December 14, 2020 School Board Meeting

001okay we should be live Hey Jill can you look when you have a sec and confirm we're streaming Rod awesome thanks okay we're ready we're ready let's go ahead and uh call to order Julie can you do the Roll Call certainly Nancy kupka present Mike Davenport present Dan Nicholas here Rick panado here but you got some serious Echo Joan Vasquez Drexler here um Charelle Fuller no and Terry pavisic no okay um s Zoe Boyd and Sam B here thank you okay we have a quorum uh we are in session let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the pledge of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation under God indiv and justice for all okay I believe we're going to start with students perspectives uh

002yes board member uh board member uh uh student board member questions and comments and I believe Sam is here this evening yes sir okay just give me one moment to pull it up all right so it's been an interesting few weeks at dgn I would say um is somebody's mic on I I feel like there's a echo I can hear the echo's terrible there's mute Rick can you mute your microphone yeah I I've been muted that's why I said everybody's muted you still have terrible Echo well it's all right for me so I will just continue um I sorry I don't hear an echo you know what I think it's gone now okay go ahead Sam all right sorry about that um so yeah like I said an interesting few weeks I think definitely the

003most interesting um little time section of time since we've last met and last talked about this has been since that new schedule was released um so actually on Saturday I put out a poll on my social media and I asked a few questions and the main one was do you like the new hybrid schedule for next semester and only about 110 people responded from North but of those people there were 56 votes for yes and 84 for no as of 5:00 pm on Sunday but yeah of course it's important to note that's less than 10% of the student body I have no idea you know what factors go into what they're saying but um that was just the the data that I received and so later I asked a couple follow-up questions um and it

004seemed that of the no people it was not against going to school it was against Minor Details um maybe such as the the alphabet bet change with that one letter or um continuing those 80-minute periods I know a lot of students wanted to have 50 minutes or uh something a little bit lower than 80 but I think that the general consensus is that we're still happy to be going to school we're still happy to be back in the building at all I just think that there's a lot of people who have you know minor frustrations with some of the the bits of the schedule but I think that of the people that voted yes and of a lot of people of a lot of of the people that voted no they're still satisfied and happy

005to be going back to school it's just there's little small things that they don't like uh in terms of student activities for Fine Arts uh there's been a lot of recording and presenting music recently for working on a final project which is to be performing for the Mosaic which will be continuing virtually um and be uh presented on Thursday which will will be exciting because it's it's really nice you know VI L still presenting despite all the the limitations that we have um for some of the clubs the NHS National Honor Society had a food drive on Saturday from 9: to 12 where members brought in Food Supplies and canned goods to be donated uh to various places like the Woodridge food pantry West bman Humane Society Westmont food pantry so that was really really

006nice um getting some community service in and also the giving tree uh the statistics are in and 337 gift cards were collected for over $8,000 so um definitely some great great uh community service work and donations going on in the last uh couple weeks so you know like I said going back to that schedule I think the mood is is excitement is satisfaction with coming back to school it's just you know small little things that that people are frustrated with but obviously you're going to get a lot of that when you make a schedule the same for everybody there's always going to be people who are upset um I just think there's there's some things that that students don't like but I think the general consensus is you know excited to be back in school

007so that's all I have uh feel free to chime in with any questions thank you all right I I don't see Zoe here yet um so we can move on and circle back to Zoe if she's able to attend later Sam it's Nancy can I just ask that you uh like you said there's just like a few little minor things but could you um summarize those and send send it to everybody please thank you can you hear me yep yeah okay he gave you a thumbs up Nancy to go I'm sorry I was looking at my at my um agenda okay so Zoe's not here so we'll move on to the approval of minutes we can always come back to her um we're looking for a motion to approve the November 16th 2020 business meeting

008the November 16th 2020 close meeting the December 7th 2020 Workshop meeting and the December 7th 2020 closed meeting minutes so moved second Terry and Dan thank you Terry pavisic I Dan Nicholas I Rick panado I Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport I cherelle fuller hi and Nancy kupka I the minutes are approved we'll move on to then to the first reception of visitors and I'm apologizing to everybody for some reason my camera is not working tonight um but this meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience this first reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote the second reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District

00999 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors and equal opportunity to address the board any individual needing more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary Mrs nidc um please uh uh come to the microphone or and state your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meaning minutes and they are being broadcast live um and I reserve the right to modify these Protocols of circumstances warrant we appreciate your observation of these protocols Rod can you pull up the action items for this evening on the slides please all right uh we do have visitors in the room uh these are the items that are the action items for the evening if anybody would like to address the board on any of these topics

010uh now is the time to come forward no the curriculum is on two new course proposals the second semester is not an action item this evening it's a discussion item all right uh I have none here and I believe all of the comments that came in through the online form are for the second reception of visitors as well they all pertain to second semester all right so I'm com back to my okay we're gonna start then with the so hany because I'm having trouble hearing you so we have nobody there who's gonna address the board at this moment regard there's nobody that wishes to address the board regarding one of tonight's action items okay thank you okay we're going to move on to the recommendation reports of the superintendent return inperson learning Etc uh Rod

011can you advance one more slide for me before we get started on the superintendent's reports I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Janice on being named uh the enoy principal Association uh dup page High School principal of the year um obviously we all know she is well deserving of this award and we appreciate everything that she does in District 99 and this uh recognition allows her to continue forward and uh be considered to be this Illinois high school principal of the year so I would just want to take this moment to uh recognize Janice for everything that she's done and all the hard work that she she's put in and that it uh and recognize that she's received this impressive award on behalf of her peers uh in uh the Downers Grove area or

012the the DW page area so congratulations Janice all right this is out you want in the fridge no leave it out so we're going to turn this over to uh to Jill and Gina to provide highlights of the November survey on uh the school year up to this point good evening everybody um I know the board appreciation day was last month but I want to thank you again for your service to the community and for all that you do as volunteers am I getting an echo am I causing an echo no you sound fine Jill okay thank you um we issued our second survey second climate survey of last month and I just wanted to share some highlights with you and detailed reports of these are on board docks for all of the board members

013to view and they're available to the public as well um we'd also like to thank those 3,295 people who responded to our survey we heard from almost a thousand students and we heard from almost 2,000 families we also read every single one of the 7,839 comments we asked in the survey about in-person learning remote learning and the current schedule now we didn't like Sam's um survey we did not ask about the the second semester schedule but we will at some point but I just wanted to share highlights from what we heard and most importantly Gina will explain what um changes that we're considering and um doing as a as a result of all of your feedback um what we heard from students like Sam most people who most students who did um experience in-person learning

014found it to be very valuable um said one student it felt normal um they also like that um 91% found that the Monday schedule it was short 25 minutes per period but they really enjoyed seeing all their teachers for the week and being prepared for the week um we heard again as we did in our last survey that many students are uncomfortable on the zoom breakout rooms and that was a theme um they're also uncomfortable initiating meetings with teachers and we saw that as a result they're not really taking advantage of those office hours what we heard from Stu uh teachers and staff they loved seeing students during imperson learning this is what are our teachers for they want to see their students and the majority felt safe at school they're also confident that they

015can provide effective instruction but straddling that remote and in-person teaching at the same time is a big challenge for teachers like students they find that the Monday schedule is very valuable to see students um and set the tone for the week um they also uh want a way to Target those students who are struggling with remote learning and they're disengaged they want to require them to help to attend help sessions and they want students to use those office hours that they have um they also have concerns with the cameras being off of course there are technical reasons for that but um it's difficult to reach students when you can't see them that's what we heard from teachers and then finally what we heard from families they find iners learning to be valuable the majority want

016their students to be back in person they also have concerns was struggling and unmotivated students they're concerned about their academics they're concerned about their emotional health just like teachers families are worried about their students um in fact many said that they would appreciate some help from teachers and the school with how to best support their student at home um but bottom line they they repeated that they appreciate their teachers and all that they're doing for them now and appreciate all the communications that come to them from their teachers so um that's just a very high uh level of what we heard um but Gina is going to address how we are responding um and to some of these themes and what changes we'll be making thank you jel good evening everyone um I'm gonna talk

017about the feedback and how that feedback has led to proposed changes or feedback that perhaps we didn't um change in the proposed schedule so as you can see students and parents and Jill said this very well as did Sam um really report a need for greater in-person learning time they want to be back in school and so the proposed change and certainly Dr th will talk more about the schedule that's proposed is an increase in per in-person learning to two mornings a week and two afternoons a week the Monday schedule would still remain remote as it currently is students and parents in reporting that need um we certainly heard that need but in order for the bus company to meet the increased transportation needs the schedule needs to be changed just slightly in other words

018so on Tuesday through Friday the buses after the morning classes will drive students home sanitize the bus turn around and pick up the students for the afternoon class so in order to do that we are going to cut the passing periods down to 10 minutes to allow the morning session to end five minutes earlier and the afternoon session to start five minutes later therefore before we will have about an hour and a half a little bit over that for the buses to drive the morning students home and pick up the afternoon students teachers uh suggested removing those scheduled fully remote weeks you may recall from our previous hybrid schedule that we had scheduled weeks where we were remote for example election week that was one of the weeks that we were remote and the suggestion

019was to eliminate the scheduled fully remote weeks teachers reported needing more transition time on Mondays teachers engage in professional learning in the morning and then start their day seeing obviously their classes as Jill said for 25 minutes a period but that transition was just five minutes between that professional learning time and first period And so we're going to end professional learning time on Mondays 10 minutes earlier than we did before so allowing more transition time for teachers we also found that time is needed for various activities and so once a month we are planning to extend our third period class so that we can have students engage in PBIS lessons we have the five essential survey coming up other building and District needs so just once a month it'll be extended so that we can

020meet those needs and that's on the Monday schedule so on one Monday per month the schedule for third period will be extended the survey data also shows as Jill stated that students are not taking advantage of the resource period which is basically Tuesday through Friday from 11: to 11:30 and teacher office hours so we're in the process of evaluating and potentially adopting a tool that would enable teachers to schedule students into either resource or office hours so that they can take full advantage of those opportunities survey data also showed that students need academic help in various areas and we are concerned because in progress grades do show that there is an an increase in the number of students who are struggling academically so we looked into various resources that we could adopt that would help

021students and you'll hear later tonight about a program called paper it's an online 247 365 day a year chat-based touring program that actually is used in District 68 and so we're considering uh moving towards that I also should share and I Jill may have said this we had a committee that worked on the um the schedule so they basically looked at all the survey data and provided input um based on the survey and based on the proposed uh changes we were planning to make and many of them too were concerned about some of the same issues such as students not using resource hours such as um students struggling academically and so uh we're moving forward with hoping to to adopt paper there were other topics that came up um students struggling emotionally and we will

022continue our counselor and Social Work psychologist Outreach our counseling and student support services department and really targeting those students who are struggling and that happens in a variety of ways phone calls Zoom meetings um home visits um those will continue as Jill mentioned lots of concerns about the cameras being an off mode and we really need to research that as to why do students why are students not turning their cameras on or turnning turning them off um in some cases we have heard that it could be connectivity um but we do have several solutions that we can afford our students but there are concerns that there could be other reasons like motivation behind that and so we certainly want to remind students and families and teachers that the expectation is that students will have their

023cameras on as Jill explained there are uh teachers who are concerned about balancing inperson with remote learning simultaneously straddling the students that are in front of them and the students remotely and teaching in that way so we are examining uh further professional development and instructional coaching on best practice so the teachers can be more successful and feel more comfortable with that as I believe Sam mentioned in the beginning the length of periods did come up so we have black scheduling so Tuesday through Friday they're 80 minute periods and on Mondays they're 25 minute periods and we heard feedback on both of those topics we did examine the feedback one of the concerns was the 80 minutes on Tuesday through Friday but in order to accomplish the goals of seeing you know all the students and

024the busing and having students in person more we feel the need to continue with the block schedule which will allow us to preserve the instructional time we also heard as Jill said that students and teachers like seeing every student on Monday so in order to continue with that schedule we'll continue with the 25 minute periods we certainly do not want to to let go of that professional learning time for our teachers some students voiced a concern about the length of that midday break so currently the schedule the morning ends at 10:55 from 11: to 11:30 is what we call resource and then of course the afternoon classes and some were concerned about that break some students even commented that they would prefer to run all the classes in a row and get out of school

025earlier um so we are concerned about students not using a resource and so we are looking at scheduling uh a scheduling tool for that but we also need to have that break in the middle of the day so that the morning students can travel home and the afternoon students can travel to school so we actually are extending it by 10 minutes by reducing the passing period time so those are just again the high level key ideas that were brought up in the survey and you'll hear more from Dr thely about the changes that I just shared with you are there any questions about the survey that Jill or I can address hey Gina this is Dan um quick question and maybe you'll get into this later when we talk about paper is there a way

026for the students that are struggling um to require the usage of paper or to require the usage of the resource hour to to proactively schedule that for the students is there a way for us to to do that or is this entirely voluntary so paper is voluntary we can certainly encourage it we can show students how to use it we can't necessarily require students to go in and use paper unless of course that's part of an activity that teachers do in class that would be different of course in terms of the resource we can certainly schedule students in and that's that technology tool that I referenced um but in terms of requiring it I mean certainly if we're encouraging students if we're scheduling them into and they do not attend then that obviously leads to

027a greater conversation with families about iend those times yeah I'd love to make sure that we somehow make the parents aware of both the resource and the paper so that the parents could be proactive with their students and and with their teachers and sign them up I mean that resource period is a great time to connect with a teacher um but only if it's being used and I I want to try to figure out a way to make sure that the students are actually using that that resource and we too are very concerned about that we certainly want students using the resource we want students using office hours as much as possible I mean even in the committee the suggestion was brought up that perhaps students that are fully remote be require to check in

028during resource you know one day a week for for a short period of time so we too are very concerned about that we are planning if we move forward with paper on doing a roll out to families not just students great thank you Gina um have you noticed um an uptick in um lower grades or failures with this semester so we are in progress grades because we don't do quarter grades we only do semester grades are in progress grades we have seen an increase in the number of students who uh for in progress grades are earning a failing grade uh We've also seen an increase in students who are earning a a d earning a are we um are we talking about any type of recovery program to help those multiple FS yes so absolutely

029so when I talk about paper I've got some charts and I'll kind of walk you through some of the models that we're looking at and I also want to talk about some of the changes that we're proposing actually to put in effect for this year that I think will encourage students to take more advantage of some of those options okay and have the guidance counselors because we have received some correspondence from the community have the guidance counselors may be going to have an extra responsibility to reach out to the parents of these students to get everybody on board certainly teachers counseling student support services are are counselors in some cases if there's case managers certainly um we encourage to reach out we expect our teachers to be contacting parents and and responding or sending emails

030that may not be always a call obviously um as students sometimes the emails aren't valid addresses and sometimes the phone numbers aren't valid addresses I know I've run into that quite a bit so we have found that to be true absolutely and that's one of the reasons I I think I believe one of the reasons why we've definitely increased our our home visits because we're having trouble getting a hold of some families no response to email phone calls those kinds of things and so our counselors have gone out um and and really done a great job of reaching out to those families who can't seem to get a hold of because maybe we can get some of those students back on track for second semester so that doesn't become a wash out either absolutely uh

031since we're uh we're talking about the survey right now right um uh notice that you know in terms of the summary of what we heard from students um I'm not seeing a bullet point there that says uh that fully remote isn't isn't effective or you know that they that they hate it um is that a fair fair statement all right and then um uh I do see though that with with uh teachers or I mean with the families that there is um concerns with struggling unmo unmotivated students um and I think we've seen we've I we certainly heard a lot of that in the emails that are being you know people that are are are being have sent to us um other thing that strikes me it looks like we've got a a pretty good

032response to the survey it's always hard to get people to take time and I mean I mean normally we would be really thrilled at this level of response to a survey and uh of our community uh in District 99 but um but I noticed it still I mean there's 1951 families responded 989 students responded um and we have somewhere around 5,000 students in the district so you know uh fair to say that there's a number of people that didn't that chose not to respond or uh didn't feel the need to respond and I don't know how how to interpret that except to say that uh when people uh when people are upset about something um they tend to uh speak up as we're you know as we're definitely seeing right now so um I yes

033I'm I am feeling good that there are a number of people that did not feel that they needed to say much at this point um and I'm grateful for those that did um respond to so that we can have this um you know this this feedback and and do something with it and I think we've done a nice job of adjusting the hybrid schedule to respond to it so uh thank you Gina Mike I do believe that uh the more that we go through these cycles and we share the feedback with the public and then connect it back directly to the changes that we're making in our programming that the you know the students and the parents and the general public and our staff understand that we're not just asking to ask we're asking because

034we want to improve and make changes and get better and I think as time goes on and you know they that everybody you know everybody's dubious when you fill out a survey will anybody do anything with this I think what Jill and Gina have set up for is what's going to come next where we do share uh the changes that we're making in our programming in response to what we heard any other comments thank all right uh so thank you Jill and Gina for setting up uh the return to inperson learning overview uh we're going to go into the information here into what we're looking at doing for second semester uh and this is um on Friday we emailed out to everyone in the community kind of the overview of what we were planning on

035doing second semester um and then tonight's going to be some details and then uh a short discussion on uh some of the metrics pieces so Rod if you could Advance it before we get into all of the changes that we're going to make uh I do want to point out that uh although it has been an incredibly challenging last nine months for everybody in our community and our greater society that District 99 has done a lot of good things uh over this school year um I know there's a a lot of things that people would like to see differently but I I think it's a a moment for us all to stop and to recognize that our students have been thrown into a learning environment that they never expected to be part of and we

036never expected to have to lead them through it and our kids have responded amazingly um you know I I am so impressed by the resiliency of our students and there were their interest in learning and improving and uh you know the the type of of children that our parents send us uh is pretty amazing and uh our staff have really worked hard to try to meet the needs of kids during these very difficult times and our families have been so supportive of the work that's been going on in our classrooms and and all of us working together to try to meet the needs of kids and we've still done some really cool stuff uh over the the course of the Fall so before we get into all of the changes I think I just think

037it's really important for us all to you know stop and reflect and and to be thankful for the good things that have happened uh over the course of the first semester I know we're all focused on getting better and improving and and finding ways uh to offer more opportunities for our students but I just would be remiss as the leader of the district if I didn't stop to thank everybody for working through some of the most difficult times many of us have faced uh perhaps in our lifetimes so um just a a kudos to our students and our staff and our families uh for everything that they've been doing over the course of this semester to make the the best of a difficult situation so thank you everyone I want to reiterate what I shared

038over the summer uh what you can see there in that image is some of the the first messaging that we communicated this summer about returning to school uh I have always shared with the community that our goal is to be at school and that I believe that teachers and students have to interact daily for teaching and learning at the high school level to be effective um but we have to balance that between the safety measures that are in place in the time of a pandemic um but for anybody who who might question my sincerity or my interest or my wish for students to be in school learning personally in person in front of their teachers every day I'm here to tell you that that is my number one goal my default is to have students

039in school if we were going with Hank's bias about school kids would be here the the challenge is is that the science points differently to how we should be handling teaching and learning in the time of a pandemic and throughout the course of the presentation tonight I'm going to point to the science and the evidence that goes along with this for those of you that don't know I am a science teacher I believe greatly in in science and the process and looking at the experts and understanding the information in front of us all of it and using that to our best of our ability to make sure that teaching and learning moves forward but it does so when a way that we keep everybody that we're responsible for at school safe Rob so a couple

040of quotes and a couple of uh leaders that have been that have had quotes sent to me greatly over the last few months are Dr fouchy and Dr Redfield and uh earlier this month uh there was some sound bites that were played from Dr fouchy and Dr Redfield that seem to indicate that students should come back to school uh right away for in-person learning pull out all the stops kids should be back at school all day no questions asked the challenge with those quotes is that they were they came out at a time in response to New York City schools that were choosing to move from an in-person learning model to a fully remote model at a time in which their Community metrics were indicating about a 3% rate of community uh positivity in their

041Community many of these quotes that have been circulated and sent to me were aimed directly at New York City schools with much lower rates of community transmission than what we've seen in Illinois or in our own community over the past month and they're also pulled out of context of what these other two leaders have also said consistently going back to the summer months and through the fall and even today so Rod if you'll Advance uh we'll focus in on some other things that Dr fouchy has said and if we start putting his comments in in a more Fuller context you'll see here that he continually talks about sending students back to school he really believes the safest place for kids to be is at school just as I do but only when Community metrics are

042low enough that it is prudent to bring students back to school and those metrics are really based on where you are specifically where your community is at with those metrics you can't just make a national statement about bringing students back to school without considering what the spread of covid is in the community that you're looking at and then Rod if you'll take a look at Dr redfield's comments he also talks about schools are connected to the communities that they live in and that we should be using the data in front of us to determine when it's safe to go back to school and when we do that we have to consider the students but we also have to consider the adults in the schools that are working with students and also the adults that kids

043go home to at the end of the day because the school is part of the community and we draw our students and staff especially here in District 99 our staff from our community and then we send them back home to our community at the end of each day so all of those factors have to be considered when we're making these decisions BR so what I've put together here uh is kind of the simplification of my mindset and the administrative team's mindset is we're determining whether or not it is safe to return to school and you can see there there's a threshold here from when we're 100% remote we can't spread the virus at school because nobody no students are here right all the way up to if we just open the doors and said come

044back to school like it was preco it's highly likely based on what we know that covid would spread here within our hallways and then there's a kind of a middle Zone where it'd be likely to spread and then we have to get into what the CDC says and the other health experts say about conditions at school that might tend to to spread um covid and then what we are aiming for on our team is that green box there how can we design school in such a way that when students are here covid is unlikely to spread that is the risk level that we are comfortable as educational leaders and at at trying to design for within our community so that's what we're shooting for is unlikely to spread I know there are other other members

045in the community that believe we should be planning for one of those other boxes um but what we are doing administratively is aiming for that we don't want to we want it to be unlikely that if a student comes to school or a staff member comes to school without covid that it's unlikely that they go home at the end of the day with covid right we we don't want that transferring here at school rod so in order to determine how to do this this is the the website there if you go to that you'll see these are the key considerations for schools as to how to operate in a time of covid um tonight's presentation you're going to see I'm going to walk you through a lot of the information on this site nearly all

046of it and I'm going to highlight for you the key pieces that we administratively are considering as we build this programming much of what is here on the CDC website is mirrored on the idph website in their guidelines and also in the DuPage County Health Department guidelines Rob so some of the the things directly from that CDC website is that we're supposed to collaborate with state and local Health officials to the extent possible I meet once or twice a week with the Dage County Health Department I have met uh several times with repres representatives from the Illinois Department of Public Health or with the Illinois State Board of Education over the last nine months to discuss what our programming should be what the the science says and what the guidelines actually mean then we're supposed

047to take all of those that information we're receiving from them and adjust it to meet the unique needs and circumstances of our own community and tailor what we're doing to meet our needs so I hear a lot from people that that comp compare District 99 to other districts within our own Community or to other communities uh nearby or across the country or uh public schools to parochial schools or private schools and when we take a look at what that the CDC is telling us is that different schools and different communities are going to end up with different programming it depends on what the priorities of uh of the community are of the administration the board but also logistical things the size of your schools the layouts um just how your different courses work the technology

048you have available to you all of those and a thousand other things play into building a program for our individual schools and in a school district our size and in buildings our size making changes to programming is a very slow process I know that many wish we could change things quicker and move faster but making a change in this district is you know turning an aircraft carrier style type of change it is slower change than even I would like at times um but we have to recognize that we are trying to build the best program for our own schools and our own Community R when we do that one of the things we have to really do is look at at the level of viral Transmission in the school and throughout the community once again

049this is directly from the CDC guidelines for how we're supposed to run schools and we need to work with the health authorities as we do this so uh our strategies need to adapt on those Community transmission levels that are there R and then as the CDC points out you know the CDC is a federal organization uh public education in the United States is very much a local uh Endeavor however the states have a lot of say over what we do in schools so the CDC is structuring the overall big picture guidelines and we're using those but we still must comply with the idph and DuPage County Health Department guidelines most of those are entirely based on the CDC guidelines but uh to for today's presentation I want to go all the way to the top

050and start at where that top guidance is based upon so we won't spend a lot of time on those other guidelines this evening so what we're essentially doing is taking our instructional program how teaching and learning will work at school we're considering the strategies and guidelines that are provided to us from the CDC the idph the DuPage County Health Department other health experts and then we're also considering the rate of community transmission so those three things we Factor together to try to aim for that green box on the diagram where students will come to school and it will be unlikely to spread now we have we factor in everything that we can and we do our best to hit that I understand different people might make different choices than we have as an Administration or

051a board but please realize that we are factoring all of those things in in all of the decisions we're making and trying to aim for that green box we're not aiming for the no chance of spread and we definitely don't want it to be likely or highly likely that it will spread when students come to school uh so that that's the goal of the exercise go R so in the hybrid program that you're seeing for second semester there's some beliefs built into that into the instructional programming so that top box that you saw of the three uh one thing that came through clear in the surveys that we heard we saw from the students and from staff is that if there's a very small number of students in the classroom that it's not as meaningful

052of an experience as if we have a larger number of students in the classroom since we started building models over the summer we have looked at smaller models 25% models like you've seen in some school districts we built and shared with schools across the country one of the first 1/8 models models where one8 of the students would be able to come into the building at a time when we evaluated those models sure those models can run during times of higher Community transmission but the feedback from everybody was if there's not enough people in the classroom if there's not enough students in the classroom to have true authentic conversations then what you've essentially done is run the virtual or the fully remote form format with a couple of kids coming to school and then just participating

053in the remote format from school that there's not enough like enough students in the classroom to really have a a dynamic conversation or to do activities or to do those things and and we heard through that feedback that that was not valuable in those couple of weeks we had where students or staff had were in classrooms with a very small number of people in it and that uh really if teachers can count on a consistent number of students that can show up on a daily basis that that will help create a quality learning environment that's part of the reason why you're seeing this model change to four days a week one of the things we we heard was that two days a week is just not enough it's not worth it it's not worth the

054lift for families to get to school two days a week There's No consistency so by coming to school EV every student coming to school every day um even though it's for only a half day uh we believe that that will uh help create a more consistent learning environment and will get more students to attend and then make it a more valuable experience when they're here we also know that while students are here we still have a group of students that are remote whether it's the other half of the classroom or it's the students that have chosen the fully remote model for whatever reason so uh we did look at models that would separate those groups from one another almost create time chunks and our early hybrid model that you saw over the summer did that

055where we separated the a group from the B group at all times so teachers uh would only focus on one group of students within the same space of time so we administratively carved out the time and allocated it for teachers for each group but what we learned very quickly was that that doesn't work for every classroom depending ending on the students that are in there and the curricular objectives for the day teachers need the ability to structure that specific class period maybe they do need all of the students in the space at the same time to do uh and and to teach all the students together maybe they need to break them into smaller groups maybe they just need to meet with five kids at a time while the rest of the students are working

056on their own uh maybe it's back and forth maybe it's one student presenting to their whole class half of them there in person and half of them remotely there's any number of lessons or activities that our teachers are going to set up as experiences for our students and we trust them as professionals to structure that time appropriately for who's in front of them and what what they're trying to teach that day and and the experience they're trying to let students have so what we need to to do is to trust our teachers to structure those classrooms appropriately the lessons the activities the time how they group kids and then ultimately the assignments they give and the assessments that they give um but as we do this we need everybody to understand uh we need students

057and families to understand and we need teachers uh to recognize that they're learning as they go along as well and uh I know uh teachers will be frustrated because they will they will not be as effective as they were before covid because they've never done this before and it is scary and frustrating our teachers every time we change the programming become first year teachers all over again and have to relearn how to do a lot of this um none of us went to school uh and learned how to teach a group of in-person students and remote students at the same time that wasn't a thing and it is now and um we all just need to to be patient with one another because we figure this out out and realize we're all trying to do

058what's best for kids and and try uh to meet their needs through this model um so I just I ask everybody to to be patient as we move into this new semester 2 programming so let's dig into the details a little bit about what this is going to look like all right so as went out on Friday and the communication we're looking at four days of in-person learning uh students will come to school each week Tuesday through Friday and we're keeping that Monday day you heard from the feedback survey that both teachers and students found that day really important for setting up the week and having it successful and especially with so many moving parts that are going to happen here where each class period might have students coming in and out of it at

059different times or doing different activities while they're in the remote or in person or even blending the the students in the classroom with students that are at home that Monday day is going to be really important for setting up the success of the week and the fact that it is fully remote allows us to get all of the students in that same space with the teacher at the same time and set up the expectations for the week then we keep the groups in group A and B you'll see group a comes in Tuesday at Wednesday mornings and then they come back Thursday and Friday afternoons in doing so they get to see every one of their teachers over the course of the week and participate in every one of their classes in person group B

060is the opposite schedule so Tuesday and Wednesday in the afternoon and then Thursday and Friday in the mornings it accomplishes the same goal and another benefit of this is no group of students is only having to come in in the morning or only in the afternoon uh every student gets an opportunity to not have to get up and run out and catch the bus first thing in the morning and every student has the opportunity of doing that so it kind of creates a balance in how the week works for students and there some consistency in that we in our old model we didn't know if we would be able to do a midday bus run part of the great part of being able to run that hybrid model for The Limited two weeks that we

061were able to before the metrics got bad was that we learned what worked in that small snapshot of time and we learned how we could tweak the transportation schedule to make this a possibility if we would have known what we knew knew then what we know now we would have tried to open with that AB schedule with morning and afternoon what you're seeing here or something similar to that but we didn't know if we could pull it out pull it off or how how everything would work now we we know it it's doable um to do this is we mentioned earlier we have to shorten the passing periods to uh to 10 minutes from 15 so that saves us five minutes of passing periods in the morning and five minutes of passing periods in the

062afternoon which we then take that 10 minutes and put it into the lunch block that's just the right amount of space that we need to make sure that we can drop off the morning students sanitize the buses pick up the afternoon students and get back in time for the afternoon classes what we're also going to do is put the resource periods always following the morning courses that provides a level of consistency we heard from uh from students and staff that there was a lot of moving Parts in the way that that hybrid looked in the fall so we're trying to make things more consistent by putting those always in the morning um first in the first semester we made it so that students could opt out of lunch study periods and almost all of our

063students did uh very few students were on campus for those lunch or study periods so uh just to make the the mechanics of it easier and the logistics easier we're going to we have that form out that if students want to opt in they could remain on campus for those lunch study periods and if we ever have a day where a student is on campus and had planned on coming home they just need to reach out to an administrator their counselor and let us know that they aren't able to make it home that day and we'll make arrangements for them uh you're going to hear about some of the additional supports tonight some of those were in the earlier discussion uh things like paper and a variety of other supports like uh being able to

064teachers being able to schedule students into resource periods and also uh this tool that we're looking at also uh allows students to let teachers know that they are planning on coming to their teachers resource period and what they need help with so that a teacher can plan for what those students needs are when a student drops in to a resource period and should make that time far more efficient uh as Sam mentioned earlier tonight we needed to make a change at North High uh and move the group a to a through k uh as many of you know the classrooms at North High are very some of them are very small and in order to be able to keep the size of the classes balanced and maintain social distancing the alphabet breaks closer to it

065breaks at a through k at North High uh so to get the the balance we need across classes we needed to make that slight adjustment in in the alphabet um South High the break actually comes more clearly at a through L uh you're going to find I'm going to explain later why this next one is so key but we do need additional nursing support at both schools to uh make this hybrid plan work and I'll go into details on that there's some changes in the metrics that's coming up to explain that and then what we're going to do is commit to this model through spring break so we want to get it up we want it to get it rolling uh as long as it's safe to keep bringing students back in this model will

066keep doing that and then we'll look at more feedback and hopefully changes in the world and how we're responding to covid and hopefully have more opportunities coming back from spring break for the last quarter of the year uh this is just a quick graphic this is up on our website that shows visually how that hybrid schedule Works throughout the week and this is the document we'll keep pointing people to uh that are looking to to follow the hybrid schedule this is a great one uh to put on the fridge at home or to save on your phone uh so that you can access it quickly and easily all right so talked a lot about what changes but uh there's a lot of things that remain the same we still maintain a fully remote learning option

067so for families that wish to keep their students at home and not come in for inperson uh that's still there uh if you're if you were fully remote in the first semester and you'd like to come back under this new model you can do that as well um and if you're a hybrid in the first semester and you'd like to go back or remain in the fully remote learning option you can do that as well uh the form went out on Friday that only needs to be submitted through the student logging in and filling out the form if you wish to change what is selected there and in those instructions we sent out Friday it shows you how to go into hack and to see what you're signed up for which learning model so you

068only need to fill out that form through your students account if you'd like to change what that model is and if you're stuck or you have questions on that please just reach out to your students counselor and we'll help you through that process we'll continue all of the safety measures that we outlined in the first semester for in-person learning bus transportation will continue just as it did in first semester however um instead of uh more staff on the buses the drivers will be the one monitoring the symptom slips and PPE but students still need their slips and still need to be wearing their masks and shields when they come to school and board the bus we're going to maintain those teacher office hours and resource periods and as we've said multiple times tonight add additional

069technology tools to uh make it easier to get scheduled into those places and easier for teachers to request that students students attend those sessions so to schedule them in and then to be able to follow up with families if students don't attend those sessions um we will still have staff with approved accomodations that continue to work off site so if that's a classroom teacher we will have an a staff member in the classroom helping to supervise the students while the teacher learns remotely um this could be for any variety uh of issues where there is an approved accommodation that that meets that criteria that we need for them to work offsite so there's still going to be a few classrooms where that occurs and then as long as we're in phase four of the state

070plan we will continue our connections or Access program uh what that program is is a a program that allows students that don't have access to Internet at home or don't have a a safe learning environment uh or any number of situations that would make it so that they can't learn effectively uh or safely off campus so we continue to bring uh students in those programs in uh Tuesday through Friday uh to participate at school um there's still a lot we don't know about covid and what will happen next um you know the the current wave that we're in right now we seem to be coming down off of it uh and hopefully we're on the way out of where that current wave is and uh we'll talk about how those metrics impact us later but

071I'm hoping uh especially in our own Community we're heading in a direction where the rate of community transmission is is dropping and it doesn't turn around an increase over the holidays also today an eventful day in our country as vaccines started to roll out um but it's still a lot is unknown about the impact of the vaccines and how they'll affect us ultimately here at school um we we know that it seems as though the vaccines are effective uh we just don't know effective across the entire population yet what that's going to look like we're not 100% sure of the duration of the protection will the vaccine last three months or three years or a lifetime um we also don't have all of the details yet on how distribution and prioritization will work uh across

072the country or within our even our own Community however we do know that the first phase of distribution is uh it's called group one and in group one are three separate uh groups the first one is uh medical professionals and uh people in long-term care facilities that's group 1A and if you were watching the news today you were seeing it start to get rolled out to those locations and distributed in DuPage County that's 58,000 people in group 1A um once group 1A is it's been distributed fully to that group they'll move on to group 1B which is all essential workers those essential workers include School Employees so they're in group 1 B and then one C are any adults with uh at risk conditions um so that's the distribution we don't know if group one

073uh everything will be distributed to them by the end of February or if it'll be over the summer we uh we don't know yet about uh how fast uh we'll be able to move through group one then there have been no tests yet on no tests done on the vaccines yet on children the first group of of uh testing is supposed to begin in the next month um so the ability for the vaccine to be used on children is further away than what it is on adults it may not be until the summer that we see our students being able to be vaccinated for covid so uh we also don't know how the guidelines might change for the better or the worse depending on whatever your perspective is the guidelines we received from the CDC

074the idph and the DuPage County Health Department you saw you're you see the flux of one of those changes right now is they're learning more about uh quarantine periods and how fast the the onset of uh covid is and how long people need to quarantine away from one another uh to keep keep each other safe so you're seeing this kind of dispute right now between the uh the medical professionals and it getting lowered from 14 but the guidance is a little in flux as to whether that's seven days with a test 10 days or 14 days so um those guidelines will probably solidify in the next couple couple of weeks but could have an impact on how quickly we can get students and staff back in the building uh if they've been exposed to co

075we also don't know how the rate of community transmission will fluctuate in our Community we know we're we're on an upward Trend after Halloween we're on a downward Trend after Thanksgiving uh but we don't know how it'll fluctuate uh over the winter break and in in through January in the coming months uh one of the other things that's uh becoming an increased uh push in Illinois and across the country is the possibility of increaseed testing in the school setting um this was something that even a few months ago wasn't being talked about or even recommended by many health professionals and now it is something that we're talking about uh several times a week with uh the health experts so to build on that testing possibilities um we are beginning to investigative testing is possible for

076us and there's two ways that we're looking at it one is surveillance testing where you would just do a statistically relevant random sample of students in a adults in the building to find out how prevalent is covid inside of the school um and that would provide for us you know a view as to is covid more or less uh prevalent in the schools than the community we also are investigating the possibility of targeting testing uh so doing like a nasal SWA BX now type test of somebody who presents symptoms at school to try to to indicate do they actually have covid or not do they need to go in for a more formal test uh PCR test as a result of of uh of that test and that should help us with also contact tracing

077and for exclusionary protocols knowing how long that individual needs to stay out of school or out of work uh as a result of that so in order to get started on testing the first step that you need to work through is to receive Clea certification of waiver and we filed uh that paperwork last week it takes a few weeks to get a response on that um so it's one of those you need to wait three to six weeks to hear back on that um so we expect that in January we'll continue to work forward on whatever options are available to us I think if we are able to get surveillance testing up and running um that will serve as another metric that we need to consider is to you know if if we have really

078low spread that our tests are indicating within our schools it's probably easier or more likely to continue to have students return for iners even if the community metrics are growing if our metrics aren't growing at the same kind of rate so um a lot a long way to go on this uh this is uh obviously nothing that anybody in the schools was trained to run uh Scott wazer on the district team has been spending the last uh several weeks getting learning about this being trained on it I I believe he had to go through a lab some a lab trading certificate that he had to go through and uh so he's been putting in a lot of hours uh understanding the possibilities and how we might do testing in the schools in the future all

079right so as we're all aware uh first semester if we go back was a Time full of changing guidelines and metrics I heard from many people that they felt like the goal posts were being moved and and that's exactly how I felt as the superintendent you know over the summer we received these guidelines we built a program we were we obviously went through all of the due diligence with the community and the board to get us to the point where we were ready to return at the beginning of the school year in a hybrid model and then the week before school started uh all of the guidelines from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the CDC and the DuPage County Health Department changed and that require that made us move to a fully remote

080model uh if you go back and look at those board meetings from at that time I I told everybody I believe that that would be the safest time of the year to have students in school based on what the community transmission was however we had to redesign our programming to meet these new guidelines things that were introduced that we never expected to be there especially around Transportation around nurses need nurses and custodians needing to receive be fitted and be trained in the use of n95 masks and any number of other criteria that were introduced just in the days before school started that caused us to move back to that fully remote model um then that guide those guidelines continued to change over the fall until at the beginning of October we did get to the

081point where ninth grade returned for a week as we tested out the the hybrid model at the same time as getting ninth graders back into the school because there was really no ninth grade orientation opportunity this year and that gave them a few days to get back and to find their way around the school and to experience uh the physical layout of being at school in person and learning we followed that the next week with uh seniors coming in for sat testing uh then our guidance continued to change and the metrics continued to then grow especially heading into Halloween and then after the Halloween uh weekend even within that we returned to two weeks of hybrid learning and added in to the uh the mix our own internal metrics and factors that we've been Guided

082by uh from the end of October uh through this week after Halloween we quickly passed that 8% positivity rate and the 100 per 100,000 cases now this number is going to come back a few times this evening as we talk about metrics but what happened at that 8% positivity is we moved into the range called substantial by the DuPage County Health Department that's we moved into there at October 19th around that time uh and then continued to grow deeper into that towards the end of October what happened internally was at the beginning of October even though numbers were growing we were still able to follow our safety protocols and one of the Key Safety protocols is following up in a timely fashion with people that are ill or have been exposed to somebody who is

083ill what we know from talking to um schools across the country you know as a superintendent I'm in meetings with superintendents in the area in the state and across the country uh as many people are aware Illinois's guidelines are different than those in other states and there's a lot that we can learn from those other states and I have and one of the key things is I talk to superintendant in Arizona or Iowa or Wisconsin or Indiana or you pick the state that has different guidelines than Illinois is that wearing masks and keeping people who are sick home are the two most important things that they point to as to how they are keeping their students safe and what's started to happen in District 99 as we got up to that 8% and we were

084running the second week of the hybrid is our nursing staff was hit the end of its capacity to be able to follow up with students that had covid or could possibly have covid or just were sick and we have all of the the protocols that we have to follow to make sure that they're not coming to school ill and we really felt internally that 8% number and the stress that it put on the nursing staff and our administrative team and everybody following up with students on illness so remember that 8% number because that's going to factor into what we do in the second semester then what happened is as we went deeper into November the metrics didn't improve and the trend continued to go down uh we continued to get worse metrics and eventually we

085moved all students remote As a result of it as everybody's familiar with r so if we go back to the guiding principles in that that website in the documentation that the CDC gives us uh they say what we all know everyone's goal is to prioritize the reopening of schools as safely and as quickly as possible and that has been our goal all along but in doing so we also have to make sure that when we bring students back to school that we are doing it in a way that it slows the spread of covid inside of the school and in the community as the CDC points out many times as and I pointed to those quotes at the beginning schools are not separate from their communities and the risk is lowest when Community transmission is

086low that's when those metrics are low that's when it's safe to bring students it's safer to bring students back together and if we're aiming for that green box of its unlikely to spread at school the higher the worse the metrics go the higher the numbers go um uh the less likely it is that we can hit that green box and bring students back to school bro and then uh you know I know that some of this information is very well known in the community that yes children are less likely to have severe symptoms than adults and that Co does present a lower risk to school- a children especially this is key especially in areas with low Community transmission as the community transmission Rises so do the risks for the entire Community but also for students

087we saw that as those transmission rates went up in uh went up in October and November it was also partnered with skyrocketing rates of Youth cases so uh they're all connected to one another and not separate from one another and I I've heard this from a few community members that student that kids don't spread covid and according to the CDC they do so I I just want to point this is the evidence that we're working from uh I've heard from a lot of folks in the community that want us to trust the CDC this is this is their guidance that we are following and that we are trusting Rod next slide then the CDC is also this is not off of that website but this is a CDC report that looked at uh what we've

088learned about Co amongst School AG children so this is a CDC report it's just on the CDC website not on the page I pointed to earlier and uh one of the key things that we need to recognize is that uh covid spreads much more rapidly amongst adolescence than it does of young children right teens spread it much quicker than kids do it makes sense I mean they're running together in more social environments they're commonly you know it's the age where we're giving them a little more freedom they're not around adults that are monitoring if they follow all the safety protocols they're being teenagers and uh many of them are working or on athletic teams or clubs or activities or those kinds of things it it totally makes sense that it's more likely to spread amongst

089big kids than little kids this is the exact reason why you will see many school districts and even Unit School Districts where they're K12 districts where the little kids will be back at school and the big kids will be learning remotely because we know that it's it's less likely that it spreads amongst the littles than the bigs we also know that uh it impacts our students of color uh much more vigorously and frequently and M in in a much worse way um and especially students with underlying conditions uh which is why we've built in fully remote models so people that feel like they are more risk or are are more at risk have opportunities to still learn from home that really builds a lot of the way that our instructional programming is so when uh

090you know we heard earlier that that people are concerned with 80 minute class periods but in order to build a a setting where students can participate in the in-person classroom and also be in a fully remote learning environment and not have to change their classroom their teacher uh their classmates and get pulled out and put into some separate section we need to be able to build a class period that's long enough that a teacher can work with both the in-person students and the remote students within that same time and space so I know 80 minutes can feel long um but we we believe that as we move into this next phase and hopefully uh our metrics continue to go down and we come back for semester that the 80 minutes will move much faster when

091there's this more of this Blended time in there we know it definitely will be much faster and crazier for our teachers managing uh that 80 minute space uh we know that we need to M you're going to see this in the metrics that we present later that we should be monitoring multiple indicators of covid uh and then layer in there our safety measures that we use with that so you're going to that's why you're going to see these these multiple metrics these multiple things that we're considering as well as all the safety procedures need to be in place um and this is a key thing that came out of the study that uh learning absolutely can be safe in communities where Community transmission is low but if Community transmission is high or on the rise

092if you reop schools or send students back to school then the community rates will also increase greater because you've opened the schools right you've returned to in-person learning with just you know when you talk to health officials they tell you it just makes sense when you have people returning to schools for in-person learning you're putting more people out of their homes and into the communities and mixing with one another and you know maybe stopping at a store they wouldn't have stopped at or or seeing somebody that they wouldn't have seen and if covid is very prevalent in your community and then you start mixing more people you're now moving to where it's likely to spread between people and drive up uh the incidence of covid in your community right some other things that we know

093about students and staff and the risks um children don't end up hospitalized as much they also don't die as frequently but they also are impacted by it we still don't know what the long-term Health impacts are of students that um can trct covid so you know obviously our responsibility is to make sure our students don't die but it's also our responsibility to make sure that our students don't get sick and don't face long-term repercussions from getting this with so little being known about what those repercussions are uh we also have to contextualize that about yes students are coming to school but so we're adults and we have you know over a thousand adults that work for us in in the district and uh as much as it is my responsibility to make sure students are

094here and learning and are safe and are taken care of and the whole child is taken care of I still have over a thousand adults that I'm responsible for and I'm responsible for those 5,000 students the Thousand adults and their families that they go home to every night I feel the weight of that in every decision I make so please know that I don't take any of this lightly or flippantly or um don't underestimate the impact that we have on all of those people every day with every decision that we make Ron okay as well as now when we get into returning to inperson instruction you know once again they point back to we need to make decisions about school reopening based on the available data on community transmission you'll see this coming back over

095over and over through the guidance that we can't make these decisions separate from looking at the level of transmission within our community but of course we also have to balance that against uh our students risk and well-being when they're learning fully remote right when they're not coming into school all of our safety blankets and measures and everything else throughout schools have been built around kids coming to school I believe the kids belong at school I've dedicated my life to that there is nothing that drives me crazier than having to tell kids that they can't come to school that's not what I built my career around but we still need to keep them safe when they're here and we have to factor all of those things in as you've heard from Gina earlier this evening and

096what you'll hear from tonight is we have put supports in for students while they are are learning remotely and we are factoring in students social emotional mental health we factoring in feeding students we've served tens of thousands of meals over the last nine months for children in this community um we're still providing special education services we're still supporting our kids and our families and if you as a student or you as a parent need more support and and you don't think we've given you enough yet you just have to let us know where we looking at a lot of factors to determine whether or not we believe a student needs help we look at grades and attendance and and their Trends over time but you mom or dad or you student you know quicker than

097we do if you need more help and all you have to do is ask for it and we're here to provide it for you whether we're in person or remote whether it's during times of covid or we're back to normal if you need more from us let us know and we're here to provide it for you right so here's what they say we need to do next okay we need to monitor the local data in our community and we're going to have a discussion in a little bit about what data in our community actually is uh we need to use this to determine whether School closure closures may be necessary we need to use our safety protocols to make sure kids are safe and staff are safe at school and we need to know what

098to do when somebody gets sick all of those things are in place right now and then what we need to do is establish and this is what we tried to do with the Illinois Department of Public Health and we did with the DuPage County Health Department we were talking to Illinois I was on the phone with District 86 and Senator Curran the week of the 4th of July with idph saying Illinois needs transparent criteria of when it is safe to be in school and when it's not we have been advocating for this since the beginning um ultimately it's to ended up on the the shoulders of local superintendents and school boards to make this criteria for better or worse you know we always cry for local control and now we have it um but what

099we need to do is provide transparent criteria for when we're going to suspend in-person learning and when we're going to return to in-person learning and tonight we're going to do our best to provide that transparent criteria to our community all right so back to this so as we look at metrics we're aiming for that green box so we have this instructional hybrid model right we have the model that we've outlined for the community where we're AB uh there's one passing period students are going to come in contact with other students in mix for about 15 minutes throughout the day at the beginning the middle and the end of their morning or afternoon there's a transportation possibility for students to intermingle with one another so in that instructional model when is it safe to bring students

100back at what rates of community transmission is it safe to bring students back and still hit that green box where it's unlikely to spread that's what we're doing so now we go back to the CDC and they talk through well you know if you're considering different instructional models here's what you can consider so if uh the lowest risk instructional model as we know is remote only right if everybody is at home it's really difficult to spread covid at school um now is the there's some risk if you're bringing students together in small very small groups we call those the cohorts right that's t99 that's our life skills classroom that's driver at behind the wheel it's any number of uh English Learners it's these small groups when they come in when you when you're bringing in

101students in those models it's the same group of kids in with the same teacher there's very little mixing of those groups of students so there's some risk to that but uh you know is you're still lower risk then medium risk would be our hybrid learning model what I've just described in the earlier part of this presentation there's some mixing of the groups throughout the day those are the the three different models that we're building in in our schools the reason why is once we hit that Medium risk once we're running our hybrid model here at South High we have between 1,400 and 1,600 people possibly in the school at a time for each one of those blocks of time so we can't move up into that higher risk model yet higher risk involves in-person only

102learning so all of our students are back in school um there might be some things still going on like math masks and uh contact tracing and those kinds of things but we're not there yet to get to that point we need to have a vaccine available or a treatment or we need some kind of a robust testing program those kinds of things would allow us to to start moving into school looking more like it did in the past okay but there's still going to be you know before we get back to preco school there's going to be this higher risk time where um whether it's testing or other protocols allow us to bring student all students back at the same time but it won't look necessarily like it did before and then eventually we'll end

103up at that highest risk one because covid will hopefully be leaving our community or will have left our community and then we're back to back to school like it was preco so the CDC gives us these thresholds that we're supposed to look at and consider this is where the metrics come in and point to us of when is it safe to run higher risk when is it safe to run highest risk those kinds of things so what we're going to look at uh Rod if you go to the next slide is uh the indicators for the higher risk this is when we're running our hybrid model so they give us some ranges here to Target and then it's up to us as experts to pick where in that range we should sit okay and we're

104supposed to consider our local conditions and and what we know about our environment to decide where in that range we're going to sit is it going to be on the low end the highend the middle um and then the highest risk of transmission would apply to groups like our cohorts and the the difference between higher risk and highest risk is really that mixing of groups in the higher risk in our hybrid model we have groups mixing on the bus during passing periods those kinds of things um in the highest risk we get into cohort so once students are here they're staying in their own small group so we're eliminating that mixing of group factor which allows us to run those cohort those smaller programs like t99 and life skills and those kinds of things um

105at a higher level of community transmission than where we can run our hybrid model in any of these models we need to make sure we're following the mitigation strategies all of those safety protocols so when we look at this if you remember I talked about 8% in our hybrid model earlier if we were going to base this on what only what we saw in first semester it would make sense to set the threshold for when we could return to school to be at 8% because once we hit 8% our nursing team and our administrative team couldn't keep up with the rate of illness in and out of our school and make sure that people were not returning to school while they were sick if you remember what I said what I've learned from school across

106the country don't have kids come to school sick don't have staff come to school sick that's the best way one of the best ways you can keep your school safe so once we start to pass that 8% threshold I can't guarantee that we can do that that we can follow up in a timely enough fa fashion to get there but I still want us to get a little higher than eight so what we're doing administratively is we're going you saw earlier we're adding additional staff to our nursing team so that we can get more into the middle of that range get up to 9% um and monitor it and see how it goes and make sure that we can keep up on that and get in the middle of the range rather on the low

107end of the range Rod if you go to the next slide all right so what we're aiming for in the higher Community transmission that's our hybrid 50% of the students are remote learning and 50% of the students are in person or up to right and then in the highest Community transmission level will'll have the cohorts going on t99 in their AB Model uh like they were in the first semester our life skills programs possibly English Learners drivers at behind the wheel a variety of those different settings but when we move beyond that highest level of community transmission we then we'll move back to a fully remote model hopefully we never go back there again in our community Community but if we do we will go back to the fully remote learning model R so here

108are the sa here are the indicators that we're going to use to determine if it's safe to return and this is what the CDC says to use one or both of the first core measures of community burden so they talk about Comm those measures are either the positivity rate which you saw there in the 8 to 10% before or the number of cases per 100,000 what we're looking at is the middle of that range for those two factors so if we are hitting one either one of those metrics then you we we've checked off the first box on safety then we add a third core indicator which I'll show you what that one is in a second and then we need to be able to follow all of the key mitigation strategies with Fidelity and

109you see those listed below those are all of our safety measures R the next slide so the metrics that we're looking at for second semester is a positivity rate below 9% that's the middle of the range it's also above what our threshold would have been based on what we could have handled with the rate of community illness remember that 8% in the first semester but we're going to push that up to the 9% by adding additional nursing staff uh or we could hit that 125 per 100,000 new cases now I I know that that right now sounds really unrealistic because we're in like the three or 400s I can't remember where we're at today uh for our 14-day rolling average um of cases but it's important to have both of those metrics there because I

110I see a world in the future where um maybe case numbers start to drop drastically as people get vaccinated and we start to get this under more control and we could be at a 100 cases per 100 th000 but we're doing uh rapid testing for individuals that we believe might be positive and the people that go and get the official testing probably know that they already have covid so it could be that there's you know a very small number of people going to get tested and they all know they're positive when they do it or likely know they're positive so there could be a low number of CA new cases in the community but a very high positivity rate because everybody who's getting tested probably has it so we need both of those factors in

111right now it looks like well the only way we're getting back is positivity rate somewhere down the road the only way we're getting back might be cases per 100,000 so that's why we're leaving both of them in there to be able to adapt to whatever the current situations are that indicate whether or not it's safe to be back um and that's going to be all of the data talk or all of the guidance talks about following Trends so we're going to do that rolling on the past 14 days so it's a 14-day rolling average so that metric has built into it Trend data we need to be able to follow all of the safety protocols when students are at school our second metric remember we need three our second metric is no ongoing outbreaks at

112school and I'll explain what an outbreak is in a little bit and as I keep going back to we need to be able to follow up on student staff illness and close contacts within a 24-hour period we need to make sure that those that are sick stay home the best thing that our students our families and our staff can do to help us out as we head back into second semester is if you're sick or don't feel well air on the side of staying home especially our students that don't feel well and can participate still in class remotely this is why this model is so important and we believe effective the 80-minute class perod s allow both the in-person and remote students to be in that same class period so if you are sick if

113a student is sick you need to stay home parents if your kids are sick keep them home but if they're feeling well enough get them on that call get them into that virtual classroom they're in the same class with their teachers and participate in class remotely that day and keep learning moving forward but keep them home so that we don't have the spread going on at school the less illness we have have at school the less we have to follow up on and it's more likely that we won't cross over that third metric because we won't we'll be able to keep keep up with the amount of illness in school and then finally adequate staff and students available is always a factor I know that that seems very nebulous you know that we'll be able

114to have enough students and staff but I'm going to go into detail in a little bit about what that looks like for our cohorts those small groups t99 life skills English Learners behind the wheel a variety of those different things because those are those cohorts built like we explained earlier the metrics move up a little bit so we move into that highest range and we get up to that 12% or 200 cases per 100,000 that's the first metric the other metrics remain the same we did feel that 12% um not right at first but as we stayed in 12% for multiple days and then multiple weeks we did start to see uh a combination of things happen we did start to see illness make its way into cohorts we did see uh the number of

115students that were close contacts from being in the community or staff that were sick or close contacts uh increase and then the number of students or staff that were able to come to school dropped and then we also saw a increase in the number of families that wanted to keep their students home as the metric started to move into the twel and 13 percents many families chose to keep kids home and then the number of students in those programs started to drop so small that what we were doing in that instructional model uh was very challenging and difficult and uh difficult to to continue and then we we finally reached a a a level of transmission in the school towards the end of November where we had to follow these safety protocols like not closing

116distance between other people uh at such a high level with such high fidelity that we didn't feel it was safe to continue to run these at school next slide Rod so once again those cohorts t99 drivers ad behind the wheel activities Athletics multi- needs all of those those small programs are what we're talking about in those cohorts the program schedules inst structional models with those because they're small groups might change over time and then some of them have outside factors that play into it like Athletics has ihsa that plays into to how this works or the governor's mitigation strategies or there's other factors outside that we have no control over that might also play into uh these programs and how they work uh out uh programs that are happening outplaced out outside of our school

117district uh Technology Center of DuPage our work program sassad other outplay students we are going to just keep an eye on what they're doing at those locations and defer to to their decisions they know how things are working in their locations and what they're doing as long as they're keeping our kids safe we will defer to whatever their program is at that location and once again our connections and access programs will continue as long as we're in phase four as long as we don't go into a lockdown we'll keep that going so what do these metrics look like we use the Northwestern dashboard to pull this data this is an example of uh what the metrics look like as we pull them for the 14-day average so as of last Friday uh I believe that

118was 1211 uh if we look at all eight zip codes that we draw from you can see where the positivity rate was we're 049 away from hitting that threshold and returning to in-person learning if you look at that metric over time for all eight of our ZIP codes you'll see that Trend that we've talked about all night where we were in very low numbers in the fall as we were redesigning our instructional model and then Halloween hits around that orange line and we see the the DraStic increase and especially the increase amongst youth cases is driving that and then everybody expected after Thanksgiving you saw we started to drop just a little before Thanksgiving and everybody was like oh here it comes you know here comes the next Thanksgiving bump like after Halloween and that

119did not for whatever reason come so um I've got to believe that uh especially within our community we're not seeing a post Thanksgiving bump so that says to me that our community is following safety protocols did what they were supposed to over the Thanksgiving holiday and I hope that we'll continue doing that in the coming weeks so that we can return after winter break okay so uh as we've release this and even in advance of this a question that has been raised that's a very valid question amongst our community amongst our staff uh we've been asking it on the administrative side is what is a transparent metric that represents our community accurately you know we floated to begin with the eight zip codes that we draw from and that's that's kind of an easy way

120to do it when I think about transparency there's obviously the access to the data and being a for anybody able to find it access it to validate that its accuracy uh all factor into the word transparency so let's talk about some different options here I'm going to have a recommendation that we change a little bit based on what we floated out to the public last Friday here in a little bit and uh an opportunity for the board uh to weigh in if they would like for us to consider something different than that so on Friday we Flo the idea of all eight zip codes and when you look at the CDC they talk about well you know you need to look at your larger Community to draw your metrics from and uh you know all

121eight zip codes represent present all of the communities that our students come from it's very accessible to get that data that that helps in the transparency you just type in the eight zip codes and you can see all of the data you need to see uh it allows the community to easily see Trends because when you type in those eight zip codes you graphs like the one I just showed you underneath it that show you that data trending over months uh periods of time it's also the largest sample of residents to draw from however the dis advantage to this is that it could skew data towards communities with fewer District 99 students in it um so if you take a look at this table you can see uh here is the number of students in

122the district by ZIP code and we have a few that start to become problematic especially that first one Bowling Brook where uh 60440 we have 94 students in the district that draw from that attendance area uh you know if if we were going to say literally that's the community they come from that's their zip code that zip code represents 52,2 46 residents um so for every student in our building that student is representing 556 residents where our Downers Grove students are representing you know between 20 and 30 residents uh for each student that's in in the building um so although it does draw from the largest community it does skew where students that are coming when we have a smaller number of students coming from a large community like Bowling Brook there could be you

123know there's a statistical bias in the data that's being introduced there so option one would be to keep this model in there it's the the long largest community that we would draw from it represents every student's Community Based on zip code but the question is does it actually accurately represent present The District 99 Community another way to look at this Rod if you go to the next one oh and this is once again this was yesterday's data for those eight zip codes okay so that's what it would look like when we pull it another way to look at it would be all eight zip codes and we would wait it by that attendance area based on the number of students that draw from those attendance areas so still we would represent it still represents every

124Community our students live in but we would base the metrics off of actual enrollment um there is ease of access in this data but it all needs to be there's a lot of huge disadvantages in doing this you're going to see this in the next diagram in a second but it's there's no website you could just go to and type in the zip codes and get this data I mean you can pull it easily but then you have to manipulate and calculate it um and just because these are the zip codes we're drawing from this isn't necessarily the demographics we draw from each day right because we're GNA have some students that choose fully remote um so to truly wait it you'd have to wait it by the students that were choosing in-person learning which

125is a whole another metric to introduce so you start introducing complexity into the variables and to me with the more complexity you introduce the less transparent the metric becomes uh it becomes difficult to map Trends because there's no website that'll do this for you you have to actually track the metrics on a day byday basis and we would have to build the graphs for the community and it would be very hard for the community to double check our work and our math but this is what it would look like if we did it next slide Rod so you can see here where you take the percentage of students you multiply it past the positivity rate you would also do it for the cases per 100 you would end up with a weighted number you add

126all of that together and you come up with a positivity rate or the cases per 100 for the community on a weighted Factor if we were going to use option two which staticians might really like Rod don't move on yet if we were going to use this one um you know I think there's a lot of stats people that would really like this model but it's a pretty heavy lift to maintain it and it's really hard for people to I think believe in the numbers because there's just so much crunching of the numbers every day and the only over time the only way that people would be able to validate those numbers would be to look get our math not to go to an independent website and check our work now the next one around

127option three was raised to me by several community members which would be to just take Downers Grove and Woodridge those are our three largest communities and only look at their metrics that uh represents the majority of our student body 81% of our students and it eliminates the over representation of communities with small enrollments the data is very accessible that helps with the transpar and it allows the community to see those Trends but in doing so it leaves out five of the eight communities that our students leave in and rem or live in and it removes uh 19% of the students from the the factors we're looking at so although this was raised as an option this is what it would look like when you pull those data just those three those three numbers or those

128three zip codes um uh it was raised to to to solve the problem of the smaller communities but we do end up leaving out a lot of student representation by doing that so finally the last option and spoiler alert this is the one that the administration is recommending is that we modify it and go to all of the zip codes with greater than 5% of the enrollment so that's five out of the eight communities uh that we draw from from the zip codes that we draw from and uh this will reduce the over representation of the communities with less enrollment it actually reflects [Music] 96% of all of our students so that that is really close to all of our students and we believe administratively more truly reflects uh the student body that's actually uh

129attending each day um this is also the 60% of our staff uh actually live with within the District 99 community and the great majority of our staff come from these five communities as well so this is a metric that's both reflective of a great of nearly all of our students and a great number of our staff so Rod this is what it would look like that's the 96% factor it's those five communities that we would draw from actually if you've been tracking the positivity rate current doesn't track much differently across all of those communities as we they're all within like three or point4 of each other um it's you know it's not an argument over picking the metrics that are best for us it's about picking the community sample that best reflects us and that's

130the the question here so um what we're recommending is option four we use the five of the eight communities that make up that represent 96% of our students uh one of the biggest benefits from this is It's been raised by many of our community members and even staff and even our own administrative team there is a challenge in including that Bowling Brook number just the size of that zip code with the low number of students that are actually attending school from Bowling Brook um creates a factor that could skew data in all different directions you know either lower our data inappropriately or raise our data in appropriately but it is kind of a a statistical outlier that we should probably eliminate from the the community data as we we pull it as well as we

131believe those other two zip codes so Rod if you could just throw us in gallery view for a second oh got a leftover slide there can you just throw us uh quickly in gallery view so at this point um we'll just take a break from from the presentation there I just want to know you know we're recommending after a hearty discussion on about this with the administrative team over the weekend and then this morning that we modify from what we first released of the eight zip codes to do the five of the eight um and just want to take a pause here since this is a a pivot from what we introduced last week to see if there's any board members that have concerns with moving on to option four or uh you know one

132of those other options sounded more attractive to you and we should consider that anybody all I need to say is that the only option I'm for is getting everybody back as fast as possible um this remote learning um we need to get to the hybrid model as fast as we can all right anybody else so I agree with you Rick um you know obviously my preference being a numbers geek is I prefer number two just because it seems to be statistically most accurate but I completely understand and agree that option four is a a great way to go um it provides a transparency that I think is really critical here um so like I said I I lean towards option two would be my personal favorite but I can be completely in support of option

133four based on the transparency yeah Dan I'm I like you you know I like crunching the numbers but I think it's important that people could crunch the numbers on their own so that's that's how we end up with uh that's how we as an administrative team ended up with FL truthfully I was I was favoring option three until you mentioned uh the staff component I mean uh uh you know in in truth the you know the 515 516 and 517 area codes probably most accurately reflect what's really going on for our students because even those students that live in uh Westmont Darian Bowling Brook what they're living right on the edge of those communities and and what's happening specifically where they are they're living is um you know is still just on the edge of

134our of these area codes right so uh but understanding that we have a lot of you know by including uh 559 and 5 61 as well uh uh it captures more of our staff uh that seems to make sense to me so I I I think I think four is the most simplest uh approach to this and something that the public can clearly understand and and probably wouldn't question much I like um option four of all the options but to be this is Nancy but to be honest uh uh one of uh I'm on another uh Committee in the community for my church and one of the other nurses I work with tracks this every week she actually tracks the incidents reports uh the numbers per 100,000 and we really do for DuPage uh because

135our church Community she looks at basically the same areas Downers Grove uh Woodridge and Darion and um Westmont and our numbers you know sometimes were a little bit higher than the rest of you page sometimes we're a little bit lower than the rest of you page but it kind of is that same Trend so you know I'm fine with number four yeah and uh interestingly you know in September and October that was really the case but over the last four to six weeks our community has been outperforming DuPage County um so you know it is it is good news that our community specifically seems to be doing their job in following the safety protocols and and slowing the spread in our community and and if we can keep that up then I you know I

136believe we go right back to what Rick said we want to get kids to school as quickly as possible our community should have the opportunity to do that by following their protocols and driving down the numbers in our community and then be rewarded for doing the right thing and get our kids back to school because it's safe to do that in the District 99 community and we're still going to take care of those kids who choose to do remote learning they will be taken care of yep so it it is a personal choice and let the families decide right but I still have to be in that box where it's unlikely to spread when kids come to school so I can only do that if we're hitting those metrics in a Range that that we

137feel our instructional programming does that the instructional programming that we are proposing for after winter break is far greater than what you know I said don't compare communities and I'm about to do that right so here's hypocritical Hank for a second but uh we are trying a very aggressive program here after winter break to run an AB daily schedule and get every kid to school you know every week so we need to make sure that those metrics are safe and allow us to take that aggressive approach you know this isn't a 1/8 model or a one quarter model this is 100% of the kids coming to school every day in two separate groups um so it's a pretty aggressive approach and and we need to make sure that it's safe to do that Rod if

138you could go back to the presentation thank you board for the the conversation the direction on that and I'm glad we're in agreement there I left a bad slide there Rod if we can move on all right so that first metric will draw from those two factors based on the five out of the eight zip codes that we draw from in our community um secondly we talked about no outbreaks this is another metric that's changed in the last six weeks um but it's now defined as five or more cases that are linked to a common location in a 14-day period so uh five cases there are confirmed positive cases that track back to the same location uh in 14 days that wouldn't include any offshoots of those connections so you know we have five kids

139in a classroom within a 14-day period they all test positive that's going to be considered an outbreak at a school those need to be five unique students that aren't also living like in the same household right so siblings wouldn't count you know or if they're living you know two twins that both have it they would count as one not as two okay so that's what those secondary cases are so it's got to be five uh single unique cases that are linked together so is what that hold on Rob don't go on yet what that does though introduce the possibility of is one school having an outbreak and needing to move remote while we let that building quarantine while the other school continues in person okay so there is a possibility in this model where an

140outbreak occurs at one school and it needs to move remote while the other school continues in person um so realize that that's what that metric means okay next one rod as we've talked about being able to follow up in a 24-hour period and explain and follow those exclusionary protocols that goes back to being able to keep people that are sick at home and then finally following those mitigation strategies that's our safety strategies we've been able to follow those with Fidelity at school okay so this last one that was hanging out there I know that this one seemed nebulous but there's two ways that we could also end up needing to move fully remote if we have too many student absences due to anything it could be the flu it could be measles it could be

141covid the health department can make a recommendation that we take an Adaptive pause at one or both schools and send everybody home and until the rate of illness amongst our student body drops okay so that's what it means for availability of students uh if we just start to have too much illness in our school we're going to have to take a break then also staff absences due to illness or quarantine could cause us to go back to a remote learning period this is especially true in certain areas of the building and it starts with our nursing department if uh all of a sudden illness spreads across our nursing department and we can't staff the health professionals within our school we will have to move remote until we can restaff that department it is critical that

142we have the health experts here within our walls to keep everybody safe so you know if we had illness spread amongst that team we could have to move remote same thing with our uh CMG Department if we can't clean the building our our custodial maintenance group we can't keep the building safe and clean that could cause for us to have to take one day or or whatever while we turn turn around a new team to get a building clean or you know we'll have to see how that goes bus drivers if we don't have Administration here to monitor the building and and to make sure everything's running and to make sure all of this stuff is working if we can't get enough subs or if we have major outbreaks of illness amongst any of our

143employee groups where we couldn't staff the building safe y or appropriately that could lead to us uh lead to a pause in some way hold on Rod skipped uh or I want to make a point here we are in no way challenged by our teacher unions or our support staff Union or any of our employee groups that is preventing Us in any way from returning to school uh we are adequately staffed um we are able to run school the only thing preventing us from returning is our rate of illness in our community due to community metrics so I I know that you know this is different in different communities across Illinois and across the country and how different bargaining units and different communities are responding to it but I want to make it very clear

144that neither our teachers union or our support staff Association in any way is preventing us from returning to school all right Rob go ahead so once again we're aiming for that green box everything that I presented tonight is a pathway back to that green box and a pathway back to school if we're hitting these metrics on January 1 that's when we'll next look at the metrics if we are under 9% in our community we will be returning that next week to school so we need our community to do everything they can to follow the safety protocols to limit the mixing of groups if you're going to mix go out into the public wear your mask keep your distance wash your hands do all of those things that we've been talking about for months you're doing

145a great job right now you're outpacing uh the community or or you're outpacing the county you're outpacing the state let's just keep going in the right direction in our community hit that 9% and get back to school to start second semester um Sam uh the fourth method of matri uh yeah those metrics will go into effect starting now so we'll start tracking that 14-day number and if on January 1 that 14-day rolling average of the positivity rate or cases per 100,000 is under the threshold of 9% or 125 for 100,000 we will return back to school for this new model on Tuesday January 5th but Hank what are you calling our community what's your definition of our community five out of the eight zip codes that represents 96% of our student body all right and

146then on that day group a will come in for periods 1 and 3 in the morning group b will be in for periods 5 and 7even in the afternoon and we'll start rolling and we'll be back in this new model for the second semester for as long as it's safe to do that and uh we will follow these metrics that we've introduced and these will be our guidelines and our thresholds for moving forward um the only things that could really greatly change that would be obviously widespread vaccination widespread testing or some miracle cure or treatment that could cause us to re-evaluate this but we have also heard from everybody that people need some consistency and uh need something to to get used to here so that's why we're going to we're going to keep it

147this way through the third quarter and re-evaluate heading back into the fourth quarter I think at this point Rod uh it's just any questions that we have amongst board members uh this is Nancy and um a very thorough presentation thank you could you speak a little bit I I know you talked about the teachers union and we've always had a good working relationship with our teachers could you speak a little bit just to um any input the teacher any any kind of comments you've heard from the our teaching uh professionals about the plan or specifically the schedule because I'm sure they've raised some you know you're always GNA have people who are for or people who are against but I'd be interested to know what their involvement was in the in the development of this

148of this schema and how we're support them going forward so there's two formal ways one is uh obviously through our DT our district leadership team which is made up of our Administration our department chairs and our department chairs are teachers and members of the teachers union so we lean on that group of teachers heavily as we build things but we also have a teacher feedback group um that we uh we run all of this information past and get their feedback plus we listen to the teacher feedback uh in the surveys that we built um and uh we also uh this time we earlier than we had in the past shared this with the the teacher the dgea um boy Allison is here and I'm Gonna Have Allison good timing Allison is here representing the DGA

149tonight uh what is your leadership uh team called Allison uh the DGA executive board executive board so so one of the changes we made heading into this round was we started sharing information with the DGA executive board earlier than we were in the past because we had more time to plan than we did in the other Cycles around um Alison I'm actually going to since you're here and the question came up uh Al the DGA asked this evening for the opportunity to address the board uh very typically when a bargaining unit asks to address the board in a in a board meeting we allow them to do that so Allison since you came up now why don't we just uh uh hear from the DGA now at this point sure thank you um my name

150is Alison ply just for those that don't know me I'm on the exec board I'm also a math teacher at North and um I just wanted to share the following statement um the DGA is here tonight to support Dr thely and the board of education's use of the CDC metrics to make decisions for second semester we feel that the use of these numbers allows students families and our members to have clear guidelines we are appreciative of the time thought and consideration that have been put into these very difficult Decisions by Dr thy and the Board of Education thank you thank you Alison so Nancy since you asked I figured it'd be just best to hear from Allison right there so uh thank you to Allison and the DGA uh the SSA support staff organization has

151uh mirrored the similar thoughts in our conversations with them as well Hank um I'd like to talk about the uh 9% number in the um less than 125 per 100K number um I'm concerned about having a hard line drawn in the sand i' i' I'd rather I'd rather see um a discretionary Zone um for instance to and I particularly I I see a you know you see where the where we are at right now on that positivity rate I'd hate to be in a situation where you know we keep bouncing back and forth between uh 8.9 and 9.2 or or you know we're at 122 per 100,000 the next week we're at 130 or something and and it would seem to me that it would make sense to have a you know basically just to

152say hey at between maybe between somewhere between the upper eights and you know up to 10 or something based on how our nursing staff our staff in general is able to keep up with uh uh tracing and and um things of that nature that you might you might say hey just don't so that people don't just automatically go oh I see where're at 9.1 that means we're we're definitely um going remote in which case but in fact maybe maybe that's that's not what we need to do at that time and i' I'd rather have there some sort of a some sort of a a caution discretionary Zone that um that you would make a call one way or another and I know you're every Monday you're going to be doing an update so but that's

153a fair point um that discretionary zone is 8 to nine right uh eventually whether it's eight nine 10 10.5 there's going to be a number somewhere where you're going to say this is where it's no longer safe we felt that number before at eight based on where we're at here we're moving that to nine based you know because we're going to have additional Health Care staff and we feel we can keep people safe at that um yes there is a chance that we hit and bounce between low eights upper not whatever that is but somewhere we've got to draw a line and we're drawing that line based on it's the middle of the CDC uh guidelines you like we're right in the middle of that and it's based on our experience from first semester of

154where we were tracking the amount of illness in our schools um so we feel that those things together point to a fair number at nine is there any way we could have a discussion as a board before that decision was made call an emergency meeting and we get together and we could all vote on this well up to this point the board has not requested a meeting for that last time the board took a vote was in August and they gave the administration the authorization to make those kinds of decisions but I guess I thought I at that time I thought we would be more in-person learning than what we ended up becoming this sem so did I rick but the unfortunately the the spread of covid has been too great in our community um

155you know I I always thought that we would be in for for more than we were but that's just not how the spread of illness has played out in Illinois or in our specific Community this provides is a pathway back to that it's based on the science it's based on our experience because that would allow Mike then to have his decision whether he wanted to go at 9% or 9.1 or 8.5 also are you concerned it's too high Mar Rick no I'm just saying before we shut everything down bring it to the board and let the board vote yeah I'm I'm saying that that over you know just as everything is changed in our past you know these past several months and everything's evolved so much that it just would make sense to me to

156say you know that this is what we're looking at right now but in fact there could be a week where you know we we pop up over the over the line just to Tad but in looking forward uh all the projections have us dropping Back Down Under the line I I just I would just I would just like to see a little discretion excise versus their Being Mike and Rick though what plays into this is that it's not just a day-to-day number it's a 14-day so you're not going to just Spike or drop because you're going to slowly move One Direction or the other because it's that rolling Trend number that's built in well if we if we start to see an uptrend and we're going to be pushing that limit why can't we have

157a meeting as a board and decide hey if we do break this threshold then we all are in agreement whether it's four to three or 7 to zero okay can I can I interject something I thought that all along with this number it is on a um a week or a two- week basis so it won't happen uh here today gone tomorrow here today gone tomorrow kind of thing you you kind of let it have an average for like a week or two weeks and then you make a decision that was my understanding from the GetGo we have a discussion before we make the decision Terry that's what the 14-day rolling average does is it doesn't allow quick Spike or quick drop it allows you to average out over time and show you the trend

158that you're direct you're going in which is why we've selected that number it's why the CDC tells you to use that number right and then and then you you um decide you know hey for the last week we've been going up we need to we need to slow down a little bit or it's going down let's let's see how this trend goes we may have to to add more classroom time you know what I'm saying right yeah if we if the drop drastically it's going to be and and we get co under control in our communities yeah we definitely need to discuss do we need to change our programming now to allow for more inperson instruction because it's much safer you know that getting into that green box you can change your instructional programming and

159stay in that green box oh absolutely absolutely and I don't think you know us having a meeting every time it changes is g to um help you Hank I think I think we need to have an input as to when it everything gets shut down as a board I think that decision needs to be discussed between all of us so Rick this is this is my question I don't quite do you mean you want to have more discussion about these numbers as they stand today as for when things would be shut down or if we reach that number and the determinate and we would shut down you want to have it an emercy I'm much more in agreement with Mike as we start to approach that 9% before Hank pulls the trigger I think the

160School Board needs to meet and we need to discuss this as a majority rule well then you need to make a motion and pass a resolution to take away that granted the administration we gave that to to Hank to to Monitor and I'm not very happy with the first semester's outcome well and I think now what Mike Mike's I don't want to line drawn into sand like Mike said maybe we can maybe 9.1 would work for a week is it possible though instead of potentially having a meeting every time to put some parameters around it as a board uh for a discussion does that work as a well that's what that's what tonight is is the introduction of the that but I'm talking about the balance of what Mike and Rick are talking about if

161we further you still get Authority but we have some more parameters that we can discuss as a board within that Authority well I thought I thought that's what we had done earlier um you know a few months ago I thought we we gave them Direction I I think so but it sounds like there think it's changed I think going forward we need to have a little bit more control so let wait wait chelle's got excuse me excuse me chelle's got the floor Charelle finish your thought please I was just saying I do agree with Terry but I guess the request is some adjustments that's all I'm saying around the par based on things being changed from you know what we had expected which you know which is hard to expect anything based on lack of

162control of the virus that's all okay and so then Rick your point was followup point my follow-up point was I agree with Mike before I think before everything gets shut down and goes back in remote we need to meet as a board and say hey we all believe the metrics are trending in this direction and maybe it maybe it's 70 and maybe it's four to three where three of us say hey keep the school open and maybe four say no I think we should shut everything down I'm not advocating for us to have that vote Rick what I am advocating for is that the N that the number not be a hard line drawn in the sand that the the idea here is that uh Hank is in in in our staff here has come

163up with uh metrics based on our experience during the hybrid model in the first semester that indicated that somewhere around 9% somewhere around 125 uh or less per 100K was a point at which it becomes uh we can't it becomes uh impossible for us to uh follow all those safety protocols that that make it safer for our kids to be in school and our staff to be there as well and what I'm suggesting is that that it wasn't it's not the 9% number or the 125 per 100K number that really matters it's it's our ability to actually keep things safer that really matters and what I'm suggesting is simply that there be some sort of a thoughtful uh evaluation in the time you know we we get further into January we get further into February

164maybe we get to a point where hey actually when we're at 10 or 11% um as Hank was saying uh that that when we have people that those are the people that are getting tested are the ones that know that they probably have it and and that positivity rate is going Sky ey but in fact you know uh and and maybe that you know I'm just saying that these numbers um are here for a reason and I like them as guideposts but I'd like to see some discretion used in in evaluating versus just going automatically boom we've crossed % we're going fully remote that's I to I totally agree with you and I think we as a board need to have that discussion yeah a couple of points to what you said Mike administratively one

165is the board and the community going to be supportive if I hit 7% and I tell you yeah we're at seven but I I don't feel like I can keep the school safe at seven I'm gonna have hear people screaming that we're not at at nine or 10 like we introduced he I think this board has actually demon rated that that we would I mean I mean we we we we're trusting you um and uh following your guidance and so that's I mean that's that's the um you know that's the the power that we've we've we've given to you um to you know to make these calls and so uh I I certainly I'm not questioning your 9% number am I I'm not I mean that's the you say that's the number I get it

166that's the number based on our experience so far but as we go forward and we get more experience um I just I I think that these are things that would constantly be be looked at and they're not a a hard line forever uh and I like for you to have the discretion you know to to to not to say Hey listen I know we're at 9% but based on what we're doing how we're handling things I think we're still good we're not going to go to remote or to say Hey listen that 9% was too aggressive we're having trouble right now SE it's 7% or it's 8% I would absolutely back you on that um I'm I'm I'm but I'm looking for what I'm what I'm trying to avoid is for the public to be

167looking at these is is hard lines that automatically mean that this is what we're doing before they've had a chance to hear from you on Monday um and because these are numbers that people can get on their own we're we're adopting the you know we're adopting it in a way that people can get this on their own so uh I I I just I I I think you need to have some discretion I think there needs to be this sort of Zone you're saying it's 8 to 8 to %. well then you know we should probably share that um and I imagine that there's other there are other uh things that maybe should be considered that we haven't considered so for instance uh the amount of uh you know ICU beds that are being taken

168up at at Good Sam right now I mean I I would think that there may be other factors that might that might actually point to you saying Hey listen that 9% number uh May a you know we can't we yeah we're below nine but you know look at what's happening in the community so we're going to have to constantly be looking at this as you always have so far um is it anyone to think that that's changing yeah I don't I did not interpret that that is what was changing I thought what we were talking about is this is the plan going forward this is how we're going to address it and as things come up because this is an evolving situation that plan may have to change I don't think I don't there ever

169position that this is it going forward and we're done I never thought that was the understanding Nancy this is such this is I just say I'm an architect and I know that when I put uh when I put a plan in front front of somebody it better you know it has to be something that I'm really you know behind because they're going to see that and that's what they're going to remember and and it's going to be hard for me to walk myself back from that and you know if I see a different direction we should go and so I'm all I'm suggesting is that is that we we at least share because the presentation t i Hank very thorough um but uh you know there we didn't there wasn't any discussion about hey just

170as in the past these things could change you know you know this 9% number might might change we might be looking at 10% or we might be looking at 7% um that's that's what I'm that's what I'm getting to here is that is that people need to understand that this is going to continue to be something that influx and is is worked out and as as as thorough as this presentation's been tonight um you know data can data can change this and sure Mike you mean the other thing you need to consider is when you talk about 9% that's 9% of what a month ago the the Dage County Health Department or Illinois Department Health Department changed these numbers they decided a month ago to include probables so now probable cases are included the 9%

171so this isn't even a real cases number that we're looking at so I don't I doubt the 9% I don't have any faith in the 9% number to begin with actually Dan I disagree I believe the the positivity rate the 9% is based on pcrs the incidence rate which is the 100 whatever per 100,000 Nancy look look at the Northwestern page it says beginning November 7th probable cases were being used and cannot be separated do you do you know the definition of a probable case it doesn't matter I'm reading what the health department but I'm I'm telling you the definition of a probable case is somebody who had antigen testing which would be screening test or somebody who was diagnosed as being covid positive even whether they had access to a test they may not

172have or they had a negative test but a healthcare provider determined that they had Co right I had four family members test positive and none of them had covid so we're putting our faith in a number that doesn't work that testing isn't we're treating that's that's why I like Mike's idea of having a buffer that the board has more input into because we're relying completely on numbers that had been proven to be inaccurate at best however Dan those are the only numbers we have that's why I think a hard and fast number because you can't tell me my the kids are safe at 8.99% but they're not safe in 9.01% it makes no sense you know what but Dan it's not just the kids are safe there's other factors involved that Hank was explaining to

173us it's it's the nursing staff it's the CMG staff which we can have that all explained to us I think this would take the heat off you know if if we discuss it as a board and the community sees that discussion then Hank doesn't take the brunt of it but Rick you hire me to take that heat yes you H this is such an unprecedented I I do not want to relinquish I think as a board this is we need to discuss this this issue going forward then the Board needs to dial in every day every week and spend the four this decision is not made every day you would know not every day you're gonna shut down tomorrow hey Rick let Hank let Hank finish his thought please the board pays an Administration and

174superintendent to become experts as much as we can in this data and make a recommendation to the board and run the day-to-day operations of the district this is the daytoday operations of the district we have done the researches an Administration we've worked with other superintendents we have worked with the Health Care Professionals there needs to be according to the CDC there needs to be a metric and what we have heard from the community is they're tired of moving goalposts of week to week it feeling like they don't know what to expect as to how this is going to operate and work what we've put together is a plan here based on our experience from first semester and based on the recommendations of the CDC and based on hundreds of hours of talking with the health

175professionals over the last nine months of something that has a solid predictable metric that we as an Administration points to that green zone in that range and yes it sits at nine and yeah what's the difference between 89.99 and9 9.01 but then where does the slippery slope go when does it become 9.5 and then 10 and then 10.25 we need a number that people can look they can see over a 14-day period that we're approaching it and I hope our community shows that they are responsible enough when they see that number growing that they do something to change it and drive it in the other direction and this gives them the tools to do that the more that we put in n nontransparent numbers like Hank picks whether or not he feels comfortable enough with

176school returning that doesn't take the heat off of me that puts the heat right back on me these are predictable measurable transparent factors that tie back to the CDC recommendation and I recommend that this is what we do moving forward for at least the foreseeable future after break and then we do it like we always we'll talk about this at every board meeting and we can re-evaluate if if it's the right thing to do but ultimately you have hired me to make these decisions to make these recommendations and to live with the repercussions of them and I believe I have done that for the last semester and I just I just want to say remember we don't need to get into the weeds that's why we've hired Hank so I mean Hank I shared this

177with you be email to me I I'm not a big fan of the 9% number I mean I believe again my opinion the only number that matters to me is the outbreaks in school so if we are if we have no outbreaks in school and we can do what you have set up in the plan wearing masks sanitizing wearing face Shields the mitigation steps of the kids in school the kid should be in school if there's an outbreak in school that's a different story we should take them out and fix it but as long as there's not an outbreak in school my opinion the kids need to be in school yeah the question is are we going to be reactive or proactive to riseing community transmission if we wait for the outbreak to happen we

178have students and staff that could be getting sick when the community metrics indicated that they shouldn't have been there in the first place and that would have prevented them from getting sick when we knew it was likely that that spread was going to occur I believe we have a responsibility to keep people healthy in our school and our community and to based on the metrics we've been provided there's an indication that we could predict that those outbreaks are about to happen because we're passing up those thresholds and metrics right but Hank when when an outbreak happens the numbers go up when the numbers go up they tell you to wear a mask wash your hands and saniti you know keep your distance that's what you're doing in school so you're doing exactly what they tell

179you to do no when the numbers go up they tell you to move to stop mixing groups of students and to separate and to eventually keep everybody home that's what the CDC says is that you're supposed to on those risks of instructional models I walked through them from remote only to lowest risk to medium that's what those are there for and they indicate as the risks in your community go you should move to those different instructional models in response to that that's what this program does right but if there's no outbreaks in school it is safer for the kids to be in school than to be out of school no Rick this is like all of the other safety measures we take at school we did pedestrian safety on our campuses to prevent people from

180getting hurt from traffic accidents to make sure that that didn't happen we do safe uh we put in all of the blueo systems and we put in all of the safety training to make sure that we're preventing the possibilities of people getting hurt from violent acts we do fire drills to make sure that people don't die in fires we put in metrics like this to make sure that people don't get sick in our hallways because of covid it's all preventive medicine it's all pre preventive safety practices I want to get kids and everybody back here learning but we need to follow the science as to when it's safe to do that and that's what I've presented tonight is based on this this expansive this large expanse in instructional programming we've also narrowed down on the

181metrics and expanded them up into that 99% range and narrowed down on the factors that we believe as an Administration indicate that we can keep people safe in this model and that's why I'm recommending where it is now and and I I like the plan I mean if you looked at a 3-week period in the old plan kids are in school for four half days and a 3-we period in the new plan they're in school for 12 half days I'd like the plan I just don't think it goes far enough I mean again in my opinion only but if we were if we were to vote on this tonight or put a plan forward I would say that kids are in school unless there's an outbreak in school now again that that's my only opinion

182but and and it's about you know we have these different levels of comfort that we have but based on everything that I've been trained on and the conversation the understanding of how schools work and what we're trying to do to keep people safe this is the plan that we believe does that I I I agree but a lot of those other issues you talked about blue point and pedestrian safety don't have have the side effects that are impacting our kids today being home so I think there's this is a bigger deal than to say we we put stop signs up to keep the kids safe Crossing pedestrians yes we do this isn't the same thing and we're putting a stop sign up in the form of metrics to indicate that okay shouldn't come to school

183because it's like it's likely that it'll spread if it's here yeah like I said I I think you're doing you're you're doing what you think is right and I like the plan I just don't think it goes far enough and again my opinion only obviously not the board's opinion but I would want to be more uh aggressive in looking at metrics and getting kids back into school fair enough but again again this will be an ongoing process so if we get kids back and they're going under this Hy and they're they're they're flourishing under hybrid and we're able to continue to keep uh we were able to get community transmission down and we're able to control outbreaks in the school then we would look at improving our uh increasing hours or increasing days or or

184somehow changing it right right and if we're able it's not an end off if we're add able to add things like testing or any of those other you know vaccination of our staff any of those things could that could changeed or any additional guidelines that we get from you know the science on this is changing as we saw the quarantine language change in the last week if the CDC adjusts bans or metrics or guidance that would cause us to come back and say we should change it but I really feel like I I you know go back to that slide about first semester and changing guidelines and changing goal posts I think we need to enter into this semester with people going away for break knowing what the numbers need to be to get back

185for second semester and and these are numbers that I I feel our staff our administrative team feels best represents the science that's out there and indicates that coming back to start second semester under these numbers is the safe way to do it any other comments Mike asked based on current metrics in the presented plan we would not be in the hybrid now as of today no but the cohorts would be back under the numbers as they sit today Hank I just I in in in your presentation I just made a couple of quick notes of things that I had questions about um several community members have asked me um with the 80 minute classrooms they get a a five minute break in that classroom and and uh every one of them have said could it

186be 10 minutes instead because you know if my kid has to go to the bathroom or you know uh get paperwork or something from somewhere you know that 5 minutes goes by really fast I think so that's it it's just a a a a quick uh thing Terry as I men Terry can I address that one as we mentioned earlier as we move into this model where we have both inperson and hybrid going at the same time the flow of the classroom is going to change very differently than when it was 80 minutes online everybody there at the same time so you know I I think everybody will experience that the structure of that 80 is going to flow very differently than it did in the past oh good because you know you know how

187it is at home it's just a little more um distraction and and and that sort of thing okay and then my other question was is you were talking about testing um are are we uh looking into you know uh purchasing test kits or um I know the University of Illinois has done that uh that rapid test testing and they're extremely successful with where they're going and um from what I understand they're they're at a uh you know 100% uh learning and and all of that because of their testing and um they've developed that rapid test thing so um you know maybe if you could talk a little bit more about what your plan is for that so as I mentioned last week we submitted the Clea certification so that's the first step in being able

188to bring testing on campus with that we will look at um uh two possibilities one is uh kind of that surveillance which would be kind of like an example that would be like the similar to what they're doing at University of Illinois where it's uh maybe based on saliva testing or or that kind of a a test where you would take a random sample of students and base that base your community spread on that random St statistically significant random sample right and then you would know the spread inside of your schools and that that could be a whole different metric than what we're looking at right now in the community that could be a variable that comes over time um there's also the like the binax now testing which is the nasal swab that is

189returned in 15 minutes and gives you uh like a rapid response test test um that one would be more typically used for somebody that was already showing symptoms it wouldn't be used as a surveillance tool the binax now Tool uh is provide or test is provided uh or there's there's test kits available for from idph but we would need to get work all the way through the waivers and the qualifications set up all the tools and protocols inside of our school this isn't something you start next week right this is going to take a month or months to come to fruition the other tests are not available at no cost I see Mike asks a question here and they cost the cost per test ranges from10 to $20 per test wow currently so who knows

190where this goes and if costs change or whatever but it is cost prohibitive both both in the cost of the actual tests and Logistics and human resource aspects that that play into it but um you know there'll be a lot more discussions with the board and the community before we get to a a testing uh a realization of testing as I said we've started the first step by filing the for the Clea uh certification well I if if we're going also with um um uh the the vaccine you know are we going to need to invest a lot in in testing if the vaccine is going to be widespread you know we're going to get hopefully her immunity by then uh Nancy can probably speak a little bit better Terry I don't know if it's

191one or the other I think it's a combination of both hits us there right now testing vaccinations yeah uh but you know the the cost is really you know as Mike said um you know that's that's the scary part you know we don't have a lot of extra money for that right we don't know what funds will become available what additional you know what might might become available like I said right now it's making sure that we're poised to go in that direction should it make sense to do that well those were those were my few questions so I'll give it to somebody else any other questions maybe take a uh can we take a quick break my bladder is about the about to burst sure that's up to Nancy uh let's uh what I

192would suggest is uh what's the next thing on on our agenda let me just look real quick we're going to talk about goals okay let's take a uh can we can we limit it to like a five minute break yes okay five minutes so 9:18 please be back thank you restrooms are in the hallway over here if anybody's looking for them had day rate it's possible yeah on which one slide was it well I think the okay possible that I had a cleric said it was like 3 or 400 and it's 922 oh so I must have copied over the seven thank you yeah good catch well I know it's so far away5 yeah well which is why that's not our only variable right we're going to be a long way from but there could

193be a point in the future where that flips right we're well under there but the positivity rate is yeah that rich oh hi Rich nice to put a name with the face this is why I know these yeah yeah yeah you've been looking at them very closely yeah yeah well hey I love that you're interested in digging in as long right right that's yeah corre but you could see a world down down the road a few months from now where people are getting vaccinated that that uh you know it's dropping and then the number number of new cases is very low but the people who are going to get tested probably have it and the positivity rate could be high so that's why both of them are in there I know but what it concerns

194me is at that point closer May by that time oh we might yeah I don't you know I don't know you know so I know I know I look at it I see what inale is doing they [Music] yeah but they're also only bringing back 25% of the students at a time so you know it's a much smaller pool of students you're bringing into the building for spe e e okay okay are people back I see Mike and Terry Joanna Dan so we have a quum back so let's get started you ready Hank hey we're back you ready to go Hank I am ready okay um so I'm I was thinking about this when we left so have we come to a decision about this last discussion that you'll simply my the expectation is that

195you'll come back to the board with a weekly up with a a uh updated every meeting and in between meetings via email and that if we need to meet to discuss anything we will is that a fair is that what is fair that fair for people any board member can request that we call a meeting and all it takes is two for that to get on an agenda so uh or Nancy you could call a meeting at any any point right so yes the board could call us back so we we'll do that is that does it does that sit okay with the board members Dan Mike um Rick I'm seeing a thumbs up from Mike Dan thumbs up from you or no okay and Rick I can't see well we're going to go with

196that okay um we'll be back on the 11th one way or another and if the board would like to meet before then we can absolutely make that happen we we did it in the summer so we can do it again if board members feel like we need to come back and talk about this more I see Zoe just put something on the chat so we should probably take a look at that yeah let's hear from it seems like Zoe and Sam both have uh have had a chance to think about it let's have them wait in because they're leaving in some chats here so Zoe go ahead or Sam oh there you go Zoe hi I see you hi guys yeah I just in the chat all I said was that after listening to everybody

197talk that from a student perspective I just wanted to say that even though like I personally I like to think I'm a pretty organized person so I do appreciate consistency and I understand the concerns of you know like Mr Davenport was talking about earlier like having that you know solid indicator of when to stop going back to school and I understand that because a lot of people do appreciate that consistency and are having a hard time with you know adapting and changing their schedule but above all I think that the students in the community appreciate more so than that consistency that you guys are using the facts and whatever metrics you have on hand to make well-informed decisions like I I think when you weigh the two together consistency is more of a luxury and

198we just really appreciate that you're using the best facts that you have on hand and you're trying to make the best decisions possible that's all I would definitely agree with that I think that maybe this is just speculation but in my opinion I feel like most often when there's tough um decisions to make the loudest voices that are speaking out are always the ones against you I think that we're not necessarily thinking about as a board all of the people who are happy with the process and are happy with the decisions being made by DR thely who aren't necessarily constantly coming into these board meetings to say by the way good job because I think there's less people that will be doing that than people that will be coming in saying I'm unhappy so I

199think we have to take into account the amount of people that are satisfied with what's going on that doesn't mean that people are everybody's happy that doesn't mean that what's been happening is perfect that doesn't mean that we don't have any work to do but I think that we should you know think on the bright side a little bit with what's been happening so far and definitely appreciate the administration's efforts so far I think thanks guys we appreciate your comments absolutely much appreciated thank you both good remind remers okay returning uh to our agenda then um Hank was there more to talk about regarding student academic supports and chat Bas tutoring with paper education Company Incorporated absolutely yeah okay I'm gonna turn that one over to Gina okay so I'd like to share with the

200board just some of the academic supports that we have in place um and also about a tutoring program called paper so this list is not meant to be an exhausted list at all but I just want to highlight a few things that are newer um or that have been expanded either in the spring with uh School closure REM remal learning or now so strive tutoring we have had strive tutoring for many years and this fall it was expanded and it went virtual and the focus of strive is not exclusively on Executive functioning but that is certainly a primary focused because what we're finding is that students need help organizing themselves their work organizing their time planning self-management you know how to focus on several different things at one time and so we're really working with

201that program we've seen a complete overhaul of the programming to to help our students and a lot of that work is literally one to one with a teacher working with uh with multiple students but one at a time we also back back in August um purchased Alex math uh programming for the majority of our math classes so everything from our lower level math classes all the way up uh past math 3 that was new in the fall and that's an online support for students to complement the coursework that they're already doing in the classes we also adopted a this fall a couple of science programs um one that uh primarily helps with online Labs since students are not person as much as uh we certainly would like as we well heard um that helps with

202doing labs in on a virtual basis we do have a math specialist itself and while that's not new we have had a math specialist um for a few years this is one of the the first years that we have been consistent and able to keep the same math specialist over time he worked with students uh last year obviously and even during the remote learning time and continues to work with classes math classes and also students in a in a tutoring type of atmosphere and that's during the day of course as the board knows we increased our bilingual support for both students and families uh that was somewhat new in the spring when we expanded the role of our home school liaison our Spanish speaking home school liaison uh at North High School and she also

203does do some work with South families as needed we also increased our bilingual and E support for our students by adding additional classes so we were able to add another bilingual class for example in science and or in social studies excuse me we were able to also add another resource for our students many of the students that are in resource resource are mainstreamed or they'll just be in one eel class and so as a transition out of the program it's very important that they have that support we also went online with virtual academic Resource Center that was new this fall as well as well as peer tutoring and our peer tutoring program is not just uh during the day um there are opportunities obviously during the day during lunch periods four five and six and

2048th period um but also between 3:30 and 5:00 and then later in the evening 5:30 till approximately 7 o'clock you already heard us talk a little bit about office hours that was new in the spring and expanded um and that's something that we're looking at both uh Dr th and I talked about a tool for scheduling students into office hours as well as the resource period that occurs it's half an hour uh Tuesday through Friday we also talked a little bit about our Access program and our connections programs those were new this fall these are students who for any variety of reasons we have reached out to and invited them to come into the building it could be a connectivity issue it could be that they don't have an environment at home that's conducive to

205learning there could be a host of situations and so those students have been invited in um to do in person to basically be remote but within the school setting and we do have an adult working with them and then the cohorts um that we already mentioned as well and that certainly is an academic support for those students who um elected to come in in the various cohorts that occurred this this fall so the question came up actually a little bit when we talked about the survey to talk about what are options for students so what are credit recovery options our course repeat options and that's very different depending on the student and oftentimes these are on a case-by casee basis we're we're very fortunate because the approach that our counselors take and we're our staff

206is trained at this is kind of working through this and kind of doing what I almost call like a wraparound approach right the counselor's involved the teacher in many cases involved the department chair parents students if it's a special education student might be a case manager if it's an El student it might be an El facilitator and they look at the situation for that indiv ual student to determine what is the best option for the student and those recommendations sometimes can differ by a year in school so if the student's a freshman versus a senior if the time of year um whether there's open seats in in a course it could depend on the course or the level of the course even so there's a lot of situations where we will look at to determine

207what is the best placement for an individual student now our current repeat options and part of the reason I put this in here was to explain what some of our options are for students and where I think um we can be effective at working with many of the students that have been showing that they are being unsuccessful right now we of course have the repeat option that we've had uh for a long time where students will retake a course within the school year or in summer school um they get a letter grade second time around and if it's due to failure both the failing grade and that passing grade does factor into the GPA if the student repeats a course they previously passed so for example if a student passes a class with a d

208they can still repeat the class and whatever grade they earn the second time unless it's enough does factor into the GPA so we do have course repeat that happens for two different reasons able is a program we've had in District 99 since August of 1999 it is a program that is really designed for individual students that have experienced some kind of a hardship and able is an alternative based learning environment and they work with a staff member through an online uh process of completing the course and they fully participate in that online experience whereby they earn the letter grade and those courses we use a program called uity um when the program first started we didn't but we use that program and that letter grade does factor into the students GPA and then we have

209credit recovery and Credit Recovery is primarily for juniors and seniors um after a student would fail a course a student can take the course in Credit Recovery that can be before school it can be after school we offer it the summer too um they take a test so a diagnostic prescriptive type test to determine where what they need to learn and then that's where the focus is um so they have to achieve a 70% for the areas they do not that is the focus and that is pure for Recovery of the of the credit so if a student is missing a credit that they need for graduation and they complete the work they get a passing breade Co has forced us to kind of look at our practices to look at these practices to look

210at how this how these programs I just discussed help or in some cases could hinder students so a current practice of ours is with course repeats if a student Pizza course that they previously passed the second the second grade the second try that grade is what factors into the GPA even if that grade is lower than the first time and as we started to look through this as an administrative team we started to ask why shouldn't the GPA reflect the highest grade shouldn't the GPA reflect what the student learned and so uh the change that we'd like to put that we're planning to put into place is that the highest grade whether it's the first time the student at the course or the second time would be what factors into the students's grade point average

211another practice that we looked at or we've been considering is when a student repeats a course that they previously failed so student takes a course they fail the course the failing and the passing grade factor into the GPA so while passing the course does help the students GPA that failing grade is still out there and and so while that grade would appear on the transcript we're we're looking at changing it so that the highest grade is what factors into the GPA the failing grade would no longer calculate and again for that same rationale that same reason that the GPA should reflect the highest grade it should reflect what the student earned it should not be punitive if a student is retaking a course we believe that it should not be punitive and then the other

212practice that we looked at is that when a student repeats a course whether it's because the student failed the course whether it's because the student wants to retake the course and get a higher grade those courses were not counting into the five class minimum required for athletic and activity eligibility so we started to question why it's not an ihsa requirement um and so we would like to move with that course counting if a student is taking a course it should count towards that minimum and our students have far more than uh five classes in in the vast majority of cases so those are some changes um that we're pretty excited about and obviously we're looking to use our practices that we have in place to help those students who may not be successful but another

213support we're looking at you heard a lot tonight about office hours and resource periods and virtual things that we're doing for students like strive and and and like some of the academic Resource Centers and peer tutoring but we're also looking at a program called paper and paper is an instant chat-based online program to support students and students basically go online it syncs with our student information system so they go online once they enter the system their classes appear they click into what they need help with let's say it's math they click into their math and then a tutor comes online to assist them they can type their questions and and and dialogue in English or in Spanish so it provides for both in English and in Spanish so we're very excited about that especially as

214for El families it's chat based and it used the Socratic method um the Socratic method is a questioning so they're not just giving an answer students can't go in and just add you know what is the answer to this problem they will not give the answer the tutors are professionally trained they undergo about a month of training actually and they are content Specialists many of of whom are um working on becoming teachers some of them are graduate students some of them are even PhD students and they have a wide range of subject areas from English math social science a lot of our elective areas as well and they go all the way in math which I was very impressed by all the way to calculus 3 so they go from the very basics of math

215and this program exists for elementary students as well very basic math all the way up to Cal 3 there's also an essay feature where a student can upload an essay for class or an essay for a college applications and they can get feedback on that within 24 hours and it's annotated feedback and again they're not giving answers they're just they'll be making suggestions asking questions what are you trying to say here those kinds of things so information about which students access the service the date and time the questions they ask basically basically a transcript of the chat is there for teachers so the teachers and administration too of course can go in and actually see which of their students are going into to paper and they can even see what time I mean obviously we

216want our students to use that time during resource and to reach out to teachers or be scheduled into office hours with teachers but our teachers are not available at midnight and we do know that many of our students will work much later in the even evening um so this is available to them 247 and then the um access to the essay so any essay that paper has provided feedback on is also there for the teacher to pull up so this this is just a graphic off of their website kind of gives some idea about the instant help they can receive how the teachers are getting feedback there's an entire um teacher portal that they can go into how the written work looks you can see on here the wife boarding so students can actually submit

217questions and whiteboard with um to demonstrate or draw pictures graphs charts those those kinds of things and in in checking references and speaking to districts um District 68 is using paper this is a quote from Greg wott my counterpart there um but I also spoke with Greg on the phone and um learned that they're very excited about the number of students that are using it El students that are using it um using it in grades 3 through eight so a little bit different obviously uh than it would be for us um but they're really excited about it and have have had a really successful launch of the program also spoke to individuals in other districts as well not just District 68 but in other districts that have been using it for a number of years

218because Woodridge has only been using it for a few months and they've been pleased with providing every student with a tutor so it's not just students who can afford a private tutor every student in District 99 would have the opportunity to have a tutor so if the district um moves forward with paper if the board approves to give the administration the power to sign the contract our next steps would be to continue the tech integration process we've had meetings obviously to talk about what that looks like and get things set up to finalize our onboarding plan and we've just laid out parts of that we'd like to conduct teacher training on January 4th we already have an Institute day so perfect timing to train our teachers on how to use it and how to roll

219it out to students and really to to see how the system works and then further planning on rolling it out to students and families and inviting parents to ask questions and learn about how they can encourage their students and how their students can use paper so that is paper in a nutshell yes so just responding to the chat so paper uh paper is a program that is expensive we would be purchasing we' get us through the rest of this school year and all of next year so 17 months would be the contract um we would be funding um part of it out of title one and part of it out of other local funds any other questions Gan I have a question uh looking at the numbers of increased uh students who probably will not

220pass a class that may be required for semester 1 is there any worry that if we don't maybe push Credit Recovery over retaking the class that there could be a down a down the road effect with uh electives and teacher teachers with um staffings that maybe we'd have so many students having to repeat the class that there would not be students available to take an elective or teachers would have to be switched because of the the the the numbers absolutely I do think we could see an increase in Credit Recovery um typically Credit Recovery is not an option for students who are freshman for example where the of course bills you know where you need that you need to be successful at the first level to be successful at the next level um I think

221where will see also an increase will be in our able program where it's really targeted on what the student missed from the course and I definitely see that you know Able's designed for special circumstances for those students and we've had you know situations and they're they're few and far between but we might have situation where it could have been a pregnant student right could have been there could have been financial hardship on my family there could be all kinds of reasons and at least in my way of thinking and in talking with our um our department chairs and Associate principles that oversee counseling and student Support Services I would see CO as a hardship so I think it really depends on the student you know if it's a if it's for example a math or

222science course where they need that Foundation then able might be a better option for the student also that letter grade then factors into the GPA right I think it just depends on my worry was I guess I wanted that credit recovery door a little bit more open than maybe it would normally be in a unid environment I think it's have to be I I I think so too I there's going to be a ripple effect into next year absolutely um and my second question I want to make sure I heard it correctly the 173,000 is for 17 months not for four months right it takes us to the rest of the school year and all the way through 2122 so it's basically January I'd have to check the exact dates January 4th I want to

223say until June 4th but I I'd have to verify that but it's the rest of the school year is there a financial is there a financial incentive for signing a 17mon window versus a 4month contract to see if students actually use this or not because part of me doesn't think it's going to be utilized to the effect that we're paying for so the difference was about $330,000 when I had originally got a quote from December right if we activated in December versus January I did not get another quote to activate January 4th but when we were looking at the same end of the to the end of this school year versus to the end of the following was about a $30,000 difference so4 4 some, to 170 some so we figured it would be in

224our best interest to provide that support when you're looking at only a $30,000 difference and you're getting a whole another year right and I I think you know I'm part of me doesn't Part of Me Part of Me doesn't believe that the Maj that this is going to be utilized as well as as it potentially could be and and that's where I work about this expenditure um and and so I I would much prefer a trial and say boy this is great they utilized it now we'll buy the next year no problem right the company does not offer trials we asked for trial they will not offer a trial or even just by a half a SE I guess a semester version of this and say hey show us what you got let's see if

225our kids are going to utilize this before we go ahead and buy a year and a half and we don't even know if by next September anybody's logging in right well we do get monthly reports so we will know who's logging in but you're but I can certainly see your point it would be somewhere around $140,000 just to purchase it for the rest of this year and then if we purchase it for the following year but I did not get a quote that way I did not get a quote for just next year right I had the quote for the remainder of this year and then the remainder of this year and next year but it was certainly more than the 30,000 I I you know I if it was Rick I think if we

226were looking at you know $50,000 to go the next four months or 170 to go the 17 you know that would be a there'd be more conversation about that but the fact that they're hitting us so hard I mean we're we might as well go to the extra $30,000 and get the get the following year no I understand I guess Part of Me Part of me I guess I see how my school has implemented and instead of hiring an outsourc it they have utilized the staff um with tutoring hours after school and at night and on the weekends where kids can log in and they get an actual science teacher at Downers Grove North who knows how the curriculum is being taught versus somebody who may not know how the curriculum is being taught at

227that individual school um maybe they get their actual teacher on a weekend from 9: to noon in the on a Saturday in the Sun Sunday or um maybe from 3:15 to 4:45 on a week night a math teacher a science teacher an English teacher I guess that's I part of me would rather spend the money on our staff and and asking them to tutor the students because I've seen the success that has happened at my school versus farming this out and it's off our plate and now we get a report and and that's it rick we we're already offering that with resource Tuesday through through Friday every week with that resource hour and every teacher has three hours of Office hours outside of the school day we already have those resources and students aren't taking

228advantage of them we're looking at adding another tool to schedule students into that time so that they could get their teachers this isn't a replacement for this this is an additional tool on top of that so that uh every student could get a tutor at any time of the day or night that they wanted one uh and it also is you know an equity like any student any student has access to a tutor where right now some of our more affluent families do have access to tutoring and do go out and hire tutors to work with them outside of our staff but this option gives every one of our students uh access to those resources it is this also available for those who might be taking summer school School classes right now the way we

229have it spelled out yes it would be for this summer but the contract would only go until June of 2022 right we would have to decide by then right yeah and that gives you that gives you 18 months worth of data to see whether or not it it's worth 175,000 right it or 173 what whatever number that is the summer school kids will have a chance to use it too because they might be the ones to really need it so I'm also concern you know I'm also concerned you know Rick Rick brings up points and about how well it'll be utilized and hearing how uh our students are already not utilizing the office hours as well as they could it's a legitimate concern but I think in our current environment um we're kind of I

230mean I I feel obligated to give the students every possible resource every possible opportunity um uh we we've all been reading the emails I mean there's there's a lot of students that that need additional help and and hopefully over the next uh several months we can just do an even better job at messaging as as Hank is alluding to how you're looking at tools to try to get these kids to schedule in um and and I'm sure that the the the teachers will be putting forward this as you know as an available option of reminding the students that this is something that's available to them and uh but I I don't see how we can't do this um quite honestly other questions anything else thank you thanks gtin you know just as a little housekeeping

231Tip since we do have people in the room um when you respond to a question in the chat maybe summarize this is to everybody responding to questions in the chat maybe summarize what the question is so that the people who are sitting in the room know what's going on uh 2020 2021 District goals these have come to the board word over the last couple of months as we've refined obviously they're delayed these usually come in August but as we've been working to return to school uh we haven't put as much work into these we have been obviously working on improving the district over the last semester uh so formalizing these uh the board has seen them several times before tonight it's the last opportunity to ask any questions before the board approves them and then

232uh as we've done in the past then we will start a tracking spreadsheet for the board as to our progress on those goals and then do probably you know every couple of months from here on out the rest of the school year do a a more formal report for you so um same process we've done in the past just a a midyear approval of these rather than in August I'll take any questions on on the goals as they stand at this point I I have nothing I think they were we're fine Mike says fine all right they're they're up for uh approval later on in the meeting any other questions okay moving on the school report card so the school report card we usually bring to you in November and this year we are off

233a little bit in the timing however this is going to be a much shorter presentation than it usually is because the the school report card is fairly incomplete R if you can thank you so in the past we've talked about the landing page and I've even shown it over the years but this year the landing page is riddled with statements like possible covid-19 impact to 2020 data so just so you know the data is not there for some things for example the five Essentials climate survey data is not there sat students didn't take the the Juniors didn't take the school day sat in April the data is not there um the Illinois Science assessment the dynamic learning Maps those assessments the data is not there so even that add a glance sheet which I have

234shared with the board in the past it's not even available but I do want to kind of point to a couple of things um there are many parts of the report card you can you can go ahead Rob thank you um that are still in place and it does still have some limited information in each of the these areas next slide please thank you there are some key factors and again most of these say possible covid-19 impact our summi of designation which the board may recall from last year was commendable that is just carried over the designations are just carried over they're not reassessing because the data isn't there some things we've looked at in the past I'll mention very briefly because we have looked at our data to ensure that it is as accurate

235as it can be and a couple of those are here that I will mention chronic absenteeism treny ninth grade on track and graduation rates and then I just wanted to point out again that the assessment data is not there so chronic absenteeism just as a quick reminder is when is students who've missed 10% or more of the school year with or without a valid excuse so even if um they were sick that factors in certainly that could be impacted by covid and then chronically chewing students are those those who Miss 5% or more without a valid excuse so I just wanted to share chronic absenteeism very quickly because last year you may recall that I brought this up that the state had kind of changed the way we could Factor it in and we were

236looking at our practices and we did and while it is possible yes that co could impact this we did see our rate come back which is exactly what I had anticipated um so we did look into it further and make some adjustments and you can see it changed for the state as well chronic treny did go up a little bit for us and we I did comb through this a lot of this data um but that's probably to be expected since the absentee rate came down um we're still at about 11% and we've range between six and 11% the other areas that I typically talk about that I'll just share really quickly with you ninth grade on track and graduation rates are also positive possible Co impact um but ninth grade on track is where

237students have to earn at least five credits and they cannot fail more than one semester in English math social studies or science and while there is a possible impact especially with the Do no harm of second semester if you could skip ahead um we did see our freshman on track rate go up so it is possible that that's been impacted but that has been a huge focus in this district for several years now and so I do believe that number is looking uh is definitely on the upswing and then graduation rates again could be affected by Do no harm but you can see this is the fourth year the next slide is the fifth year and then the sixe rate and you can see we have pretty much stayed the same all those years or

238been in the same area on graduation rates so I don't think that that there was a negative impact by Co which is why I wanted to point that out and then last but not least um as I mentioned earlier we did not give the PSAT 8910 or the sat in April our seniors did come in on October 14th and we were very happy that we had a huge turnout for that testing we really didn't have that many more students than we typically do that were absent for the test and I do want to point out the SAT is still a graduation requirement it was waved for the last year's class class of 2020 yes it was waved but it is not wave moving forward at least not at this time so we're very happy to

239have uh the outpouring that we did have of students come in and take the SAT in October so a shorter presentation on school report card for some data again it's just non-existent um but I'm happy to answer whatever questions you have Gan I just want to say thank you for everything um another great presentation and um thank you thank you I agree Rick thank you hearing nothing else uh we have two curriculum proposals we have two new courses coming to the board this year we're very excited about them one course is coming out of uh English English Flor uh four excuse me black American literature from our English Department and incubator for entrepreneurs so what American literature from English I'm going to turn over I believe our department chairs are with us um Tracy Sebastian

240Andor Chris Brony so I'll turn it over to them we are both here um good evening everyone I'm Tracy Sebastian I'm the South English department chair um Chris Brony is here with me as well um I'm going to start off just by saying that this is a course then that is for English 4 so it will be for our 12th graders we currently have um our students are able to as seniors take one of three different year-long courses or they can take a semester long course in critical reading in a semester long course and a writing in testive course so this would be adding one reading course to our list we currently have five other reading courses um this past year we actually eliminated a course because of lack of interest and low numbers for

241the past couple of years so we're actually just going to be looking to slide that in and take the place of the one that we just recently Replay that we would be replacing so it would not be in terms of adding on to what we normally had it would just actually be getting back to the same number that we've had for years um so it is a semester long class so they would get a half a credit the other half again they would take in a writing intensive course um the prerequisites then they just have to be a senior so they will have successfully completed either English three or normal junior class or AP language if they are coming in from that track so let Mr Roy tell you a little bit more about the

242actual course yeah thank you and to the board of ed thank you so much for for having us tonight uh I'm Christopher Bry the English chair newor that I'm just going to kind of do a little overview of what the course is in of itself uh I think it's important when we when we start with thinking about this course that we think about the actual title um we we spent a lot of time and I want to make sure I give um a shout out to Britney Mitchell at North and Riley love at at South who were the The Architects of this course and as Tracy and I work with them on designing this course we spend a lot of time with the title the original title was actually going to be uh black literature

243and um as we looked at what they were proposing we realized that that what they were trying to focus on actually was more what is truly the Black American culture and it came at the right time um obviously uh there's a lot going on you know this summer um and into today and when we when we worked with them on the coret and we asked them questions about it you know it really aligned with a decision that the Associated Press made this summer uh to to capitalize the be in black as its own unique culture um and what they tried to do in designing this course was to create a course that celebrated the richness of black American culture um for what it is and through the literature that that sort of you know helps

244support that and so that's what this course is is seeking to do um this course is seeking to explore what what it what it means to be and celebrate Black American culture um in particular one of the things that we're trying to do at this course is to push back against what is traditionally the sort of oppressive narrative um of black culture and so um the course is going to be structured in a in a chronological sort of historical uh landscape but within each sort of time period the goal is going to be to sort of connect those historical works with contemporary works so for example um and this isn't an actual necessar example that would show up in the course as of yet we're still you know flushing some things out but um it

245might be a poem from Phyllis wheat leaf from 1750 that you know looked at uh uh the concept of Oppression but it also might be paired with a poem by Nikki Giovani um or an excerpt by tanesi coats um or something from Tony Morrison to celebrate great writing simply for the fact that it's great writing um and and was was written by a black author as opposed to we're studying it simply because it was written by a black author so that's um what this course is trying to do um we are trying to look at you know really adding in the robustness of the Black American Experience so it will be obviously a literature course first and foremost um but we'll also look to bring in other text uh speeches you know all the things

246that are listed there music uh to to Really you know to have it look at you know this culture um and it's a culture that you know a lot of our students don't necessarily always get to see um day-to-day in in our current curriculum that said I think it's really important to note that this course is abs absolutely in addition to uh not in place of the work we are constantly doing as English departments uh to teach as as robust of a selection of authors as possible um from you know a wide range of of black and African-American authors to Latin xau authors uh to lgbtqia plus you know themes and authors we strive on on a regular basis and work with our course teams to have as robust of a selection um of authors

247and and of characters as possible and so it's just worth noting that this is not trying to replace the fact that you know nth 10th and 11th grade English will still have all of that that layers of diversity uh this is just a more focused area for students to study this particular culture with that I'll I'll send it back to Tracy so we wanted to stress that though it is about that culture and that's the Thematic element to that all of our reading courses have thematic elements we have science fiction we have rebels in literature all of our courses have a thematic element but they are all centered around the common cor St standards for reading so just as would be in the case of any of the other five courses everything that they do

248is going to be anchored in these standards so they will be analyzing style and structure looking at author's crafted message and and in this case particular really looking at the actual message how the message was communicated the multiple perspectives of those different interpretations of messages they'll be looking as Chris said at varieties of different types of literature and incorporating things like slam poetry songs things that we consider literature that not everybody always considers literature because they are specifically part of the culture and then we'll also be looking at all of the other standards that we use in terms of we read but how do we assess the reading we look at Reading Writing listening and speaking all working together so they will be doing a variety the same way they do in the other courses

249a variety of things to produce works that show their understanding and their critical analysis skills of the reading by doing things like personal Reflections other creative Works have Socratic seminars they'll have discussions they'll have presentations they'll do research they'll write about informing people persuading people all the same things that we would do in any of the other courses so they'll be based in those same common core standards that all of our reading courses are based in this will just have that thematic element of the Black American cultural L that would that would go the same way all of our other courses have that same type of thematic element to [Music] them and with that we'll ask if there are any questions for us yeah there any questions for Chris or Tracy I have a question

250would miss Mitchell be the one teaching that class at North should it be passed through yeah Sam that's a great question and you know obviously we we don't necessarily know at this point who would be teaching what of of any of our classes um but she has a strong desire to teach it and I have a strong desire to have her be teaching it so um but but we also uh you know to to the full you know extent in in in conversation within this that was a big conversation that we had and you know to to the board as a whole you know we thought about um who who would be given preface to teach a course like this which could be a little bit you know different than you know teaching Shakespeare um

251and and we thought about things like you know will will we want to look at perhaps a teacher who has been through our seed training um th those sorts of um layers to make sure that you know what what could be you know at times perhaps you know touchier subjects um someone has a little bit of a background in that Soh so yeah that's kind of where we're at with that but yes I mean you know Sam yes we would love to see her teaching that course like Zoe had a comment as well go ahead Zoe yeah I just said that I mean I've I'm a senior so I've pretty much taken all my classes but I really would have loved to take an English course like this I think that both the English departments

252and the history Department could really benefit from classes that educate students about different cultures and especially like it's not necessarily the fault of the teachers it's more so how you know we in America have told our history but viewing history and culture from a non- eurocentric lens I think is a really important value that we need to establish in our departments too so I think this is a great idea you for that Zoe that's that's very much appreciated it's something we are as Chris said trying to work on in all of our courses and I would also add that uh I've been interviewing a lot of people for a newspaper article about um topics about race and the curriculum and stuff like that and a lot of things that uh were continually brought up were

253changes in curriculum so I think that this is definitely an excellent step in the right direction to addressing the problems that continue to you know persist in our our community just as much as they persist throughout the country so I think this is definitely great stuff thank you Sam for sharing that so this this is Nancy and I want to just say I agree with both Sam and Zoe uh but I would like to add and I'm gonna say this for the next course that's coming up too I think this sounds like a fabulous course I would like to hear after it's run one or one or two years I'd like to uh at some point it would be nice to have some students come back and tell us about their experience with the course

254we can do that thank you any other questions before we transition to the next course okay our next course comes out of our CTE current technical education department um and we have our two Department chairs here with us Melissa danwood from nor North High and Pat fary from South High so I will turn it over to them to explain the course to you so um just to start off uh we want to again uh thank the board very much for having us out here tonight um this course incubator for entrepreneurs course has been a long time in the making I think we've been researching this exhaustively for uh I don't know how many years Gina has been extremely supportive with us in uh getting this course up in uh hopefully on the books for next

255year um and then also as Chris made a shout out for his teachers we have uh two excellent teachers Andrew heims and Paul North and Paul cricket south who have have worked in putting this uh course together uh along with Melissa and I um so incubator is set up as a a year-long class um that is going to replace our current semester-long entrepreneurship course um it was created by uh a company called Uncharted learning um Uncharted learning uh created this as a way to Foster entrepreneurship um in a sense of bringing together um Community uh to engage with the students um so instead of just a teacher for in our case for a semester U going through the typical curriculum that you might see you with the incubator curriculum you are bringing in mentors from

256the community you're bringing in coaches who are going to work work with teams of students uh to actually uh start their own uh business plan so they're going to go from um the a concept to an actual plan to implement starting an actual business and by the end of the year they will then present that business idea to a group of venture capitalists who can actually give money as seed money to you know winning groups in order for them to actually start their business um The Hope is that eventually um we'll add the second year course which is the accelerator uh incubator course where students will then actually be able to run their business during the class period um this course is set up though um in working through all the different components um with

257the students within those teams of students in order to from the the Inception the idea of the actual U product or service or whatever it may be that the company they want to start um into actually getting to the point where they could begin uh that business itself well said do you wantan to Rod if you can advance the slide yeah sure great yeah I'll just let you know Rod um so what we'd want you to know is that this is a year-long course it's going to replace our current um semester long entrepreneurship class and what we're really excited about is that even if a student so uh Sam and zo you can spread this for us uh even if a student took entrepreneurship they can still take incubator uh for the next two two

258years and still receive credit so that way if a sophomore took a class this year and then they said oh wait a second now you're offering incubator wait I missed out they don't have to miss out uh they can still take it uh we're going to use this uh grades 10 through 12 and the idea is um they can ideate develop uh their own product and service and a startup to gain that investment funds for that final pitch event that big pitch event which we're going to make it a huge celebration at the end of the year um invite all our Community Partners we're so thrilled to have such a strong community outreach um and we really want to celebrate that so Pat and I are both looking forward to a big party right when

259we're finally all ready to get together um so why we're excited about these Community Partnerships is because we'll have coaches and mentors from a variety of areas um they can be traditional entrepreneurs which is wonderful but sometimes our best uh entrepreneurs are people with entrepreneurial Spirit but perhaps they work for a large company or organization all mentors are good mentors and they all provide a lot of uh help to our students our teachers will work closely with them so even if we have uh possible Community Partnerships where people are a little nervous like oh what's that like to work with high schoolers our uh teachers are going to help them to feel really good about what they're doing we'll all work together to help that student so we have some uh foundational program elements uh

260we have the experiential learning uh connected learning and then Competency Based um in CTE as you know we love our competencies and our standard based learning uh and this is no different what Pat and I are really excited is that this um um career in information is already really situated for our teachers that they do not necessarily have to create this from scratch and also we get the value of the fact that so many other high schools like neille barington Elmhurst are already all using this so we know that these are really great standards and competencies and then what's exciting is as Pat mentioned these are real uh these are real cases not simulated um there are situations we've already had where students have started their own businesses from this class and now we've always

261felt like oh how do we help them get to the next step you know they have this great business how do we take it to the next level and now with incubator we feel like we're ready to help them take it to the next level so it might be as simple as a small part-time business where they have figured out a way to capitalize on a market or it might be the start of something really big in general um what we know for sure is that this is what colleges want to see um they want to see practical applications of what students have created so when we're looking at uh when Pat and I research and we look at our data to see where students are going to school and what they're uh majoring in

262when we look at the business field we know that students have to show those top competitive business programs that they have created um a real product and so this course is a a wonderful course for our students to be able to to do that and then finally students are going to leave the course with a completed uh business model canvas competitive analysis financial model minimum viable product a pitch deck and a future communications plan as Pat mentioned our our long-term vision is to eventually expand this but we're really pleased with this class as is in the sense that students will leave after the end of the year with a solid piece of evidence to support their learning any questions although as my son would say as I look at the clock it says 10:15 he

263came in from his first semester of freshman year college and I said why are you up so late and he said Mom time is a construct and I can appreciate that but for all of you time might be feeling very real right now so uh if you don't have any questions that's okay too no my only question is to Gina Gina this is another reason why every single year I keep asking you about changing summer school to open up opportunities for later in a a student's career in Downers Grove so they can take these types of classes because here's a great class but historically it's almost impossible to get to it without sacrificing maybe another love that they may have whether it's art or music or an extra English class or an extra science class

264I mean it's this is a great class both of these but how do you get to them in Downers Grove when there's no way to accelerate your education in summer school once again Rick after the master facility plan is finished this summer we'll look at expanding it in future s Hank I've heard that for eight years I've heard that I've heard that response for eight years years from heard me for four in all four years we've been doing major summer construction as soon as this summer is over we'll look at expanding it for future years I think this is a great class I mean I would want to take it myself so very good class and it gives a different uh for everybody that's not aspiring we talked about at one point giving people other

265options because everybody could be successful regardless of what path they take give them opportunity to to look into something else absolutely I'm a big fan of a multiple career Pathways and although this definitely I won't deny it colleges love this class I'm going to own it because it's great for us but that being said many of our entrepreneurs might not choose a traditional path and we are very responsive to that I just I just wish that you had uh had this class uh probably about 10 years ago because my my daughter had um has a BS in entrepreneurship from depal so um she would have gotten a little more experience to to go there so where does she live I'm hearing guest speaker well right now she's getting her M's in uh interior design at

266scad in Atlanta wow wow so she's going to use both of those things in her future than yeah I would just say please in this is Nancy I would just say please invite us either to the um presentations or a presentation to the board and a few years love to hear how this works out it's exciting absolutely yeah this sounds like a fabulous class I wish I could have taken it myself I I'm curious are you able to share with us uh who some of these mentoring Pro uh people are or businesses yeah absolutely so we're really fortunate to already have some great Community Partners we're always looking to grow um but we're really fortunate for what we already have in place and Downer's Grove and it's extending all the other areas I'll be honest

267Han I did not realize there were that many suburbs that fed into Downers Grove High School District um and so uh we're really thrilled and so some of them are a traditional entrepreneur so they are your classic where they've created their own company um they are maybe a consulting firm or for example uh we have some sports retailers uh things like that but we also have used um people have started their own business we have some wonderful local business owners who have volunteered their time um but admittedly as the program grows we're hoping to grow too thanks so so this is Nancy again how are you going to protect their intellectual property yeah you know so that's the great thing about incubator they actually have um the paperwork in place so we can utilize that

268paperwork um as far as when we've talked to our friends at neighboring high schools uh they haven't had any issues with that there's been definitely a lot of um honor among among the class and because I think everyone's working together as a team but that being said um our our vision is to grow and so when we do grow those pieces come with this program which is one of the reasons we really like uh incubators so much they've thought of everything cool yeah awesome and I have some guest speakers that I could share with you potentially that would be able to help there's a group in Chicago called Chicago inventors and they work with a lot of people to get on uh QVC and different um different organizations like different um to get these products

269in different places Walgreens different places like that if it's a product oriented um eventure by wow that's great thank you we'd really appreciate it all right well thank you Chris Tracy Melissa and Pat for joining us this evening appreciate it thank you very much uh moving on Master facility plan progress yeah and just uh both of those are up for approval later this night action so just really quickly in the master facility plan um we continue to close out uh phase b a few of those incidentals have cut into the contingency a little bit but we still remain on Pace to have uh you know the the goal was always a million dollar in contingency heading into the last summer will be well above that and then we'll be bringing plans for the remaining portions

270of it uh in the coming months as we uh finalize the FF and the furniture and fixture and Equipment budget for phase C in the Commons which is enormous uh over the next couple of months and uh get rolled one on phase C uh it's almost completely bit out on the projects and uh you know we remain on schedule and ahead of budget so things are trending well great any any questions comments hearing none have we had any Freedom of Information requests um uh Nancy let me just show a couple of quick pictures oh I'm sorry it's all right uh so South High Auditorium and and the the front side of South High in front of it uh then moving on Broad uh there's a nice drone shot of the commons uh coming to form

271in the middle of South High and then uh North High Commons uh all that internal work is beginning you can see everything's boarded up so we can do the work inside of that space and then that's the outside uh patio that will be the dining area outside of that common space so just a few quick shots to show you some of the progress over the last month now for request okay uh Hank let me ask you though since we're talking about starting back to school have you heard anything more about dropping the speed limit on Dunham and on um Springside by the school I I have not but I can follow up with the village Downer Grove on there okay next time you talk to him please thank you sure for your requests we had

272some and we filled them and they're available on our website okay great uh the tax levy request Mark can you put my there you go um this is the summary of it and it's getting late I'm just gonna cover it briefly here uh the potential Revenue to us 4.26% is what the requests would cover um we don't expect to get all of that but um CPI factor of 2.3% is something that is a given uh because that's how the tax caps um give us cost of living increases uh but it gives us up to 1.96 of new construction growth which is just a guess at this point um because we don't know we have we have some guidance from our assessors um which pretty show us that we should get at least 1% or 95%

273but we're adding a little bit extra there just in case more growth comes in because they gave us preliminary information they don't of course haven't had it through the end of December because it hasn't occurred yet um so that's where the the 4.26 comes in adding those two numbers together if you go to The Graphic please um I think we there should have been a graphic in there so that up again um I was going to just show you I just going to show you the calculations and if you'd like to see it I'd be happy to share that with you um it's it's um asking for a little bit more for new construction the new cost to a $300,000 house would be around $41 um a year in taxes if we um you know

274that's what we expect to have occur so it is it is an increase in taxes because it's we we do have um 2.3% of tax cap limit added to our our last year's extension so we'll be asking for you to approve the ly request it has to be be approved before the last Tuesday in De in December so we need to get it on the books and then come March or April we'll have um actual data for what the new con what our eav is and what the new construction is and we'll be able to tell you exactly what our revenues will be for the U for the next fiscal year any questions on the ly hearing none okay so the next item I have is the uh just proposed amended budget I think we

275we've um heard the concerns about it and so we're responding to that doesn't uh bother me too much to put it this way technically the cash and Investments should be restated this way but it for us the form itself the state form that we use is very rigid and and um doesn't really help us explain how we what we actually expect to get in our taxes so I'm fine making a change like that we've had it shown like that in in past year some years too so um we're going to make a change two changes to the budget um it's been on display for more than 30 days it's almost 50 days 60 days and so uh it needs to be approved as well at this meeting that's it any questions and those changes just

276just to remind me Mark those changes we made they were like putting it in a different line item it wasn't a substitutive change right one was it was always there it was just reassigned right one well one was the cash and investment which when we add cash I put it in there without the early taxes because it lets us keep the the exact correct Revenue line item for the taxes um but the way you overcome that is you you have to subtract it below before you get to the fund balances so you have to put it in the beginning line item and then you have to subtract the early taxes out of another line item um I shortcut it it I and and honestly I it was incorrect do it that way technically but I

277think it it showed where we were on a fund balance level just easier to follow the other one was just to break out the fire prevention and safety out of capital projects because it is a capital projects fund by Gap with General accept accounting principles what uh uh it's it's for the cfer and other you know nationally made documents it shows up in the capital projects is accumulated there um and it has to be spent out of Capal projects but um the state does have it on a separate column um for whatever purposes for their tracking I guess even though they get data um but yeah so it's just breaking out some line items on it so it doesn't change any revenues or expenditures which are really the the life blood of the budget and

278actually the county level we only have to give them revenues we don't even have to give them expenditures so every different body has different reporting things that they want to see and I have no problem reflecting it this way okay any other questions or concerns hearing none we'll move on to the public hearing on the 2020 2021 proposed amended budget uh during this hearing the board will adhere to policy 4.10 and its public participation policy 2.23 we are going to allow members of the public to speak for three minutes at this time since we have a number of people who want to address the board tonight um and we expect that anyone to who who presents to expect to conduct themselves with respect and civility while members of the public may ask questions neither the

279board nor Administration are under any the obligation to answer questions from the public so this uh the proposed amended budget has been on public display for 30 days as required over 30 days as required by law now the administration brings the proposed amending budget forward to the board for final approval this is the final opportunity for the public to provide feedback on the proposed amended budget before the board takes action later in this evening is there anybody who wishes to address the board does anybody wish to address the board about the budget uh none here and there are no uh online submissions regarding the budget okay so we will close the public hearing on the 2020 2021 proposed amended budget and move on to the consent agenda I think we need a motion to close

280the hearing and take a vote on that if thank you thank you thank you I'm getting tired do we have a motion I move that we close the uh um uh what is it to the 2021 Terry we never opened it so we have to open it then close it I thought Nancy opened it yeah but she didn't take a vote for the public portion you don't have to have a vote public hearing don't vote to open it we have to we vote to close it vot to close it yeah yeah so I I vote that we close the public hearing on uh the 20 uh one 22 202 20 20 2021 I'm sorry I was reading the wrong sentence that's okay 2021 proposed amended budget thank I think Rick seconded yes yeah thank you

281p pavich i Rick panado hi Jo Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport hi per Fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi and Nancy kupka hi the public hearing is and the budget is closed now we're gonna move thank you now we're gonna move to the consent agenda is there any um uh item that any board member wishes to remove hearing none we need a um motion to approve the consent agenda which includes the Personnel report appointment certified leave of absence certified the Personnel report retirement certified the financial pages and the IGA with Downers Grove Township regarding PR the Prairie restoration project so moved Terry second Rick Rick was that Rick seconding that is correct thanks Rick thank you k pavich i rck panado hi Joan vasus Drexler I Mike Davenport I charell fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi and

282Nancy kupka I the consent agenda is approved we're GNA move to the rec uh recommendations for a action the approval of the service agreement with paper education company Incorporated so moved excuse me there's a whole motion that you need to read if you would bu please I I'm yeah I'm just sorry I was just moving over on my computer I need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the contract with paper education Company Incorporated in the amount of $173,300 us and that the administration be approved to sign and otherwise execute any related documents pertaining to this contract I think I heard Dan motion so moved thank you second Mike go ahead Mike Dan Dan Nicholas hi Mike Davenport hi Ro Fuller i k pavich i Rick panado I danan vasus Drexler hi Nancy

283kupka I the motion is approved next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2020 2021 District goals as presented so move moved go ahead Mike I think it was Mike and Terry yeah that's fine Mike davonport hi Terry pavich hi Rick panado Hi D Vasquez Drexler hi Dell Fuller I Dan Nicholas I and Nancy kupka I the motion is approved next we need an uh a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2021 2022 curriculum proposals for black American literature and incubator for entrepreneurs as presented I heard Joan in there yeah andelle Joelle thank you Joan vasus Drexler hi dra Fuller hi Dan Nicholas I Trey pavich I Rick panado I Mike Davenport I and Nancy kupka I the motion is approved next we need a motion for

284the Board of Education to approve the certificate of tax levy the certification excuse me certification of certificate of tax levy and the certificate of compliance with the truth and Taxation law as presented don't move Joanna yeah and was that Mike second yes okay Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport hi charal Fuller hi Dan Nicholas i k pavich i Rick panado I and Nancy kupka I the motion carries and finally we have need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2020 2021 amended budget as presented Terry Terry second thank you very much K pavich hi Mike Davenport Hi D Fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi RI panado I Jo Vasa dlor I and Nancy kupka I motion carries moving on to the second reception of visitors public comment this is the second reception of

285visitors which is intended 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 individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary Mrs nidek visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone State their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting me excuse me accurate meeting minutes and are being uh broadcast live the board's pres uh I reserve the right to modify these protoc if circumstances weren't and we appreciate the observation of these protocols but we do we do have people that actually made it through the evening thank you all for making it through uh they're

286going to come up in a moment we did receive 22 comments through the online forms nearly all of them encouraging the board to return uh students to school second semester to consider changes in metrics like those that we discussed this evening and to continue supporting our students in any way we possibly can can as they return recognizing that this semester has been very challenging on many uh we had uh nearly 12 more people than what you're going to hear from in here tonight uh appear to to show up but unfortunately because of tier three mitigations we had to limit the amount of folks in the room and we did have somebody that needed to leave earlier and left a written comment that I will provide to the board after this meeting along with all of

287the ones that were submitted will be forwarded to the board and become part of the board minutes so with all of that being said we can have our community members start stepping up to the microphone uh to address the board for up to three minutes all right can you hear me all right all right Rich benma to quote from the CDC page each indicator or combination of indicators should not be viewed as hard cut offs by School District decision makers rather than serve as broad guid guideposts of inherent risks of to inform decisionmaking Dr thely cannot use the CDC as a scape coat for this second semester plan despite what he said during discussion the CDC does not require a metric nor does it Define or require a move to full remote at any time

288in my opinion Dr thely seems to be overly afraid that the risks of inperson for those under retirement age he's overly afraid of it well not afraid enough of full remote here's what I'm afraid of I fear the proposed second semester plan sets the bar unreasonably High I fear it'll become full remote and hybrid clothing just like first semester with the inflation of probable cases the 9% of January will not be the 9% of October Nancy you correctly defined what an antigen test is but there's a math lesson addition means numbers go up tests not previously included are now being counted this is not Apples to Apples it's apples plus oranges what is safe full remote is not safe either it is undeniable students are being hurt physically socially mentally and academically granted it is

289an incrementally small amount each day but it is cumulative and it is piling up remote learning has and continues to damage the students on Friday teachers were telling students that they should prepare for in person how many kids now have their hopes up what I fear the most is what will happen to them if you pull out the rug from out from under them again the risk of inperson is a low probability of a one-time large amount of harm the risk of full remote is a high probability of small amounts of accumulated accumulating harm neither option is inherently safe both carry risk I along with most parents hinsdale's District 86 Administration and board and even the CDC believe that the realized risks of remote outweigh the potential risks of in person stop hurting the students

290with full remote don't say you want students in person prove it add an adjustment to the thresholds to account for the inflation due to the newly included probable cases bring them back keep them back thank you can you hear me yep go ahead uh good evening Carrie Norris I'm uh earlier today I submitted to you an open District 99 petition which reflects a sample of our district 99 community members and their desire to see the kids get back into person instruction in January I hope you will read those signatures and the comments I'm standing here as one of those District 99 community members who signed the petition but more importantly in this moment I'm standing here as a district 99 mom of a boy who is serviced with an IEP my husband and I have

291seen our 10th grader unravel emotionally and academic academically at a much higher degree than our quote regular ed kids so the issue of special ed students not receiving what has been set up for them is very close to our hearts I have been actively communicating with District 99's administration and special services leaders inquiring about what they can feasibly put into place to better service the learning disabled population Dr thely mentioned reaching out letting them know that it's not working and we have we've inquired about smaller groups he mentioned cohorts but there's no cohorts available for the general specialed population who have IEPs and 504s we appreciate the administrators and teachers responses to our inquiries and their offer to place our son in the access program access would allow our son to be in school all

292day he would be placed in a room of 10 or less students and there would be two staff members supervising him making sure he attends all classes and is on task in the access program for our special ed student there are no CER certified teachers no one-on-one tutoring noal resources and no direct teaching or in-person presentation we feel the only thing that's going to get our son back on track is in-person teacher presence in our minds the lack of face-to-face lessons is the biggest culprit of our son's listless academic attitude and Rising anxiety since a portion of District 99 special services students were not offered a specialized pandemic program we really lean on hope that our son's situation will improve in January when a more regular hybrid plan is put into action it is a

293dire need for many that an in-person instruction model be implemented immediately and remain in place thank you thank you m hello my name is David lewood Community uh Community District board 99 Dr thy the CDC and the hwo agree that the safest place for students is in school the board and administration have an obligation to put kids back in school science class without lbs is not science English class without in-person presentations and discussions is not English ban without performance is not ban and the list goes on and on I informed by many teachers at District 99 that the curriculum has been cut by at least 30% from years past to accommodate remote learning remote learning does not provide our students with a quality education and saying otherwise is disingenuous moreover we are putting our students

294behind other students in our state the country and the world the recovery rate for people under 70 who contract this virus is 99.95% and 99.998% of all students fully recover the board voted 7-0 for a hybrid in August and it is the duty of the administration to make that happen the administration should make this happen for the start of the second semester further all the science and data dictate that students should be in person full-time the choice of of whether or not our students return to school should be left up to the parents it is our responsibility to weigh our students risk until they reach adulthood to make their own decisions I think the district should not tell me what I should do for my student but instead allow me to decide what is best

295for my student moreover there is no data or science behind the arbitrary and constantly changing bench benchmarks implemented by District 99 our students are being deprived of academics activities social interaction leadership opportunities and sense of community until some arbitrary threshold is met why are the students or staff more at risk if these metrics aren't met where are the studies supporting these theories there aren't any there is simply no reason not to have in-person school how do these kids get this this year back once once it's gone it's gone forever there are no doovers it's nothing less than a dereliction of Duty not to do whatever it takes to get these kids back in school thank you thank you Mr my name is Jim debit good evening I'd like to begin by telling you a conversation

296I had with my daughter a senior here at dgn the other day we were discussing me speaking here tonight and I asked her if she wanted to go back to inperson warning and she said of course she did then she told me something that greatly disappointed me she said that no one meaning the board wanted to hear what her or any other students had to say how terribly sad is it that the student population who you all ultimately serve feels they no longer have a voice over 3,000 individuals took it upon themselves to sign a petition to be back in the classroom and nothing changed these kids now see many other schools going back and they see news reports one after the other stating the kids belong in school yet they remain locked out in

297the cold what they do see however is very frightening at the very least they see their grades falling my daughter's a perfect example she stated that she does better when she's in a classroom because it's easier for her to focus on her work without the distractions at home such as the dog the TV the warm bed or the sandwich in the kitchen from there things for quite a few kids get much worse much much worse suicides depression anxiety drug and alcohol abuse has risen dramatically this year our kids should not have to live in a world where all this becomes The New Normal they should be able to be in a nurturing environment for learning with positive examples and positive role models it falls on you the school board to give that to them and

298so far that has not happened our kids got short Taste of school just enough to remind them of what they were all missing before it was taken from them again what do you think that did to their morale take a quick drive around town and you'll see kids being kids trying desperately to have some normaly in their lives they did not social distance they did not wear masks they become kids again and most kids that age think they're Invincible in fact the latest data regarding the virus backs up that belief for the most part if they were back in school Under supervision they would have on the proper PPE they would be reminded to social distance to wash their hands often all the things that adults know that we have to do to stay safe

299when they leave school and return home to their families their parents won't have to worry about where they were who they were with and if they took precautions don't know they were safe and sound under the supervision of School District 99 in closing I beg you to allow our children to return to inpersonal learning so the learning that they so desperately want and need right now show them that they are what's most important always no more excuses no more finger pointing no more anything but could putting kids first thank you thank you Mr hello my name is D mystery uh first of all I'd like to thank uh Dr til and the board and especially the parents who came out here to present their thoughts and they have covered them you know suly really well

300what is wrong with the way we are looking at this and to me the biggest thing is you can use a matrix when there are known known this is an unknown and a dynamic situation we have to be very agile and be ready to adapt we cannot be setting in stone saying 9% is our threshold that doesn't work because as everyone has pointed out as testing increases the chances are the positivity rate might even go up and even at 12 they might be safe so we really have to start looking at this from from a much broader perspective and being adaptive and agile about it instead of just setting things in stone I was severely disappointed to see that in the first semester we had a plan to go hybrid and then last minute we

301decided to change that other districts are in the same boat they were able to continue their education in a hybrid model I I don't understand how we were not able to provide that the two weeks that my daughter not really two weeks that was four half days that my daughter was in school she was the happiest she at least felt connected she felt like she was getting proper education nowadays every single day she has a headache every week she has a H down this is not a daughter that I'm talking about who has been struggling she used to be an honor student and even right now she has tried to maintain her grve but the amount of effort she has to put in is is unsurmountable the teachers are not aable to teach they they

302don't know how to teach in this environment I I I don't blame them this is a new Norm for everyone and they just don't have clues of doing it you talk about social emotional learning or soci emotional wellbeing of the students how are you even evaluating their social wellbeing what Matrix do you use how do you even know that they are doing well I just don't see because without seeing someone in person I have no clue how you can tell that someone is doing well or they're not doing well so all these things that while on one side we are talking about that we want to do the right things I don't know we are open I don't know if we are open-minded enough to act be ready to bring students in class if we

303really start with the idea that we our first thing is to bring students in school and we will adapt as things on you know reveal themselves I think that would be better instead we have continue to hide behind Matrix to me that's that's basically a you know cya it really all it is it really is cya and I'm sure all of you here know what a cya is so I'm not going to go into details of that thank Mr Min you're out of time your your time has expired okay that's good thank you thank you anybody else that's all of the visitors in the room that wish to speak thank you um okay moving on then to Communications and announcements Dan do you have any update on lend or Hank no update um yeah the

304uh the last time we met was with representative Caston I I think we're meeting again after the holidays they are spending a lot of time looking at State Testing requirements and how they are tied to graduation requirements right now and trying to determine how to Advocate with State leaders around those issues thank you uh Joanna anything on Sid no no report Terry the Educational Foundation sorry sorry I was muted um I do have a couple of quick things um we are um uh donating gift cards uh for the schools to uh assist families that uh need help during the uh uh covid uh crisis so uh we are doing U donations for that if anyone would like to donate and uh we received a um $1,000 uh donation from um ASB which is the um

305um Association of school board or a school business uh officials uh in honor of uh Mark stalen and his um uh mamar I hope I'm pronouncing that right Monarch award Monarch award yeah yeah so um that was really greatly appreciated and and uh uh we would like to thank and honor uh Mark for that uh uh for his award and uh we are also thinking to support uh it's called feed six and it's um going to be a pass through account uh for any District 99 families that would like to um uh put food baskets together or food cartons together for um the hungry so those are the three things that we're doing right now very cool okay thank you uh Mike anything on reporting the Illinois Association of school boards uh no report but

306wondering how giving Tuesday worked out for the foundation Terry uh I have we have a meeting tomorrow or no Wednesday I'm sorry so I don't know about that yet so I will report that next month okay anything else all upcoming board meetings are January 11th which will be a workshop meeting at 6:30 p.m. and January 25th which will be a regular business meeting at 6:30 p.m. we'll update the public on the location whether it'll be virtual or in the um south or wherever it will be uh when we know closer to the date uh so we now I think the only thing we have left is a motion to adjourn oh so moved second Terry and Mike all those in favor I I anybody opposed we are adjourned thank you very much and thank you

307for to the people in the audience for uh sticking with us yes was it