July 27 School Board Workshop

001three no picking your nose so now my nose itches work [Laughter] how can i get everybody on here wait click gallery view and you'll see everybody tom can you help me find the gallery of you my husband's gonna help me a minute i'm having a little trouble okay upper right hand corner okay yeah i can't seem to see it yeah i don't i don't have gallery either i don't know it's going to be different on the ipad on the tablet terry than on the computer yeah yeah yeah i'm set okay thank you because whoever talks gets the view for me yeah okay i think we have a quorum yeah let's call to order nancy kupka present mike davenport president shirelle fuller present dan nicholas president terry pavicich here rick pavinato here joanna vazquez drexler here

002okay we have a quorum let's uh start with the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and justice okay um just a little we're gonna just to run down what we're gonna do we're gonna start off i'm gonna give rick the floor for a minute he wants his announcement he wants to make then hank is going to do a presentation i'm going to do a presentation mike has asked to speak and then we're going to open it up for the entire board okay rick you wanted to say something yeah if you see me close my screen tonight or turn it off it's because i had eye surgery and i probably should have done it a lot more last monday night i didn't think the meeting was going to be

003as long or as bright as it was and so it's only because of if the background gets too bright or lights in the background you're going to see my screen probably go down more often than than last week i texted nancy last week and told her but i didn't say to everybody so i wanted everybody to know why okay thanks rick and stay comfort yeah do what you got to do absolutely okay hank all right i just i don't have a presentation i just have a statement can you guys hear me all right yes all right so i'd like to start off by thanking the board of education for setting aside an additional night to discuss the proposed plans to return to school i also appreciate all of those including students family members staff and

004community members who have taken time to send along their thoughts and concerns about our plans for this fall last week the board received 255 public comments made through the online form to the board in addition to the remarks made in person during the meeting so far we've received an additional 300 comments online and this is on top of hundreds of emails that we've received as well please know that the district 99 team and the board of education review and care about and consider each and every comment while we have indicated that all comments would be read tonight the number of comments prohibits us for reading each comment instead we have reviewed all of the comments and will share an overview of the public comments please know that each individual comment has been shared with the

005board and will be entered into the minutes so they are part of the official record of this meeting of the 300 plus comments we've received so far today starting the school under the proposed hybrid model many wanted to see additional hours of in-person learning eighteen comments advocated for remote only learning for those who are comfortable with the hybrid schedule people cited the importance of supporting the mental social and emotional well-being of students they also feel the district's plan is one that creates a safe physical environment many are thankful for having a choice about whether or not to return to school for in-person learning many comments pointed to a concern that there's not enough instructional time built into the hybrid plan several pointed to science as to why we should open others pointed to science as

006to why we should not open while it is clear that there are varying opinions about how we should open school i think it's safe to say that most if not everyone agrees that this is a complex and difficult decision the illinois state board of education gave clear guidance that schools who can return to in-person learning should do so the illinois department of public health shared guidelines for schools to follow based on those guidelines the administrative team has developed a plan that we believe is safe for returning students to in-person learning if the health metrics regarding covet allow us to do so the dupage county health department has also assisted our team in devising this plan that starts with safety all showing that the best outcome for our students is to have them back with us

007whatever time we can have them our best tools for making sure the kids are okay are based on having them physically with us everything else pales in comparison i think you're breaking up again give it a second to catch up yeah okay yeah if in-person learning is what is best for kids then it is our duty as educators to do whatever it takes to meet that need no matter how uncomfortable it makes us or how much work it takes our calling as educators is to do what is best for the education of our students and best is here at school in a safe environment the administrative team believes this is accomplished in a hybrid plan this plan also gives families the choice to select a fully remote option as of noon today 214 students out

008of the over 5 000 students in our district 4 percent of the student body have chosen the fully remote option of the 214 students selecting fully remote learning 20 percent had pre-existing medical concerns while the other 80 percent did not as long as it is safe to do so i believe that we must bring students back to in-person learning this is the same approach being taken by other high schools across dupage county the only high schools in dupage county considering starting in a remote format are those with much higher rates of covet in their community following the illinois department of public health metrics the positivity rate number of hospital beds and icu beds in dupage county indicate the conditions are not in the range to send us backwards in our plans i've said that all

009along that in the days before school opens we will use the current health data to determine if we can return to in-person learning if these numbers change and there's a seven-day increase in hospital emissions for cova-19 related illness or reduction in the hospital or surgical beds or icu capacity below or a positivity rate above 8 percent i will then discuss with the dupage county health department and may recommend that we don't return to in-person learning and go fully remote at that time we are working on a remote learning plan now one that is more robust than what we delivered in the spring and teachers are assisting us in the development of that plan learning can be accomplished with a remote learning plan however it will never be as good as having students here in person

010the administrative team believes it is essential to start out the school year with in-person learning and maximize whatever time we have to gather safely in person i acknowledge the board of education has the responsibility to represent this community and also has the weight of this decision to make along with the administration although we have shared a great deal of information with the board and the community regarding how to keep students safe ultimately the board of education needs to decide if we can do the plan that we have proposed in the end we are all involved in a very difficult decision where nobody can really be sure of the correct answer if we don't bring students back to in-person learning the virus won't spread at school however if students don't come to school we cannot be

011sure that we are keeping them safer from all of the other risks in life schools help mitigate so with that i will turn it over to the board um to have the discussion i believe nancy uh you you were next on the agenda yeah thank you hank you know since i expressed my opinion uh which was informed by facts last week i had assumed everybody kept up with the numbers as as i did and i received some criticism about that which is very well founded so i brought some references to review with everyone tonight uh these have been added to and updated since i sent some of the national numbers to the board on tuesday rod can you put the slides up okay so i'd like to start talking about the cdc uh how the

012cdc released information promoting the importance of schools many have referenced uh what they have just read about this in the media and here is a portion of the cdc document it is true the cdc recognizes the value of in-person learning and they offer resources and tools to help schools who may elect to bring students back to help to do so safely i don't think that anyone here including me can test the importance of in-person learning or that in the right circumstances we will be able to open safely but if you dig into the guideline a little bit more you'll find some additional direction next slide please rod the cdc promotes these guiding principles when i compare these to the hybrid model i think we fall between more risk and highest risk more risk because we

013have students coming into the building but highest risk because students will mix between classes and activities it is after all all about risk the risk of exposure the risk of transmission etc even with the best social distancing there is risk nothing magical happens at 6 feet or 15 minutes or at state and county lines so i find the note but i find the numbers concerning so let's take a look at those numbers together next rod please this is the seven day moving average of new cases by day this is from the cdc this is a national number and it includes hot spots as well as areas that have had low numbers of cases as you know the trump administration changed the reporting structure i'm not really sure how that impacts this chart but if anything

014it probably would be higher next um thank you so here's the state of illinois you can see where the darker areas are there are more cases this is in many ways an artifact of population density the more people who live in an area the more people who will fall ill let's look at dupage county specifically next slide please as of today we've had 1178 cases per 100 000 people next slide now the next two uh slides i'm going to show you are just progression and numbers when you look at how this is reported in terms of counties these are the numbers of known cases it's a cumulative number right so it's going to continue to get higher from last wednesday and last friday knowing just the number of cases is really insufficient to identify the

015risk or probability of infection occurring in a population because again more more populated areas will naturally probably have more cases so if you look at the numbers of cases per 100 000 it provides a fair uh comparison so the 100 000 is in blue and dupage county is in red um we are we're actually the 12th highest county head of 102 counties in illinois we're actually the 12th county highest county which i think is is pretty good um but we look like we're the third or fourth third highest here just because the way i sorted it but we are the 12th highest county what i take away from this slide is that while it could be worse we're substitute we're still at substantial risk so here was 7 22 i believe was wednesday 7 24

016it was friday right if you can go to the next slide again here's 7 24 we had 1151 and today as of this morning we're at 1178. this is refreshed i want to say something like four o'clock in the morning so this would have been over the weekend and usually um reporting uh goes down over the weekend because a lot of offices aren't open to do those reports next slide please the next few slides uh are daily new cases for a hundred thousand people and this comes from the johns hopkins coronavirus resource center which is a continuously updated source of coven 19 data and expert guidance the data shown here is from the first excuse me january 22nd to july 26th and federal guidelines advise that states wait until they experience a downward trajectory of

017documented cases within a 14-day period before proceeding to a phased reopening the next phase of opening in the state-specific views of the graphic this two-week period the last two week period is highlighted in orange if cases are turning upward or green if they're trending down so if you look at the right hand scoop of the screen of the graph you'll see that it's colored orange so you can see illinois although not anywhere we were back in march continues to trend up this is good news because we're not as bad as we were in march but it's also something to watch with caution but let's take a look at our neighbors i have to point out that the numbers on the left vary that's due to population numbers but the important part here is the trend

018so here we see indiana trending up next please wisconsin trending up next please missouri trending up next please iowa actually may be starting to trend down but still not a good spot and kentucky trending up when i look at this data i see that our all of our surrounding states are trending upwards in cases faster than illinois so good for illinois but we still have people who are coming into the state from outside the other piece i wanted to draw your attention to is a list of underlying medical conditions that increase a person's risk of severe disease let's concentrate on the first light bulb the strongest and most consistent evidence and remember this is a novel virus the science is evolving all the time what this slide shows is that if a person has any

019of these conditions and they become infected with cova 19 it's more likely that their symptoms will be more severe the nausea the vomiting the diarrhea the loss of taste and smell the fever the shortness of breath the difficulty breathing is likely to present itself in a more severe way and if the student or staff themselves and member involved don't have any of these underlying conditions if they can track coven 19 they may be bringing it home to somebody who does next slide please rob one community member called me out correctly i might add uh for an inappropriate response to the data they submitted from the cdc which is on the top which is in the top paragraph and i apologize for that it was not my intent to imply that they were what they presented

020was not true rather i was thinking that although children may be at lower risk they are still at risk and that's in the second paragraph which is from the same guideline and although i am sure it is not the committee members to intend to imply this i must point out that even if the date death rate for children is small it's still clinically significant and even more so of great imports to our school and to our community and finally i would just remind everyone that our schools are not only made up of children below the age of 18 we have teachers administrators and other staff most of them above 18 who will be sharing that space in my my next slide i'm going to move from fact to opinion my opinion i have heard and

021read many criticisms for remote learning in uh i don't agree that face to in-person education is better i agree it is in person is better for social and emotional learning i agree it is i don't disagree that any of these statements are true i don't disagree with statements that the curriculum in spring was not ideal our staff and our teachers went from full in person to full remote days without warning and we're further constrained by the state grading guidelines i know that most if not all of our teachers and staff have had the opportunity to find their to refine their approach in their materials i don't disagree that students were demotivated because of the state mandated grading system that is no longer an effect next slide please is the hybrid plan well done and comprehensive

022absolutely and i'm proud of our of our uh dr thiele and all of our administrators and all of our staff for pulling it together in such a short period of time and it's true that many other districts are beginning the year with the hybrid model my concern is not that the district hasn't provided a comprehensive plan for hybrid learning my concern here is that we will have hundreds of students staff and teachers some with medical conditions making them much more susceptible to the virus in a confined area for prolonged periods of time and to protect them we are relying on the combined efforts of hundreds of people to practice good hygienic technique attending school is not the same as walking through a grocery store or going to a restaurant at 25 capacity it is easier

023in those settings to maintain social distancing than in a school where people are changing classes and mixing do i think many of our students will comply absolutely i drove past the south field on 63rd street thursday morning around 8 a.m and there was some team out there i don't know what team they were they were wearing gray t-shirts and they were beautifully distanced around the field but i've also seen i've also received a picture of a backyard party where young folks were wearing purple shirts and clearly not distancing i've seen pods of runners in my neighborhood and basketball player excuse me baseball players on 63rd street the other day at egg harbor there were students several again in purple t-shirts sitting almost shoulder to shoulder my concern is not that our hybrid model is not

024a good model i believe it is my concern is for the health and safety of our students our faculty and our staff and our community at large lots of other schools are going hybrid but i really think that there's no shame in us not being a leader here i hope i'm wrong that i'm being overly cautious and there are no negative outcomes in those other school districts i still propose we start remote with a few excuse me with a few exceptions when the need is there and those exceptions would be well defined if cases plateau in a month or three months we can move to a hybrid model yes we will have lost those initial interactions but i ask you doesn't the risk of transmission of a deadly disease out avoiding the risk of transmission

025of a deadly disease outweigh the risk of initiating the hybrid model in a few weeks with that i'm going to end the um i'm going to hand the speaker over to mike and we'll go from there thank you very much for listening all right thank you dr kupka um i prepared some remarks uh and uh asked nancy let me read uh read them to kind of get things going kind of from the standpoint of i i waited to last last time so i thought maybe i kind of launched things this time so i wanted to start by saying um thank you to all who submitted mostly productive empathetic and heartfelt comments uh they've been invaluable in guiding my discernment and i you know despite uh you know we all have jobs right uh we're uh

026this is we're not getting paid to do this uh you know hundreds of comments coming in and and uh you know i wait till the last minute i was um having my daughter actually helped me um go through some of them as we were driving home from a college visit so uh anyhow i just really want to thank people for taking the time uh to share with us uh and uh to those of you those few of you who uh decide to use your profanity and uh otherwise insensitive or unempathetic language i just want to say i i heard you too so um i spent a good deal of time preparing for our last meeting but information continues to evolve and we've now heard from hundreds more people in recent days we also just received

027updated guidance from cdc and isbe just this past week and some of that was unexpected uh i requested this special meeting today uh because i am now convinced that we should start the year in what i'm calling a remote for most model uh and this is for several reasons so i'll share them now i have a daughter at dgs although i believe the hybrid model is worth the risk to my healthy white family i might feel differently if my family was black hispanic or if my house was multi-generational or if one of us had underlying health conditions since the data clearly shows that these neighbors brothers sisters parents and children are at a greater risk of illness and death from kova 19. i know that i know what many of you are thinking just let

028them choose to stay home and i'll get to that in a minute many parents teachers students bus drivers custodians food service workers you get the idea regardless of their race health or age are deathly afraid of the disease even though our hybrid plan i believe will reduce the risk that's a fact you know that fear whether we agree with it or not it's unlikely we are going to convince them that we've sufficiently reduced the risk at least not in the next few weeks attending school with high anxiety and fear is not a good learning or teaching environment to say the least the truth this truth actually is not found anywhere in the cdc guidelines for those who say that people who are afraid or at higher risk should just stay home i say it's an

029unfair unequal choice we have a responsibility to avoid inequality if we truly believe that the benefits of an in-person experience are worth the health risk then we must admit that those who opt out will not be receiving this valuable benefit which creates an inequality that i cannot abide better that we create a more robust learning experience for all and something else about the choice some students might choose hybrid even though their parents choose remote for them the opposite is no doubt true too can you imagine being a student who is paralyzed by fear but forced to attend school by their parents or can you or consider this the isbe guidelines state that we must allow 18 year olds to decide for themselves about attending school in person can you imagine being a parent who is

030at high risk but has an 18 year old who chooses to attend school disregarding their parents wishes choice will create division within some families that we cannot that we can avoid with a remote mom the remote model has the inherent advantage of being entirely predictable even if we adopt a hybrid model as we've discussed we could be told by the state to scrap the model due to increased positive tests deaths etc the recent data for our area has been trending worse not better which nancy's just shared i like knowing for certain that we can do what we can do with a remote model regardless of the infection trends and in the remote for most model that i envision we have we must have strategic supports for for students who struggled this spring students who struggle

031with mental health issues and vulnerable populations such as english language learners and students with disabilities these supports should include limited ongoing in-person learning we should also consider some limited in-person opportunities for ninth graders and transfer students to help these new students transition into our d99 community we should also have tools to measure the success of remote learning and accountability for teachers for many families remote learning was not a success this past spring it was not a success the overall level of engagement of students as well as teachers was unsatisfactory and i we fully understand we had to move on a dime all that sort of thing but we sure did paint ourselves in a corner here i you know many people i think who are afraid of a remote model are looking at what happened

032here this spring and they're saying i don't want more of that we need to make sure that doesn't happen we need regular reports and data regarding remote learning and a plan to correct deficiencies in real time and we need to regularly evaluate the health risk metrics and engage community discussion to determine if we can launch the hybrid model later this fall or winter as a first step to returning to in-person learning so in closing i intend to vote for remote for most beginning to the school year with in-person strategic supports and continuous evaluation of the overall plan effectiveness so that's my statement and i look forward to hearing what everyone else has to say and then you know robust discussion thank you mike would anybody like to offer up their thoughts i can go first

033you can hear me can't you i i wasn't sure if i uh unmuted um yeah yeah i know this this zoom is uh is a little more interesting i i not as big fan but hey it is what it is um i think i spoke with uh nancy and with mike this week and um expressed my concern you know i know that i had um said that uh the um hybrid model would be the the best way to start and after looking at the numbers and where they're going and [Music] you know just i worry about all of our at-risk students and faculty and staff um and i don't want to make the wrong decision for them because that can maybe meet lead to life or death for them and um uh i just don't

034want to feel that way and so i'm also kind of leaning towards starting with remote and uh maybe having freshmen um some of those uh at i'm calling them at-risk students uh ones that um maybe we're having a hard time with the remote learning this spring and our counselors and and teachers know who those students are um and transfer students to somehow uh work out that they could come the first couple weeks of school to meet the teachers and get an idea of what their expectations are going to be because um i know that if we have remote learning it will be much more um stringent and much more um uh challenging than what we had this spring and so um i think for for the students to understand what their expectations are with that

035from our teachers um and then see where it lies with um how all of this is shaking out because i'm really afraid that we're going to have an increase because of the fall coming up um i worry about that and and i know that i have i kind of kept a little spreadsheet here of um comments and i know that i didn't get a chance to see the three o'clock um mailing that i think hank sent us on what was uh sent to the district so i didn't get to add those into my little spreadsheet here but according to me um and the comments that i got parents really want to see us start with the hybrid and maybe part of that is because of the experience they had this spring um i i did

036see a few of them would like to see us do a hundred percent and just go um full force and um our teachers uh surprisingly i i got uh more teachers wanting the hybrid model than a remote and the students i got more of them wanting the hybrid but um i think the students especially they're not as i'm not going to say at as risk but in their age group they don't feel as vulnerable maybe as some of the other groups so i i just i i this is such a hard choice because our students are what's so important but yet without our teachers and and fact and staff and all of that to help them get to where they need to go it's not going to work so i suggest remote and then see

037where that goes but i would also like to see our freshmen and um our transfers and some of those other folks come in and meet our teachers and talk about maybe what they need to do to to make their their experience successful i don't know thank you terry i i would like to clarify one thing just to be clear um i received a couple of emails i received several emails personally that i forwarded on to dr thiele i received three or four i don't even remember emails that either contained um personal personal medical information or i had one email that was uh the person felt was almost afraid to reach out because she felt her neighbors would not approve of her stance um and so those i did not forward because i didn't i didn't

038want to make them part of the record so i just want to acknowledge that there there may be a few emails missing from their cadre because i know i withheld three or four of them not many that's okay it's okay but you know my number my numbers are not um you know all the numbers involved but i just kind of took a little running tally of where each comment lied um in in my graph so but i mean it was it was uh a huge majority of hybrid oh yeah i told it yeah i would agree with that so anyway that's kind of where i am would anybody else like to discuss anything yeah um i i just wanna um thank you you all uh expressed your view so eloquently that agree and i'm not

039going to go on um i've been watching this statistics and i'm not as eloquent as everyone else but um i'm being totally guided by science i have been watching the way it goes um i think i was telling shirelle that i read a couple of books one on 1918 flew one on the 1957 epidemic and they followed a pattern of being very active in march falling down in the summer and then coming back with the vengeance in the fall and i i know it's not a popular decision this is um it's been weighing on my mind you know i think when i got into this i never expected that i would uh feel so torn up about about this issue but i also feel since you've all presented the statistics i won't go over that

040that there are other things to be gleaned during this time our country has faced it faced hardships other times you know i think the world war ii people they all came together and for the common good they did things maybe they didn't want to do um i think families have an opportunity to become closer at this time and learn how to teach their children how to learn because isn't that the objective of school it's not so much the facts but learning how to learn and i think it's a good uh for students to learn how to learn independently i i know that's going to be hard i mean i've had the experience too of trying to motivate a child who isn't motivated and i do believe that nothing can beat the in-school experience but i

041really feel this is a time we have to rise to the challenge and and and do this and i for that reason i'm going to be voting to go totally remote even though it's like a really hard decision that's kind of all i have to say in this thank you joanne i know somebody else started to speak before that's yeah so i've got a couple things to say um i guess i'll be the bad guy here and be the one that advocates for for the hybrid model you know this is a difficult decision i don't think there's a right answer i think we've all said that there's there's no good answer here for us you know i've read every single one of the hundreds of comments from the community i've talked to community members i've

042talked to teachers i've read all the comments from the teachers and in my opinion the most important job of the school board is to ensure the safest environment possible for our students to operate in and learn it's not to eliminate all risks let me refine that to provide the safest environment possible and then let the families decide what's in the best interest for their children we do this all the time let me give you an example we have hundreds of students that play football every year across america every year it is guaranteed that children will suffer brain injuries and death so what do we do as a school board we establish concussion protocols we train our coaches to how to practice and play safely we provide athletic training at the events and then we let

043the parents make the decision for their family every year we allow students to travel internationally and subject themselves to risks they don't face in the school environment what do we do hire the best tour companies available train our teachers provide proper levels of supervision and then let the parents make the decision and i think that's exactly what we're doing with this hybrid plan it provides the best possible safety environment mass and shield symptom checkings enhanced sanitation and more and then lets the parents make the final decision on whether or not they want to send their kids 100 remote option removes all choice from parents it's essentially the board telling parents we know better than they do and therefore they can't make that choice i'm not arrogant or vain enough to think i know better for

044five thousand of our families what's best for their kids i think we need to allow the community to make the choice for their kids i understand there's risk according to cdc i personally am considered high risk i have underlying medical issues and i am considered high risk but i would be sending my kid to school if we did have hybrid and you know what that's my decision to make that's not anybody's decision here on the board or in the community that's my decision so i mean in conclusion i'm in complete support of the hybrid model for starting school and more importantly to provide a choice for the thousands of families in the community to decide for themselves what's best for the family that's what i have to say eloquently said the only thing i would

045challenge you on dan is when you play football or you go on a trip you're assuming that risk for yourself in this instance you're bringing the risk to everyone else around you if your parents make that decision if parents are not willing to take that risk i'm perfectly fine with that parent opting out and having their kids stay home that's what this is about this is about providing choice there's risk in going to school every day there's a risk of school shootings every day in our school so what do we do we hire new head of security positions we bring on new security guards we enhance security as part of the mfp and then parents ultimately make the decision i don't think we're here to make the decision for every parent in this community about

046what level of risk they should assume i i just i just don't feel that we should make that decision for them i just feel that those are decisions kind of nancy said those are your individual decisions these are decisions that affect a community society i that's to me the difference between those type of decisions well but you're not giving the parents a decision you're removing decision from parents you're i think again maybe maybe i'm looking at this wrong but you're essentially telling the parents of this community that you know better than they do because at least 70 of the comments that we've gotten in the last four days at least 70 percent have been from parents that either want the hybrid model or more and what you're doing is you're telling those parents that you

047know better and they're wrong and therefore we're not going to allow them to send their kids so dan dan i gotta i gotta interject here um uh the you know we are charged as a board to dig into all this data right weigh all weigh all the pros and cons and we have that responsibility to make these kinds of decisions i mean no matter what what choice you make here you're making a choice for somebody right you're you know there are people damn there are people that want that want to come to school you know without face masks at all there's there's people that it's it's all over the place and unfortunately it's been put on our shoulders i would have much rather seen guidance from the state or or from the federal government that

048said if you're if we're here you do this if we're here you do this instead we didn't get any of that what we got was um well here's the things you can do to make things lower risk moderate risk or high risk you decide which one you want to do so i you know i i get what you're saying you want to give people a choice um i i rest on the on the notion that uh that it's an unequal choice um let me ask you guys every every government agency their first requirement was everything you can to get the kids in the classroom that's the first thing in the cdc report the pediatrician's report get the kids in the classroom the safest way possible in areas with low transmissibility and hey for a second

049just i'm going to let you finish what you're going to say but i'm just going to hopefully for a second because terry has the floor next after you she's been that's fine signaling go ahead sorry no that's fine well maya wait my turn no finisher finish your statement no let terry go that's fine i don't have a prepared statement i didn't know we all had to sit down and come over prepared statements tonight i thought we were gonna have a discussion this is two of us elected to prepare statements go ahead uh the other thing is is dan to your point i understand that uh you know you're talking about families but i think we also have a responsibility to our um our faculty and our staff um you know they're at a much more

050i'm going to put them into a more vulnerable category versus the kids of the students because you know many of them i think hank had told us last week that 25 of them are in the high risk category or even higher risk that's not accurate that's not accurate terry oh okay i'm sorry i misunderstood i missed that's all right i the it's about 10 that have said that they need some kind of accommodation to a medical issue to return which means that some of them may not be able to return some of them might have conditions that we're already addressing through the preventative measures we have in place about eight percent have child care concerns and about seven percent have a different concern that they would like to talk about with an administrator which could

051be anything ranging from um a family member that is that increa they themselves are not an increased risk but they have a family member that is um it could be just anxiety not just but i don't want to minimize this it could be anxiety and fear and they just want to talk through it with the school leader and work through that it could be any number of things in that that lasts seven percent but it's about 10 that it's a medical accommodation so i i just want to get the real numbers out there but when you add those together that's 25 that is 25 but not all of those are saying that they can't return oh oh no i'm not saying that they they said that they couldn't return i'm just saying that 25 of

052those are are concerned let's say about their either underlying conditions or other conditions so you know uh i think we have to think about them too so this is just so difficult it's so difficult but i still worry about them rick did you wanna yeah i i said what i believed last week and i'm standing by uh what i said because i really do believe classroom instruction is important um i i believe that hank's plan has done just about everything he possibly could the administrative team to try to make as a hybrid model as safe as possible um i think that is the way to start knowing that potentially down the road we may have to go to full remote we're offering people a choice and i i believe if the people that choose remote

053are going to get just as good as the people that decide to sign up for the hybrid yes i know there's a whole other week of sign up for the remote learning but you have 4 800 versus 200. the if the people want the hybrid i believe in the hype i believe in that classroom instruction i cannot say i know better if now if the if the remote learning people came back by august 3rd of next week and you have 2500 people that want remote that's a difference but for 214 people right now of which 40 percent have have underlying issues i i i'm for the if hank's plan didn't have so much detail and so much thought out i'd say oh you're just going to be winging it i don't believe if we start

054with this plan it's going to be winging it i think there's still time to have meetings with the people that need to be in those meetings the teachers um and i i think the hybrid model is the way to start i want to address mike's concern um uh rick it just i'm not i don't mean to nitpick but with stats it's 20 that have said that they want to be remote because of an underlying medical condition 80 percent is just another reason not an underlying medical condition and then uh mike your question about how many uh percentage responded to the survey we only asked people to tell us if they were choosing the fully remote option not that they were comfortable with the hybrid right it was just to gather the names of the students

055that we had to start following up with uh for uh you know to make sure we're following up with those families uh if we end up in the hybrid family we know our hybrid format we know we need to reach out to them so otherwise you know the default was the hybrid as of last week and my my concern is just that we're we're we you know it seems that from the you know comments and information we're getting that you know the majority of people an overwhelming majority of people would prefer to have a hybrid um and i and i'm i fully respect that and uh but also uh you know take to heart my responsibility to um look out for the least amongst us too um but so but i don't think we can

056fairly characterize right now that you know 4 800 of our of our students or in their families are supporting the hybrid model right now what we have is comments from people who took the time to share with us um but certainly we have not re we heard we have not heard from the majority of our of our community actually on this um so only so we've heard from the we have a majority of a minority um who have responded and uh and shared with us and so i just want to make sure that we're characterizing things correctly and and that's all so thank you i just want to be clear because that that could be confusing to people right just what the purpose of the survey is people are only filling it out if they

057would like to go fully remote and that survey is still open for another week plus families we have told them could opt in at any time but need to stay there for nine a nine week period so just i just want to make sure everybody understands kind of the perspective that's out there on this we have heard from families that have said i might choose to do that closer to the school year i just don't want to commit to that at this time so mike what you're saying is fair it's not really a survey of the entire community where everybody's telling us their opinion right it but it does give us a metric that after one week you know it's about 215 students that have chosen to go fully remote and that's i mean that's

058what it says right and i'd like to add i mean you mentioned that we didn't get a majority people to send us comments but if you go back to last week's meeting through six o'clock today between emails and comments there's over 500 comments we've gotten from the community and a vast majority of the 500 comments are for hybrid so that may not be a majority of the 5 but that's still a pretty big mandate from our our constituents that are saying they want the choice to send their kids to school you know one of the things when i was reading all the emails many of them said they were concerned about their ap and honor students not you know being motivated and um not maybe being able to take the act and sat test and

059i thought i wouldn't i looked that up and i found out that um most of colleges and universities are kind of de-emphasizing that and realize that the whole country is in the same boat so i'm not saying that they're glowing their standards but i kind of think that's a fear that the parents don't have to be concerned about i am a little surprised that honors and ap students would not be motivated usually that's the kind of student that is highly motivated and usually can learn on their own um i have more concerns about those students who struggled with it because they probably weren't you know i shouldn't say they all weren't but i would say most of them probably were not ap and honors students um but i heard that kind of as a refrain

060um throughout the emails and um so and and and also addressing mental health issues um i realize these are tough times and and i hope our students aren't being severely depressed over this but if they are i think that through um remote we can the support staff can certainly address those issues and if people are more serious i think they ought to be going to seeking professional help and um you know maybe get therapy but i i just don't i i didn't think that their reasonings were all that good to be honest i'll just address sat just in case there's any confusion out there on october 14th there will be a essay a session uh we'll have to figure out if we are remote if we can bring seniors in for that sat testing experience

061to come in and take the exam that they missed last spring so that is the state testing date for seniors they must take that s.a.t to graduate from high school that is a state mandate that has not been waived in the spring we assume that there will be another testing date for current juniors just as there has been in the past and then sat will be running the non-mandated uh testing windows as well and that is the same test correct it's the sat yeah yeah oh here's here's some of my thoughts i'm listening to everybody and it's been some good comments i know the comment about us making a decision for the community i mean that's what we've been doing that's what we're kind of elected to do by the community and we have been

062where we've heard from the community in the past in droves and we have decided to choose what made the most sense to us and what we felt was the best thing for our students so that's what we are tasked with in being a part of this board and we have exhibited times before where we had a majority my minority and we decided to make the best decisions that may not have aligned with that so with that being said i i feel like um where i am on this is kind of digging into some some more um information about we're talking about 100 remote are we talking about um not doing the entire nine weeks remote is what do you guys have in mind could it potentially be and is it modifiable is it something where

063we start four or four weeks and we take a look in to see how things are going and we ramp on to a a uh back to into a um in person learning and then when i hear hybrid i did call hank um and ask about you know there was a comment about what i read about remote and the kids potentially not having access to some of the same things potentially that the kids that are in the classrooms and i think hank what you said to me dr thiel is what you said to me is that what they would be missing is just that in person learning in that case so i i like to at this point you know just kind of dig through what if we're talking remote what we're talking about what

064can that look like um can we can we um on board into this hybrid um is that something that you guys that mentioned a remote could be agreeable to i think now we kind of dig into other ways that we potentially can make this um work for our community well what i envision us doing is tracking along remember starting a remote one we can always go hybrid we'll never i doubt we'd ever go remote to full classroom again we but when the the as the number of cases start to decrease and we hope they do as we see the experience of other schools who have gone hybrid we may come into a different position in a month or two months or three months i i don't know the answer you know it is it is

065a conundrum because there is really no right answer the matter i i think of it as is less risky to do it this way but i would imagine that at some point we would go from fully remote or remote what is it you call it like remote with remote for most you know for most where it would be from remote for most to a hybrid to hopefully someday you know full coming back to school full-time what those metrics are going to look like i don't know i just know that the trends are going up and that concerns me for the safety of our student center so if i could say too i um you know the remote model has to be robust and it has to be successful right um i am trusting um our

066administration and you know they're they're they're saying to us um that we can do this far better i've heard you know we've heard it from teachers and their comments to us we can do this far far better in fact i wonder if we had done it far far better in the spring understandable that we were you know there were a lot of reasons why we couldn't right but if we had i wonder if people would be so uh concerned about it right now um i definitely see us taking this remote model as a start as a beginning but as i said monitoring the monitoring its success and getting that feedback and you know having that accountability and also look as i said previous looking at the metrics our health metrics and what's going on and

067i was hoping that actually you know this would be a good way to learn right we bring in some of the ninth grade you know we bring in the ninth graders we bring in transfer students for some something like that hybrid model to start right we bring in we bring in um students who you know who are more at risk um uh students who really struggle this spring in the beginning and we might learn from that experience with those smaller groups and how to expand that um and and maybe feel safer and more confident in that approach based on though that that learning experience that we're going to go through but i could also see myself at some point if remote learning isn't working so good and this is why i'm looking for real time

068monitoring you know if this is if this if if we end up going like we were going in the spring you know for me that could change the equation i i you know too much being lost um uh you know would it definitely change maybe some of the risk metrics for me um so that's how i i really did see this as a as an opportunity to kind of dig in initially in something that we can predict and hopefully do very well learn from the experience with those limited engagements um you know the strategic supports i mentioned and then figure out a way maybe as we continue to discuss and i know we've spent so much time on this and nobody wants to hear me say we should continue to have lots and lots and

069lots more discussion on about this and to continue to invite parents and teacher and community feedback student feedback but that's what we're going to need to do um that's that's what we need to do that's what's right for our students here and if there's a point in another you know after after three four weeks where we feel we could we could transition into this and our our staff feels that they we could do that then by all means let's let's do that um but uh i need i need people to be you know i really need people to be really really on board with this and especially those that feel that those 214 people that we've heard from so far and i know that number is probably more likely going to grow some those people

070i mean if we don't speak up for those people who's going to and and uh i just i just i really think that uh we need to kind of start in this remote model and then look for a plan to ramp up from there um and that's that's where i'm at yeah i i agree and um and there are there are a certain number of the population that we're going to have to have um you know that that probably can't do the remote learning you know the special education kids you know the uh tc er i don't know exactly 99 yeah the d99 students and i'm not sure what we're going to have to do with the um tcd students you know because they're doing a whole different kind of thing so you know those

071are questions to be asked but we still need to have some sort of a plan for those t99 and um special needs students that are in our buildings and um you know where you know how are they going to be doing their learning because you know it's very difficult for them to do remote learning i would think yeah so one of the reasons that we're meeting tonight yes mike did ask for a special meeting but we're actually not voting on this until our next meeting but we wanted to give if we're gonna if we're gonna change lanes and go to remote for most or totally remote which i still hope we do um you know it it it makes more sense for the people who are preparing to launch in august to know exactly what

072they're what they're going for instead of doing dual preparation because it also gives us more time to prepare for hybrid which frankly is you know it's very um i don't know the word i i'm the word convoluted that's not the right word it's very intricate there's a lot of detail and there's a lot of planning and it's got to be this day that day this hour that hour i mean it is very untraditional from what we've done so i would just like to throw that out that one of the reasons we're having this meeting is to re uh to talk with the board about their feelings so that so that dr thiele and all the administrators and all the teachers have a better half a more firmed foot on where they're going to be in

073august when school opens because this is not closing school this is simply going remote um can i have a few moments to ask a few questions of the board and and seek some direction here sure um so the idea of at some point you know he froze once before he had a brown out about 23 minutes ago so hold on let's give him another moment just at the just at the meat of this does anybody wanna wanna say anything more while we wait for hank to come back on dan did you have something yeah i had a couple things to say but maybe for hank just as a suggestion if his voice is having issues maybe he could chat his comments to gina so she can read them i don't know if he has access

074to the chat for that um because i know sometimes the voice in video it's too much bandwidth for for a connection so sounds like he was going to have a little bit more than a chat yeah more robust than that um [Music] let me maybe if he turns this video off for a few times i'm gonna i'm just texting him to tell him he's frozen again i'm back so i'm sorry i'm back sorry guys i'm experiencing brownouts here so that's the reason i've dropped off twice i've switched to my phone uh can you guys hear me okay yeah you can so at least then i have uh i'm powered through this so um so some of the questions that i'm seeking from the board or some direction one is i'm going to need clear direction

075from the board of what the conditions would look like for us to consider bringing students back in a hybrid model because as i said in my opening statement the numbers the way they are now are a way that we feel that we're comfortable coming back after the conversations we've had with the dupage county health department so i'm going to need some instruction as to who you want me to talk to in the health care profession at the dupage county health department or some direction from the board as a whole of what that data needs to look like for us to start transitioning to the hybrid model i'm not asking for an answer today but i'm going to need that so my my initial thought is uh you know at your to your point idph is

076charged with helping us make this decision and we are you are working closely with the dupage department of public health which is great and they're fabulous i'm sure that they have epidemiologists on staff that if you say we want to have we want to look at initiating hybrid when we start having a consistent trend of decreasing so that the the incidents right the new cases in our catchment area are decreasing consistently over a period of time and see what their recommendations are that's my would be my suggestion ah and nancy when you look when you showed your numbers those were for dupage county it would have been probably more appropriate to show them by city or village um because i probably took into aurora or where maybe some some areas that are having that are

077seeing higher spikes than maybe downers grove woodridge westmoreland you know i don't know if it is that i know you can look by um zip code but uh and we could do that we could try to do that um it may be different it may be different but you know rick we don't live in isolation and we don't even if our our numbers you know there are some other dem there are some other demographic to your point i think is there other there are other socioeconomic factors that factor into this and if we had some other cities they might be artificially inflating us i think that's your point you know i don't know that we would be that far off because we have large numbers large enough numbers that we should go towards the mean

078so we'd be statistically representative i'll try to find it but it wouldn't really to be honest it wouldn't really change my mind much because we live in dupage county we go people go into the city all the time for work or for enjoyment i mean i certainly can look i don't know off the top of my head right it's gonna be really hard to give hank a medical resource to look at when the cdc and the department of health and um the governor has us in phase four we're nowhere near sliding back to phase three the american pediatrics all those medical resources are telling us we're fine so i don't know how actually they help with the numerical resources dan all those medical resources are telling us we're fine in areas of low transmission correct

079and we are in phase four in dupage county correct where we can have gatherings of 50 or more 50 years but our but our numbers are escalating not enough to shift us back in in phases and we're not one of the four counties in illinois that is in danger of being shifted back i'm i'm just saying the board might make the decision the board's going to make the decision and it's obvious the decision is going to be five to two i'm just saying that it's really hard to give hank direction on this is the medical guidance to look at because the medical guidance actually says we should be back in school well again i would i would i would disagree with that statement i mean even the declaration that came out from the governor said

080something to the effect of um again we you know schools should go back if possible in areas of low transmission and so the question becomes what is low transmission there are also other medical um professionals who say we should shut down the whole country again but nancy phase four is low transmission the only way we get to phase five is if it's eradicated or there's a common vaccine right but we can't slide back into three we can slide back into three and i think it's eight isn't it the number is eight yeah and that's what i said in my opening statement if we were at eight i'd be recommending a positivity rate of eight i would not be recommending that we go back to school or any of those other metrics icu beds below 20

081percent you know any of those things that would uh start driving us towards phase three would would result in me letting the board and the community know we're going to recommend full remote what i'm saying is right now we're not statistically at any of those numbers the only statistical trend that is concerning is six straight days of increased numbers in dupage county um so far as all of the rates that the dupage county health department and ideph have been having us look at so just you know the the spot i'm at now is the board is saying start remote and then look for an opportunity to move back to hybrid but i need to know what that opportunity would look like what would make the board feel comfortable and i'm not saying answer it now

082right you know but i need to know what those metrics are so that we're following those things and trying to know as an administration when it is that we should be looking that way with without that then it's what rick said we're looking at once we hit phase five then we look at coming back to school i'm not thinking that that's what i heard from the board tonight so i need to know what that point is between those numbers where the board would say okay things look okay things are trending in the right direction so uh go ahead and start working back towards the hybrid i would offer that when we look at the numbers in the county and in the state we are looking at numbers that have not where school has not been

083in session and my fear is that having schools in session is going to drive those numbers up because it's a congregate setting even though we'll be distancing i mean certainly in some areas like day cares i know my church has a daycare my grandson goes to daycare they have less than 10 kids they don't change classes it's a different setup so again i would think we would be able to work with the epidemiologists at the dupage department of public health to come up with some metric and present it to the board but my concern is that once we have everybody coming back into schools we're going to see that community metric rise and nancy do this was my point last week was that our opportunity to get kids back to school my fear is now

084now is the time this will be our only opportunity in the foreseeable future to bring students back because i don't believe it will be us that drives those numbers up i believe our plan is safe it follows what the dupage county health department has said it follows what idph has said we have extreme measures that we're taking with ppe to make sure that people are safe i don't to see that other schools are going to be following that across the state to the level we are and i think that other schools other communities uh are going to take this decision out of our hands within a few weeks or months and there will never be an opportunity to bring students back until we are in phase five hank i i just have a question for

085you too is this um do you think it's realistic to have those freshman transfers and at-risk um juniors and seniors or sophomores juniors and seniors that we know because we know what what they reacted to in the spring we and we know the teachers have an idea of what students were having a struggle with remote learning um how hard is it to get those kids maybe acclimated to the remote learning because i have i have i'm with you i have this gut feeling that come october into november this is gonna rage again and so if they're all in the remote learning process um it's not a here today remote tomorrow kind of thing yeah terry you're opening up to what my next question was going to be for the board which is uh first at

086what level of bringing students back are we comfortable right now is it 50 is it 250 is it 500 is it you know the model the hybrid model is about 1500 to 1800 students a day and about uh you know it's our full staff coming back every day at least for the mornings our whole staff would be there there's major challenges with bringing back some students the first is i i don't know based on the board's discussion right now how many is it 25 is it 10 percent is it 3 of our students that we could bring back on any one day and the board would feel like we would be able to keep students safe or is it zero right now two whatever number you pick above zero creates an incredibly difficult position with

087me and staff because some students coming back means that some staff will need to come back and work with students and threading the needle here of then who in our staff ranks we expose to a greater risk versus who does not get exposed to a greater risk is a great challenge administratively so i i hear you hank and i i do think it's we need to talk a little bit further about that because i do believe it's going to be a difficult decision and we have to give um the administration and the staff a chance to pivot if they're going to pivot and we're going to do something else we have to give that and even to the students to be able to make that um transition so i agree that we we the board

088we need to kind of figure out what that looks like and then my next question involves are we only talking about the school day or are we talking about activities and athletics as well can families select to allow their students to continue to participate in athletics whatever that looks like in the state of illinois while we're doing remote learning or does remote learning equate to we are not doing uh any athletics or activities in person as well once again i don't need an answer tonight um you know we can spend the week working on this and sharing some information with the board about what we're thinking but these are all the next set of questions that get presented as we shift this way um so we will make some recommendations administratively unless the board wants

089to give clear direction tonight on any of these okay i have i have a really um in regards to that what are we looking at in the way of numbers of freshmen what do you what do you think that is and um what would be the numbers of transfers and where do you think the numbers are for at-risk depends so freshman classes between six and seven hundred students traditions at each school at each school at between six and seven hundred yeah okay um and then how do we start do you think they're about a hundred i i don't know off the adve that's a number that's i on a yearly basis yeah but then when we get into the other ones you know english learners do all of the all of them qualify or some

090of them t99 all or some students with 504s all or some students with ieps all or some you know once we start adding together all of our students in these different groups that need additional supports you're getting up to 30 30 to 40 percent of the student body which is why the administration was recommending 50 at a time come in because then all the students in the at-risk groups as well as all of the rest of our students come in on a regular basis and get assistance from our staff and that's you know i hear a lot of talking about equity tonight but that is a level of consideration that we had in this plan is that in the hybrid plan there is a level of equity and there is a level of choice and

091those are the things administratively that we were trying to balance as we built that hybrid plan and when you're home remote learning those supports are not there and you can only you know you an ideal situation you would like to have everybody on the kitchen table with the computer remote learning but you know it's occurring in the bedroom it's occurring after hours it's occurring maybe not at all and so at least when they're in the school you bring all those supports to the table that maybe you didn't think about when you say oh let's just go remote learning there's more to it than just the teaching of the material in the classroom there's a social aspect there's an emotional aspect that some could argue is is more important than the academic at this level of

092student yeah and rick there's a competitive aspect the kids that aren't going to be able to part of those groups who are going to be at home learning with not as good of a learning environment why the rest of dupage county is in school at least in some format these are the kids are competing at competing with first college for scholarships and at college next year so as we try to figure out for the next six to eight weeks when they can go back to school their students are falling further and further behind every day yeah the achievement gap is going to get wider by remote learning well if that's really if that's really a fair statement i mean nancy based on personal experience for what happened in the spring it was it was horrible

093it was it was a it was a horrible situation we acknowledged that i've been doing i've been teaching remotely now now granted i teach graduate students it's it's much older people with much more motivation yes i do but i will tell you this that it's it's just improved tremendously and i think that really it's an unfair i understand it was horrible in the spring but i think there were reasons for that and i don't think it was necessarily um you know i i think that we're we're not in the spring anymore and teachers have had some time to think about this and i think that no matter what way we go if we go hybrid or if we go totally remote there's disadvantages to both you know what i mean it's not it's not ever

094going to be the same as coming into your classroom and learning and and being with all your friends and getting together for social emotional that is just it's just not going to be the same so then the question in my mind becomes which is the less risky and i have to still stay with remote because we've got teachers who can who are learning to teach in a new way we have parents we're going to need to learn to support a new way we've got counselors that are going to need to support in a new way i understand that i'm not saying this is ideal i'm saying it's the lesser of two evils right but they're they're learning a new way at the expense of our children i mean and i i understand we there were

095some teachers that did a great job my son had two teachers that did a phenomenal job he had three teachers that did they tried i give them credit for putting the effort forth they improved and i have no doubt they'll improve if we have to do this again i had two teachers and these are i'm not going to mention names these are stem classes these they're not these this isn't gym these are stem classes where the only time my son talked to the teacher was the last day of class for the teacher to say goodbye have a good summer he went from march to the end of the year without one conversation with the teacher that to me that teacher should be fired in my opinion well so guys i'm i'm gonna argue on both

096sides of of the argument here um as i've been known to do uh i'm going to agree with nancy that the spring should not at all be a indicator of what remote learning in the fall will look like uh the how quickly it happened the restrictions that the state put on us under the guise of do no harm caused our students a ton of harm um remote learning the plan we put together here if the board chooses for us to go fully remote will not look like the spring at all and the state has recognized that in their latest guidelines saying that at least two and a half hours a day of instruction by the state mandate must be synchronous instruction right so they've recognized that they they really didn't give us the tools we

097needed in the spring to make this successful so i i would encourage everybody not to use the spring as an indicator of what remote learning will look like in the fall to continue to argue against myself one second dan to continue to argue against myself in the hybrid model no matter what we do in the fall teaching and learning will be different like our teachers are going to have to re-envision teaching and learning whether when the hybrid model or we're in the remote model either way is going to result in our teachers really having to redesign teaching and learning for it to be effective hank if i can make one suggestion if we have to go if we decide the board decides to go 100 online obviously against my objection but if the board decides

098to go that way i know some school districts i believe rick your school district is one i think there are other school districts that are requiring their teachers to be in the classroom to do that synchronous learning from the classroom i want those i want the teachers undivided attention in the classroom teaching our kids not at home is that a consideration we can look at if we have to 100 it's something that we are definitely discussing administratively especially those that don't need a medical accommodation in any way however there are challenges in our school building and the fact that we don't have a space for every teacher to be in and teach at the same time you know and to have is their own physical space and uh that does raise some concerns for me

099that i i know just doing these calls in in my house with my family around or in even in the office with people in and out can be a challenge so undivided attention isn't necessarily guaranteed at school right if we don't have a unique space for everybody to be in so there might have to be some balancing here but i will i agree but i do know working from home on a zoom call from experience and i'm not a teacher but for insurance working at home from a zoom call is very different than working in your office in your place of business on a zoom call there is something different about the environment you're in and i think as much as possible they should be in the environment that they teach it i will uh

100i think that one of the things that mike said earlier that we need to be getting constant feedback from our students and families to understand what their experience is that if we do allow teachers to work off-site that there needs to be a mechanism for us to understand if a teacher is not being successful off-site and if that's the case then definitely they need to work from school but this is not something we've fully decided yet administratively and then this is something we also need to work through uh with the with the dga and and the teachers to figure out how this this might work um i do think that if we're talking about bringing back some students in some way i need to have staff available to serve those students needs that are in

101the building so um the id like i said that one that's in the middle between hybrid and full remote the remote with supports will be the most challenging to figure out with our staff so nancy i know we i'm i'm going to mention this and i know i'm going to lose so but still i'm going to mention it we haven't had it yet dan no i know but that's what i'm saying i'm saying i i know we're not supposed to it's not on the agenda to vote until next week but there's an awful lot of work for our administration to do and i know if we vote now it's going to be 5-2 against what i want but i think oh it i think we owe it to the administration to give them clear direction

102and to give them that vote so they can go ahead and build the best plan no matter what it is but to build that best plan for our students so i actually think we should consider voting to give a clear mandate to our administration tonight we can't do a vote at this point because it's not a board meeting with an action item but boards typically in these situations do straw polls and give boards a direction of what direction to start working in and then this would be an action item and i'll talk about what that action item might look like uh in a moment so do we have any people in the building well to make comments they would do that after this is done i would i would think we'd want to hear from

103them before we made a straw poll right yeah nancy that would be yours i mean having read all of the comments then some you know the i appreciate that everybody took the time and expressed their ideas their ideas fell into just several camps and if we haven't had really any other unique [Music] um uh offerings from the community right we i think we have a good sample of what people are thinking how many people are waiting to speak gina do you know we have three people let's go ahead with three people three minutes each but before we do that do any other board members have anything they'd like to say so the people coming to talk to us can at least have the benefit of her hearing hearing our thoughts or questions hearing none let's

104bring the three up okay would like to go first nicole let them work through some of the technical gymnastics here of getting the zoom up and running and get people to the podium hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hello again this is nicole primos i'm here today i'm sorry i can't can't hear it move a little closer and speak a little louder i turned my speakers up hello can you hear me now yes um my name is nicole primos i was here last week and i want to thank you again um for hearing me i'm here to speak for myself and i hope i'm not repeating too much when i do this but there were a few things that i wanted to touch on that i couldn't in my three minutes

105last week there's some more updates on health issues that i wanted to bring up first of all the chicago tribune stated that the seven day rolling average in dupage county has increased by 96 in the less than the last four weeks the patch reported that 750 students between the ages of 10 and 19 were found positive as of july 26th people are mentioning the cdc article that mentioned we should go back to school but as robert redfield the director of the cdc stated right after that document was released that it was quote substantially edited by the white house officials and the apa who did say we should go has also stepped back and said that safety is paramount for our students and i know that we can do this as other districts are currently going

106all online such as stevenson evanston lyden and even one of our feeders woodridge and borders for counties are not covered by glass i feel no solace in the fact that they are in a different area even pritzker said that state lines present a risk to us but as far as the hybrid goes i want to briefly touch on some of my concerns about the hybrid well it is well thought out and we are creating groups to work together for all models to develop plans if things go as expected we should be fully remote which means that we should spend our energy focusing on e-learning and including more faculty member voices to help improve from the plans that we were stuck to last year providing a structure that is more consistent and emotionally stable for our

107students as well the wesley educational association stated that remote start teachers edit educators and the community best practices for seasonal likelihood rather than flip flopping back and forth so while there is a choice for the parents there's still not a choice for the faculty members and that still puts us at risk but should we all work together right now rather than in small groups we can start to produce a plan that is effective to serve the students parents and teachers and finally we're not to give new direct instruction when we are face to face so the immediacy requires that we focus on e-learning where we can provide our students with a better education in the beginning and use our time more efficiently receiving direct instruction and allowing us to provide a fair equitable and consistent

108experience for all i don't think this is comparable to things such as brain injuries this is a pandemic and i know it may seem like if we just hunker down in the buildings this is a storm that we can weather together but last week i lost my anticovit it was a short battle it only took a week this is not complicated it's not us versus them it's not hybrid e-learning it is what this state is i have a husband with a compromised autoimmune should i take this home to him i don't think he would survive it this isn't a hoax this isn't something that we can throw up borders and stop it from coming across we need to do what's best we need to do what's safest i love my job i want to return

109i love my students i know they want to return but the thing is if we hunker down now and do e-learning there's a better chance that we can return into the building sooner it is not like august is the only time we meet students we have teachers i'm sorry your three minutes has expired thank you very much thank you very much my name is mark molinari i come to you as a parent of two students here in district 99 a teacher at district 99 a coach and a community member so i have a different perspective i witnessed two of my students go through the e-learning and it was not perfect i watched them as a parent i had to struggle and make sure that they were getting up and teaching them the correct etiquette and

110how to go through zoom and it was tough and um my students or my two kids benefited from e-learning with the grades and the guidelines their grades improved but that doesn't mean that they learned that means that they took advantage of some opportunities and i appreciate that but it was a it was it was a test it was a test for them it was a test for me as a parent and i had to consistently daily get them up and make sure that we found that routine i know that there were times that my my son and my daughter were frustrated they needed to reach out and it wasn't that this teacher wasn't available but they just needed a quick fix or a little help or some guidance and the e-learning was tough and it

111was tough for the teachers and it was tough for the students but i come to you as a teacher and i tell you that it was a challenge and we were challenged because of some of the the state demands that have been said but it challenged me to be a better teacher to learn how to use flipgrid and paradigm and that puzzle but it's and it forced me to communicate with parents more but it's not it's it's not the best way and we know that and we know that that personal connection that we make that dr thiele has encouraged us to have we can read our students and then and having that in-person instruction one day a week i'll take it i would want more but i we don't have that we don't have that

112opportunity and i would just say that is us coming back i've always thought that we were central workers as teachers and now more than ever through this pandemic we realize that we are essential workers and we need to come back and i know that our administration and our board has put a safe plan together i know that we're going to be supported when there's students that are are not going to follow through or we're going to have issues but there is no there is no substitute for in-person instruction as a coach there are no guarantees we're going to have a football season or any seasons but our district has allowed us to coach our kids we've had we've added players to our program there has not been one player that has stayed home because of

113covid today over 150 north and south football players freshman and sophomore came out to be a part of the program and knowing that there's a chance that we may not even play in the fall and i appreciate the opportunity to be able to do that and we're coaching those kids because they need it and they want it and those kids want to be back and they desire and we're we've been testing it it is safe they understand social distancing playing football a contact sport with masks and not being able to have any contact is a little weird but we're still doing it because we enjoy it as a community member i don't know any community members and you you've read the comments that don't want us to be back in school they trust this park

114i'm sorry you're out of time okay thank you um thank you for letting me speak my name is darren oral i'm a community member i'm also a teacher i've committed over 20 plus years to district 99 in special services i teach the at-risk kids that have been talked about so much tonight every student that i've taught for 22 straight years has been at risk and i can tell you while i agree with many of the things that mr davenport said tonight he made some awesome points and i can agree with most of them the equity point though i do not i believe that the equity with those at-risk kids would be enhanced if we were completely remote remote learning does not work with at-risk kids it just is not the best way for any kid

115but especially for the kids at risk they do not have the support at home um they they do not have the tools um regardless of what we do as teachers as much work as we can put in and i can tell you i've heard a lot about how remote learning was terrible in the spring and that's really not because of the teachers dan i've heard you make some comments about some of the teachers and the poor experience and i can tell you that unfortunately in any profession there's some teachers that don't do a good job and that had nothing to do with remote and you could take those teachers and put them in the classroom and there's probably some issues as well so i really believe we need to be in the classroom i understand

116the risk i have a um i'm i'm in the risk category i have an autoimmune deficiency my father is in stage four cancer and my mother has been in and out of the hospital with many health issues i check most of the boxes for a person that shouldn't want to return but i understand how important it is to be in the classroom and i can't tell you how impressed i've been with dr feely and the administration teams in both schools to put this plan together the amount of work that mr thiele has gone through to to try to check every box and be concerned about every person and every student is amazing um i i i'm truly impressed and in over 20 years i've had my issues with administrators and some superintendents but i can

117tell you um while i'll say when i don't agree with something i really want to make it a point to tell how impressed i have been with the work and the effort that he has gone through to try to get us in in school and in person as much as possible and i really believe that regardless um if we go remote even if we do better which i know we will we're going to work hard but there's still going to be issues with remote that no matter what you do are still going to be present they are they're still going to be issues let's get them in person as much as possible until we can't because those kids need us and i'm ready to be there for them thank you thank you i was afraid

118i was going to have to cut him off when he was saying wonderful things about me [Laughter] we have nobody else waiting to speak to the board no one else okay we will continue to monitor all of those as people are speaking i mean we have emails coming in all the time this is there is no perfect solution here there is no perfect answer there we're going to lose any way we go there i don't think there's any way about that it's a matter of where you how strongly you feel the risk of losing health and life is versus losing this opportunity and i don't i i fully respect every member of this board i fully respect their their um vote and i just think we all have to vote our conscience and let's go

119from there so we're going to straw poll it can i explain what next week will look like before you tell me that this is the way you want to go just so everybody knows the direction is i interpret it if the majority of the board here get for you the straw poll gives us direction to start working on a fully remote plan we will still come back next week with a resolution from our attorneys that indic that indicates that it is the board's intention that we work on a fully remote plan and come back in that fashion to start the school year and that we continue to work on the hybrid plan should we need to use that that the the board will then authorize in that resolution provided from our attorneys the administration to

120do whatever we need to to make that happen which means we may have to modify board policy we might have to make changes and procedures we might have to uh negotiate with our bargaining units but you you'll pass that resolution that will give us as an administration full authority to do everything we need to before school starts to get this up and running um because the time is of the essence well i agree time is of the essence but i don't know that we can say that it's going to be carte blanche i mean i will i will once again provide what our recommendation is from our attorneys that that uh once you approve a plan that they are that they are recommending that you allow the administration to do so i will forward you

121that resolution again tomorrow okay um and what is in there um so you can determine if if you're going to go with what the attorneys recommend or you would like something different fair enough nancy yep i just want to clarify you know going back to my original statement you know i was really i'm really looking for i know we're calling it fully remote i was calling it remote for most i i do think that there are as we just heard um from uh uh gentlemen uh speaking there are some students that you know we need to consider bringing in and um and so i wanna i wanna provide those strategic supports and some limited in-person contact in specific situations so i don't know how we capture that in in this um you know for hank

122in this but um to be to be clear i'm you know i there are some students who you know should be brought in if as long as their parents you know agree with that and i'm also kind of um in the same place with mike i'm at this juncture if we say remote i like to kind of have a plan for i know it's based on declining numbers but can we look at this in in uh four weeks you know just um identify timelines and i know it's going to be based on the numbers but what are we looking we're probably not going to see no cases you know but we'll see hopefully some decline but i'd like to not go for remote the nine weeks i like to see us go with some if

123we were going to do remote with some identified hey we're going to revisit this at this point or at this point at this so i'm not for just saying remote for nine weeks and i think that's the timeline right frank of hank it's a nine week um and and i'm not strictly for that either well cherelle my plan would be at every next board meeting from there on out if i you know where i uh the whole board knows where i stand on getting kids back to school if the numbers improve in any way i will be back at every next board meeting advocating to get kids back into the classroom what i don't yet understand is how many i can bring in at a time now and the board would still be comfortable with

124that do we have to give you that tonight or i mean no i'm going to bring you a recommendation next week and then you can tell me what you think okay okay all right okay so are you ready to straw paul hank i have a question for you since or straw polling if we do vote remote that pretty much cements the fact that sports and and club activity you can't come in after school if you can't come to for the classroom correct rick there are some school districts that have chosen to go fully remote for instruction but are allowing activities in athletics to continue uh following the guidelines of ihsa and idph and the youth sports guidelines because those are voluntary activities that students can choose to um you know can choose to participate in

125it's not the required coming into the school day each day but isn't it i agree with that isn't that our hybrid plan we're allowing people to voluntarily adopt the hybrid plan we're not forcing it on them we're giving people a choice we're voluntarily saying would you like remote or would you like the hybrid plan correct i don't see how you can have your cake and eat it too if you're going to go full remote because you're worried about contact and and it's it's so distressing then you can't have contact right which is why i agree you can't bring in half the students because you remember not every freshman is in a freshman class and not every teacher teaches just freshmen some teachers teach sophomores some teach junior some teach freshmen some freshmen are in sophomore

126junior classes it's not cut and dry and then which teachers are you going to bring in which teachers are you going to say oh you get to stay home so you either got to go one way or the other you can't be dicing this up oh this that and the other you got to realize there's consequences by going fully remote doors are going to be shut and by those doors you mean athletics and activities and and supports that those students get those at-risk kids they're not going to have those supports that they would have in the classroom all day long at home you can't and you just the teachers will not have that contact of person to person for those at-risk kids but i think what we're looking at correct me if i'm wrong at

127with remote for most is that there would be a very small subset of kids that we would bring in so we'd have less traffic in the school we've had we'd have a smaller teacher student ratio we would decrease those those kids in that classroom they would i would think we'd be able to maybe limit them to the same staff member every day so we don't have that constant rotation and mixing as for sports and activities i mean i i believe they are important but if more important is the actual academic work to me and that i would think if we weren't coming in for academics we wouldn't be coming in for other things because it's the same it's the same it's the same issue it's a lot of bodies and it can find space over

128a period of time so nancy if i'm understanding you correctly the idea of supports and lowering risk goes back to the cdc information you brought at the beginning of the meeting tonight and that it's the concerns of the mixing groups with the mixing adults so your idea of safe supports would be the same group of students coming back and interacting with the same adult rather than the idea of passing periods and changing and those kinds of things and in small numbers exactly which i think for many of us many of our students are coming in who need a lot of support are in small numbers anyway would that be the same for bringing freshmen back as well and introducing them to school i think if we brought very small groups back we have lovely new

129i don't know if we can sit in the stadium yet but we have lovely new seats outdoors we brought small groups back didn't rotate them you know didn't have them in confined classrooms rotating between classes we could limit it you know whatever we could do to limit that exchange of bodies and people and space is what we should aim to do so but it's kind of describing a hybrid plan then in that case if i yeah so no well the this is what some of the elementary schools have the advantage of in bringing students back is there it's the same group of kids with the same teacher all day long and in a high school we don't have like that model doesn't work you know the kids have to move and the kids have the

130the kids and the teachers have to move in a large comprehensive high school like what we have and um that's why we've gone through the the things we've done in the hybrid model between you know lowering the number of people in the building at one time and then adding the additional face shield with the face mask when they have to move locations to try to add that extra layer of ppe to protect in those settings but eliminating it all together is not something we could do in a normal school model so i understand that all right i think i know what i need to to go back and work with my administrative team i'd like to know overall what direction the board is leaning towards so i can bring a plan back to you next

131monday at least the skeleton of a plan it won't be a full robust plan like what you saw with hybrid sure so i'll ask i'll ask julie to call the role and each board member can say hybrid remote with all with all that remote means or of course you're always welcome to abstain but i hope nobody does julie will you call the vote call the roll nancy kupka ramon mike davenport remote shirelle fuller hybrid dan nicholas hybrid and allowing our families to make a choice terry pavicich remote rick probinato hybrid and joanna vazquez drexler remote if i counted correctly the straw poll this isn't an action item the straw poll is 4-3 to work on a remote plan as much as we can over the the next week here and come back to the board

132with whatever we have piece together for next monday i will also be forwarding you the resolution that the the board's attorneys recommend that the board pass along with that direction to the administration yes all right as has been mentioned several times this evening the administration has already started reaching out to staff members to get them involved in a variety of different committees working on a full remote schedule you know a class period schedule bell schedule if you will that team gina and ed and janice are leading that team and they began meeting today we have 38 volunteers in total for those committees so uh we do have some people that came forward we also if you remember had over 40 volunteers on our task forces that led to the hybrid and all of our chairs

133were involved who are also teachers in the developing of the hybrid so we we did have teacher involvement from the beginning we continue to have teacher involvement working on what we have going forward we will probably not have any of the other committees work next week outside of the remote group because things like example lesson plans and classroom management tips and all of those things will look very different hybrid versus a fully remote we don't want those teams spinning their wheels for a week so we will call them together to work in earnest once we have official direction through board action next week so that's the administrative plan thank you thank you hank anything else to discuss anybody want to raise anything call to adjourn oh moved terry joanna yeah all those in favor aye

134aye aye always opposed all right we are adjourned thank you very much thank you guys thank you everybody thank you so much you