2021-08-02 CSD99 School Board Meeting - LIVE EVENT

001[Music] please we'll call christopher espinoza here cheryl fuller here jenny hagstrom here terry pavisic here joanna vazquez drexler present nancy kupko here thank you we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge 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 good evening um [Music] i just want to remind the board members because of the way that this is set up if you're trying to get my attention or dr feli's attention you may have to you okay we're going to start with student perspectives uh let's start with jade we have a little bit of uh background noise all right can everybody hear me yep awesome okay so in the last couple weeks since

002the boards met um school activities are starting up again which is very exciting we have band camp drum line color guard having their mini camps here on campus i was in person the other day and it was so nice to see the energy being brought back everybody was smiling excited to be here and it was really great those groups that i just mentioned are practicing because we got word that friday night lights will be happening this year and so we'll be getting home games for football our first one being on august 27th which is very exciting because i think everybody really missed having other people near them during the school year after the pandemic where everybody was very isolated so everybody is working very hard to make sure that all students feel welcomed and safe

003coming back freshmen and transfer student orientation is scheduled for next monday at 4 30 here at north us teachers and school leaders have been working very hard to make this possible we are all very excited to do this we want to make sure the freshmen and transfer students feel safe and welcome and informed when they're coming back and before then we also have another event called trojanpalooza a very fun name in my opinion on thursday august 5th from six to eight where it's going to be an open house type setup for people to be able to come in if they rsvp they get their schedules they can check it out check out their schedules like how their classes are going to go from day to day and they get to see the new renovations here

004in the building including our commons which are very nice i had a great first experience which is very exciting and we're going to have the therapy dogs here so i think that's the best reason also the health office will be available to present or collect any physicals or vaccination records and answer any questions and in terms of the next week we also have vaccination clinics being hosted here at north we have one tomorrow and we also have one on thursday wednesday wednesday for the second dose of the last clinic so with that i'll give it to scarlet okay so mine is going to be about two specific events some things happening at south before the start of the new year are orientation events for both the freshmen and sophomores at south tomorrow august 3rd the

005sophomores who were not able to attend in person at any point last year will be invited into the school and they're just going to gain some exposure to the building maybe feel a little bit more comfortable since they are sort of going to be in the same boat as the freshman and the goal of the event is to help their transition to be a little bit less stressful and the other orientation event that south will be holding is on saturday august 7th it's our mad dash for the incoming freshman at this event the students are going to participate in three small group sessions listen to a keynote speaker and watch some skits that address rumors that you might hear about high schools and incoming freshmen and they're also going to be able to ask questions

006to the leaders who are our juniors and seniors and just hopefully gain a little bit more exposure and have some more information and it'll help ease any of the worries that they have coming into high school thank you thank you jaden scarlett thank you both okay for tonight's for tonight's reception of visitors we're going to be bringing speakers to the microphone to speak on a first first-come first-served basis therefore we ask that you complete the speaker's slip and submit it to mrs nydak our board secretary the reception of visitors occurs in two stages first the public is invited to comment on anything the board is voting on tonight there is one action item where the administration is seeking approval of the return to in-person instruction planned approval resolution this reception of visitors will occur after

007the administration presents the plan so that everyone in the audience is aware of the details before commenting comments on this single topic are limited to 20 minutes with no more than three minutes per speaker later in the evening there will be an opportunity to address the board on anything concerning district 99 this reception of visitors may last up to 30 minutes with a limit of 20 minutes per topic and again no more than 3 minutes per speaker failure to comply with these guidelines or interruptions to the business of the board such as shouting or the use of vulgar or threatening language to the board or other visitors as well as removing your mask will for the safety of our students staff community members present and the board results in me closing the reception of visitors

008portion of the evening and moving into closed session to discuss an employment matter after which no action will be taken by the board i also request that you face the board during your presentation finally i'd like to thank the downers grove police department as well as our own security staff for being here again tonight thank you gentlemen dr dealey thank you dr kupka as mentioned we're going to start with the return to school plan and then we'll take public comment on it before i ask the board to take action on it uh later this evening all right so since we met just a couple of weeks ago we've received quite a deal of quite a bit of updated guidance from the cdc idph isb and dupage county health department some of that guidance continued to

009come in today with updated faqs from the illinois department of public health idph that was then reinforced in a meeting with the dupage county health department so it wasn't until about four o'clock today that i had the most up-to-date recent guidance after that was all processed and updated we updated the plan and posted it on our website today so it's very possible that people in the audience are at home have not had a chance to see this yet board members were provided a copy of this in advance of tonight as soon as i had it i shared it with them all right so we've received uh quite a bit of updated guidance and really the key to areas that this has come in is in the area of face coverings and masks and in the

010area of close contacts contact racing quarantine so the mass guidance that was updated today at noon from the illinois department of public health mirrors the guidelines that were provided on july 27th from the center for disease controls which talks about universal masking in indoor settings where there is substantial and high transmission i'll make a note for the board that the idph guidance that came out today was much more direct than this and also didn't provide a pathway for how you get out of universal masking the idph faq that was released today had a question of who should wear masks at school and the response to that question was everyone period that's that's part of the recommendation i'm bringing tonight but we're also going with the you know cdc talks about layered mitigations and idph talks

011about how these guidelines still have local control as to how we move forward with them where we have options to keep ourselves safe while moving forward and we know that about 50 percent of students in dupage county are fully vaccinated i don't know the exact numbers for our own yet we're still gathering that as we move close to school and about 68 percent i believe have had at least one dose of the vaccine so you know they the cdc talks about these are the general guidelines idph talks about these are the general guidelines but we also have to take into consideration what we see here at school we've run very successful vaccination clinics as jade pointed out thank you you stole my thunder in a couple of slides that we have clinics going on the

012remainder of this week and so does the dupage county health department so what i'm trying to bring the board is remember we're trying to get as close to normal as possible in our return we still need to fit within the guidance and keep students and staff safe so that's what tonight's presentation recommends so i want to be very clear that we're we're providing a pathway to optional mask wearing optional but recommended tonight that reflects what i believe is the intent of the cdc guidance in a community that is like ours so that's why we'll talk tonight about a pathway to that in times when we are no longer in substantial or high transmission our goal is to get us back to normal as much as possible and we're celebrating the fact that we are getting

013pretty close especially because in comparison to last year at this time close contacts in quarantine one of the key pieces that you're going to hear tonight is this updated mass guidance plays into close contacts and quarantine if we follow the universal masking guidance then close contacts are set at three feet and the quarantine period for those that are unvaccinated is set at 10 days if they're a close contact if we were to not follow the universal masking guidance close contacts would be set at six feet and we'd be at a mandatory 14 days of quarantine so we as an administration are trying to get as close to normal to balance the safety guidelines and to try to keep kids at school learning as much as possible and the plan that i'm bringing you tonight we

014believe kind of threads the needle of all of those things so when we talk about universal masking in this guidance it does lean towards schools being just universal mass guidance for now right and that we'll update you later but they talk about in indoor settings that this differentiation can be made that there's kind of a line in the middle with on one side low and moderate and at the other substantial and high and that's based on the number of cases for a hundred thousand people in the past seven days in your county is what the cdc outlines that as i've put on the slide there i know it might be hard to see for the board with the little screen up there but it's also behind you where you could see it is the trend

015for the last two weeks and right now we're we're sitting at about 78 cases per hundred thousand uh in dupage county which puts us in that substantial range the guidance that we received today or since the 27th on july 27 from the cdc was really talked about when you're in that substantial or high that you move to universal masking so all student staff volunteers must wear a mask when indoors so it's still nice in the fact that when our students are outdoors they're doing activities outside if teachers take class outside masks can come off but when we're inside they must be on and then when the county drops below moderate so below 50 cases per hundred thousand or lower than that then we move back to the plan we talked about at the last meeting

016before this guidance was released that outlines a pathway to you may you know if you'd like to you can it's recommended that if you're unvaccinated you do but we shift back to the families being able to control that risk more because we're now not seeing transmission rates so high in the county so those are the key changes since the last time we met i'm going to pause there and see are there any questions from the board regarding any of that my question is why we need to use the whole county and why we can't use the five zip code sorry five zip code demographic that we used in the second semester yeah so my default is to go with what the recommendation is from the cdc we're also although we're seeing increased cases right now

017it's still a lot lower than what we were seeing before in the spring my concern is varying and the county numbers and our five zip code numbers i caught i checked them this morning are very close to one another my concern about going with just the five zip codes is that um you could more greatly get quick swings in the numbers better or worse um so you know my default though is to to go with what the cdc says if the board would like for me to consider this is what we did last year we started with what the cdc said and then in discussions with the board we chose to go to our actual community um but i'm always going to start with what the health guidance is by default sorry one of the

018things that you mentioned is that part of the concern is with the thousands of students in the buildings that the kids interact with every day sort of with the acknowledgement of the caveat that that kids are doing things outside of the school day where they you know may or may not be wearing masks so it sort of seems like if your concern is the children the kids that are in the district in the building with them they're that's our five zip codes that's not dupage county you know as a whole i would entertain it if that's what the the board would like to to entertain i mean i'm like i said i'm always going to start by default with what what that cdc guidance is but if the board would like to advise me to

019go in a different direction like we did last spring we can maintain that and monitor it as well the only downside i guess data wise is that the county numbers are very easily accessible to people you can just go to the cdc you can go to ph county health department you can see what the numbers are for the county uh for our five zip codes you're kind of relying on us tracking that data and we've done it in the past i'm happy to continue doing it but then you know the only source of that information then becomes us tracking it and maintaining it but you know happy to do that just like we did last spring i i would just say two things when you one you can get the because i follow the zip

020codes on the northwestern site i don't know if you've been to that yet now i didn't check it this morning the last time i looked it was last night and they only had the dates they only had the numbers through friday as is typical over a weekend and i know they were at point something 48.6 48.6 so i don't do check it today yeah but they're only through the 29th they're only through the 29th so that's part of the problem is northwest you know we're relying on northwestern they're a little delayed i personally prefer i want to bring up two points i personally prefer the county numbers because i understand the concern might argument has always been that there's no like curtain that falls outside of our zip codes we have people coming in and

021out all the time whether they're going to work or coming from work or going to sport whatever people are going in and elevating the other thing i just wanted to bring up for the for our two new board members in case you weren't aware of this after the last surge when we were coming down in our numbers at the request of some board members at that time we held meetings we at least held one or two meetings at the drop of a dime to see what mitigation we could peel away and that is an expectation i would agree i think we all agree going forward that we may have to call special board meetings either to ramp up mitigation efforts or to scale back mitigation efforts so that we can be responsive as possible to

022the needs of our community so i would just throw that out for you guys to be aware of that and i'm going to dovetail on that nancy since you provided me an opening the resolution that i'm recommending that the board passes tonight supports the plan as presented tonight or with any modifications we make at the table and then just as the resolution did last year it authorizes the administration to make changes as needed or to to modify policy as needed based on responding to the pandemic in real time if i'm making a significant change i first need to contact nancy the board is giving her authority to consult with me and then make a change and then at our next meeting which could be an emergency or a you know a more quickly scheduled meeting

023i would then take ask the board to support that action forward or modify or deny it right and that that's how we worked last year that's what the resolution this year uh kind of sets the terms for how we work forward through the this year i'd suggest that we um that we follow the county numbers just from a practical standpoint it's the easiest thing for you to glob onto right now given the fact that those numbers are pretty much paralleling what we're seeing in our zip code right now if by by chance you know we get forward in this and we discover that there is some sort of discrepancy this is certainly something that we could come back to if if for some reason we feel like hey you know our our zip codes have

024been pretty low compared to the rest of the colonies i mean that's that's something that we could as a board come back to but i'm i'd want to keep your work to a minimum at this point in terms of what you need to do to keep track of what have you and and uh and and there i don't since this is the cdc guidance on this you know i don't see a strong you know a strong reason right now to differ from that but i'd like to reserve the option to come back to it if we do see some you know a discrepancy that makes sense currently we're at 48.6 and they're at i don't believe it i mean that's that's the difference i'm just going by what i was going by i'll i'll double

025check the number four double check because the four i mean it may be different but the 48.6 was i think from friday right it was from july 29th the other piece and maybe we're going to talk about this later but the other the other piece of this is you know first and foremost to me is having the kids uh in in class and that we avoid remote at all costs i don't see the the masks as being a huge problem so i'm wondering you know we'd all like to not have the masks but hopefully this this surge passes hopefully by the time we start school things are are even getting better but i don't i don't see having to wear a mask as a as a huge detriment to our student learning um that and

026until i hear a case otherwise um i don't i don't see the i'm not that caught up in it i guess you know and i'd also rather not have a situation where we're going one week mass next week no mass next week mass then two weeks no masks and it'd be i think for consistency stake in getting people to comply with the the requirements it would make sense that we not bounce back and forth too much and so we may want to take a look at that hard line too that 50 line and say you know i mean we need we need i've hank and i have gone last year we kind of back and forth you got to draw the line somewhere right um i'd like to see consistency as much as we can

027so this is something i think that we can massage and there can be some nuance to it as we go forward um but that's just to provide the most up-to-date data according to the northwestern website which does take time to update that data what we started to do was pull it off of idph so we could track it in real time and that's what we would do again rather than rely on a third party right but just because it's easy to pull it as of it probably got updated this afternoon so as of 8 two the number of new cases seven day per hundred thousand population in those five zip codes which are six zero five one five six zero five one six zero five one seven six zero five five nine and six zero

028five six one is seventy four so and then i pulled this this morning from idph for dupage county and it's at 70. so i mean they're to me they're relatively close now yes we could end up in a situation where our five zip codes end up on one side of the line and the other five and or the county ends up on the other and it could be good or bad either way for what we want to see my default though is you know i'm not seeing a huge discrepancy over the past week of those numbers um so what's happening no i just wanted to look at that bottom line it's easily defensible to start with the cdc recommendation and then monitor that as we're going if i was seeing a huge discrepancy right now

029and the county was at 80 and our five zip codes were at 20 i would likely be coming and saying look i i don't think i can recommend starting there because they're so far apart but they're i would say i would flip it around the other way as well yeah oh right yeah if it was the other way too tony was at 20 but we were at 80. that's also something i'd want to talk about so um but so long as as the county numbers somewhat closely parallel what we're doing here in in our zip codes i don't see a a reason to to go against the cdc guidance uh on this yeah not yet i mean that's why that's my recommendation now i don't know if if other members feel differently i know you're

030down on the other side there i want to joanna had joanna was trying to say something so joanna then terry okay can you pull it close to the mic pretty much i'm agreeing with mike i think that we need the consistency i think the masks on the mask off i think the kids become frustrated with that and they don't even know what to do and i think wearing a mask is a very small sacrifice to make to be in school all the time so that's the bottom line for me and i think following what the cdc says is the way to go chair i'm fine i know i have a different mic so that's why um i i agree that uh we need to use the cdc guidelines rather than going back and forth between

031just our county and or i mean our district and that and i think we need to start with masks and see where we go well we might we might not start with masks because the we could be reaching a peak right now and before school starts it could drop i i hope it does that means that you know that that covet is getting back under control and maybe this delta variants getting under control and hopefully the friday before school starts we're back under that that substantial level and we can come back even closer to normal like we had hoped when we had met the last time right but if we're not then i think the prudent thing to do according to the guidance and what the health experts and idph and dupage county are telling

032us is that if we're above that threshold we need to universally mask until we drop below it and i think at this stage of the game everybody has a mask kind of with them anyway and as we did last year any of our new students will be we did i think we put the order in today so that any of our new students incoming ninth graders or transfer students we can provide them with the same masks that our students had last year so that nobody's kind of left out and doesn't have access to the same resources that we provided if if a student lost a mask they could get another one um i don't know if we have enough to give everybody a new one i think it's only new students that we ordered them

033for we can always negotiate that right we'll see how many requests come in i i'm sure students uh you know have their own preferences as well and maybe the one we're providing isn't their favorite either so that's a good point all right so any questions on those changes that have come any other questions jen did you hear anything no okay okay all right so our plan looks really similar to the last time we met we're excited to be back on any period day with lunch in our brand new spaces we're going to have outdoor seating if people want to take their masks off and eat outside although so we found out today some of our furniture for the new construction including our new spaces is running slow so we might have some temporary furniture in

034those spaces while we wait for the the new and improved stuff not even improved just new stuff uh to show up so we started troubleshooting that issue today since we're on lunches so will there be any opportunity to eat inside like in bad weather or at all eating out no the most of the opportunities will be inside okay so the way that would look is that students would go through the lunch line with their mask on go to wherever they're going to sit and then once they're seated they could remove their mask and eat and then if they're sitting within three feet of anybody then we have to contact trace if somebody would become ill at that point um that's a you know that was a that's that was a good point to this remember

035because we had an issue at the end of last school year where yeah at the end we were allowing the students with you know close to three to get down to three feet but that meant they had to quarantine because they were less than six so this is a significant change going to this year which hopefully minimizes the number of students that would have to quarantine um because they don't have to quarantine unless they're within the three feet correct and the quarantine at six feet had really nasty ripple effects throughout the rest of the school especially because we had a remote option at that point and to avoid the possibility of quarantining students were just not coming to school at all and they didn't want to end up quarantining from sports or activities so it

036really you know i i fought with the health department a lot about okay this is something that on paper in theory appears like it would work but in practice it's not it's not serving us well so we're very excited to see this possibility of getting down to the three feet um you know in what we're looking at well thank you for that advocacy that's that's a it's a key piece to this i think it really is so is the plan still done that vaccinated students do not have to quarantine yes correct so it according to the cdc guidance if you are if a student is vaccinated there's no contact tracing or quarantine or if they've tested positive for covet and then recovered in the past 90 days both of those work interchangeably with one another

037really when it comes down to getting everybody back and keeping everybody here the the most important thing on that slide is that people stay home when they're sick that staff or students you know really take that seriously families take that seriously the more we can keep illness out of the school the more it won't spread here and the more we can keep students here and not have to worry about contact racing and quarantining and all of those things we're going to continue to promote and provide opportunities for students and staff to be vaccinated i'm going to share some of those with you this evening we'll continue to follow mask wearing based on that cdc guidance based on transmission levels in the county updating it each friday as we said tonight we'll start with the county

038level numbers and monitor it and and see what that looks like moving forward we're is everywhere that we can we'll maintain a distance of more than three feet as much as possible um i've already had conversations with several teachers that are trying to think about how to set up their rooms how to set up activities you know and really the the good uh good thought that we're just thing that we'll just keep sharing with everybody's just keep an arm's length away from everybody around you that that works out to be about three feet and if everybody just kind of stays an arm length away as they're doing activities or things in the classroom then they're not within the distance that we have to worry about contact tracing right so especially if you're spending a good

039deal amount of time with anybody while the masking it's wearing the mask keeping the three feet away when we drop down into the other levels we'll expect that it's just keeping the three feet of distance are we still going to do the hallway hallway or no what's that nancy no i asked if we were still going to do the one-way hallway yeah we didn't do one-way hallways last year we just felt with the way that our floor plans were that it would actually cause people to actually have to spend more time in stairwells which you know are way more packed together than our hallways are so um we never did the the one directional hallways and we won't this year and especially with things like the commons and and some of our new hallways that

040are there it'll be a lot easier for students to spread out as they go from one side of the building to the other as i said last time and i guess it was a premonition of what was to come guidance from federal state or local health officials could cause information to continue to change so could an increase of illness here at school could result in the dupage county health department telling us to change a certain practice in response to that um so that's kind of the plan right that the plan is we're really close to back to normal right and as we talk administratively uh we keep getting a lot of questions about what do we do you know last year we did this what do we do now and our first response is well

041what'd you do before the pandemic like that's where we start from and then we really have three pieces of safety that are on top of that right now the universal masking because of high transmission levels that hopefully those will drop and universal masking goes back to a choice as to what you do with that the next thing is contact tracing and then quarantining which are required for the cdc required for the dupage county health department we must comply with those those orders um there's options as to how those happen though depending on if a family chooses vaccination or not so we're you know it's far less restrictions than what we saw last year and some more choice for families than what we saw last year but this will continue to likely change as the school

042year goes on we're still dedicated as much as possible to offer a normal learning experience pre-pandemic style learning experience in our brand new beautiful buildings as much as possible so any questions on that is a plan from board members i mean not much has changed other than the masking piece since the last time we met and the actual details on quarantine all right this is just a slide that reviews what we've said multiple times tonight on close contacts in quarantine i wanted it pulled out as a single slide though so it'd be easy for families to find if they wanted to reference it nancy it looks like you have a question yeah and i'm sorry i didn't catch until now but to be clear if you've been vaccinated and you test positive you will still

043quarantine if you are vaccinated and you show symptoms you will you will need the quarantine yes you will just not quarantine if you're close contact correct okay yes yeah and i i have a typo on the slide there so cdc still defines a closed contact who is not fully vaccinated well they do is six feet of an infected person but we're able with the mask wearing guidance to reduce that down to three feet okay so just to make sure that that's clear there and then those who are vaccinated those that have had covert in the past 90 days do not need to quarantine unless they have symptoms right then obviously anybody who's sick is going home you know that's the key to keeping everybody safe when we follow this new mass guidance quarantine is 10

044days without symptoms if they have symptoms then they have to follow a longer quarantined practice and if you're a close contact to a person who's already been vaccinated you will have to quarantine whether you're if you are not vaccinated so yeah if a vaccinated person has symptoms and tests positive and you were a close contact to that person and you were unvaccinated or did not have covet in the last 90 days then yes you would need to quarantine and the fact that i know that off the top of my head is scary all right uh as jade pointed out we have a vaccination clinic here tomorrow through walgreens it's up on our website we tweeted it out and put it on facebook and next door students can still sign up for that today and show

045up here tomorrow and get their first dose and then for those that were part of our code care clinic last month their second dose is on thursday and then dupage county health department shared this other half of the slide with me today it's hard to read there but if you go to the dupage county health department they right there under vaccinations show you all of the options here but i i posted this and i'm calling it out because there's two opportunities here in woodridge uh upcoming as well so some local opportunities from the dupage county health department caravan where you can go and get vaccinated at the sites where they're kind of roaming around the county and you could get a vaccine from them i think the woodridge public library on august 4th my eyes

046aren't as good as they used to be yeah and uh there's another one i thought in woodridge no westmont west suburban community pantry oh yeah and west yep jefferson middle school that's a naperville though okay but there are also westminster an open house at the westmont police uh tomorrow night so several opportunities in the neighborhood through dupage county health department as well all right so i received a lot of questions last after last month's presentation about what happens if somebody is from parents and students so this was a piece that the community felt was missing in in the presentation last month so we want to make sure we brought it back and kind of close that gap this month so gina is here to talk a little bit about this little this is this was

047in last month's presentation and i'm circling it now to just call it out that everything that gina was about to share was in this bullet but we didn't dive into the details of it last month so this month we're going to kind of dive into the details of the fact that we've added additional supports and programming to help students remain successful even when they're out because they're sick or they're quarantined students being out for a duration of time is not unusual for us you know whether it be for flu or strep whether it be on a a string of college visits or out because of a family reason or mental health issues or other physical issues throughout the year and this is something we've seen an increase of over the last five years and that

048we have continued as an administration and a board to add additional resources and personnel especially in c triple s our counseling support services to respond to these kinds of student illnesses or reasons that they're out we've increased those this summer and over the past year knowing that you know especially for some students at no fault of their own they're just close to somebody who happened to be sick that they might have to be out for a period of time um that that we have supports for that students will continue to be provided instructional opportunities help from their teachers and will be provided an opportunity to learn that being said every student's plan for that is different because it depends on the courses they're taking what the teacher is even teaching that week what's going on

049you know a classroom one of the things i used to teach was chemistry there are certain weeks of the year where there's a lot of like information and you know notes and lecture and and presentations and those kinds of things where you're gaining concepts and the next week you might spend five days in a lab right the student that misses the week where there's a bunch of content and information what i would provide them as a teacher would look very different than if they missed the next week when we were doing a lab all week right so i received a lot of questions from students and parents that want to know like what will happen when i'm out for 10 days what will happen is that our our teachers and educators will make a plan

050for you and then you will be supported through that plan from our teachers and also our counselors and other variety of supports depending on what you as a student need so gina's going to provide an overview of the menu of things that we've added on top of those resources that are already there within our district that we'll be kind of picking and choosing and selecting from to make an experience for each individual student mike just a point that occurred to me 10-day quarantine means the maximum number of days that a student would miss school would be eight so it will be eight or less days missed so one day is too many but it's not you're not going to miss two weeks of school correct and that's that's the key of going from 14 to

05110. yes right yeah all right gina thank you dr sealy as dr thiele said we have several supports that are new or additional we've added supports this last year and we're adding additional support for this school year and i divided them into two areas personnel and then other resources or programs we are in the process right now of hiring student success coordinators this is a new position for us we are planning to hire one at each campus the student success coordinator will work very closely with our interventionists last year we had a full-time intervention second semester at south and a part-time at north we are planning to add an additional interventionist itself so we'll have two and then a full-time in addition to a part-time interventionist at north and the student success coordinator will work

052very closely with the interventionists they'll coordinate various resources and interventions for students including students who may be receiving homebound students including students who are quarantined they'll coordinate those interventions working with counseling and student support services with teachers with students with families they will be the conduit between the school the counselings the teachers and the students and parents so that we're really excited to be able to add those positions we also increase social work support at both north and south for this upcoming year we are again returning to having an additional agency nurse at each campus to assist with everything that they need to do related to quarantining covet contact tracing serving students and we are adding additional ft as well we had very deliberate choices in terms of adding fds to certain courses that were

053higher class sizes we wanted to bring down the class size we are adding 0.6 which is a little over half time 60 percent teacher here at north high school for our bilingual and el students the board may recall we added to south we've added consistently the last few years for our el and bilingual students we're also adding an additional 0.1 so an additional resource period for bilingual students at south all of these new positions will be funded out of the sr arp grant which is a grant to enable schools to provide additional supports for students and so all of these positions will come out of the grant for this year and just if i can just interrupt for a second and correct me if i'm wrong but for the benefit of our new members just

054fortuitously prior to covet we had increased our support staff our counselors our psychologists et cetera because we knew there was a need so if you look at this it says well you know is this really all we're going to do but it's actually we had just increased staffing tremendous a lot just prior to pulving yeah this is huge because we've consistently over the last few years added support to counseling and student support services and we're continuing to add so in terms of resources we are in the process of redesigning our academic resource centers that will provide services tutoring to students during the school day so during lunch study hall you know those those kinds of of resources we've also expanded our strive program our strive program has been in existence for more than a decade

055and we added last year at south a strive to a higher level to support students during covid and really saw some success with that and so we're expanding that this year and we'll continue doing that at south but expanding that to north high school as well our path program and i know we've spoken about that a few times our path program we were unable to fully implement last year and as the board may recall the path program is supporting students in and out of school suspension it's restorative in nature it's designed to decrease suspensions and increase students therefore being in class we have a curriculum for that it's called the why tri curriculum and we're very excited to get that up and running fully this year we have had teacher office hours last year and

056that will continue into this year which is synchronous in nature and students can receive support from their students we also are in progress in terms of our social emotional learning programming we are we have groups working and attending conferences and then working to design curriculum for not just counseling and student support services but for teachers to use in the classroom so we have sel collaboratives that are working on designing curriculum aligned to the framework which is aligned to the sel standards in the state of illinois and then we have paper which the board has heard about before we actually had that open for summer school students and i was very pleased that some students were using it even in the summer so we will continue with paper into this school year we will be replacing

057anonymous alerts with a safe to help program it's actually a state of illinois system for schools it's 24 7 365 days a year multiple modes to obviously report those kinds of things that are that are urgent can report through text and phone and different different models and so that is completely funded by the state it's also an anonymous it is anonymous absolutely um but it's provided by the state so that's also good for us in terms of not needing to use district resources um to support it so these are not meant to be an exhaustive list of supports for students but supports that are either changing being added or are new okay i got a quick question for you so let's say i'm a parent of a freshman coming in everything's new to me and

058we get a month in and my child has had a close contact has to quarantine what should i expect to happen yeah you should first expect that you'll hear from our nursing department that that close contact is happening then they'll contact trace in cooperation with the dupage county health department and they'll provide you information on what the next steps are for you health-wise and then shortly after that you would hear from likely the counselor and maybe in cooperation with our uh interventionist the interventionist thank you i'm starting to get my vocabulary confused uh and putting forward a plan that has been developed in cooperation with the classroom teachers as to what your experience will be over uh the next 10 days in advance you should have already been connected to your teacher through google classroom

059and all of those other tools as well as be aware of when their office hours are which are a combination of in-person and virtual although during the in-person time uh a student that's on quarantine could remote into their teachers office hours during that time and get real-time help from them you know during those office hours every teacher is expected to have a blend of in-person and remote opportunities so that t students can connect in whichever way on a normal basis you know when they're not on quarantine that they're most comfortable connecting with their teacher so that that would be the path going forward and then it would be monitored by the the group of support to make sure that you're being successful and then when you come back well a lot of students will still

060continue to submit things that you know there's a lot of digital opportunities and they'll stay on top of it as much as they can while they're outside of class and then hopefully fold right back in when their time on quarantine is is done or time being sick or whatever that is thank you other questions all right so any overall questions on the plan once again uh tonight you're being asked to approve the resolution which kind of takes this plan and says as of today this is what we're doing and authorizes the administration to adapt that plan moving forward outline first contact with nancy for an emergency or an urgent issue and then we put that response in place the default would be to take it to the whole board at a public meeting like this

061with less substantial changes and the board tonight is being asked to approve both of those things in the action by default by approving the resolution you're approving the administration's administration's plan at this point so it seems a little weird in the way that it works but i just want to make sure all of our members are clear as to as to how that opera is operationalized can you say again i'm sorry what how you're going to convey changes yeah so it depends on how significant and rapid the change is that needs to be made if it is something significant and immediate that needs to occur then and you know we're not able to call a board meeting before that has to go into place so if that would occur i'd confer with nancy i would

062say work with her to say we need to put this in place immediately based on the recommendation of dupage county health department legal what whatever that is right we would confer then we would put that in place because it was a some kind of a urgent issue that we had to respond to the board would be informed that that change would be made and then we would communicate that out to the public to students and families and staff if it wasn't something that was urgent then it would happen through the normal board process now i might not be able to wait two or three weeks for the next board meeting for that to happen so i may need to work with nancy to call a special board meeting to talk about that that change so

063it could be any number of the like just in the normal board work that hey here's a change we would like to make we're seeing it's not really urgent but we feel like we need to make this change whether it be in practice or board policy as a result of the pandemic um one of those i'll give you one that we're looking at right now is our immunization policy and how that fits in right now with not not and it's not anything related to covet immunizations it's the required state immunizations that have been there for like tdap and all of those things right yeah yeah so we have some language in there that might be difficult for families right now just with kovid and everything else that's out there and we're having internal discussions about

064what our board policy says about immunizations related to the state required immunizations and the timing and how that works i might need to before school starts depending on what we find out related to those come to the board or use this process over the next couple of weeks and say we need to make a slight change in that because right now the way that our language is written is that if you don't have the state mandated vaccinations in place by the first day of school you cannot attend right now we're trying to ascertain how many students haven't gotten those vaccinations do they intend to be able to get them before school starts is there something related to the return from covid or increased cases or anything that's preventing them from being able to get vaccinated

065if we find that that's the case i might make a recommendation that we waive that policy and give them an extension to get those vaccines done before the school year starts or you know or after the school year starts so that they're not held out of class due to something that isn't a fault of theirs right if that's the case let's we'll just play that forward and say that's the scenario our next board meeting is on the 16th the 13th is the first day kids are back in school if we find that that is a true issue i will likely reach out to nancy and say hey for the 13th and the 16th we'd like to waive that part of the policy i'm recommending we do it as administration it's kovit related we found that

066this is an issue related to covid for those first two days of school i would like to suspend that policy and not hold students out of school nancy i would confer with her we'd discuss the pros and cons of it i would let the board know nancy and i are discussing it we would make a decision at that point then on the 16th which is our next board meeting i would come to you and say okay we made we talked about this i administratively waived that policy under the resolution you're about to pass tonight hopefully now i need the board to give me direction of what we do moving forward do i continue to suspend that policy or is it in in places as written which means starting the next day it the decision i

067made is nolan void and now it's what the board has decided right so that's kind of walking through a real scenario we're playing with right now is we try to determine the impact of covid on our families and our students um that that's exactly how what this is set up to try to work around but to be clear you're not talking about to be clear you're not talking about culvert immunizations there is no code required administrative vaccinations no no not being discussed not being considered by the administration or the board in any way what i'm talking about is the traditional ones which is why when i started talking about i'm like oh do i even want to dig into this but it's it is the real thing that we're dealing with right now is the

068board policy says we must exclude students without their mandated vaccinations on the first day of school until they receive those vaccines the state has a later deadline we've got to figure out is this a big issue or not we're also talking about trying to run with codal care who's been a partner for us on vaccine clinics for covid bringing them in to run clinics for families that were unable to so we're we got a lot of irons in the fire right now that i'm not prepared yet to tell the board hey this is truly an issue and here's our solution and here's it's developing in real time so i might need to make a decision before we're able to meet as a board to say this is what's best for our kids during these times

069and then the next time we meet we'll sort it out with the full board and make sure that the board feels comfortable with us continuing down that path or gives me a different direction but that's how this is set up to work just because things are developing and changing far more rapidly than they traditionally do around our practices at school you know things like this like a a pop-up vaccine clinic for mandated vaccines not covid the other mandated vaccines would be something we would spend months working on but we're starting to get a feeling like this might be an issue as we return to school this year and a lot of people that haven't seen their doctors in maybe 16 months because of kovid might be having challenges getting their student their children vaccinated right

070now with the required state mandated vaccines so if we determine that that is truly a problem we're going to try to respond to that and help our families and our kids out so that they're not held out of school but we we got to work through it all and figure it out so that's a real time example of something that administratively we're wrestling with and trying to get our our heads around how to respond to that and might have to make a change in real time to offer resources to our our students and families so that's a very long answer to a very direct question any other questions sorry can i ask about people that are going to be having to quarantine more than once yeah it's possible we had it last spring it is

071possible that somebody would have to quarantine more than once and so then you're looking at someone who's possibly missing days of school the the question is is it possible that somebody would have to quarantine more than once yes it is possible and yes then we would have to respond and meet the that students learning needs for the entire duration that they're they're out for sorry the plan we're voting on then every friday you're going to make a determination based on the numbers yeah i mean i've ever had yeah it's not really determination right well i mean yeah are we above the line or below the line if we're below the line for the next week we would go back to the mask optional well you know you raise a good you raise a good question

072because oh sorry thank you you raised a good question because last year before you guys came on board one of the things that was difficult was that we were trying to match the mitigation for depending on the numbers and it got to you know do you round up do you run down it would seem to me that and i think what did we we had we had it we had it that you had to have three consistent weeks it was all over the place because the guidance kept changing the guy and said but you have to have a trend for over three weeks so i would hope that we would never get to the point where we'd say this week we're at 49.9 so no masks and next week we're at 50.1 so we mask

073i mean we would want to see a trend of at least three data points of a downward um or upward trend the cdc guidance has you reevaluating every seven days it's a seven day rolling the the fact that it's a seven day rolling average has a trend built into it by using that number and our experience from last year was not seeing a jagged line right we didn't see that even in the the variety of data we were looking at last year you saw steady increases and then steady decreases and steady increase right now we're in one of those waves up right now i fully expect based on what we saw last year at some point we'll hit the peak of this new wave and it'll turn around and go back the other way until

074some other factor variable plays in into it and then it'll turn around now it might go up and stay there for a little bit but then something will cause it to go back down whether it's expansion of vaccines to pediatric patients whether it's enough people have gotten the delta variants that now there's you know just less people getting it so it's it starts dropping we have not seen a lot of zigzag patterns over the last year and a half we've seen these steady increases and then falls and then rise and then fall i would imagine we would see the same thing here yeah it is possible that come friday a number sits right on one side of the line or the other but we talked through this multiple times last year at some point there's

075a line and the cdc is recommended as to where that line should fall i'm recommending that that's for now what we use and then we monitor it and see what makes sense from there i'm hoping this is a quick turnaround as i said earlier and by the time kids come back next week or the week after i mean but by the end of this week we're looking at the next week's numbers that we see a rapid fall here over the next few days and then we're back closer to normal if not you know for everybody's sake health-wise that it continues to fall and we get back to normal as quick as possible so the data point you're using is the seven day rolling average 50 or less would put us in the massive optional 50

076above 50 or what no actually it's 49.9 or less would be mask optional 50 or higher would be the the higher substantial transmission rates and would be universal masking well my point is if you look at the daily to your point you're looking at the seven day average we're not looking at the daily number we're looking at the seven day average number on friday thank you yeah the seven day average number has a trend built into it all right any other questions all right as i've mentioned multiple times this is up for action later this evening under the resolution we have moved the first reception of visitors to this point so that the audience had an opportunity to hear the administration's recommendation and provide any feedback so we will begin the first reception of the

077decision the way that this will work is this first reception of visitors is for action items i'll call you up in the order in which the slips were received we have two of them [Music] once i call you up you can get there i'll advance to a screen that has a timer on it once you start talking i'll start the timer once it hits the end of the time we ask that you step away from the microphone and conclude your comments so the first person is kevin custer good evening um first hank i'd like to say you haven't referenced and if you have i apologize you haven't referenced what specific site you're getting the positivity rate from can you please inform the public of that so we can monitor it as well according to the

078dupage county health dot org which i just looked at the five-day county zip code excuse me the five-county zip code for seven day average positivity rate for a hundred thousand is 74. that is below the number of 78 where we need to wear masks we are not in compliance for your own rules i'm going to pause you and i'm going to give you back two minutes in 30 seconds so i can fix it just sure so the the data comes from the cdc that points to county by county data and the threshold cut off your reference to 74 is below our number the number from the cdc as presented just a second ago the cutoff is at 50. so under 50 would be masks optional 50 or over would be masks required thank you for

079that clarification 50 puts you it's substantial 50 puts your substantial so i just want to you know i'm sorry 50 puts you at substantial 50 puts you it's substantial and then above that puts you at uh i can't i mean it's high uh let me pull it up for you so 50 to 99 is substantial 100 or higher is high so those two ranges would be universal masking required and then below that would be moderate or low okay okay just to make sure we're all clear absolutely i'm going to start the clock and just i'll resume your three minutes thank you since i i cut into your time the other thing i want to say is this perception becomes reality it's what is perceived and as a parent here of district 99 the perception is

080that information is not getting to us in a timely manner i'll take for example the board meeting last week right there were so many people that kept saying i can't hear i can't hear rather than adjusting the audio or people speaking of the voices they kept saying that that just increases people's anxiety and their frustration and that then comes upon you guys right and i know you don't want any more frustration so i commend you for making adjustments and changes to the audio here today if you're back at south i'd recommend you do that again hank you said that the board member in terms of this math mandate that you received it a while back i don't remember your exact words but you received it prior to today no noon today was for illinois noon

081today you received it yes okay what i'd say to you is this the more information people have the better they will be and they'll better feel about things in terms of the voting on consistency mask or not mask here's what i'd say to you michael joanne join i noticed you were cold i got cold too you put a sweater on you made an adjustment based upon your environment okay i didn't wear a parka today because i don't need one so if we're gonna have these mass mandates at certain thresholds these kids are smart enough and they can make a changement it changes they'll make adjustments in their clothing when it's cold when it's hot they can do with mass and that shows us that we're moving towards getting back to a sense of normalcy right

082inconsistency is life having just this blanket thing saying we're always going to do it without thresholds is not what the educational system is about right you set up this is what you need to get an a this is what you need to get a b and you hold it hard and you hold it fast what i'm asking the board to do is to do a better job in communicating giving information as quickly as possible hank i get it you got it today right but just let people know that so you've got all these people that hear about the board meeting going on today and the perception is that you're withholding whether it's right or wrong that's the perception and that's what you guys get painted with when people can't hear things they believe that you're

083withholding and they believe that it's adversarial last thing i'm going to say today's death total was 362. 320 people die every day of alzheimer's 1800 people die every day of heart disease at the height of the pandemic there was three thousand to four thousand people dying a day we have lowered that rate by ten fold i'm sorry your time has expired thank you all right and then oh boy i've been out of the classroom a while so reading handwriting is is not as good as it used to be i believe this is a is dan submitted a slip yes please please approach the microphone what's that oh no you're that's it this is the second slip that's it yeah could you please state your name dan uh good evening i i just you know i

084guess wanna make a comment or two i know hank you and i have had several conversations already and uh i think this is a lot that we're all going through and uh there's a lot of information and disinformation out there and i guess you know as far as i know i i don't believe the fda approved the shot yet to call it a vaccine is that true uh it is approved under emergency use authorization but not officially approved so that's just might be no it's officially approved it's under emergency so it's been tested and it has been approved it's by the fda by the fda okay not official but emergency use only correct right so i think there's a big difference there i guess is my opinion but um that's a big concern i have

085you know we've had conversations about that before and you know just parents are watching closely these are our kids and we should have choice in what they do or do not do as well thank you all right um that's it for the slips we've received okay we'll have another reception of visitors once we're done with the remainder of the evening um so we're going to move in then to title nine training yes uh gina okay as the board may recall we underwent title 9 training last year and we have kendra from franzik joining us this evening of for an update it's recommended that annually we review title ix and that the board be trained before title ix regulations so with that i will turn it over to kendra thank you gina can you guys hear

086me yeah okay well thank you for having me out this evening it's nice to see people in person again i'm used to doing these over zoom um i'm an attorney at franzik and happy to be here to talk about title nine there we go okay so i know a lot of you did uh do a training with jackie last year on the 2020 rules about sexual harassment and so for those of you this will be a little bit of a review i also have some updates for you uh for those of you who are new this is a good foundation and overview of what title ix requires and specifically the new regulations that went into effect last august so first of all um there had been some talk what's going to happen now that we

087have a new administration the rules that went into effect last year are here to stay certainly for this school year most likely for several school years to come still president biden when he was campaigning did indicate he intends to make significant changes to these rules but that is easier said than done it is a lengthy process some of you may remember that back in when president trump was campaigning he also said he was going to make these new rules that took quite some time it took until november of 2018 to come out with a proposed rule it took another 18 months to go through 125 000 comments that people had people are very invested in this issue and had a lot of feedback the final rule came out in may of 2020 and went into

088effect in august so if the abiding administration moves at that same pace we won't see a new final rule go into effect until 2024 right so this is a long long process the administration may be able to speed that up they are pursuing a slightly different approach they had some listening sessions and hearings in june to gather public comment before proposing a new rule so they can gather some feedback and hopefully then shorten that process a little bit but this is going to be a long process and in the meantime the 2020 rules do remain in effect so just in july the office of civil rights issued a question and answer it largely reiterates the information that was in the preamble to the 2020 amendment so some people had thought that the new administration would

089try to sort of maybe massage or you know change a little bit how we interpret what's in the rules um and parts of it that they don't like as much but they went at it a very straightforward way the answers to the questions really pair it back exactly what is in the regulations and what is in the preample and there's not that much room for different interpretations anyway it is interesting in that it highlights the things that ocr thinks are important what are the things that those of us in schools need to know that's what's in the question and answers and so i'll highlight some of that as we go through the presentation today one thing to note is that you remember from the presentation last year that the definition of sexual harassment under title

090ix now is narrower than it used to be it covers less conduct it is a stricter definition a higher threshold ocr wants to make sure that we know that conduct that is sexual harassment that doesn't meet that threshold doesn't mean you ignore it it wants to reiterate for you that still if it violates your student code of conduct you are going to investigate and impose discipline if it is found that it occurred if it's employee matter you're still going to follow all of your standard procedures even if it doesn't fall under title ix okay ocr has been busy over the spring and summer so another q a that they put out was specifically about civil rights during remote learning and school reopening and there's nothing really surprising here but it's really reiterating and emphasizing the

091biden administration's focus on civil rights and saying that all the civil rights laws they continue to apply regardless of whether you are in remote or hybrid or coming back into school buildings so it addresses racial discrimination discrimination based on disability and title ix sexual discrimination and there are several questions specific to title ix about if you receive a report about harassment that occurred during remote learning do you have to address that yes absolutely if you receive a report and you're currently doing remote and so you're not in the building and easily able to handle things do you still need to address it yes absolutely um some things might look a little different you might have interviews that take place over zoom or other technology but we're still going to comply with all the same rules

092regardless of the format that school is operating in one thing i was hoping we would get that we don't have yet is some data on how many of these complaints we got last year there was anticipation that we would receive fewer complaints that schools would get fewer complaints that ocr would get fewer complaints because the standard is higher and because the process is harder we don't have that data yet when we do get it it's going to be a little bit muddled because we also have the effect of kobit and we have the effect of a lot of schools being remote so there was less opportunity for students to be in the same place or harassment might occur additionally even if there was harassment i think we had a situation where some students didn't feel

093as compelled to come forward and say hey school this bad thing happened i need help if they knew they could just be on remote and they wouldn't see the other person and so it's possible now that kids are coming back you might start to hear that last year when we were on remote learning this thing happened and now i'm concerned about it because we're all coming back into the building so we may see sort of an uptick in reports that you guys are receiving as we get students back into the building another report that the department of education put out has to do with the disparate impacts of proven 19 and different groups of more vulnerable students and one of the groups that is addressed is lgbtq students so these students prior to the pandemic

094had higher rates of bullying harassment victimization mental health issues suicide attempts all kinds of difficult things uh there are more likely to be runaways more likely to be homeless which also you know compounds the challenges that they face the data coming in is preliminary on the impact of proven 19 on this group of students but preliminary preliminarily there are concerns that they are more heavily impacted because they relied heavily on the mental health services that schools provide and that was harder to access just because people aren't as comfortable doing that kind of thing over zoom you have to schedule it you can't just pop into somebody's office as easily you know you don't have that daily communication so early survey results indicate that lgbtq students had a harder time with their schoolwork had a harder

095time communicating and connecting with peers um and had a higher impact mental health wise so that's another thing that we're going to be on the lookout for as students are coming back to make sure that we're supportive of all students and especially students who may have been more impacted by the pentagon okay more from the department of education they keep up on this track we're just going to be here all night um so this is specifically about lgbtq students in title ix and this is a notice that the department of ed put out saying that title ix protects students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation this is based on a supreme court decision called bostock versus clayton county that was decided last year it was in the employment

096context so under title vii of the civil rights act as opposed to title ix of the educational amendment and the department of education says there's no reason that we should come to a different conclusion both statutes prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and the court found that you can't discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity without discriminating on the basis of sex it's just definitionally part of discrimination on the basis of sex and the department of education says same exact reasoning applies to title ix what's interesting is they do not specifically call out the issues that have been hot button issues over the past few years like bathrooms locker rooms and sports what they do say is very broadly that no student should be deprived equal access to the educational program of a

097school because of their sex including sexual orientation and gender identity biden has nominated catherine layman to run ocr she was also in charge under obama and was very aggressive in promoting the rights of lgbtq students and ensuring that schools followed the law and the way that the obama administration interpreted the law so we expect to see a similar approach from the binding administration additionally here in illinois we kind of already have that because the seventh circuit has decided that students should be granted access to restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of their gender identity um and the illinois human rights act also requires that so not a big change for us here but you know a shift at the national level okay so getting into the regulations and responding to sexual harassment you guys

098are aware the impact of sexual harassment can have significant long-lasting negative effects on victims certainly on their mental health on their school performance additionally and this is kind of what is attempted to be addressed by the regulations unfair processes can also have detrimental effects on both parties if the process when you report harassment is unfair to either party that's going to be a problem that's going to impact them broadly as well as specifically in school we also want to make sure we are addressing this because there's legal risk involved the law requires that we respond to reports of sexual harassment and failure to do so can lead to legal challenges both within ocr as well as a court and that can come from the complainant the person who is saying they experience sexual harassment if

099they believe that the school district did not appropriately address it it can also come from the respondent from the accused if they feel like they did not get due process okay so starting big picture title ix the first thing most of us think about is sports especially right now during the olympics that's what i'm thinking about um title ix however this is the language of the statute it's quite brief but it's very broad no person in the united states shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance so you notice it does not reference force it doesn't reference sexual harassment right it's really really just no sex discrimination you can't treat people differently

100based on sex so that has been interpreted to apply to a whole range of different things including athletics like we talked about sexual harassment like we're going to talk about today but also with discipline you know if a boy claims that he is being more harshly disciplined for the same offense than a girl wants uh it also has to do with uh how you treat pregnant and parenting students it encompasses a large variety of things we're going to talk about sex-based harassment because that is what the regulations govern but all of these things are still falling under title ix so if you receive a report of a problem in any of these areas it still needs to land on gina's desk to be addressed it just won't be addressed using this process okay so our

101title ix regulations prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and really the big change is there are a bunch of procedural requirements it used to be that ocr was just looking to see did you follow your policy if you got a report of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct in school did you do it the way you said and was it fair now they've set out this very detailed process that we need to follow and we've got to step through all the hoops so this requires that you have the policy a procedure you have your title ix coordinator and a whole bunch of really nitty-gritty details that we'll talk a little bit about but that your administration has been trained on in a lot of detail okay so when is the school district required to respond

102to sexual harassment i've broken this up because there are a lot of components a school with actual knowledge of title ix sexual harassment in an educational program or activity against a person in the united states then you must respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent so there are a lot of pieces there and we're going to talk a little bit about each of them just so you get a better sense of what really falls under title ix so actual knowledge this can be something that you actually personally witness something that is reported to you verbally or in writing something that you just hear about the q a that was just issued mentioned if you read about it in the newspaper if there's an anonymous report if you get this information if

103your employees get this information pretty much from anywhere that there's sexual harassment occurring then the school district has knowledge you sense it you hear a report or you hear about it okay if someone wants to make an actual report anybody can report it it does not have to be the alleged victim it can be somebody else you can make it by mail telephone email and it can be made at any time so you guys have systems in place so that you know somebody doesn't have to come find gina in her office during business school hours you can make that report anytime any day and you can make it anonymously if you want to so you are required to respond if an official with authority has knowledge an official with authority means an authority to take

104some sort of action to remedy the problem and at the higher education level that's limited to certain particular employees at the k-12 level that is all employees all employees no matter what their role is if they hear about sexual harassment the district has an obligation to respond as board members you guys are not specifically included as an employee you are whoever mandated reporters if you hear about sexual harassment or abuse that would fall under anchor under abused and neglected children so just a distinction to keep in mind okay so let's narrow in on what exactly is sexual harassment falls into three buckets one is hostile environment one is quid pro quo by an employee and the other are these sort of big four sexual assault domestic violence dating violence and stalking so let's start with

105quid pro quo something for something specifically we're talking about an employee of the school conditioning an aid service or benefit on an individual's participation in unwelcome sexual conduct so it's important to note that this is initiated by an employee as opposed to a volunteer or a student if the head of the school newspaper tells somebody else on staff i'll publish this article if you engage in this activity that doesn't follow quid pro quo we'd have to look at it under hostile environment but any employee towards any student says if you engage in the sexual act then i will give you a better grade get you onto this team any benefit of the school system then it's going to fall under quid pro quo the big four that's the ones that i mentioned here sexual assault

106domestic violence dating violence and stalking you have the citations there because sort of unhelpfully they send you on this sort of goose chase to find the definitions of those they are now helpfully in the q a exactly what each of those means and so that is helpful to have those definitions any of these between students between staff and students that's going to fall under title ix sexual harassment okay hostile environment is the one that comes up probably more frequently is more typical harassment and i've broken up this definition into lines also because it has a lot of components so it starts with unwelcome conduct that is determined by a reasonable person to be so severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the recipient school education program or activity

107so you need to have a lot of pieces there it starts with unwelcome conduct which is subjective to the alleged victim then it switches to an objective standard a reasonable person standard reasonable person in the shoes of the alleged victim so a person of that age of that gender in the relationship to the other people that is both severe and pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies equal access to the school so we've got to have all of these different components again if we don't have one of these that doesn't mean it's okay that does not mean is it accepted in the school environment it means we're going to address it under our code of conduct and not through these procedures one of the the last phrase there was that it effectively denies equal access

108to the program the q a says that this really shouldn't block anybody out this should be looked at very expansively it could be a student who is having trouble getting to class because they're trying to avoid their harasser it could be a student who's upset by what's going on and their grades are dropping it could not really be showing up at school they give an example of a third grader who's crying at night and wetting the bed there could be a lot of different impacts and the ocr has encouraged schools not to look for necessarily a concrete injury but to say if we have met all of those other criteria we're going to assume that that student is not going to be able to have equal access to their education the next part of the

109definition is that the sexual harassment has to take place in a program or activity of the school district what that means is any location event or circumstance over which the recipient exhibits substantial control over both the alleged harasser and the context where the harassment occurred so clearly if the kids are sitting in math class harassing each other you are in school you have authority over the context you have authority over both students that would fall within your program or activity things that happen off campus things that happen online those we're going to have to look at a lot more carefully to think about is that something that the school has control over we did get from many districts reports where people were coming to school saying this thing happened off campus at this party over

110the weekend and i want you to do something about it i want you to look into it i want you to do something that's not going to be within title 9 most likely because you don't have any authority over the party that happens over the weekend um these things that doesn't mean you say sorry we can't help you at all right you can still support that student but it's probably not going to fall under your title 9 process again online is going to get really difficult online if it's during remote learning on your remote platform yep that's going to fall within your program activity on snapchat over the summer probably not but there are probably a lot of gray area in between those two examples where we're going to have to dig in and look

111at those facts additionally we have to address sexual harassment if it occurs against a person in the united states um the time when this might not be the case if you have a trip abroad your band your choir some group that goes abroad um hopefully one day in the future we will be able to do that again um but if something happens abroad that's not gonna fall under title nine again absolutely you're gonna address it you would not use this process okay so how do we respond what is required now there are three possible responses depending on the type of conduct so if it is title ix sexual harassment that we just talked about you have your policy to 265 and that is the new one that is specific to these regulations for other sexual

112harassment other forms of discrimination based on sex that will often fall under 2 260 which is your uniform grievance procedure for other misconduct between students most likely that's going to fall under your student code of conduct so you can kind of think of it as a road that splits if it's title nine you're going to go down your procedure under 2 for everything else where you get a report that even if true it doesn't meet that threshold then you're going to use a different process to address it now if you go down your title nine route and you find that the respondent is not responsible you cannot turn around and then use a different method to try to impose discipline you're just done if we can't use the title ix because it doesn't fall under

113all those criteria then you are going to look to see whether another policy will apply okay so here's the response first step when you have information that looks like it could be title ix sexual harassment is the title ix coordinator or designee is going to meet with the complainant to offer supportive measures then if there is a formal complaint we go through these steps of informal resolution if both parties agree investigation decision and a possibility for appeal so we'll talk a little bit about each of these so the first step is that informal meeting with the complainant this is not an investigative interview this is a time for the title ix coordinator or designee to say we can offer you supportive measures we can offer you help regardless of whether or not you file a

114formal complaint additionally if you do file a formal complaint this is what the process is going to look like so that they know kind of what this is going to look like what they're going to go through and what their options are in the high school setting for students who are under 18 this will involve parents parents are going to be involved throughout this process anytime we were dealing with minors confidentiality if no formal complaint is filed we will maintain confidentiality of the complainant if the complainant does file a formal complaint their identity has to be disclosed to the respondent the rules in this area are very specific that in order for the respondent to be able to defend themselves they need to know who the complainant is so you're still going to maintain confidentiality

115among other people right that doesn't mean that just anybody in the schools should know but the identity will be disclosed to the respondent so they are able to respond and defend themselves supportive measures i mentioned these are individualized services offered as appropriate without charge they can be offered to the complainant or if a complaint is actually filed to the respondent as well before or after the filing of a complaint or if no complaint has been filed they can still be offered and the point is to try to restore or preserve equal access to the educational program without unreasonably burdening the other party so oftentimes we're talking about counseling or social work support for one or both students it could be additional supervision it could be changing the class schedule it could be a mutual no

116contact agreement there are lots of different things that may be beneficial depending on the specific situation there's also an opportunity generally we cannot take the respondent out of their class or out of their activity because they haven't been found responsible yet right we're not prejudging this so we're not going to do anything that would be punitive at this early stage the exception for students is if it is necessary to protect a student or other individual from immediate threat to their physical health or safety in that case the title ix regulations allow for that student to be removed you guys should have alarm bells going off saying well wait a minute what about sb 100 and we have rules about suspension and expulsion and protections for students with disabilities and you're exactly right and it is

117difficult to mesh these um and we need to follow both processes so we will be in close communication if we get to that point which hopefully you will not it is different with respect to employees so if an employee is accused of engaging in sexual harassment or misconduct you can put that person on administrative leave in line with your cba and with state law okay so it does not put any restrictions on your ability to do that so briefly here just student removals we do have our discipline laws administrators only can uh suspend for up to 10 days the board you guys would need to approve any sort of expulsion any removal for greater than 10 days and of course the idea and section 504 have additional protections so we want to keep all those

118things in mind before removing a student okay so if a formal complaint is filed let's talk about that formal complaint the formal complaint is a document that is signed by the complainant or by the title ix coordinator alleging sexual harassment against a respondent and requesting that the school investigate the allegation of sexual harassment it cannot be filed by a third party so a third party can report it but they cannot file the formal complaint so the complainant can file it if they are attempting to participate in your program or if they are not willing to i think i have another slide on this yes to file a formal complaint they don't want to pursue this if it is something that is significant if the respondent is a staff member somebody with authority within the school

119system if it is repeated if there are other reasons to be concerned that if we do not go through this process we could expose other people to risk then your title 9 coordinator can sign a complaint the alleged victim is still the complainant even though they have not filed a complaint it's sort of confusing language but in that case the title ix coordinator signs this is a really weighty decision because like i said a few slides ago it means that complainant can't be confidential anymore their identity is going to be disclosed to the respondent that they came to the school and said this is what happened and i want you to take action so that is a new thing with these regulations the next step is informal resolution this cannot be required it has to

120be voluntary both parties have to agree in writing that they're going to participate and you can't say you know if you participate in this then you get this benefit or if you don't it has to be completely voluntary it is not available if the respondent is an employee and the complainant is a student and it's not allowed then only allowed if it's between student student or between employee and employee it cannot be used unless a formal complaint has been filed it can be used at any time during the investigation process so at any point if we're going through this process and both parties say hey this is kind of onerous i don't know where this is going to go i think we can work this out in an easier way you can stop what you're

121doing and do informal resolution however if you're doing informal resolution and one or both parties says this is not working for me i don't think this is going to get me to where i want to go then it stops and you go back to the investigation okay the investigation this is a really detailed process in the regulations that obviously we're not going to go through all of the requirements your administrators have been trained on this and this is really a shift from what was required before 2020. so who's going to be investigating would you not recommend having your title ix coordinator do the investigation because she's going to be sort of a resource she's going to be monitoring everything we want somebody else to take that role they do need to be trained they need

122to be unbiased meaning they don't have any actual or perceived conflict of interest and this is really an interesting thing here we have a presumption that the respondent is not responsible right kind of like in criminal court we assume that the defendant is not guilty however that does not mean you presume the complainant is lying right we believe the complainant and so you have to hold both of those things in your head you believe the complainant and you believe that the respondent is not respondents full full because we're not going to prejudge before we have any evidence so at the outset everybody is credible there's a lot here like i said the investigation is very detailed in the requirements top one is another important one the burden of proof is on the school it's not

123the burden of the complainant to prove that this happened and it's not the burden of the respondent to prove that they're not responsible the school has the burden to prove what did happen additionally both parties always get noticed before there's an interview of when and who's going to be there and what the topic is parties can have an advisor or an attorney with them during an interview after the investigator has collected all of their evidence all of the evidence goes to both parties they both have an opportunity to review all the evidence and submit any feedback to the investigator the investigator then writes a report that summarizes all of the evidence and that is also provided to both of the parties so you can see this is can be a fairly lengthy process because there's

124timelines built into it getting to the decision next the decision maker again not the title ix coordinator not the investigator so it needs to be somebody new you are not required to do a live hearing in higher education they are in k-12 we do not recommend it a written determination is required but before you get there because we're not doing a live hearing and the respondent should have an opportunity to confront their accuser and the witnesses we have written cross-examination so each party or their parent or their attorney has the opportunity to have questions they submit it to the decision maker the decision maker submits it to the other party the answer send it back to the decision maker who sends the answer back to the party who asked the question and they can ask

125follow-up questions so again this can take some time the decision maker gets to decide what's relevant uh we follow the rape shield laws which means questions about the complainant's sexual history or predisposition are off limits uh we cannot access treatment records physical or mental treatment records unless there's consent to do so also legally privileged information remains legally privileged so they can't ask questions about what did you talk to your attorney about what did you talk to your clergy member about all of that would be out of bounds and the decision maker uses the preponderance of evidence standard of proof that's 50 and a feather so if it's more likely than not that it happened the respondent is responsible if it's not more likely than not then they would not be remedies if the respondent is

126responsible then there can be discipline taken additionally we can offer more supportive measures counseling for the victim or for the accused there might be changes to services changes to your policies whether or not the respondent is responsible it might result in the district saying we need to beef up our education our sex education on consent on dating safety on internet safety we need to make sure that students have a good understanding of what this means and how to protect themselves okay appeal you also need an appellate decision maker so this is another person this is why gina has so many of your administrators trained because different people have to do each step of the process so again this cannot be the title ix coordinator can't be the investigator and it can't be the initial decision

127maker both parties have an opportunity to appeal both parties have an opportunity to submit a written statement and the decision then will be issued to both parties you cannot appeal just on anything you want there are three specific reasons the first one is a procedural issue that impacted the outcome the second is if there is new evidence that was not reasonably available during the decision phase that would impact the outcome and the third is if there was a bias or conflict of interest on the part of anybody in the process whether that was the investigator the decision maker the title ix coordinator there was any sort of bias that could be a basis for appeal as well this biased conflicts of interest and fairness is a big focus of the new regulations all of the

128people involved the coordinator investigator decision makers informal resolution facilitators cannot have a conflict of interest or bias for or against complainants of respondents generally or for and against any individual person involved in the matter and cannot prejudge any matter before them so we want to make sure that we don't have decision makers and investigators who are outspoken kind of on either side of this issue kind of in the more global sense everybody needs to come to this issue this particular case with an open mind ready to gather the evidence and go where the facts lead them there's also a lot of record keeping involved in this at each stage there are records created that need to be maintained those are student records so they're going to be confidential but would be available to the student's

129parents all right i went through a lot of information hopefully that breakthrough uh does anybody have questions at this point i just said one first of all thank you sure it was actually very clear for us i know gina if you don't know is a title ix coordinator who who's involved in the the decision making in the appeal so we have i'm sorry thank you we have trained numerous people for each role to ensure that we're always covered so for example decision maker could be the principles but we have other people trained as well because it could be it doesn't have to be the principles even for me as title 9 coordinator it could be a designee so for example uh scott ugaiser has been trained as a title nine coordinator so he can step

130in so we trained a lot of administrators um and we'll be doing some retraining in fact so that we have it covered and so we've also done it so we have both genders by the way so that it's not just so the administrator level is trained and we have multiple okay thank you pretty much everybody on the administrative team has a role that they could play or multiple roles that they could play in in the process and gina has spent so much time making sure that district 99 is prepared to respond to these changes and do it appropriately and respectfully of everybody involved she needs to be commended for the amount of work that she put into this over the last i don't know a year and a half and with very short notice last

131summer uh while we were in the middle of trying to figure out what to do in response to a pandemic gina was also sorting out how to respond to this appropriately so i just want to make sure that that doesn't go unnoticed all right thank you thank you so much thank you kendra appreciate it all right a couple of quick items uh location of future board meetings uh as noted we moved into here this week uh we had to keep our location before because of construction the south high commons was our only large space available last board meeting we did complete the new tile right outside here in front of the main entrance so you can see that on your way out and that opened up this location for this board meeting and then the

132next board meeting we're going to hold it at the brand new south auditorium so we have a chance to show off that new space um so that'll be august 16th we'll be there after that kids are back so all of our spaces start getting filled up by student programming and musicals and plays and athletics and all of those kinds of things so our big spaces are going to be limited moving forward because we're back to normal instruction right and normal activities and those kinds of things so starting in september we'll move back to our old home back at the administrative service center we will accommodate right now there's currently no restrictions on number of people so we'll have chairs set up just like we used to and if large groups wish to present we'll encourage

133them to send a representative to speak on the group's behalf if we have anticipation of a large controversial issue like a major change in the return to school plan as we have done in the past we'll try to locate to another large area like we've done at the cafeteria south before you know maybe it's one of the common spaces or we'll try to move into a large space but we try to stick to a consistent space because of the audio and video and those kinds of things to make sure that people have a a good experience if they're attending our meeting in person or if they're watching online as a result of kovid one of the things we did do was start live streaming our board meetings so even though we might be back in

134a smaller space everybody in the world can participate in real time and watch our meetings take place as a reminder school board meetings are meetings in public not with the public so the fact that they are streaming allows our entire public to observe our work as we do it as a board and administration so that's the plan moving forward um so board members over at south to check out that brand new space on the 16th and then from there back to our good old home you'll have breadcrumbs to get auditorium the auditorium's still where the auditorium always was yeah that's just will we be coming in the front door then yeah we're going to come in through the main entrance and walk through the brand new commons on our way and pass the new cafe

135on the way to the new auditorium um on the uh the next thing since we're on it master facility plan just a few images that were released today these are hot off the presses the board hasn't even seen these yet some of the pictures of the auditorium and common space that are being put into place you can see the top left hand corner is the auditorium top right hand corner is the new west events entrance entrance with the fly tower of the auditorium in the background that's another one of those images that looks really close to a rendering that the board has seen in the past you can see the main stage entrance that you'll be entering in for the next board meeting in the bottom left-hand corner and then you can see some parking

136lot uh getting finished up as we clean up that west events entrance over at south way in the background you can see the brand new bleachers south commons is coming along top left-hand corner is the grand staircase still a lot of stuff activity going on on the floor around it you can see that then uh the next picture that is the new uh meeting room uh the community room at south and that top right hand corner bottom left hand corner is an aerial view of the outdoor eating area outside of the commons that's what's left of the old courtyard which is still a lot of outdoor space for our kids and then bottom left-hand corner is some more of that commons cafeteria space coming uh into shape so a lot going on over at south

137over north if you have an opportunity uh board members or anybody in the audience that would like to uh you could just walk out the door here at the end of the night you could walk into the commons here at north and it is gorgeous and north didn't have as much going on this summer so they're a little further along than south is that's far left is the commons middle is the boy that is the oh the outdoor events entrance where we are replacing the glass curtain wall that is there that's an update as part of the capital project i believe and then the far right hand side is the outdoor eating patio at north that that's coming into place and you can see it's very similar to the the commons you if you walk

138through the comments you'll be able to see that tonight as well so a lot underway you can see it really taking shape here and coming to fruition all right so uh master facility plan remains on time and on budget i've reported that for the last five years and i'm very proud of that all right we have one recommendation for action this evening okay so we need a motion for the board of education to approve the 2021-2022 return to in-person instruction plan approval resolution so moved second mike and i didn't hear the fact that jerry thank you very much mike davenport aye terry pavicich aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller aye jenny heggstrom aye the motion carries next we'll move into the second reception of visitors is there anybody who wishes to address the board we

139have no additional comment slips but i do have a short prepared statement that i would like to read go ahead i would like to take a moment to provide some perspective on the public comments at the last board meeting related to our work on diversity and inclusion when we hear the term critical race theory crt we here as the administration believe that this is referring to the branch of graduate level research within critical legal studies crt is a graduate level tool for investigating the role of race and racism in the legal aspects of society or in other areas of scholarship this is not a concept that has been used in our work around equity inclusion and anyone who says the two are connected in district 99 are wrong regarding our actual work district 99 is

140dedicated to continuing to teach students to recognize and overcome challenges students may create these challenges for themselves sometimes like kova they arrive out of everyone's control while others are built into the systems into systems and are almost invisible to all but those who are impacted by them and sometimes there's obstacles that are intentionally put in students ways each student also comes to us with unique abilities and benefits that should be grown and developed to their full potential we are in a community with enough resources where caring for and challenging each individual student does not come at a negative cost to other students generally we have resources to provide an appropriate learning experience for each child and we are not running short on caring as we support our students we believe that it is the community's

141expectation that we create an environment where each student feels like they belong at school so that each student can develop to their full potential and that is what we will continue to do thank you i just i just say that's been the guiding light of every board as well that i've been part of in the ten years that i've been here um so i i'm i'm so so proud of the work that we've done in those in those areas um diversity equity inclusion every student deserves as it's it's customized education as they can get for their you know for their need and i like to say i wish every student could have an iep you know because every student is so important every student learns differently has different needs coming from a different background and

142the work that we've done here is just stellar and i'm i i will be fully committed to it continuing for as long as i stay on the board for sure so thank you for all that hard work well said mike thank you all right we have no visitors remaining so we're going to move into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity

143do i have a motion so what was that mike davenport aye christopher espinoza hi jenny hagstrom aye terry pavich hi joanna vazquez drexler hi and nancy kupko hi we're going to go in close session we will be returning only to adjourn no additional action will be taken so our students can go and enjoy the rest of their evening so can the administration the administration can go enjoy the rest of their evening we thank you all and this will be very short are you going to be here for a few minutes yeah okay