board members but you know two years ago we sit in this very room struggling with covered mitigations remember how angry we got because nobody gave us any direction and we were trying to figure it out much like you're advocating for today how we leave we were when people finally when we finally got recommendations from both the cdc and idph and the dupage department of public health who i kind of grip in with idph those recommendations haven't changed and this suggests the assumption that they've not been they've just been there they're just sitting there like something stagnant that they're that they have not been continuously evaluated by public health bodies
155i think is not a right assumption they remain the same no question about that and can i defend all of them i absolutely cannot but i can defend a lot of them and i think we should not assume that people like wrote these recommendations and said we're never going to look at this again they're saying in spite of the fact that that um we have a high vaccination right in spite of the fact that we've put in air exchange in our schools um our recommendation remains the same there is an end point identified by the cdc and that is when we are out of high and substantial transmission it doesn't matter you know whether whether you think the it should be the positivity rate should be whatever or i think the hundred thousand should be
156whatever those those guide posts have already been established they haven't been changed that doesn't mean they aren't continuously evaluated right so you know to the argument that masks don't work we do know that school transmission is observed more often in school districts that did not enact mask requirements is it horrendously overwhelming it depends how you define that but we know that there is more transmission where there are no masks and if your argument is that masks are ineffective i would just remind you that calving masks is how we moved back to in-person learning from remote because now we had masks and unfortunately now we have higher grade masks that we're supplying to our students and that does provide additional protection to the individual wearing those but it does not change the fact that public health
157officials continue to recommend universal masking even with that knowledge again to those who argue that differences in mask requirements from our elementary partners will cause confusion i would remind you that district 99 has seven partner districts six of which require masks some hope that removing cover mitigations are going to reduce the divisiveness in our community this board as other people have said this board and administration have received threatening and abusive communications on issues before covet on issues unrelated to covet since kovitz onset now as evidenced here today many students and community members on both sides of this issue although only community members on one side of the issue came tonight but in the in their in their responses to the open survey and in the letters we've gotten we've seen that many students and community
158members have articulated their perspective without divisive speech without threats still others have been out now cruel to each other the weight and divisiveness in the community is not to remove safeguards but to respect other people's opinions and to civilly disagree this pandemic has negatively impacted all of us especially our students we're all in agreement on that therefore i would like to see us enhance our mental health services for our students and staff if you you may recall that right prior to the pandemic we just fortuitously because we knew there was a need and mental health has always been a large concern to the district we increased the number of counselors we have social workers we had all of our mental health the health staff and then coveted so what i would like to do is
159hear a plan from administration on how we're going to consult going further going on with mental health experts teachers students and parents to assess how to provide better support to those who are struggling with the effects of the pandemic even long after the pandemic mitigations are lifted so from my perspective i disagree with the motion i advocate to continuing following the recommendations of public health bodies for the nearly 5 000 students and 1 000 staff members within our buildings and that if and i believe that if we air we should err on the side of safety that's what i have to say yes i have some comments in response to board members but i'd like to give our students the opportunity to share if they were to if they would like to i thought it
160was loud okay i'll go first okay i was typing something out while you guys were all talking because i was like i knew like someone was gonna put me on the spot mike i didn't think it was gonna be you really didn't i might actually have to pinch you afterwards i'm just saying anyway um this is really hard i want to start off by saying i truly truly don't think it sounds so bad but i don't think there's a right choice either way we go tonight someone's going to be upset you can make everybody happy and that is truly tragic um this week going to school has been so hard not just for me i'm sure not just for scarlet but like a lot of people there has been bullying on both sides um a
161lot of my friends i have friends on both sides of everything um and i have seen them if they're not wearing a mask get told wear a mask you're like you're gonna hurt someone and if someone goes up to someone that is wearing a mask and coughs on them it's also not okay i i truly try to see like the whole perspective right because although i may think something i need to understand that i represent everyone at north and that's not easy especially right now i have so many people that i know that are immunocompromised and i understand why it's important for them to keep wearing a mask either way we go tonight i'm going to keep using a mask to keep myself safe my friends safe their families and my family safe and i
162also see it from those students who i truly am very pleased like you said that they use their rights um to do a protest i know they did it during school they did it on friday after school on main street and i understand their perspective as well they have a right to an education and i understand their point of view that that it may feel like that was taken away from them and i don't think it's all of them that are being rude or anyone not just one group of people is being rude there has been a lack of kindness on both sides a lack of respect and i think we all need to take responsibility for that and take ownership for that and i wish i could tell you what would be the best
163choice to take i i don't know i really wish i did and i don't um you put it very well thank you i'm trying hey okay so it's my turn um i first want to say thank you to all the students for coming out and speaking because i really respect that the students are here they're the ones in the building so i think it's most important that we hear from them personally like jade said i'm not just speaking on my behalf i'm speaking on the whole student body at south's behalf for me either way i probably will remain masked it's a personal choice for me and i think that's the one i want to make and now this might be bad to say but it's become a norm for me over the past 18 months
164i just i grab a mask when i leave the house it's normal and i do see where the other side's coming from optional masks i mean it has been 18 months and it's crazy that we're still masked but my biggest fear is going to be peer pressure in the classroom i think either way people are going to be pressured to do what they don't believe in a class if you walk in and you're comfortable wearing a mask but your whole class is not wearing a mask and you're going to sit there and the only one who's masked everyone's gonna be looking at you and you're gonna feel that you're gonna feel everyone's eyes on you and i think students are gonna feel pressured to take their masks off even if that's not their belief i've
165had students come up to me just today on my own team and say that's how i feel i will probably remain masked but if my whole class doesn't have a mask on i'm not keeping it on because i'm going to feel pressured to take it off and i've had teachers also say you know for me i'm going to probably stay masked but it's about respect i think like jade said there is no right choice in this either way people are going to be upset about the choice that's made so i think either way the biggest thing is we have to respect both sides you have to respect your peers if they choose to wear a mask or not wear a mask you have to respect your teachers because we don't know everyone's stories i mean
166just today i learned teachers have immuno compromised friends who haven't left their house in six months because they have transplants like we have to respect everyone and their own personal choice so i think that's gonna be the biggest thing when you make your decision tonight you have to think about how it's gonna affect the students because they're the ones who are in the building and they're the ones who are gonna be affected by this decision so if it's gonna make school unbearable because you're getting pressured and you're getting bullied like jade said then you have to take that into consideration when you make your choice tonight thank you right before the so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] yeah see if i can mess this one up now all right all right so uh as usual i will
167ride the middle here and and i have things on both sides first of all i don't think any board should ever make a change because students are breaking rules said that at the beginning of the night tonight regardless of how students believe if it is their right or not the board under their authority passed a rule in august to require masks to be worn at school it is my responsibility to ensure that the administration carries that out regardless of whether or not people in this community believe that is the right decision or not when the board gives the administration a direct instruction it is the administration's responsibility to carry that out and we will do so i understand that people feel like that this is something that shouldn't be done to them therefore that gives
168them the authority to break the rules there's a lot of rules out there that people feel that shouldn't be done to them that doesn't give them the authority to break the rules and if they break the rules there are consequences to those as was demonstrated in civil rights in the times of civil rights and every time after that you you can make choices you can protest if you don't like what your employer is doing you can walk out on them but something's going to happen to you as a result of that your your perspective will be heard and these students perspectives have been heard however breaking rules at school no matter how much somebody agrees or disagrees with them comes with a consequence and we will continue to carry if whatever the board's actions are
169tonight as i said in my opening statement it is my legal responsibility to carry out the directions of the board and i will do that so make this decision today on what you think is best for learning for our students for our culture but don't make it because it's going to make it hard on the administration lord knows the last two years have been as hard on the administration as anything ever could be if we can't survive the next as terry said whatever it is coming next we'd be given up at the end so make the decision based on what you believe is the best decision to make i will ensure that my administration and staff will carry out what the board has directed us to do because that's our jobs and i believe greatly
170in demonstrating for our students the integrity of doing what you have said that you are going to do and when i took this job i agreed to do that and i will continue to do that with integrity for as long as the board directs me to do that if i can't do that i'll turn in my resignation i know that would make many people happy right now but i'm not going to do it because the board gives me a direct order two i've said this to you many times dr kupkin private conversations i'm going to say it in public the health experts are not education experts i believe the health experts for the last couple of years because they were forced to at the beginning were very focused on eliminating the risk of covid and
171at the beginning people were dying at unprecedented rates we didn't have any idea how to respond to this it was our responsibility as a community to step up and protect everybody since then vaccines access to high quality masks access to treatments just understanding that we need to have these conversations with one another about how we behave around one another our new established expectations as a school educator as an educator as a school administrator i must consider the whole child and nancy you brought up the idea of social emotional supports i believe that the masks as mike said earlier or i talked to earlier are getting into the way of the whole child experience that there are social emotional impacts at school i could have brought a whole nother data set to talk about those tonight
172there are social aspects there's communication aspects that right now are being blocked from this and when our students are leaving school those are not blocked when students leave school they go out into the society into society and when they're hanging out with their friends they're not wearing masks in a couple of weeks students will be able to go to target starbucks walmart taco bell anywhere that they want in society and will be able to have the choice of being masked or unmasked quite frankly i am exhausted over the fact that kids continue to have to be the front-line defenders against kovid and for the last two years our kids have been held to a different standard than our adults have and then all our adults do is about what goes on in schools and as
173a school leader i am exhausted by that not by our kids i love our kids i am exhausted that our adults haven't had been held to the same standard of our kids in their behavior in their covid response and in their expectations and that is why we are exhausted in schools not because kids are protesting not because kid we need to tell kids to put masks on because we continue to be held to a different standard in schools than everywhere else and in two weeks it's gonna happen again and i am just exhausted by two years of having to hold children who are statistically not as negatively impacted by covet i understand they're part of a larger community but that larger community of adults sure doesn't seem to care very much and our kids continue
174to have to carry their water and i'm tired of forcing our kids to carry the adults water in this community and in every community and for that reason i'm bringing you this recommendation tonight i'm i am exhausted that the adults will not hold themselves to the same standards that kids need to if the adults believe that everybody should be masked then do it right if they believe that our kids should stop bullying each other stop bullying each other and stop bullying us the adults need to step up the kids have done it for two years kovit has been carried on the back of kids who had to go remote who had to learn to teach to or who had to learn to learn to learn differently of a teachers that had to learn to teach
175differently and did a fabulous job of it yeah on a dime with no training and no expectations and did it and you know what our kids fell behind last year you know what this board did with esther monies that i heard people complain about tonight they made summer school free and you know what we did we got our freshman on track data back to the where it was before kovit as a result of that and they put mental health experts that they hired and this board put student support coordinators in place they made sure the kids that were out in quarantine didn't fall behind and they put interventions and interventionists in place to catch kids up and they put in path coordinators to make sure that kids that were disciplined would be caught up and
176they put in more social emotional support and counseling support so when i see the criticism that comes in from this community that says that this board doesn't care about kids i call bs it's hard i'm here tonight to call it so regardless of what the board decides tonight i will continue to lead with integrity but i'm telling you that it's becoming hypocritical that kids have to bear the brunt of this and i am quite honestly exhausted by it that is why i make my recommendation tonight that it goes effective on the 18th because it just can't happen soon enough that the kids stop having to carry everybody else's water if the board cannot do that tonight i will recommend an alternative recommendation that it goes into effect on the 28th because there is absolutely no
177reason that kids should have to do this when the adults don't have to so with that i will turn it back over to the board i'm done very well i think though to be clear it would not be the right we should not assume that all adults feel that children should carry the water that all adults are not out to find the cove mitigations no i would say that the actions have been put in place by those above us have forced kids to carry that water i would agree the kids have to carry it and the adults don't i don't have to wear it at work you know i it it's constantly on the kids you it's it's time to give families a choice it's my job to represent the kids that i that's the
178best way i feel i can at this point and we'll help the kids we always do the kids that are marginalized the kids that have health issues the kids that are just concerned about this change we will help that's what we're here to do that's what we've dedicated our careers to we will do that i think too the kids will surprise you i think they will i agree they want to get back to that standard too and this is part of it making a choice all right is it there's a motion on the table right now we have wait wait mike you have you have no i so i yeah i i would like to know i would like to know from those that are undecided or haven't stated uh with certainty how they're going
179to vote um if they would make a suggestion friendly amendment um something something along those lines because we need to do something tonight for me i don't want to leave here tonight unless we get something done and we just can't i don't we can't go on this way i want to make an amendment to your motion and make it the 28th i can live with that do you want to vote on the your original do you want to vote on the original one your original or just accept the amendment is it a one-shot deal no no we can make another do the other two want to want to speak before uh i i i think terry's amendment i i might go along with that yeah all right so well i would say we just accept
180the amendment then because we need the we need four votes to get it done so you need to amend your i do yeah okay so i would like to accept the recommendation of the superintendent and the staff to be effective on 2 28 starting that monday exactly okay can you call the vote asia okay you want me to do it you start with gentlemen mike mike okay jenny hackstrom hi mike davenport hi christopher espinoza joanna vasquez drexler aye nancy kupka no the motion carries and to be clear that masking is still recommended oh respectfully respectfully recommend we expect people to both mask or to to make the choice respectfully and respect other people around them it is recommended until the 28th it is still mandatory that students wear masks at all times at school can
181i um can i ask too we heard from at least one student who claimed this evening that he was locked in a room can we can we state with certainty that that is not a truthful statement yeah not locked in a room students want to kind of an in-school suspension right i just want to make it i just want to make it clear to those those following along that we aren't locking students in rooms correct um and and they um are getting their schoolwork in there and they're allowed to do it is there a certified staff member [Music] excuse me excuse me could you answer the question yes we are ensuring the teachers are communicating with students putting stuff on google classroom and following up with homework however it is impossible for a student to
182get the exact same student experience i understand that when they are removed from the they some of them were saying they had no work at all and i go well you can't sit there all day if the student feels like they aren't getting that work they should be reaching out to their teacher or they should be reaching out to the administration and we will ensure that they get the work that they need okay the other thing is you know peer pressure was brought up and that that is very concerning to me um how are you going to ensure that as you know because some kids really feel i do think that masks will fall away i truly do and how are you going to ensure that that doesn't happen i mean you've given us a
183couple you've given us a good amount of time now for our principals to work with the staff and the students to make sure we've taken proactive measures to make sure that that doesn't happen we recognize that that is a concern that's what we have the experts in the building to help lead us through and i trust that ed and courtney will help us do that and since we don't have a plan prepared for you right now at this moment no i know you don't i know i think by by removing the mandate component of it that respectfulness will will return i think it's easier if not we have our work cut out for us yeah we meet again if not we meet again yes i will call the board back together if things are not
184working or you know if the health department tells us to you've given me the authority to respond appropriately and i will so so since we're also addressing other issues that were brought up could you just for the benefit of those listening we've had quite a few emails come in and questions there is a process if any student is bullied yes or has an issue with the teacher there are processes in place yup to address that can you just review those really quickly well it's all on a case-by-case basis but you know they start with going to start with going to a trusted adult or a dean or an administrator and then we will follow through on all reports of bullying and harassment and we'll lead that to the appropriate outcome depending on the situation this
185isn't something where i can just say if this than that right we'll investigate it we'll look into it if it's determined appropriate there'll be appropriate outcomes so start by going to a teacher start going by teacher trusted adult administrator me we're here for i also wanted to i also want to point out that we heard we heard several times that that some people are getting consequences and others aren't and just because you don't know that the other person is getting a discipline or a consequence doesn't mean that those consequences aren't happening i know that i know that they're not with anybody i know that they are just because you don't see something happen right immediately in real time does it mean some consequence wasn't issued exactly correct much like a guideline being reviewed all right
186thank you board for your service we need a motion to adjourn so moved second terry and mike all those in favor aye aye aye all those opposed we are adjourned thank you