001our board members on right now there's nobody i'm not seeing okay not yet good morning morning okay it's nine o'clock should we begin i'm going to call this meeting to order roll call please ansi cupcake here mike davenport here shirelle fuller shroud fuller she's here i see her just need to hear her shirelle shirelle fuller present thank you dan nicholas i am here thank you terry pavisic here rick pavanado here joanna vasquez drexler did she come on and zoey boyd sam bull here thank you sorry i can't see everyone good morning all um do we need to stand for the pledge i believe yes let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it's hard to do asynchronously yeah first of
002all thank you all for coming together um at nine o'clock in the morning on a saturday um we called this special action meeting um because uh hank said he wanted to address the board he had some thoughts about potentially changing the metric and because we've had discussion about perhaps meeting weekly as needed um i just didn't want to let it go an additional week before we came to a point that we were going to make a decision so thank you all for being so flexible with your schedules since monday is a federal holiday so yeah we could not meet monday because it's federal holiday so hank did you have anything to say before we open up the reception of visitors uh no let's start with the reception of visitors okay we're going to go to
003the reception of visitors and we're going to start with the um dga but this is an opportunity for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments will be limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board if you need more time submit your thoughts and writing to mrs snyder the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone and state their full name the proceedings are being taped recorded for the for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and we are live streaming uh i reserve the right to modify these protocols of circumstances warrant and we appreciate audience observation of these um protocols right hopefully you guys can see and hear me okay good morning my name
004is valerie hardy and i'm the president of the downers grove education association i'm also a teacher at south a member of the donors group community and i have a child who is a freshman at downers grove north in the hybrid model thank you for the opportunity to see here today cgea as an organization has consistently supported a return to in-person learning so long as it is safe for all district 99 students staff administration and the surrounding community for the past 10 months dga and its members have had to put our trust in the district 99 board of education and administration in consultation with health officials with decisions regarding when it is safe for students and staff to attend school in person as we embark on second semester dga members appreciated the queer metrics that dr
005feely and the board set forth even if some of our members did not necessarily agree with them or the integrity of them while there are some apprehension amongst our members about whether these metrics would be applied as outlined there was a significant sigh of relief and increased faith when we saw that the first two weeks of the semester played out in accordance with the designated metrics the sense of trust that this board and administration engendered by presenting a rationale for and sticking to these metrics that they set fourth to start the semester was immeasurable the trust that was placed was contingent on our understanding that our district's leadership advocacy and clear was advocacy for clear and consistent metrics as originally presented was grounded in science and guidance from the health department earlier this week dr
006thiele at the board workshop meeting further reinforced his commitment to these metrics stating quote if i would have felt like we could set it at 10 and that we could have kept kids safe based on what we know now i would have brought the board 10 but i didn't because mine is where i feel confident where our administration feels confident that we can keep kids safe at school end quote he further explained that nothing has yet changed in our understanding of how this works for me to recommend to the board that we expand beyond nine percent that could change in the coming weeks if we are able to come back and learn more or if guidance changes from health agencies end quote in reality the coming weeks that dr thiele was referring to seemed to
007have equated to just three days the time between the january 11th board meeting and the circulation of the proposed change to the previously established metrics as steered as shared with staff and the community on january 14th proposing a new set of metrics less than two weeks into the second semester is both deflating and infuriating the call for the vote at this time and supporting these changes now undermines the trust that the eta membership has placed in administration and the board to follow through with their own policies in a consistent manner we recognize as outlined at the most recent board meeting the metrics can move up or down depending on new information including experiences teaching in a hybrid environment new research including on the mutated form of the virus new guidelines vaccine distribution and increased testing
008based upon the information available to us at this time the only factor that we're aware of that could have changed over the past few days is the first one our experiences in hybrid however making conclusions about safely returning to the building based on the data from the week of january 4th is flawed and inadvisable many students who selected hybrid and were thoughts expected to be in the building the first week of the semester were not present for some or all of that week there is simply not enough data from the four days with students with fewer students in attendance than anticipated to attend in person going forward not to mention is the first week under our expanded hybrid model that doubles the unique groups of students in the building each day to say that district
00999 can safely operate under the initial metrics much less under an even higher positive positivity rate threshold furthermore the extent to which there is transmission of the virus within the building cannot even be known with fidelity at this time as we are just eight days out from our last in-person class and according to the cdc coven 19 can remain dormant for two to 14 days there appears to be no new information to justify changing metrics other than the sheer desire to change them this further erodes our ability to trust a policy that changes its whim of its creators and negates the predictability that having stapled that stable metrics provides also while using the most current metrics available seems to make a lot of sense in determining the next week's educational model there are many practical
010implications of using monday's 14 day rolling average metrics instead of the previously committed to friday cutoff to determine our remote versus hybrid status for the subsequent week though many teachers will monitor the metrics prior to monday to see where they are trending if the numbers are close to the threshold teachers as well as students from their families will not find out until late monday afternoon as to the final decision for the week we have several concerns with this process first the northwestern dashboard has been inconsistent in posting its daily metrics so there's a good chance that the final metrics will not be available on monday afternoon therefore not only is there a concern about waiting until monday afternoon we are unclear on what will happen if these metrics are not available what figures will the
011district use in such cases as teachers we pride ourselves on being prepared to teach our students at this time we are required to have weekly plans ready and published to students by 8 o'clock each monday morning this is already a struggle when we are not notified until friday as the perform school will most likely take the next week we are now being asked to create a plan for monday morning without knowing for certain until monday afternoon whether students will be fully remote or hybrid it is quite difficult to provide students with informative plans for the week given the potential uncertainty of the model under which they will be learning this 11th hour notice is particularly problematic for a number of our instructional disciplines for example cte there are several teachers who need more lead time
012to assemble materials for their classes as just one example our culinary teachers struggle with providing food to their in-person and remote learners in a way that both allows every student to participate in class and also does not lead to wasted perishable food and money for science teachers whose curricula are heavily lab-based require advanced notice and time to prepare if teachers do not know if students would be in person until the night before a lab it's difficult to plan for at best planning a lab just in case that doesn't end up running would waste time chemicals and in many cases also money furthermore holding off on planning a lab for the second half of the week would regularly exclude half of our in-person students for physical education some of our pe teachers have expressed that their
013plans change drastically based on the mode of instruction that for remote teaching they use the same plan with everyone but with the hybrid model they have to come up with three differentiated plans one for the students in the room one for the students on the zoom that day and one for the permanently remote students so that the students are not simply repeating the same activities day in and day out and finally for fine arts there are several teachers whose specialized disciplines require them to structure their lessons differently under the hybrid model versus under the remote model and this requires extra notice to be able to appropriately distribute the unnecessary materials to carry out meaningful instructional activities with their students dga's leadership is left wondering how to sell these seemingly arbitrary shifts to our number to
014our members many of whom approached us with concern after receiving notice the proposed change in metrics we find the labs inconsistency of metrics and the manner in which the proposed change came about deeply problematic the fundamental problem we had with the motion on the table is a loss of trust in december we were asked to trust that the reason the district couldn't establish metrics during first semester was because of the lack of transparency and consistency from our health department and state and federal leadership during the december board meeting district leadership provided coded thoughts as to why it became possible to established metrics for second semester that are based on both cdc information and local community health statistics on january 11th those numbers were reinforced at the accurate numbers to confidently support the safety of all
015in our district now the board of education is proposing to change these metrics even though the parameters under which the current metrics were created have not changed there are too many variables at this time to shift the metrics especially when the advocacy for such a move is based on insufficient data cga fundamentally opposes the change as proposed and urges the board to vote against this action thank you thank you thank you sorry i just assumed thanks we have nobody else in the room that wishes to address the board we did receive 14 comments uh through the online form um and the responses are mixed in those 14 responses however they lean towards the recommendation to supporting the recommendation change the metrics all of those comments will be provided in full form to the board and
016will be made part of the official minutes and record thank you hank okay uh rod could you pull up the slide deck thank you all right um yeah val was an excellent opener for me because a lot of the questions that were raised in there are what i hope to address uh in this morning's meeting so you know over the course of this school year a baseline that i think that we need to establish with the community that might not be clear out there that i know is well well known amongst our teachers and our board and our administrative team is that the first responsibility of a school system is the safety of their students legally speaking we are responsible for student safety from what we always talk about as educators from portal to portal
017from when they first step foot outside of their door until they arrive back into their house at the end of the school day technically speaking or legally speaking it's called in local parents we are assuming the full role of a parent for the time that a student is with us and as a school leader and i know myself and the rest of the administrative team especially ed and janus all of us feel that we have a responsibility to be able to look any student in the eye and say you'll be safe with us the same with our staff and we expect to be able to look at and talk to any parent and say your kid your most precious thing in this world is going to be safe with us when you send them off
018to us that is the mindset that we have for 5 000 students across the district and we realized that each family each parent might have a different comfort level with covid and and where their comfort level would be to send everybody off to school but we as an administrative team also have to have a level where we can truthfully and honestly to any student to any staff member to any parent say you will be safe with us and that is the position that we have worked from all school year and as i continue to share as an administrative team we believe that that statement can be said when we design a system where covet is unlikely to spread when you're here at school and there's many factors here that play into this as we continue
019to point to those instructional programming what our our program is like in that hybrid model the guidelines and the strategies we have to keep people safe and the rate of community transmission those last two play together as we've discussed for the last several months that your ability to keep people safe is highly dependent on the rate of spread of kovid within your community they are not mutually exclusive from one another and then those two are greatly impacted by your instructional programming how often are you having kids mix at school how long are they there you know are they able to maintain the safety guidelines for the duration of the time that they're there and are you having them participate in activities that make it unlikely for covid to spread those are the factors that are
020playing in and at the start of all of this we had absolutely no experience in running school during covet nobody did so we were designing under the guidelines we received over the summer which then changed the week before school started and introduced this idea of community metrics playing into how things work and as i've shared with the board in the past the initial understanding that we had over the summer was follow these guidelines and everybody will be safe end of story but what we've learned since then is yes they're safe to a certain extent and as the level of the virus spreads in your community the less effective your safety measures are expected to be so what this meant was at the beginning as this was released to us and the dupage county health department
021started talking about how metrics would work and impact us we'll focus on positivity rate because that's the number of discussion within the community and and we've created that and i'll explain why that's the focus but the positivity rate from dupage county health department said we should start to really be concerned returning students under our old hybrid model around five percent and then we modified our our hybrid model so that there would be only one passing period per day per day and based on that modification and instructional programming matched up with the strategies and guidelines we then moved that positivity factor to eight percent and uh felt like we could keep students safe up to that eight percent threshold and we brought students back as we were in the sixes and while they were back in
022that hybrid model for those two weeks we rose up to that eight percent threshold what we did over over time was we applied what we had learned to modify those metrics and knowing our programming knowing what was going on and we ran two weeks of hybrid two weeks of half days we also ran two months of students and cohorts in our special ed cohorts as long as the metrics were under 12 we stayed out of tier three we ran those what we found our experience over those those periods of in-person learning either in the modified high or in the hybrid model or in our cohort models was that it our experience correlated with the rising positivity rates as the positivity rates rised or rose and we were in school we started to see illness spread
023in into our school whether that be it was really the number of students and staff that were out now that doesn't mean that they got it at school we don't believe they did but you know it did seem to indicate that the amount of illness present in our community and in our school community was rising as community rates were rising so at that point the positivity rate became a benchmark for us to to be kind of an early warning system for what we would expect would happen in our schools based on our experience it was a transparent and easy to find number it would help the community you know as val said follow the numbers throughout the week and know what direction we were headed in and in in december i came to the board
024and said based on our experience which i've just shared with you we feel that that number that is safe is nine percent and when asked in december by the board if that number would change before semester two we said no i said no there's nothing in our experience because kids wouldn't be back in an in-person model would lead to us having any more data or information or experience to modify that number between december 14th and the start of second semester and that is the number we used when we came back the first week and then we used going into the second week because we didn't have enough time to learn yet and to process from that first week when we met on monday i did share with the board that we didn't have any information
025yet to indicate that that number should change as val pointed back to however every week since this school year started our full administrative team meets every monday which we did monday before the board meeting and talked through what our experience was from the week before and that that first week back was very positive but as of monday we wouldn't have known the impact of any illness we had a chance to fully go back and talk to all of our teams and fully process that full week let's go back to that first full week of school and in that first full week of school we came back with numbers above nine percent um through by the end of that week we were over ten percent however uh as val indicated we did have uh students uh
026choose to either self quarantine or stay home that week and depending on the class period throughout the week we had a we had about 89 of students in attendance on average in any class period day throughout the week across the district so we factor you know you have to factor in the fact that we didn't have full attendance over that week and it took us a while to find what that real number was and to process that through all the data but we knew anecdotally from talking to our teachers and looking at our general attendance data that we didn't have all of our students in person that week however the amount of evidence we were able to gather over the course of that week is equivalent to our two weeks of being in the hybrid
027model since we had the equivalent equivalent number of hours of of class time available in that first week so if we're using the time in the hybrid model in the fall as a data point the time in that first week is equivalent to the amount of time in the fall therefore it's as valid now as it was then based on what we know now [Music] when we met this week we met with uh as i said our entire administrative team on monday and then as we have every week of the school year when we've had students in school uh ed janus um gina rob scott and various associate principals have met with us in further intensive like specific meetings to look at things like transportation or contact tracing or illness among staff and students we've
028discussed our safety measures and our ability to adhere to those things and every time we've had students in purp in person the next week we talked through how how did we do were we able to go through those things what happened this week was later in the week just like we have every week of the school year we met with those small teams and discuss those specifics were we able to found follow our safety measures has any illness tracked back and yes it's uh we're at seven to ten days at this point of a window of time up to this point as of friday we are not tracking any illness back to school and by the time we hit monday we would know if that was the case we have we were able to track
029illness within a 24-hour period for that week even though we doubled the number of students that were coming back to school that week um we did that by adding additional agency nurses and you'll see we're also adding additional support for that and over the course of that first week of school we had no issues with staffing over the course of the week the number rose above 10 and it was at 10. about 10.4 by the end of the week based on the fact that we had not time we had time to debrief and fully understand that week and know if our experience was a good one we made the next logical choice and did exactly what we explained we would do within the community we used our past experience it was benchmarked by that positivity
030rate we moved above nine percent and indicated that this past week we would be fully remote we did the work over the course of this past week and based on this experience our administrative team believes we feel that we can keep our students staff and our community safe when positivity is less than 10 percent to start a week as it was when we had headed into that first week of school this semester i have indicated all along to the board that we would come back and discuss as soon as we felt that we had enough evidence to move that number or for it to change up or down we would come back to the board and have that discussion and that's what leads us to being here today the 10 isn't a random number it
031reflects our experience and it points back to the top of the range within that cdc guidance that cdc guidance has become an interesting as i said correlation in in how we are are doing this as people look at at the decisions we're making in our community it's easy to to look at bits and pieces of information to put together and back up a point of view as to what the school district should be doing however this administrative team has worked very closely over the course of the school year constantly sharing and learning about the experiences that we're having within our schools and ultimately you know ed and janice and i we talk every day about how we get students back to school what the metrics say the larger team with gina and rob and scott
032and us me multiple times throughout the week this is constant ongoing conversation and ultimately that team is the only set of experts in the entire world that can put these three things together instructional programming strategies and guidelines and the impact that illness has had on our community and have a full perspective about how they all interact with one another to be the district 99 experience within this instructional model today we or this week we met we had the same kind of discussions that we've been having all year and we feel that based on that experience and what we have learned at the end of or coming into next week we can say when when numbers when community transmission indicates that it's below 10 based on our experience based on the correlation we've seen your kids
033will be safe with us that's why we're back here this morning to have this conversation because as soon as we feel like we can do that we strongly believe that if we can keep students safe at school it's our responsibility to have them here that's our full purpose of why we exist is to have students here with us in school so as a as a leader that you know i i am i am a science teacher i'm a logical and rational person um we consider all the variables as they change and the evidence in front of us and then we make the next change based on what we have learned and how we move forward it could change again as as we move forward and could go down based on what we learn it could
034change in any direction based on what we learn this is a novel virus none of us have the answers none of us have the answers for our own specific instructional model none of this has ever been done before but what we do is carefully go through all of the knowledge that we have gained and the goals of what we're trying to accomplish and try to match that up to get the right answer for our students next slide right so uh based on our review of this this week uh we have some changes that are already underway um we know that contact tracing we did see more illness that we had to follow up on most of that was people choosing to self quarantine outside of school actually we had very few students out because they
035were sick in the last week less than one percent the majority of absences in the last week were people that we expect students we expected to be coming to school but chose to stay home for whatever reason their family chose uh but we follow up within 24 hour period a 24-hour period with anybody reporting that they're staying home due to any kind of covid related illness or like illness so we were able to keep up with that that amount of work with the additional nurses we added but we expect that that might grow so our athletic directors had a great idea of utilizing our athletic trainers as additional help for contact tracers we have added one additional contact tracer at each of the schools to keep up with that workload and we have additional ones
036that we could add on at a moment's notice if we need to to keep up with that work we've also through our review there's a there's a process of notification there's there's two notification levels uh one is the contact tracing right if you're a close contact to somebody we follow up with you with a personal phone call or conversation to let you know that you were a close contact to somebody and then how the quarantine period works and all of those pieces and what signs of illness you need to be looking out for we have another process that's the low risk letter um we have made this a pretty intensive process to try to try to follow a set of protocols to get those low risk letters out our process is far more time intensive
037than what other schools in the area are doing they are other schools in the area are generally notifying people if a student came to the school in general and we later find out that they had covet and most of those notifications are being posted to a website we're going to follow that notification procedure the intent of the low risk letter is to just let know that let somebody know that they came into a location where kovid was present that's pretty much the entire community right now if you go to the grocery store you go anywhere uh covet is present in the community so we were taking a far more time intensive and aggressive process with those low risk letters and what we were finding was that people were confusing as a result people were confusing
038the low risk letters with a close contact letter so it was causing a lot of anxiety across with people and they thought that they were at risk because of that low risk letter and we feel like we need to step that back a little bit and get it closer to what the intent of that letter is and uh and reduce some of the anxiety our process is causing in some of the time that it's taking our team to keep up with those low risk letters so making a change in that and then we have two major things we've been working on for uh well one of them for for the past month which is testing programs uh scott and lisa or scott and gina have been working on scott mostly on the internal testing process
039getting our clia waiver and getting to the point where if we need to for a staff member or a student could do a covered test on site we're still working through that process and waiting for a cleo waiver but scott's been working diligently on on how that might look and then gina has been really working on with scott's help the external uh lab testing for saliva based testing of all students that are returning in person we plan on uh bringing a proposal for that to the board at the january 25th meeting where we would then have as a as a requirement a condition of choosing a hybrid model you would be selecting to participate in the the saliva based testing and then from there over time we could lessen our reliance on community metrics and
040point more towards the actual rate of the illness or presence of the virus within our own uh school system the other thing that happened was uh monday of this week we met with the regional office of education and the the process of putting together a vaccination program for school employees was tasked to the superintendents of the high school in elementary districts to put together a plan that works on site for us so we've been working we've spent a lot of time over the past week identifying a provider to to do the vaccinations and develop a potential plan we're also working closely with the villages that we partner with as we have we both have the need to vaccinate essential employees and are comparing notes and processes there and we hope within the next week here
041to come up with a a process for vaccination that we could also share with the board at the january 25th meeting both the idea of testing and vaccinations will cause us to greatly change or consider changing how we measure if it's safe to come back to school next slide so just to review this is a slide that indicates from the cdc the things that we should be considering in and we do consider that community burden but of course as i said earlier that is correlated with our experience and those things factor together um our third key indicator is the ability to keep up with contact tracing and then of course we need to follow the safety strategies the mitigation strategies that are listed below so based on all of our work over the course of
042this year and especially our recap and administrative review of the first week over the past week if you go to the next slide rod uh you know we're recommending that we set that positivity rate below 10 since we were able to keep students safe in a week that we opened at 10 and we kept our staff safe during that week there are concerns about using the northwestern website because data is delayed there so what we've started doing actually there's a community member rich benema who has been working closely with me because he's been recording idph data for since early january uh so he shared his data set with me and then i went and i'm gathering it for the district as well and have verified his numbers against the the idph and the the northwestern
043numbers by monday we will have an internally calculated 14 day average so we will you still use the northwestern website as a third-party independent validation of our map and make sure that we're calculating and recording all of the data correctly but come monday on the dashboard that we're copying for district 99 off of the northwestern website we will add a tab to that that has the idph data as well as we head in today i don't have that data for you because we haven't collected 14 days yet of data however i do have the seven day uh average for us and we are at 7.93 for the seven day so you know we are below that 10 in which we opened in that first week and we're trending down in that first week we opened
044below 10 and we were trending up so when we say follow the science follow the data follow the trends um it is likely that at some point next week if not by monday we are under that nine percent threshold that we set on december 14th um and we'll have another set of data to back up what we've been gathering from northwestern we appreciate the the voluntary work that northwestern university is doing and making that data easy and accessible for communities to use but we know that you know they're staffing it and doing it out of the kindness of their heart and if we're trying to make timely decisions we just want to go to the source with idph so we'll use the ibph data to have our own 14-day rolling average and then validate our
045math and our numbers against the northwestern site moving forward so we chose monday because uh you know that is closer to the date and i know some board members raised concerns of the number friday looking so far back before school started i would be comfortable with that being friday or monday you heard from our teachers looking at that number on friday definitely gives them the weekend to know what's going to happen and to plan and probably creates a better educational experience for our students the following week monday gives us you know more recent data the the the world of of covid is all about trade-offs and um you know we we trade off more recent data for putting our teachers in a position where at the last minute they're having to modify and change plans
046it puts a lot of stress on our teachers um it might create not the best learning environment even if we are able to come back in person but i did hear clearly that people were concerned about using the most recent data so this is all all trade-offs um so we brought based on what i heard from from board members and from the community that the friday before numbers were looking too far back in the past so that's why the monday recommendation is there i'd like to hear in the discussion that follows here with the board where the board members fall on that now that you know you've heard what we've what we knew a lot all along from our our teaching staff and you've also heard from our community as well other than that all
047of our metrics remain the same all of our safety protocols remain the same we're staying at 12 for cohorts that mirrors our experience from first semester 12 seemed to be the number of concern that's when we started to see illness spread amongst the that student body and even some of the staff there um you know it just it's more prevalent in the community so staffing started to become challenging so uh last slide ron so that's our recommendation coming into today although the board absolutely i'm hoping the board has a discussion about what i just shared with you and then the administration is obviously open to changing that recommendation or the board not approving it at all and leaving it nine percent um or you know any other variation upon that as as the administration always
048does so um that's it for the superintendent report on the topic thank you hank okay we are open for discussion did you want to start terry otherwise i'll start off if nobody wants to begin go ahead you start nancy um but i think didn't sherrell have to leave so maybe she needs to speak first i don't know um i guess i'll hear from the rest of the board then i'll share my opinion okay well i'll start i gotta say this is one of the three times in my ten years here that i have come into a meeting not knowing where which way i was gonna fall on uh which way i was gonna vote so i um this stuff has been swirling around in my head and i'm just gonna you know there's there's pros
049and there's cons and that's what i've actually done is just made a pros and cons list for myself and it's not in any given order but these are my thoughts take them for what they're worth so the pro is i think for changing the positivity metric is we all recognize the positive positivity metric is not really that great of a metric period there's a lot of vagaries associated with it however it is one of the two um primary measures advocated by the cdc and the dupage board of health and while a lot of people argue that it can be artificially high because there are more older people more older people are being tested it also i would argue might be artificially low because of poor sensitivity of the antigen test which they to dan's point
050a few weeks ago they dumped in there and lack of access by those who can't afford to be tested um also um this is absent the whole discussion about the fact that our incidence rate which is the rate per 100 000 is 50 above the top level recommended by the cdc or dpa or idp we'll just say cdc and idph going forward because they're they mirror each other pretty pretty much um and that can't be ignored we are already operating 50 50 above the high no the high end of that rate there is an indicator there is a secondary indicator that speaks to a percent change in new cases per hundred thousand population during the last seven days compared to the previous seven days which might be valuable to consider and that's about the end
051of that is less than or equal to ten percent and i just roughly looked at it because i didn't have all the historical data and frankly we've been about that going on ongoing okay another pro governor pritzker is moving our uh we should soon hopefully be moving down a tier based on a 12 positivity rate which is significantly higher than what's being proposed here today right um but again you know i keep thinking about that incident rate the fact that we are already above the recommended incident rate we are surging and the impact of the holidays is not yet fully felt which concerns me and then we have the emergence of the new um b117 lineage of sorry we don't know what the impact of that is going to be on our community to think
052that we were never going to have alterations in the virus would would have been naive we knew this was coming we just don't know what the impact is going to be okay our pro we have two weeks of experience our con we have two weeks of experience so the fact that you know i appreciate the fact that um administration is following so closely i am cons both heartened that we have some experience and concern that we have so little experience the pro is parents have the choice about whether or not they send their their children to school um is that but i don't know if that's an informed choice about all of the risks you know what i mean they they i frankly when my children were in high school and even in college i
053left it to the school to decide a lot of things because i felt they were doing a good job of that the con is both the staff and community don't have a choice about whether or not we go back they have a voice but they don't have a choice unless they're a parent of a student the pro we have increased staff and we feel like we can manage it i think that's great we've hired new nurses we've got some more contact tracers um i still don't understand like feel i mean feel like we can do it is an anecdotal review i know you're looking at different indicators but we really and and frankly it's all you can do right now i mean i'm not faulting the administration and saying oh you're not looking at closely
054enough it's all that is available i get that i understand that so it's going to be we're really limited with objective criteria and the whole idea about case monitoring and tracing back with fidelity to to whether or not a transmission happened in school it's it's it's a swag it's a scientific wild ass guess you know that and that's all it is and again i'm not condemning the fact that we're doing it because that's what it's the only thing available for for anybody including healthcare professionals the pro is that we have community supporting this chain the con is we have members of the community supporting remaining the same the pro is that we have other schools that are opening and don't seem to have a problem with outbreaks however not all of those schools are back
055yet and all of those schools are following our original hybrid model right they're having fewer students in class so we have hinsdale relatively the same numbers they have no history of outbreak they're following the old hybrid example naperville is going to hybrid at the end of january westmont is coming back next week wheat and warrenville i didn't i i think they're back i didn't i didn't this week following a similar you know almost all the so when we start back next week yeah and as i've always said it's dangerous to compare oh yeah the models however especially from the first semester they were very different however as you indicated most schools are returning under a a similar hybrid model where half the kids are coming back over the course of the week at a time
056in different time structures but in different time structures but most of them it seems to me from just a quick review it's like our original hybrid model right getting closer to one another now so you know that's heartening because we have other boards that are and and administrations that are supporting returning to hybrid but again we don't really know and while the percentage of young people is low you know the kind of this is well so we're coming back because there is and i agree there is well there's there's varying documentation about the impact of hybrid on young people i don't think it is it does not seem to impact the same younger people in the same numbers that it's impacting older people i think that's pretty consistent across the research but it's not absent
057you know what i mean there's still opportunity there still a few younger people who get hybrids tend to be hospitalized and to be if they become ill become more severely ill although many of them don't have any symptoms at all so it's it's it's um it's an unknown and the results we're learning more and more about the results just because there hasn't been time about the devastation of the disease so i continue to um grapple with this stuff in my head about what is the right thing to do i am not a risk adverse individual i've taken a lot of risks in my personal life when it comes to safety though in this case i lean as i have always leaned on airing on the side of safety so that's where i am i'd love
058to hear other people's thoughts so i i'll chime in next so thank you nancy for really driving us down the path of the pros and cons i i have a question um and i've been researching and trying to look through all these things because there's a lot of data a lot of information out here right as it should be right we're talking about a world pandemic i was recently talking to a co-worker who's in europe and they've totally gone to a six-week shutdown or again so you know not only i have the perspective of here you know again world pandemic i'm hearing from different people and how things are being handled i i guess the question i have um hank you're advocating because i was thinking through the notes to start this on tuesday what's
059you you're advocating to right now for me i wouldn't say that i couldn't be opposed to the ten percent we had a big discussion last week about nine and why nine was right and you know here we're today within within a week asking for a higher number however i'm not certain i'm comfortable with this as early as tuesday i feel like i haven't as much information i've strived to gather in the short distance of time of calling for a special meeting on just this past wednesday to have it on saturday i've tried to find out as much information as i can but do i feel fully informed do i feel even fully informed after even the information you just provided i'll say no so i could potentially be in favor of it i don't know
060how comfortable i am with saying let's do this on tuesday and that's my honest answer right now and you know that's where i stand so shirelle to clarify i'm sorry are you saying you support the change to 10 but maybe not as soon as tuesday yeah i think i'm good but not as soon as not right now okay thank you so um i've got a couple of comments i'll try to keep them brief for us all since it is a saturday morning first off want to congratulate pink and his staff for having the flexibility and continuing to work to refine the metrics and refine our plan to make it safe for the kids to be back in school so first off i just want to say thank you to you and the team for doing
061that secondly maybe not as related to the 10 percent number but as you know i i have fundamental issues with this statistic being used as the measure of indicator of safety and unfortunately for you i'm not going to let that go it'll come up in future meetings um you know i'll keep bringing that up um but in regards to the 10 um i am strongly in favor of making that change and making that change now it's a step towards getting the kids back in school sooner i feel even more comfortable about it considering that the current four uh 14 day average is like nine and a half or something like that and trending down so we may be under nine or really close to nine on monday or tuesday anyway so we're almost already to
062where we were um you mentioned hank the seven day average is actually under eight at 7.93 so i strongly support making this move um but also encourage the administration to continue being flexible and looking at these metrics especially as things change either positively or negatively with the strain with how our vaccines impact um these types of numbers um as we can do testing and actually look at internal metrics i i encourage you to keep that flexibility in mind and keep looking at those a couple or just one question for you because this because we're using a 14-day average here a seven-day average is a good indicator on the direction that that 14-day indicator is going so would it be possible if you're making the decision on monday would it be possible for you to indicate
063to the teachers on thursday or friday hey not making a decision now but the trend looks like and most likely we will be in school because i'm thinking most of the time you're going to be able to make that call based on the seven day number and the trend that we're going just to give the educators as much time as possible to plan for that um so um dan we'll just comment on that while we're on it one of the things that we did discuss on the administrative team remember we're trying to to balance ease of use as part of transparency with picking the right numbers and metrics and you know based on evidence something the team did discuss was setting it at 10 but only if the seven-day average was on the decline right
064so that was you know something that we kicked around on our team is working in the seven day trend with the 14 day positivity rate it just you know it adds a layer of complexity to it that you know people have to understand the full piece to know what's going on i i think that that would be something fair to discuss at this time or the board to consider based on what you're saying now yeah i think my only thoughts with that is i i think the seven day indica the seven day number is a good indicator on the direction that the 14 day is going but as you're using a smaller data set seven days versus 14 days that seven day numbers tends to be more volatile and more susceptible to things like large
065spikes and either number of tests or large spikes and or changes in data so i would i mean honestly for the the visibility for the public i would be hard-pressed to say you know i think that's a difficult number i would prefer to use that 7-day number if you can and if you're comfortable on fridays or thursdays just send a note out to the teacher saying it looks like based on current trends that on monday the decision will be to be back in school because we're going to be under 10. i mean you would know i mean if we were at 9 and the 7 day was at 14 percent you pretty much know that it's it's going in that wrong direction and then no numbers would flip so that's my only concern with the
066seven day number that tends to be much more volatile dan you ended up exactly where the administrative team ended up this concussion um the last um the last thing yeah so and just in conclusion and i'll stop talking a note saturday morning like i said fundamental issues with that 10 number we'll talk about that more in the future but for the vote today uh strongly in favor of the move to 10 percent to to get the kids back in school and to honestly give us more that data that we can use and and move forward so that's my thoughts i'm going to say that you know nancy you laid everything out the pros and cons i know i couldn't do a better job and like sherelle i feel that there's not been enough time i'm
067not comfortable voting for that at this time um i did the other thing that bothers me is unpredictability of this virus and that this back and forth back and forth into school i mean it does make life in general hard to plan for the families and the staff and i think in the final analysis i think that public health you don't have education if you don't have good public health basically and so i'm not comfortable voting for the 10 percent at this time who's next oh i'm going to be very short i am full in favor of this anything that we can do to get the kids back into school i'm for i don't think this is a radical movement of the numbers i think it just it it helps us better get the kids
068back in school where they need to be so i'm full in favor of this like i was a couple days ago when i mentioned it to begin with i'm also in favor and uh support uh i i would just echo um i what dan's comments were uh i agree with uh pretty much everything he said nancy uh great job with the pros and cons but um i prefer to stay out of the weeds and let the uh you know let this that that hank kind of lead that and and it rightly wrong you can't help but you're that's your level of expertise i'm an architect so um so i rely on you and and and hank in this so uh my only concern i guess is just hearing from the dgea this morning and uh
069some concern about you know if the last item on the slide uh adequate staff and students available always a factor um you know whether or not you've gotten some input you know from the the dgea as to whether or not this change to a monday uh decision will affect um staffing and uh i guess that that would be my only concern but i support whatever you're recommending here mike i don't think it would affect staffing and staff like choosing not to be here at school right i think it does possibly have impact on the ability for our staff to be able to plan what's happening with their families the next week you know everybody's dealing with a variety of child care issues or many people are and the the structure of work life and their
070you know their partners at home or whoever that is right so the the later that we make the decision for our families or for our staff just the more complexity it introduces into their lives i don't think that our staff all of our staff have been the utmost professionals through this whole thing i i don't think that there's any risk of you know a staff member acting unprofessionally as a result of this change it quite honestly though does put more stress on our employees to make this change so can you i mean dan's suggestion that you're on on friday giving people an indication hey we're looking we're you know things are moving this direction of course we'll make the final call on monday but just you know to look look forward this is where we're
071we're looking for the next week just to give somebody give people some sense of of uh you know what to expect it does but it doesn't eliminate the uncertainty that they're concerned about absolutely i understand um uh just uh and that's the nature of the beast here right yes i mean you know but you're but uh and you can't do more than this but to give people some sort of uh an indication ahead of time and um and and then everyone can everyone can also be looking at those numbers just like they've always been available um you know that that so i you know giving that giving people a sense on their own to be able to see where we're going and for you to kind of affirm that um understanding that everything could change
072on monday because uh you know we still have data to collect on friday saturday sunday so thank you i just have a quick question um is there going to be new opportunity for uh students and families to choose fully remote after the statistic changes like is going to be a new form sent out and everything yeah students can always choose to go from uh in person to remote it's the other direction that we haven't except for rare occurs occasions allowed for because we have to make sure that we have space in every class the classroom um so we can't allow the other way and more students to show up than what we've planned for and where we've placed all of the the classes but yes students could hear this change and choose hey you know
073i'm not comfortable or families i'm not comfortable with the safety measure of this metric at 10 rather than nine so i'd like to move to remote and they could do that at any point yeah i think that i mean i'm not voting but if you want to hear the student perspective i think that at least for me with that option to that's always there to be able to go remote i think that um we should definitely strongly consider and potentially approve that that 10 number i guess it's my turn um i am so torn with this because i personally i don't like the um the fact that um every week it seems to change one you know you're remote you're you're in school you're in remote you're in school i don't think that that's a
074really good thing for for anyone to do um the other the other thing is is that um as nancy said earlier this virus is so unpredictable that we um we don't know how this mutation is it's just common to illinois and we don't know how that's going to affect us and god only knows when we're going to get vaccines in our arms so we don't know um you know how long that's going to be it could be uh you know next week or it could be next month or even the end of the month at the end of the semester so uh i'm just so torn on this because i understand the numbers and um and that but gosh safety is a is a huge deal so um i don't know i don't know i
075can't can't wrap my head around all of it so i don't know i would just make make an argument uh in favor uh from the standpoint that you know this is what our our our team is recommending that we do um and as we've trusted them with so many things and uh you know they've proven time and time again not just on on this issue right you know but everything else that we rely on uh that we don't have these deep deep discussions about um and and we trust and uh there's been absolutely no evidence that we shouldn't uh trust the recommendation and so that's you know you know sometimes it's difficult right we all want to um we want to know um we're afraid about sticking our own necks out sometimes uh making a
076mistake and and especially when it comes to things that we're just not experts about and we're not um this is uh you know we're just not and and it's unfortunate that our staff has had to become right um this is not something that uh that uh superintendents or principals or anybody or ever dreamed that they would have to have to uh tackle and and and lead on and uh but but our our our folks are doing an exemplary job and uh until i see otherwise that's where i'm gonna place my trust and um so i just encourage you terry and everybody else to you know to keep that in mind um you know these are peop these are people that we've hired to make the tough decisions and and uh and they they have even
077maybe more concern than we do about keeping our our community safe our students safe our staff safe um so uh just i guess that's where i'm at you know mike i agree with everything you said but i would like to say that if we do not if somebody does not vote to change the metric that is not a reflection or a statement of mistrust in administration by any means yeah it i i agree that's all it's not a vote of you know the lack of confidence right right right the uh the conver you know to to to not vote in favor doesn't necessarily mean that you don't agree with what i've said yeah right and i i fully thank you yeah and that's good that you're giving people that latitude um reminding them of that
078yeah i just want to echo that because i feel that it has a lot more to do with one values more and i think that the public health is the most important thing to consider and one safety and just once again i think this back and forth and back and forth is very disruptive to staff and families and i think sometimes the quality of education could be somewhat diminished by this back and forth back and forth and while i want to see our students back in school they're our best natural resource that we have i don't think you can have education without good public health first and it's about the community as well thank you julian that was very good i'm so torn uh does somebody want to call a vote i think we've lost
079sherelle right she's gone i'd like to make a motion to accept the 10 percent number to for hybrid learning okay rick motions second i'll second that 10 seconds are we do we have uh so i appreciate the motion um but we want to make sure that we're also accepting the greater than 200 per 100 000 cases and that the um that the decisions based on a rolling average past the 14 days recorded each monday let me ju let me take my motion i accept everything that was proposed proposed today by administration so the the motion that the administration proposed rick if if you would like to amend your motion to be this is to set the community transmission threshold for operating the 2021 hybrid schedule in person at 10 positivity or 200 cases per 100
080000 persons based on the most recent 14 day rolling average available at 3 pm each monday i can do that exactly and to be clear can i just i'm sorry i don't need to interrupt your motion but to clarify the 3 p.m monday is when the official number comes out from idph right it's in the afternoon it's in the afternoon frankly sometimes they post it friday night because i follow it but um sometimes it's saturday morning but that's because i because i get that question a lot why is it until monday and it's because that's when the official number comes out at some point and then you need some time to do just right get the information off the idph website and double check all of our our math so sorry for interrupting you rick
081but i just want to make oh that's okay yeah um i'd still since the motion just got on the floor i'd still like to make a um a discussion second to the amended motion mic seconds go ahead i seconded the n seconds i believe it was dan um i'm i'm not crazy about the the monday um notification i think that there should be some uh mechanism that the administration uses to give the teachers and maybe not our students per se as much as our teachers to know hey this is where we're headed you know i've got a feel for this so that they'll be prepared for that um i'm i always try to be uh open and transparent with our entire staff including our teachers and would absolutely intend on letting people know the direction
082the numbers are heading at the end of the week this is also the mechanics of where our metrics currently sit right in the first semester we only sat in the range that we're in now this nine to ten percent range for a couple of weeks it was either blew past it and it was clearly past these kinds of range or it sat well below it so i think we just happen to be in this time frame of we're coming back and we're in that same window of where those numbers sit i think is the further away from we get from the holidays here we may dip and stay below these numbers and it's very clear every week that we're we're here for in-person learning or that other variant could show up and become far more
083uh you know drive up our rates far quicker and then it'd be very clear that we're we're remote right it's just a nature of where we're sitting in this week and i know it's a tough decision to make for this week but because we are where we are and what our experience was in that first week it makes me as an educator that believes kids should be in school if it's safe to do so is i've told everybody for the last 10 months that i need to be here in front of the board to say look right now based on everything we as an administrative team know we think it's safe to have kids back next week you know uh to your point about the trend i would and this kind of speaks to terry
084i think you know um two things one weekend's reporting falls it it just does consistently since the start of the pandemic but the other thing is i've been giving a lot of thoughts to you know at some point we're going to be over this at some point we're going to be trending down down down down down down and i personally will have a lot more faith in raising positivity numbers whatever number whatever metrics we're looking at once we know we're consistently trending down over a period of time so tangential to what terry said i really would like to see us start following the percent change in new cases per 100 000 during the last seven days compared to the previous seven days because i think that will in the long run give us more information
085to help us make an informed decision but that's not a vote that's just a suggestion we'll definitely i'll i will discuss that number with the health experts and try to understand it a little better but the the vote is going to be on basically those three items and one of them is that number right no that's a different it's a different metric that we haven't discussed to this point the percentage adding adding to that right it would it would nancy would like for us to investigate that number and if i'm understanding correctly and correct how if that would be a better predictor of safety for us uh over the long term than the two metrics that we're using from the cdc right as recommended by the cdc right now and i think the motion says
086on monday but what i'm hearing is and i support that we would work towards looking at making that decision formally earlier than later but i don't know that we're you can really speak to that at this point right because you're you're changing the way you're gathering the metrics as we speak correct that fair assumption i mean the the here's the the challenge right is the numbers do change over the weekend and um yeah they do if i if i pick a if we i we pick uh or choose friday as the date because then it gives people more time to plan we are definitely by the time we come back the following tuesday relying on data this was dan and rick's concern last monday that is far outside of the window of concern for when
087students are returning yeah just cool no i mean i agree with them they've got a valid point i mean there's like no good solution to any of this so we move it to monday because we want to use the best data available to us but that increase that brings in a whole nother set of challenges so as an administrative team we talked about okay maybe we should pick the 14 day on friday and say if it's trending in the right direction then we're going to come back so everybody knows okay we could set it at 10 on friday and if it's trending down over the past seven days then we're going to be back on monday because we're pointed in the right direction we set it at 10 on friday and if it's trending up
088well then it's probably going to keep going up over the weekend and then we're not back that might be the like the best metric trend to look at and gives people a lot of time to more time to plan not a lot of time but more time to plan right yeah it probably points to the way that it definitely points to the direction that the data is going in however it isn't something that is super easy for somebody to just go and look at we can although we can work on our our dashboard to try to make that clear and apparent of you know explaining which way the line is pointing in on friday we'll play into things um you know and that is something we discussed on the administrative team we just didn't know
089what uh you know like we said earlier nancy pros and cons with all of this i would be comfortable with that uh and i would work with our team to make it as clear to everybody as possible if rick wanted to amend that that it would be based on the 10 positivity um does rick have to amend it or can any of us or he'd have to remove his motion and then put it back differently but you know if that was something that the board wanted to consider of setting it on on friday and setting the ten percent threshold i guess you'd have to we'd have to play with it a little bit because um you'd either say it's we'd have to play with it a little bit here and workshop it to figure it
090out yeah right now the the motion is for the uh 10 positivity or 200 cases per 100 based on the most recent 14 day rolling average that's available at three at 3 pm each monday we can amend that um i don't know if hank is ready to really it doesn't sound like at this moment in time can you confidently say do you feel confident in amending that hank or do you need more time before we we can always look at that as a separate motion so my point can we remove it to remove it you'd have to vote it down at this point or rick would have to take it off the table you know i guess my my big concern is consistency i really feel that we need to get the kids back in
091school but we need to be consistent about it we can't keep going one week this one week that one week this one week that it's got to be consistent i totally agree with you i agree with everything everybody said everything everybody said but i don't know if that's so much a factor of this happening at 3 p.m on monday as it is just the volatility of the numbers yes i i i understand that i but you know um this going back and forth isn't good for anybody we're even deterior you know everybody agrees with that you know but we're in a pandemic right now i mean it's unpredictable the kids going back and forth and nobody can guarantee that that will or won't happen and no matter what we do with our numbers um nobody
092can guarantee that will or won't happen the best thing we can all do is i think uh as a as a board as a community to stop um you know uh uh lamenting about it and and really kind of let's start talking about how we're all in this together and supporting each other and the you know and the difficulty that we have in working through this and i think that's you know so we had a presentation at our meeting last monday um you know talking about student supports and the things that we're doing and and we have to try to focus on that positive but i have i absolutely i'm 100 i agree with you i mean i i have a daughter here who's you know bouncing back and forth you know and i'm seeing
093it firsthand i i get it i totally get it but you know we talk about here is you know it's one week at a time and and we can get thing get through this thing together and what can what can we do as parents to support our students in this and and uh you know it's a tough it's a tough time for the country but it's time for everyone to come together as one you know and and that's where we are right now so i um i don't know i i think rick are you going to pull the question back or you want to call it i want to call a vote so question question on that so we don't need to change the the the vote or we don't need to change the resolution
094for hank to tell us that he's going to let the teachers know on friday what the trending looks like no that's just my practice yeah i will definitely do that uh i would have done it regardless of what we talked about today i want people to know what to plan for okay so so you can tell us right now that if we move forward with this that you will let the teachers know on fridays what it's looking like for next week and it may be too close to call but you'll let them know well this is if if this resolution passes i'll have to let them know this afternoon that it looks like we'll be back on monday the way that the numbers are trending but we'll know for sure on i mean we'll be
095exactly in that scenario today okay right so we don't have to change we don't have to change the motion for that to happen no that'll just be my practice thank you yeah and we can come together again too um to amend this once again um if need be i mean i you know hey we need to be nimble um i know everybody wants consistency that sort of thing but uh everything keeps changing and we've got to be willing to change with it and so i think we've heard some good things today a suggestion from nancy you know i i you know i i like what's being suggested i like the idea that hank would go back and talk to the staff to his team uh about how we might further refine this um and make
096it even better um that's i'm fully supported that but i think i'm i still support what what we're talking about doing right now um at this meeting uh this morning and one of the things we're going to talk about at our next meeting which is a week from monday because we rick had brought up before and in all the discussion frankly i lost it last last time we met was uh setting up a standard weekly meeting that could be canceled at any time but you know we have to put a public notice blah blah blah so one of the things we'll be talking about at our next meeting is setting that up and what that means for people and are willing are people willing to do that etc so so that we can act more
097quickly more easily i i will also point back to something i said earlier that i don't want to get lost i don't think this will be the normal i think we'll either it's just a weird time where we're sitting right around this threshold and you know in our experiences within this threshold i i think we will quickly fall back down below it and it'll be very clear week to week that we're in person or will rapidly pass beyond it and it'll be very clear that we should be remote because we're outside of that 10 range where we as an administration based on the guidelines based on our experience feel that it's safe to have students at school it's just the weird spot where we're in today on this day so are we back to the
098vote yes terry did you have anything else you wanted to change or add well i'm just i'm just saying that if we want to take out that last part we need to vote this down and make a new um motion without it you wanted it to not be at 3 pm on monday yes the the motion on the table is as of 3 p.m on on monday terry would you be more would you be more comfortable if it said no later than 3 pm on each monday yeah i suppose but you know just taking it out all together um in this motion and then we can discuss you know making a separate motion for that does that make sense no it doesn't no no why not no i'm not following what you're trying to what's
099your what's your end goal my end goal is is to say we need to make a tentative decision on friday rather than on monday oh okay so you want it based on the data the 14 day rolling average available on friday instead can i make a suggestion here could we just have two motions one talking about the rate the ten percent positivity and then a separate motion related to when it when it when it will the decision will be made that's up direct right he made the motions there's a motion that's been seconded on the table all right so let's vote rick that's why i'm saying you got to vote this down and then we can do another one right you got to vote it down so that no yes i agree but i like
100nancy's suggestion of changing the word verbiage did no later than 3 p.m on monday that gives hank flexibility ability and yeah i'm seeing rick not his head so i i would suggest that you amend the motion once again to do that and then i i can definitely amend it to the to that wording because that gives hank a little bit more flexibility so to be clear then the motion on the floor is for the board of education to set the community transmission threshold for operating the 2021 hybrid schedule in prison at 10 positivity or 200 cases per hundred thousand persons based on the most recent 14 day rolling average no later than 3 pm each monday available no later than 3 p.m each monday available i'm in favor of that okay dan dan agree to
101that i agree okay we're going to call the vote okay rick ruth cavanado hi dan nicholas hi barry pavich nay joanna vazquez drexler mike davenport aye shaw fuller is absent is that correct yeah okay and nancy kupka no so we are three three that means it does not pass it does not pass we will put it on the agenda again for next monday um unless somebody wants to make another motion now then somebody must make another emotion now yes i move that we do the 10 positivity rate that's it so you're you're if i'm understanding what you're asking for to set the community transmission threshold for operating the 2021 hybrid schedule in person at a 10 positivity rate or 200 cases per 100 000 persons based on the most recent 14 day rolling average available
102or the way we have it now would be for the friday prior to the next week of instruction yes hi second terry mike thank you terry pavich aye mike davenport aye dan nicholas aye rick pavonato aye joanna vazquez drexler no nancy kupka no the motion however does carry okay so can we just talk about the thank you board can i just tell you about the logistic piece the challenge that we're in now is that it may not be until monday this week that i have that number okay so i understand our staff still my our staffing community won't know until monday because i need i need northwestern to update their data because i don't have enough data yet to know what mon friday's 14 day average was right until they update that number but we're
103still operating under so we're still operating under the uh hybrid model the nine percent in the 150 right i mean you'd still you'd still be using that to make determination for this coming week then ten percent and 150. so the issue is just notified when that decision will be available it won't be available friday it will be available monday just because of how this the date that the decision fell that's what i'm understanding well i'm talking about what's going to happen this coming week am i i'm not following some so and it looks it looks like according to northwestern dashboard hasn't been updated for friday yet the 14-day average is 9.62 with the seven-day average at like 8.25 so unless there are some dramatic changes which there weren't yesterday when you looked at the testing
104number we will most likely most likely be in school next week correct our most recent available number for friday is uh under 10. now is it it's not friday it's a holiday is that going to be a problem yeah i i don't know i i don't know how the metrics will get reported i guess what we would have to do is if you're concerned about that we we'd have to how did we read the motion did we say available on friday julie can you i don't think so julie you said no later you did not do a time on friday no so did we say the most recent available rolling average available on friday i i'm sorry i i don't didn't have the exact i don't i don't think we did today i don't think
105you said it that way no um i think we need to delineate that uh whether it's friday's data or the data that's available on friday and i i know it sounds weird but it is a huge difference right because i can't control the rate in which data is reported to me so if i if it is friday's data i might not have that until tuesday this week because of the holiday um i i think it needs to say the same language that i brought before which is available on friday um because otherwise it does nothing to to meet the concerns that we had that people would know is going on um so it's got to be like available to me at 3 p.m on friday or you know sometime so that i know when to
106go whatever date is available to me that i draw upon that at that time and if it's like thursday's data is the most recent data available to me at that time that i'm going to use thursday's data if it's fridays it's fridays but i don't want to end up in a spot where we're at right now if i have to rely on friday's data and i might not get it until sometime next week it does nobody any good and we end up worse off than than we ever have been to this point so can we just make it best available so do we need to make another motion yeah because we've already voted now so we need a motion to use uh the 14-day average veil average data available as of either 3 p.m friday
107or available by the end of the workday friday whatever you want me to say at noon friday uh most can you say most recent data yes the most recent 14-day average available by 5 p.m friday december or not for free i'm sorry for the week knowing what's going to happen the next week yeah so what three o'clock yeah three o'clock is good because we always like to send the message out um before people go or as people are going home because then uh it's either then or be the middle of the day we try not to disrupt the flow of class periods and if we're releasing that information at 3 pm it will definitely disrupt what's going on in classrooms so it's either the middle of the day at noon or it's the end of
108the day at three gives us the time frame to communicate that out and not disrupt learning that's going on because as you could imagine this would likely become a conversation point so so moved for 3 p.m so what exactly is the motion i'm going to read a motion you tell me if you think this is correct terry is moving to set the the time the data will be retrieved and decisions will be made for the next week based on the most recent 14-day rolling average available at 3 p.m each friday and that is without language related to positivity or the rate correct that would just be setting the official time in which we would use data and draw data i'll second that research yes rick cavanado yes joanna vazquez drexler yes mike davenport yes joel
109fuller i'm sorry dan nicholas yes nancy kupka yes the motion carries so to put it together so that everybody is clear of between the two motions what we have just decided just so everybody's clear and everybody knows in the community and then we can communicate it out to everybody is that we have set the community transmission threshold for operating the 2021 school hybrid schedule in person at a 10 positivity or 200 cases per 100 000 persons based on the most recent 14-day rolling average available at 3 p.m each friday correct but that is as two motions because i do not want i do not support the ten yeah but no i don't but i mean effectively one effectively yes yes so the one voice of the board between those two actions is what i just
110read and based on that we will be returning to school for in-person learning next uh monday because my most recent available 14-day rolling average as of 3 p.m last friday has us below 10. tuesday right tuesday tuesday yeah tuesday not monday when school is closed monday for federal holiday to respect dr martin luther king jr yes so anyways so tuesday we would we would return to the hybrid model and we will do everything to communicate that out to everybody today any concerns from or beyond beyond that matter we all all in agreement understanding that thank you for your hard work on this hank and you know for the uh for the extra time today um you know and and continuing so getting the word out to the community thank you yeah thank you hank all
111right thank you board uh so we need a motion and move we adjourn mike and terry all those in favor aye aye all those opposed we are adjourned thank you very much to uh hank and all staff and everybody else for coming in on monday on saturday morning again remember our next meeting we're going to talk about um setting up a like a standing emergency meeting that can always be always be canceled but that's decision has to be made within two days you know you know you know the open meetings act right thank you all thank you