SD308 Board of Education Meeting (5/10/2021)

001hmm [Music] i call to order the oswego community unit school district 308 board of education meeting can i have a roll call mrs doyle president mr gatewood president mrs johnson president mrs croner dr marino present mrs simonton present mrs swanson present agenda item 3.2 pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and this is republic for which it stands one nation undergrad indivisible with liberty and justice for all item 4.1 public comment on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card

002and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted we'll limit the comments to three per subject the board does not participate in discussion during public comment follow up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by administration through the contact information provided on the comment card cindy book submitted a comment by email okay will the covid19 vaccine be required for students in order for them to attend in-person school in the fall if this has not yet been decided can you direct concerned parents to the governing body

003who would is responsible for making this decision so they can have their concerns heard before a decision is made thank you crystal casper my name is crystal casper and my son's a freshman at oe tonight i came here to speak on behalf of my own family and thousands of parents who couldn't be here i will never stop fighting for our children and will continue to be vocal until we are finally hurt with the new board present i'd like to make a statement so it's loud and clear from the start the district has failed our children parents should not have to beg and plea to simply have their children attend in-person instruction children belong in the classroom five full days a week i understand there was a pandemic that forced us to shut down but the

004shutdown should have been temporary instead it turned into losing most of the year when the updated guidelines from the isbe came out in march that loosened restrictions we finally had a glimmer of hope many emails were written to the board and dr sparlin hoping our kids could have gotten more in-person learning but we were quickly shut down by the board and told no more changes this has left us wondering if there really was ever a plan to reopen the schools while other schools seem to quickly adapt to the new challenges and guidelines or new changes and guidelines sd-30 sd-308 did nothing and continue to fail our children i'm sure you're all aware of current news regarding local teachers unions fighting to keep schools closed i certainly hope this isn't the case with our district unfortunately

005with the current in-person instruction that is being offered to our children in my opinion this remains a questionable subject it is our hope that the new board address these issues and work to restore the trust of the community we ask while we ask is simply to show us that you care about our children and we will and we will do the best for them we pay some of the highest real estate taxes in the state of illinois yet our district is dangerously underfunded there have been an extreme mismanagement of money in the district and it continues to negatively impact our children while raises are being dished out programs and services are being cut after reviewing the audited 2019 and 2020 finance 2020 financials myself because i'm an accountant it has come to my attention that

006we are over budget on salaries alone by 7 million the outcome is grim if we continue to pay for things we can't afford i encourage all parents of sd 308 to get more involved it is past time the board and school district are held accountable for their actions we demand transparency and honest discussions in order to address these situations and fix this horrible mess my son told me last night that he wanted to finish the year remotely because school is not fun i asked him why and he said no one talks to each other you can't hear people speak in class because of the math he said it's no different than being home because they are literally sitting at their desks in school on their chromebook interacting with people that way what is the point

007of being in school if this is how it's going to be we are doing so much damage to our children's social and emotional health they need to interact with peers i honestly miss seeing them smile and laugh giving hugs high fives going to sporting events having fun i miss seeing them happy you know in conclusion you know i received several emails from the district stating school's going to be full time next year sadly i have no faith in you guys but you you'll do that and even if it does happen what restrictions will our children be subject to this time i i implore you to prove us wrong our kids deserve better thank you for your time thank you agenda item 5.1 board member comments well i have a comment i wanted to say hello

008to everyone and um i wrote it down because i knew i wouldn't be able to to say it all uh it's hard for me to believe that i've been your board president for a week now um if you would have told me a year ago that i would be serving as the president of the school board i would have told you that you're nuts i'm truly honored that my colleagues see so much potential in me and i'm honored to be serving with this amazing group of board members i know that we can do great things together there's never been a board like this before i i'm touched to be so welcomed into the community of those who have served before me and i want to thank the members of our larger community those that voted

009for me and those that didn't because representing all of our community and all of our students is important to me i think knowing a person's why is very important to understanding their motive to help so i'd like to share mine with you when i lost my father in the world trade center in 9 11 i made a conscious choice rather than to sit and anger and hate that i would choose to make a positive difference in the world in equal magnitude to the hate we saw that day and in doing so i would live a life that honored my father my decision since then to work with children in foster care to help raise a family that stands up for others and to help leaders be the best has all been an extension of that

010and now serving on the school board so here is my promise to all of you our community our students the administration and my fellow board members i promise to do my best to listen to be compassionate and to move forward a strategic agenda for the betterment of our entire community and all of our students i know i will not be perfect but my heart will always be in the right place and i want to thank you for your faith and trust and for you to know that i do not take it lightly thank you dr moreno i would like to say a few things i just wanted to take the opportunity to thank mr lightfoot mrs morgan and mr bauman for their service and also to recognize mrs croner mrs swanson and mrs doyle for

011their service as well through a pandemic no one prepares you to lead a school district through a pandemic there's no manual there's no book and getting to know each of you i've learned that you did the very best with what you had at the time so thank you for your commitment to our students i would also like to thank dr sparlin and miss dalquest because i know they also spent countless nights awake making sure that they did what was best it's very easy to sit on the outside and i had to make a lot of those um comments during uh campaigning and it was hard because judging is easy from the other chair i know you got thousands of emails from the board in the administration you had to answer to a lot of different

012people all the time and i know you did the best that you can i'm also very excited and very proud to sit on this board of education with two people of color for the first time in our history and i look forward to our board of education representing better our student body so thank you very much okay agenda item 5.2 board committee reports since ruth kroner couldn't be here she gave me her update the equity committee report they finalized their equity statement and are ready to bring this to the board for next steps and the only challenge so far is getting in-person attendance and determining the next mission of the committee they did attempt to meet in person but they did not have a quorum so hopefully in the fall they'll be able to start

013meeting in person okay 5.3 superintendents report well good evening board tonight we have a heavier agenda under information so i'm going to keep my comments brief as you know last week was teacher appreciation week and tuesday was teacher appreciation day i wanted to take this opportunity to think of our teachers for all their good work that they are doing that are doing so well making a difference in our students lives this past year has been very extremely hard on teachers and our 308 teachers have done an outstanding job and i hope they all know how much we appreciate them and also last week was uh national nurses day and i wanted to publicly thank our nurses for all that they do for our students and staff on a daily basis we have some outstanding nurses

014here in 308 and being a school nurse is a stressful job but being a school nurse during a pandemic is extremely stressful and they've that they've really stepped up and done a wonderful job and i hope that they know how much uh we all value them as well so uh that's like i said we have a lot of under information so that's my report for this evening thank you okay apologize um sorry the minutes from the previous meeting is that you're approved secretary okay 6.1 can i have a motion to approve the minutes from the previous meeting actually this is the consent agenda so you make a motion for the entire section so it's a motion to approve the consent agenda including 6.1 6.2 6.3 if there were one and it's just one motion all

015right well thank you um 6.0 approve uh can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes from the may 3rd 2021 special board of education meeting and 6.2 to acknowledge the freedom of information act requests received by the district second mrs simultan aye dr mourinho aye mr katewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle hi mrs johnson hi item 7.1 is information uh financial statements does the board have any questions in regards to the financial information that's been provided this evening can we just clarify on the year-to-date remember the local property taxes i think we're we've only collected 51 percent that's pretty normal or that's due to covid no that's normal so in may we'll start you probably just got your tax

016bill over the weekend and it will do june june 6 i believe so we'll start to get payments but okay all right moving on item 7.2 is an informational item regarding the request and release of kendall county land cash funds kendall county land cash fees uh are on the district kendall county collects land cash fees on the behalf of the district for property in unincorporated areas these fees are in lieu of donating land to the district for a new site that would be needed due to increased enrollment caused by any developed property kendall county is holding our balance of land cash in the amount of thirteen thousand four hundred twenty seven dollars in order for us to receive these funds we must submit a request to the regional superintendent of schools along with a resolution

017stating that the what the purpose of the use of these funds is so does the board have any questions and this is an annual item as well does board have any questions regarding this informational item the only question i have and i think that this is just that we've been doing this for so many years it does say at the title of this attachment to david bailow yeah um i i don't think he has become our regional please forgive me if i have this wrong but i don't believe he's become our regional um superintendent no he is not well this is information and we'll make sure it's corrected and again i don't think that this is anything other than we've been doing this same form for that long all right very good appreciate you bringing

018that to our attention kristy you've made it out of that thank you all right item 7.3 is student rights and responsibilities section of the handbook 7.3 is another annual item which is the student rising responsibility we have our executive director of student services val patterson vale is going to take us uh through the process what what how where student rights and responsibilities gone through to get to where we're at before the board looks at it for information so val go ahead thank you good evening dr sparlin and board of education the summary of updates and revisions that was provided to you included some background on the rights and responsibilities code it's reviewed annually this year we did this in february and march and the current school year's code was opened up for all administration to

019provide any concerns questions suggestions revisions and those updates are then reviewed and incorporated once the review hits my office and then also moves over into the board of education attorneys hands so that all of the updates and the changes have been properly vetted to be sure they're in alignment with not only board policy but also state laws and any other uh governing agencies or laws that we need to line up to also the district's parent advisory committee is within a special meeting of the board's policy and legislative committee we held that meeting on march 22nd and we had a draft in place and we're still taking again suggestions or possible updates you can see that in the memo the 2021 parent advisory committee members were listed when you saw an asterisk it meant that they

020were present at that meeting so they were able to vote also you can see that there were several guests the guests in attendance included our executive director of special education dr denise hildebrand maureen lemon board of education attorney and don samosky director of transportation so that we made sure we could look at sections that included specifically student discipline on buses student discipline of special education students and again we presented our our draft at that point all recommended changes and updates have been legally reviewed and they've been incorporated into this draft that you see for the may 10th this evening's board of education meeting for first reading and then a second reading would be on june 7th for board approval so information and then board approval in june thank you very we appreciate that board are

021there any questions regarding the updates to the student rights responsibilities portion of the handbook uh just double checking that i've got this right that the main first change seems to be that it won't be in a printed handbook correct that was a budget adjustment for next year any other questions regarding the student rights responsibilities portion of the handbook okay hearing none thank you baylor thank you item 7.4 is in regards to the consolidated grant application and our associate superintendent faith douglas will share what this means why we do it and any questions the board may have so there's a lot of acronyms and a lot of grants and i'm going to try to go through and explain some of those uh it is the season that we do annually for our consolidated district plan and

022while that opens right now this beginning plan is not about what are we going to spend it on or anything it's assurances that we have put in place so that we can get then access to additional grants so the grants that are covered with the consolidated district plan involve title 1 which is related to our schools that have a higher percentage of students from low-income families not to be confused with title 1 part a which is more about school improvement and those schools are not receiving money because of their percentage of low-income students they're receiving funding because of needing improvement as identified by state test scores and other factors then title two is around professional development and lots of different fundings and some flexibility with that title three is for our language learners and language

023instruction title four is kind of a catch-all it's safety drug health education there's even gifted enrichment pieces in it then ida which is our special education main grant it's called the ida flow through and then the ida preschool which is for our child early childhood programs and services the numbers that are on the slide right now are not the numbers for next year this is the amount that was received for this school year it does change so we will not yet know what our final allocations will be till till somewhat later into the summer and sometimes even into the fall but once we put this in and is approved then we start getting grant applications for those other pieces so this was just to give you an idea of the types of money that come

024in through this and then some of the plan requirements that are all listed and ready to go on the illinois state board of education forms we have to show evidence of coordination of those different grants of how they would work together we have to have a needs assessment which we've done with our staff already this fall where we've had them identify what professional development they need we have different stakeholders where we've gone to the teaching and learning committee on pieces around this we have to show alignment with the state goals with what we would like to do and then there are auditing processes that we have to guarantee and then we do need to work with private schools and foster care within the area on this too very short but sweet version of the consolidated

025district plan that's where all the money comes from for grants correct most of it very good any other questions regarding item 7.4 all right number item 7.5 is the boulder hill school-wide title 1 plan also somewhat related there are two different ways that schools within the title one designation can receive money one is targeted where you really have to use the funds only for students from low-income families or struggling students there's also a version called school-wide and we have two of our schools that we are suggesting moving from targeted to school-wide this allows a lot more flexibility to use resources to help all students within the building it utilizes a lot more flexibility with what you can do with use of staff and it's a very wise thing to do to provide that flexibility so

026the one caveat is is they have to go through the work to have the school-wide plan and that needs to go to the board so we're doing that for the first time and i apologize for the amount of details that i gave you but i wanted you to see the plans that heather kincaid and lindsay allen and the two school principals and their teams have put together to make this happen this is only information at this particular meeting it'll be at the next meeting that we asked for approval so you'll have some time to digest that very good faith to be eligible for school-wide uh school must have what percentage 40 40 and boulder hills currently about 53 40 of students would be from low-income families may i just add a statement please regarding both

027of these schools very often when you see school improvement plans or school-wide title 1 plans i appreciate the title being changed to a school-wide title plan rather than school improvement because in no way shape or form would i want to even hint or suggest that either of these schools are anything other than excellent schools they are um and knowing both of these administrators and the diligence of their committees i i feel confident that our students are in good hands with them um and i appreciate that they'll be able to get the extra funding hopefully that they need to serve kids with higher needs thank you or any other questions regarding that item 7.6 is the long beach uh school-wide title one plan same information but this is now for school for long beach correct faith

028correct any questions regarding 7.6 long beach school by title one plan what percentage is uh long beach i know you said boulder hills at 53 16. yes it's up about 10 [Music] from maybe 5 years ago that sounds about right yeah it was a little over 50 i think last i was there so this is the first time they've both gone to school-wide though right correct so did they collaborate at all on their plans because i kind of sat with them like i noticed that like one school does this a little bit different in this school so i just wonder if like one school has had more success and they also have different amount of allocations of money so that makes a few things um more possible or less possible but i know that we

029get our elementary schools all of our title one schools together to talk about not only what their plans were but how they assess them and finding the different successes of that so that happens even outside of the school-wide plans okay we're going to move on to item 7.7 if you could pull the presentation up and i'd ask the esd directors to come up to the mics all right item 7.7 is our learning plan for fall in person and remote learning item 7.7 is our learning plan for fall which are we are very excited to be sharing with you this evening there are four committees with a total of 84 people who worked on the plan that is being presented we had an early childhood elementary junior high and high school committee who came together on

030a number of occasions over the past couple of months and putting together this plan that is being presented for next fall the board has been provided with a paper copy of this presentation so i'd ask that you please take notes i'm going to ask that you hold your questions until we're done with the presentation because like a lot of presentations such as this questions will be answered a lot of your questions probably will be answered during the presentation so the next slide there are three areas this plan addresses the first is in-person learning so what does it look like for the fall in person learning remote learning for those who qualify for remote learning what will this look like for the fall and then the federal funding for covet plans that are all included in

031this evening's presentation as i've communicated throughout on a very a variety of occasions we are planning five full days of instruction with lunch for the fall in 2122 we are going to allocate additional time at the start of the year for establishing safe and nurturing climate we believe that getting to know our kids their backgrounds what their interests are where they see themselves down the road are very important variables in the equation of success for our students and we are also building additional time into schedules for teaching behavior and social emotional skills and standards and we've also built an additional time for increased support for teacher training in a variety of these areas as well and again those will be highlighted when we talk about the specific levels so slide three starting the year differently

032as i said we are allocating time within the day at all levels to teach and reinforce the safe and nurturing learning environments for all fostering trusting relationships between students staff and families families will continue to implement the sd 308 climate for learning framework and we will be in stressing the importance of checking for understanding through formative assessment to ensure our students learned what it is that we just taught and when they didn't learn it uh you know to reteach it when necessary these are all items that we've been talking about for a couple years that's why it is very exciting to be talking to you this evening for implementation in the fall good evening i'm heidi pizza i'm the director of social emotional learning and so this slide gives you a kind of graphic or

033visual definition of social emotional learning and one of the things that we felt was important as we walked into next school year was to ensure that we are attending not just to the academic needs and development of our students but we're continuing to support them with their social emotional development as well as their mental health and wellness social emotional learning is based upon five core competencies that are at the center of what we call the social emotional learning wheel those are self-management responsible decision-making relationship skills social awareness and self-awareness all of these pieces work together to support student success in life and in school these competencies exist at the classroom level where they are taught and reinforced through sel curriculum and our content area instruction and in the climate and culture of the classroom we

034focus on them school and as we roll out the climate for learning framework and create safe inclusive and affirming learning environments for ensuring that those competencies live at the school-wide level they live within our families and our caregivers as we develop our partnership with um our parents and within the community-based resources and opportunities that we provide in connection outside of our school walls in order to do this for next year we are implementing new social emotional learning curriculum materials at kindergarten through eighth grade this is not a significant departure we have the second step curriculum in kindergarten through eighth grade we are upgrading to the newest edition which was revised during 2020. we are also implementing a mindfulness-based resource in early childhood through 12th grade that can be utilized by all staff in their classrooms

035and is also accessible to both parents and students at home to use as they see fit in the home environment we have dedicated social emotional learning time built into the schedule daily at elementary at early childhood through fifth grade and then weekly in grades six through eight and our social emotional learning standards are embedded within the core content at all grade levels it's important to note that a number of our secondary teachers implemented social emotional learning activities this year such as daily check-ins goal setting and perspective taking with into their classes and at the high school level our kinetic wellness teachers did a phenomenal job building and implementing a unique sel curriculum and lessons into their classes and those standards are going to continue to live within that content area we also continue to look

036at expanding our programming and supports for both students and staff around mental health and wellness and we recognize this as an integral component to recovery as we return to next school year good evening i'm lindsay allen director of elementary education just as we have this school year in elementary will continue to provide students support time to differentiate instruction to meet students needs the difference that we will see for this upcoming school year in person is we will have two student support times one that is specifically designated for literacy which is reading and writing and then one that is designated for math and uh shannon looters had a family emergency so i'll be talking about junior high this evening so one of the great things that happened during covet is we learned some new tricks on

037this was student support time and finding time in the day to provide differentiation and some coaching pieces the way that we're wanting to build that in after the committee gave us some input at the junior high level is to take five minutes usually at the end of the day add it to the 14 minutes at the beginning of homeroom and give it more structure so that this would happen daily where students could be able to go get more support or enrichment and then one day of that week would be designated social emotional instruction that all of our students would be getting and now i'll turn it over to heather good evening my name is heather kinkade i serve as the executive director of accountability in high schools so in addition to the academic and seo

038planning that is occurring to transition students back to the full five days in person we wanted to be able to ensure opportunities for students to seek help during the school day so what we're proposing to do is an alternate schedule similar to an assembly schedule twice a month and what we would do is either assign students if necessary or students would be able to select an intervention or an enrichment session things that we have discussed with both high schools are you know at-risk students assignment by course holding review sessions opening up the writing center structuring peer tutoring retakes and makeups college and career readiness psat and sat prep and then student voice sessions so so those are some of the examples of the sessions that we're looking to offer but the key thing is it

039based on our schedule at the high school sometimes very tight so we just wanted to make sure that we built in those supports and time within the school day we're talking about offering it after second period where all students are in attendance just like we've talked about student support we also feel very strongly that we need to have strong teacher support and as we've built things throughout the last two years of what we want to do there are a variety of topics we feel strongly that it should not be a one and done where you've now learned everything about literacy in the last two hours and you are good to go for the next five years instead we have ongoing pieces of what this would look like so we're mapping it out not only for

040this year but there's a big board in my room where we're talking about the second and third year of what that would look like a main emphasis will be our climate for learning framework which is if you don't know what ec through 12 plus is that is early childhood through 12 plus is our transition students the big emphasis as you've been hearing is social emotional learning reinforcing positive behavior culture responsive teaching amplifying student voice and of course differentiation we've had students that have done very well throughout all of this we also have students that have struggled so we will differentiation has always been important but it will be critical this year we'll be rolling out the literacy framework for kindergarten through eighth grade and the math framework as well and then because of all the

041chromebooks that have come in we really need to be thinking about instructional technology and all the different ways that we can do instruction better now that we have more technology some more lessons learned during covet is ways to do professional development uh it's a little bit easier to have cross district meetings with all the teachers and we can do that uh via remote we also are really looking into having some asynchronous abilities to be able to provide those learning activities when teachers want them we're looking at increasing coaching and also something that i'm very excited that i had learned that other districts have been doing is that you can give professional development actually while teachers are teaching for example somebody could teach a third grade math lesson across to all third graders in the district

042and then have the teachers do the follow-up with that you do require substitutes or other pieces and you got to see does it really work with my kids and what that would look like for teaching staff early childhood through eighth grade we'll continue with ongoing support and hands-on professional development at each of our school buildings this will come in the form of instructional coaches staff meetings professional learning communities and videos when appropriate so for the high school what we are proposing is to do a once a month late start in order to have a dedicated one-hour professional development time for our teachers and staff to support the climate for learning and instructional technology so on this monday the student schedule would start at 8 20 instead of 7 20 we would not have a change

043to transportation so students that would still need to participate in transportation to school we will have supervision available for them we're now going to switch over and talk about remote learning for 21-22 so this will be a change remote learning would only be available to students that have an approved medical form for an in-person exemption it would be important to note that students placed in remote learning will need to stay in remote learning for a whole grading period you will not have the flexibility to go in and out back and forth and you'll see why in a little bit why that is so crucial and then we want to caution everyone especially the elementary level that when you join back in person we will try to have you attend your home school but we cannot

044guarantee that based on classroom size and numbers uh and there also may be some exceptions for our students with disabilities about staying in or out for an entire grading period i'm denise hildebrand the executive director of special education good evening i'll be speaking to early childhood while the number of students who will qualify for remote learning is unknown at this time remote learning plans include the following for early childhood we are anticipating that we will have specific staff assigned to teach and support students in remote learning there will be one class per day rather than a morning and an afternoon session with a specific schedule which will include virtual time and offline activities but will also include virtual sel and socialization time for students who will be learning from home related services which include social

045work support speech and language pathology or occupational and physical therapy supports will be provided virtually but will also be offered on site on a walk-in basis for remote learning at the elementary level we will also have separate teachers to work with students so that teachers are not having to provide both in-person and remote instruction it's important to note that it will be a full remote day just like in-person instruction from nine o'clock to 3 50. since this is a long day especially for our little ones online there will be opportunities for breaks snack and lunch for remote students who do qualify for fourth and fifth grade replacement math they will live stream into a classroom with a gifted education teacher for their math instruction and then finally for specials which includes art music physical education

046and library the specials teacher will remote into the child's google classroom so that the student is not having to leave their general education classroom go into a special classroom and then come back in we'll have those specials teachers join the general education google classroom and here is a sample of what a remote elementary schedule will look like and again it is very important to note that remote for elementary will be a full day of instruction from nine o'clock to 3 50. going to talk about junior high we are also going to have separate teachers for the core content areas for the remote students so remote students would have designated teachers in the core for a double period of english language arts and then single periods of math science and social studies for some of our

047band students we do have many teachers that are interested in having a stream in version of band we do not know yet whether that would be at every single school so it might not be with your home school due to the number of courses that we currently offer at the high school not every course will be available in a remote environment so we will offer either virtual courses or courses through ingenuity we will combine students from both high schools in either the remote options and we'll be working with approved students to either review or potentially select alternate courses if necessary good evening my name is renee sartor i'm the director of english learners so if there are students who require english learner services who are remote they'll be served remotely through an english learner resource

048teacher dual language from kindergarten through eighth grade would not be available remotely so dual language students who need remote learning would join a monolingual classroom with the option to return to dual language once they return in person if space allows for special education self-contained programs at all levels will have designated remote learning teachers while we are not sure the number of students that may be eligible for remote learning at this time it may be that students from multiple buildings may be with one teacher for example we have stars which is our autism program at hunt club elementary at wolves crossing south bury and also at homestead elementary so it may be that there will be students from across different buildings that will be participating with one teacher if we have sufficient number of students across

049buildings to constitute a classroom however this is somewhat different than what is happening for general education if a student does return to on-site instruction we will make every effort for them to return to the program or building that they would have attended if they had been in person at the beginning of the school year this will our attempt to ensure that there is consistency in terms of the teachers and related service providers that they've had in previous years related services again as i mentioned for early childhood will be provided remotely or on-site if appropriate our students that are in our resource programs these are students who are receiving push-in or pull-out services or who in co taught classes at all levels we'll have teachers and related services personnel assigned to them and they will follow

050the schedules that would be recommended for general education eastview academy and our transition programs will follow similar programming for students in remote learning that they have had this year where they will be live streaming as appropriate and again as with our other levels and for students and our other programs that if they choose to come on site for the provision of related services such as social work speech and language pathology occupational physical therapy they will have that option if requested and they will receive those services virtually if they wish to do so so the timeline that we're hoping to follow for parents to request in-person exemption is that the form has already been shared with parents on april 30th we wanted to get that out ahead of time so if people needed to make doctor's

051appointments they could but by the end of this week a video with the description not only of remote learning but also in-person instruction plans for the fall will be shared with parents and a reminder that parents will need to have this medical professional complete the in-person exemption form and return it by june 4th so we can make plans accordingly to allocate correct amount of staff and ensure that we get as many of the classes in place early on now i'm going to switch a little bit here and talk about esser which is the elementary and secondary schools emergency relief and i'm going to talk about the funding that has happened so far so the name of the grants digital equity was out there for just a little over a million dollars we used that to

052pay some of the pieces of the chromebooks and also ipads sr1 was around a million dollars and we purchased more student and staff devices as well as all of the cleaning equipment the overtime for our custodians on some of our touchless sanitizing machines now i'm going to talk about sr2 which we've been allocated the 3.3 million on then sr3 which we've been told will be seven and a half million but it has not been released with the application for that just yet so as we looked at for establishing what are the priorities for allocations we really looked at three things looking at addressing some of the schooling loss as i said before we have some students that have done well through this we also have students that have struggled so differentiation and providing coaching and

053instruction will be critical then we also wanted to utilize funds that were acceptable under esser for things that were already in the budget to help out with our bottom line and then we also looked at our capital improvement projects such as each air conditioning and hvac systems that are currently on the list of acceptable projects also to help with our current budget so these sr2 funds need to be spent by september 2022 and while this is not a comprehensive list these are some of our suggested allocations the first item on here is two secondary coaches and that's really with curriculum and professional development you may recall that some of the budget cuts that were involved this year were taking away five part-time junior high instructional coaches as well as an assistant director for high school

054curriculum these two people would help out with those pieces and we still have all of the remote instruction that needs to be monitored and supported as well we're looking at hiring an interventionist for each of the elementary schools as well as the early learning center these people as dr sparlin said in slide three are so critical to making sure that the foundation of literacy and numeracy is in place for our youngest students because all of the learning that happens after that is dependent on a solid foundation we're allocating the salaries of 10 teachers for remote instruction that may not be additional funding from the budget those could be current teachers that are pushed over to remote learning as we see how many students would be in remote but we can use this for either existing

055teachers or new teachers depending on the need we're also looking at replacing some of our elementary reading materials that were distributed and very well loved during remote learning and are not coming back in the best of shape and need to be replaced and we were close to the time on that anyway we will need additional cleaning and sanitizing supplies we're also looking at replacing two boilers at ohs and then especially at the high school level the need for instructional technology coaches as all of those chromebooks come into the building and we move one to one we were not prepared for all of the professional development to deliver and to talk about how best to do that our devices were very delayed in coming in and we'd like to have a chance to get that set

056up and done very correctly as all of those students come back into the fold next school year uh and then s or three uh this again is not a comprehensive list and we still have uh a couple of million dollars to think about on what else we would do these funds do not need to be spent by september 20 till september 2023 but some of the pieces that we're looking at the literacy framework that we're so excited about in order to be able to do differentiation really well we need existing materials to be expanded to have much more choice for students and teachers not only in the topics but in the ability books we also need a second step as a doctor for jessica talked about with the social emotional learning curriculum [Music] high school

057assessment software will need that there's more budget for cleaning and sanitizing supplies to chillers at us we go east then a building automation system was already on the capital projects list and we're looking at allocating funds to that and then keeping those instructional tech coach positions going for the following school year as well as the curriculum coach positions that are on the previous page going also the interventionists that were talked about that would be the salary for the second year then cyber security software as you want to make sure that no one can hack into our system and what that looks like that was a need already in the budget that we'd like to allocate funds for we have some staff at the high school that are in dire need of some more updated chromebooks

058if you've been to our junior highs the projectors are in need of some repair and are very dim so excuse me we're looking at that and then our junior high access points need updating as well excuse me all right that was a lot of information so go ahead and start off with questions i was going to say i apologize for the length of the presentation but uh this is uh planning for 2122 is a big deal and we wanted to make sure we were as comprehensive as can be so as faith just said let's go ahead and start answering any questions that the board may have and just in case you have questions for denise i apologize i asked her if she could go let mrs croner back in the building as she's returning to

059the meeting after the concert i got a couple yeah uh slide seven all right can you put the presentation back i guess go ahead while he's pulling it up i have my slides my question on the junior high was um i i guess my question is what does that look like so um every day at the beginning of the day there would be the 19 to 20 minutes of time they will be supervised out with staff there will be some students might have an additional study hall but other students could be assigned to intervention time or have sign up time that they wanted to go that it could be test retakes it could be enrichment types of pieces one day a week will be the social emotional learning piece but we are envisioning having the

060students divided up among all staff members depending on what they needed and what their interests were it could look different all right and then at the high school level we do you guys had a couple of suggestions but again i speak from what i know but at westwood we call it aac it's an academic support period and it's literally manned every single hour of the day so if a kid has late start he can sign in even online they can sign in on a zoo meeting and they can say hey i need help with chemistry or hey i need help with physics or there's a science and math and english and i think we also started spanish foreign feel like i actually know somebody who was doing that for spanish anecdotally so i i mean

061just another i know i assume that all of your teachers have a duty to again i'm i'm assuming which i should not do i understand but i i think that that provides a lot of opportunity for support especially for kids who maybe leave school early or kids who arrive late or kids who just go to study hall and you know it's half hour before math class and i got a big test next hour and can somebody please help me and we even have some of our kids our peer tutors sign in to those and help kids as well so it's another opportunity at the high school even at the junior high level where you can have kids help kids and teachers help kids but you could literally do it all day long instead of just

06219 minutes at the beginning or the ending of the day so for what it's worth and then on slide eight again every time you put differentiation on a slide i circle it and i highlight it and i right and i i i've been doing this 21 years and i still struggle with differentiation but at the end of the day i think it also provides a unique opportunity since we are now one to one to cross train across districts and i know you guys talked about a late start on slide 10. so my big question on slide 10 and i'm trying to keep going kind of keep it moving okay um on slide 10 i assume you mean a plc i could be wrong so not necessarily um what they're would be doing is either professional

063development or work in their core teams so which is very similar to a plc so so for people who don't know plc i'm like i'm my teacher ease is a professional learning community so it's all the physics teachers get together and we all talk about what unit we're on and how we taught it and what labs we want to do and who you know who does it best and how did you do it um so i guess my i have two questions one is that in addition are we still doing the wednesday afternoon thing yes yes so this is in addition to the wednesday afternoon thing correct correct and then is how can i say this um so i guess i would want physics teachers to meet together i would want algebra 1 teachers to

064meet together and i realized that teachers don't just teach one course especially and i'm talking more about the high school level but also at the junior high right so i guess when you tell me one day a month that's not nearly enough time to even get going on this no and that's why we're going to use the wednesday times primarily mrs swanson for what you're talking about with the course teams and the department meetings and then the monday focus will be primarily professional learning and professional development so the wednesdays occur more frequently that's why we've scheduled those meetings as you described during the wednesday times okay because to me the district stuff most of that can be sent out in an email or on a zoom call like what most of this isn't districts things

065it's building and their content these are their course areas i think what also has happened with the one to one is i think that we've had pockets of buildings do things really really really well and there hasn't really been any cross contamination if you will right so you have some buildings who are really excelling in one area and other buildings who are really just kind of struggling whether it's you know new staff or or comfort level with the chromebooks themselves or whatever the case may be i don't think that we get these people together enough to make a difference right now so when you guys tell me one day a month if you're telling me you're switching the wednesday meetings to that then i'm in but i don't you know what i mean but i

066know exactly what you're saying yes i'm struggling a lot with what do i need to tell them as a school and what do i really need to bore down to to get these kids to be more successful you know what i mean like the socially emotional for me is nice but what i really need to do is be able to read i want you to be nice to people but i also need you to function as an adult in society correct and that social emotional piece is so connected with that because it's also about goal setting it's also about managing your emotions it's also about building a culture that students can take risks in academically and be able to speak so there's there's a lot of cross you need both of that culture and the

067climate and the academic piece to really make a great learning environment yeah i mean because like at some point i'd like to talk i'd like to circle back to i was going to go there at the common finals and then what we're actually teaching the grading we go over to high schools like we've had these conversations for many many years but i i think that now that you have the ability to communicate across without having to drive across town and and in a shorter amount of time gives us so much more opportunity but i just i like i would like to really see us as a district actually do that and then slide 13 big dollar signs on number 13. you know i'm the i'm the one that doesn't want to spend money ever but

068when you tell me there's going to be separate teachers for remote learning like in my head dollar like dollar signs all over my page so but also know that those students were also going to be in person for us so as you take off maybe we'll have i don't know how to predict we have 20 first graders and 20 more first if you had two sections of first grade both at 20 for remote instruction that's 40 students that also aren't going to be in person so it's not additionally hiring but it may be some because sometimes the numbers don't break for that especially at elementary but at junior high you could have someone who's teaching one section of algebra remotely and the rest of it being in person it's not always additional staff so i

069was cheering silently when you said the teachers wouldn't have to teach and remote teach like i i don't we don't that would i don't even know how you do it i can't even fathom it um but then i on this slide it says for gifted math so are they teaching and getting in the gifted because like that concerns me a little bit so because there are so few students already in the gifted program to designate a gifted only teacher to teach just remotely for those those sections that would definitely be an additional cost and might not have a whole lot of other students to interact with and be for so they would be teaching in person and be live streaming in um for so our teachers of gifted would do both so if you are

070in gifted math you would have one period of math from the elementary day where you were live streaming in while a teacher was also doing in person you could still have student support time well let me let me ask this could we instead of that could we maybe open it up to maybe some kids who were maybe on the bubble of gifted math because while i want to say that every grade is important the ones that really counter in high school right so maybe those fourth and fifth graders who are kind of on the bubble who you know what maybe if given the right circumstance they could have could we then split them out and say hey look we can take 20 more kids we're going to put you you know we have this class

071that suffered remote maybe i can offer it at the end of the day and maybe they got to go somewhere else in the building to do it but so for in person they i don't i'm not understanding another in-person class of no i'm talking about creating another even if it's just a virtual like i'm talking about maybe adding enough kids to it to have a gifted virtual and a gifted but not necessarily from their home school right but still have the opportunity to give it a whirl i mean just you know outside it's it's possible it also is very integrated with the whole elementary school curriculum because you you have your other teacher for all the other subjects and then it has to be math at that particular time right in order for them to

072rejoin the rest of their class so we can look at that as a possibility but the the scheduling of that is sometimes quite it could definitely be tough but if we were doing all the same things that all this i'm not telling teachers how to teach like that's not what i'm saying that you have to do this on this day but what i'm saying is there's there's enough time in the day to afford an opportunity that wouldn't otherwise exist so i'm going to piggyback off of what you're saying because i think i understand it and i actually saw some cases of this where we had some gifted teachers teaching one child in a classroom while they were live streaming with maybe four kids total but there were more seats in that classroom so i think

073what i'm hearing you say if i think i'm on the same train with this that could we provide that instead of scoring it at 92 and a teacher recommendation on whatever the thing is maybe go to 90 or yeah [Music] there aren't we definitely can explore that i just want to caution a little bit because that's an accelerated program so if you are putting students in and then the next year they haven't you know they're they are having to exit they might have to repeat the same math material or they could do a fantastic job correct correct but you have there's a risk with everything right because i've also been on the receiving end of the phone calls of why are you having him repeat what yeah he or she had already done the year

074prior i'm all for expanding the opportunities to do that but it doesn't come without some risks right well i think parents would i mean i'd throw my kid in it all right my last one is on slide 21. so so i i have said this before and i don't i don't know why districts don't do this more i mean i so we're talking about hiring i guess my first question is my my big concern is hiring a position for a year or two because i see in in here you've got a couple of positions that look like a one-year position but then you flip the page and it looks like we could have them for one more year for an additional cost and i understand that at the risk of how much we've lost this

075year right but i also when i see things like um interventionists especially at the early childhood and at k-6 so i there's a thing called erlen screenings i know this because my own kid did it and we don't we don't do it and i know that i have brought it up a couple of times but i know that we don't have anybody in district who does it i know there are people in the general area who do it and i know that my own two kids sat in reading interventions for five years with some really fantastic teachers but neither one of them really needed to be there one of them needed a pair of glasses and the other one needed a blue overhead and we spent four years behind in language arts because we nobody

076ever said to me go get him tested for erlang it's just it's just a screener and it's just colored overheads so i guess i if i'm looking at all this money that we're spending i would maybe like to explore that a little bit because i think a lot of these kids who are you know add adhd needing reading services probably some of them just need a pair of glasses right allen's eyes over converge so he can't track and focus a pair of glasses to fix it there was nothing wrong with his eyesight but a pair of glasses fixed it i don't know that we explore that type of stuff and we have the opportunity to do it all right i took up enough time can i ask a couple um just more practical um numbers

077based questions if you don't mind sure um the esser funds they're required to be spent by a certain amount of time and there's a certain amount there are certain types of things that we can spend them on is there a percentage of supplementation versus supplementation that we must follow or can we because i've been seeing a lot of things that are just in our budget um what will we use the budget that we have for them then so the requirement is that you need to use 20 percent of the funding for academic and schooling purposes to address schooling loss or improve instruction there are not the requirements of supplant or go back we have a lot of flexibility with the sr monies that we don't have with the other types of grants so really we

078were trying to look at you know our bottom line and where that was and we know that we've just been through rounds of budget cuts and uh we were allowed you know to think about our what are some of the things that we were wanting to do but kind of to ali's point we didn't want to add on all new expenses or those pieces and then have to take that away later on we wanted to use some of the funds to make the budget a little bit prettier and put us in more stable pieces so that we're not making budget cuts later on so that leads to my follow-up question because when i'm looking at student learning recovery i'm looking at boilers at a high school going that's not going to help students recover learning

079that's been lost now this is capital projects we've got the 700 000 in sr2 and in sr3 i'm seeing where was that whole list the two chillers one mil 1.7 million in building automation systems upgrades for 18 buildings um that's what is 2.4 million dollars of this in two years um on capital expenses now my understanding is we do often receive capital funding dr sperlin we've been talking about some that you've been keeping an eye on for a while that can only be used for capital projects um so i guess my question is why wouldn't we use an extra 2.4 million for student learning recovery why would we use it for capital projects when we can get capital money just for those yeah right now with the capital piece that you're referring to is you

080know we uh that's still in the air kind of thing we don't know that for sure right and then uh you know over the last couple years we've been uh allocated some monies through the house and through the senate but again i don't know when those types of monies are coming and so this is an opportunity to take care of some of the uh capital projects that are that are looming that do need to get done but if we were to get those if we were if we were to get those monies which we made then obviously we would use that money to pay for these types of projects so the building automation system upgrades for 18 buildings this is a necessity that we've got to have chrissy it helps to one of the things

081we can use sr funds is to help with uh airflow things like that so that was what we were trying to address here the building automation some of the buildings have already been upgraded this would do the rest of the district so that somebody can control airflow from their computer so if something goes down somebody can check remotely get into that system and maybe do some kind of a fix building automation is a really cool thing but i guess for me my question is gonna be is it cool enough to take away a million dollars from um other supports that especially for the next couple years our kids are gonna need just to provide them with recovery lori i think uh faith had uh mentioned it earlier this isn't an all-encompassing list they're still uh

082if you total this up i think there's still a couple million dollars it's like a 5.5 million dollar ideas list right here but there's still a couple million dollars in there for additional thoughts as we right i totally get all of that but i'm just talking about this million dollars and i guess i i want to make sure that we're not spending it i get that our chillers and boilers go out they take about eight months when they go out so we need to plan ahead for those but when i'm looking at a million dollars of building automation in 18 buildings when we've only done five to this point why can't we slow that down and then use some of this million for additional supports because there there will always be more supports that our

083kids are going to need that we aren't providing so i'm i'm with lori on that as well i i understand that we have lots of capital projects that have been put off for years and are kind of reaching the breaking point so i get that and i apologize if these questions have been answered already in the presentation because i did come back in late band concert was excellent by the way um what i feel like what i'm not seeing on here and maybe just because this is not a comprehensive list is i would love to see after school things um that can both help academically and social emotionally you know a couple years ago we had to cut junior high sports from the budget because we had to that's what i'm saying too that's you

084know that can be a big social emotional thing for kids and something that encourages them and builds community and teamwork and um helps kids feel like they're part of something or gives them a place to fit in and that's not the only thing that we have cut in the last several years there have been lots of things but that kind of stands out in my mind is something that clearly was important to our community and i know i had kids in junior high who participated not in sports they had no interest and others that did and it was a wonderful experience and i feel like there we cut activity buses as well because those were the two i was kind of heading toward um actually for that social emotional piece what we keep hearing at

085budget cuts is that fact that our after-school sports the high school level really impact our students and grades and wanting to come to school and eligibility we've pulled that from the junior high and arguably in the social emotional realm junior high has been the hardest hit while i would love to see building automation systems and and i'm not i'm not going to tell you how much i actually really do love building automation i i this could fund those programs after school it could give every kid an opportunity to stay after school for a sport not just ones who can get a ride home it could give every opportunity a kid an opportunity to stay after school for a club not just those who can get a ride home and it can provide opportunities for tutoring

086and peer coaching and things like that that we could have so i i just would hate to see that it's convenient to add more to the back end and and like i said the chillers the boilers i get the long leg time there i i get that we kind of gotta get the money while we can but i really think that for our kids we we can do better we can do more for after school um if we just put the money toward them instead although it would be super cool to be able to remote change the temperature because i can do that from my home and it's fun my family doesn't like it if i do it while i'm here but well i think um laurie and ruth make some really good points and

087um as well as ally you know i really concerned for our kids i'm i'm glad that i see five full days a week um and uh i know ali is very focused on the academic support and i agree with that i'm also very focused on the social emotional support and you know i the sports the after school activities after these kids have been in isolation for a year i mean those are those are i mean they're so crucial to their sense of belonging and community and for kids who are struggling academically that may be the place only place they feel good about themselves i think we're trying to accomplish a lot here and i really appreciate everything the administration has put into this without a doubt um but i'm concerned when i see things like

088the um like that 19 minutes in the morning with the junior high it seems like we're trying to accomplish a lot in 19 minutes and what is really going to get done and it seems like um four days of the week those 19 minutes are focused on academics and one is social emotional and we're really gonna see a mix we're gonna see kids who you know who even did great academically remotely but they're falling apart they're they're just really falling apart and so how can we get the kids what they need um you know during that time and is that enough time um i loved ally's idea of like the support all day like if we could manage something like that where kids can check in and i i think both academically and social emotionally

089um there's just so many kids struggling uh i'm curious why we have a late start but we can't offer the transportation at that start time and what those kids are gonna do for an hour um is you know or are they just going to be wandering the halls or is there going to be something provided for them no there would be supervision uh it could be a study hall type of thing it could be that there are other activities that are going on at the same time the reason that we can't do transportation is our buses run three routes they run a high school and a junior high in elementary so if you change the start time of one level you have to change it for all the other levels as well and having a

090delayed start or an early release at the elementary level is much more impactful for parents on all of those pieces so that's why just at the high school level and why we're not changing the time of transportation okay i get that or why not do it one day every week and let junior high teachers i know i know again why not let the junior high teachers all meet together let's take all our language ones and put them together you just have to have a different time for junior high to supervise all those students too yeah but if we did it every week could we adjust the schedules so that it wasn't as impactful are you saying like like shortened lunch like every week each like high school starts in early junior high starts in early

091elementary school like on a regular school year we would start every monday an hour whatever hour i can't even remember now it's been so i feel like it's been forever but it was we had an hour and 10 minutes maybe that we got to meet with our teams and again like one week it was chemistry one week it was biology when you know what i mean like you kind of went back and forth in between your teams but everybody knew that the bus came that much later because it's monday and it just again it's it's about having time right so all these teachers have done all these great things but nobody not ever you know what i mean like not everybody knows about them not everybody a works well on their team and not everybody

092knows who's at the heist other high school or they've had kids that have had different needs that next year they'll have different kids with things that maybe someone else encountered so just you know it i mean if we're gonna do it let's go all in on it that's my point like if we're gonna if we're gonna commit to one day a month then why aren't we committing to one day every week but i that being the case i don't want to give teachers an extra hour and a half in the morning to just hide in a room and do their own work you know what i mean no like i also want i want to ensure that they're meeting with their teams right it needs to be very structured and that time can be really

093really valuable we're also um cautious at limiting the amount of in-person instruction more to our students coming off of this too of you know the i personally have witnessed all the great things that can happen while you give teachers time to do that but we're also coming off of a time where people are like well teachers need to be teaching all day why you know so trying to balance that perception of teachers having time off i know it's not time off i know it's very well spent but trying to find that right balance between doing that and limiting instructional time i do think it's more difficult on parents at the elementary and the junior high level to change that start time than it is at the high school where they're pretty great at finding out

094who has cars and who has a mom that can drive them and go at that later time without disrupting the family like you don't need an additional child care kind of thing right so i i mean i would ask dawn if maybe she can i mean how much are we impacting buses like by an hour i mean are we talking about not picking up till 430 for at the high school level that everybody all the buses would continue to run the same times right so it would just be if you now wanted to delay you know junior high or elementary everybody would be delayed by you you could push it all back by an hour um i worry about the impact of that on our elementary families i would love that time but she's given

095me the it would be a wonderful time but i think that would be really difficult i think of when we changed our elementary start time from 8 45 to 9 o'clock right and the huge impact that had on parents trying to get to work and having to provide extra daycare for their students was hard so i would love i've asked can we do a late start but it i i really do think it would be difficult in our community some of the creative ways that lindsay and i have talked about on how to provide some of that at the elementary level is by using assemblies or i know when i was elementary principal i used to teach aerobics for three grade levels at a time i know in kobe you can't do that but um

096and then give staff time to do that so there are some other ways when the school is not so large that you can build that into the day uh if you get creative and do some problem solving pieces to provide that so a few more sorry you want to go all right you might have the same questions okay we'll see um do we have an estimate of how many um students we expect to qualify for remote we do not we don't okay and do we know if special education students are going to be more affected by that or more likely to meet that criteria it really goes by the health of the families at home there might be some more students that were impacted on that i don't has i don't have an idea of

097higher percentages or what that would look like i don't think we're seeing a higher percentage of remote students in special education compared to other some of our other schools that is true although we've had some preliminary inquiries already for those children who are immune compromised or who have some other disabilities that might put them at greater risk than their peers when everyone is returning to school but as ms dolphus said at this point we have no idea how many families will actually qualify and make that request i just think it's something we have to be mindful of that they might be disproportionately affected because of those issues and i mean it it does concern me to get certain services virtually and the difference between receiving that in person and um as we talk about equity

098i just want to make sure that we are looking out for those kids and making sure that they're getting a truly equitable education and that is the number one priority for us as well and that's why as i've mentioned before that some families have elected to bring their children into the building for specific services to ensure that they are able to receive them optimally i think physical therapy is a really good example of that where it's very difficult to provide virtually but um so we have had some families who have had their children attend on-site for those specific services as well okay thank you i'll turn it to you okay on page 13 the elementary plan so are there going to be specific remote specials teachers like for example there's one art teacher who's the

099remote art teacher and they just go from the first grade remote classroom to the second grade to the or are these going to be from a specific building in addition to their it just confuses how the specials are going to work so uh it could it'll probably be but it depends on numbers again that it would just be the teacher from that school teaching a remote um piece that could service a whole bunch of students from other schools so i don't see that they will be a remote art teacher all day they could be in person for many students and then have one section of first grade remote only for students from around the district okay so like maybe the teacher from hunt club would do the first grade remote and from southbury would do

100the second grade remote okay depending on um the number of sections that they're already teaching some of them have more room uh in their schedules than others and that kind of segues to my next question is how are we selecting the remote teachers is that going to be an application process because i know we may still have some teachers who are concerned for health reasons as well i don't know if it would be like seniority or we're just we're going to pick you or so there'll be several different prongs one of the first ones is to establish who for medical reasons needs to do that or would need to be on a leave because we would like to give teachers on that opportunity than being on a leave but there'd have to be a good

101match between what they already are certified to teach and what we have but that would be the first piece and then we would be doing postings for those positions and see who would like to be interested and we can interview because some of those skills in person teaching and remote teaching are different um so we want to really look at what those pieces would look like and then also look at what the team of remote teachers were putting together is for elementary because we're probably going to have like a remote school um for those for those teachers and they'll need to be able to work together and have different skill sets and the same at junior high and high school except they may not be remote teachers all day they might have some in-person classes

102and some remote classes okay on page 15 it says there will be separate sections for the remote students and they will have these core periods um does that mean they'll have direct online instruction only and not like live streaming correct and my second question about that is this mentions a double period of ela math science and social studies so normally they have electives at the junior high um are they just going to have a shorter day or will they have an opportunity to also utilize something like a genuity or something similar to provide electives for those students who are remote we need to see how many students are needing remote instruction and what that looks like i know that shannon lewders has already had conversations with most if not all of the band teachers and

103they would be willing to have those students stream in you know to join in band and what that looks like so that may be a possibility for some of those other electives but until we know how many students were hesitate we would we would like to under promise and over deliver than the other way around okay but it could certainly be a possibility of utilizing something like edgenuity just for a special i just i mean i'm just thinking like if i've got only five periods what do they do the rest of the day they just have a short day like i don't know i think that's maybe possibly a missed opportunity if there are i know edge annuity doesn't have every elective under the sun but we don't have a huge variety of electives and

104it might be something different like you're not taking home ac but you're taking i don't know certainly languages i would think would be offered on ingenuity um do we i know we have a pe requirement at the high school level for graduation is there no pe requirement at junior high so there is that you would be involved in a pe class and that is one of the things that we might be doing with a coach and have it be you know what are the physical activity are you doing and that kind of thing rather than watching a pe class or doing those pieces but having a plan for what that would look like into the student's day that could be incorporated with what they have at home or what they are able to do okay

105so for the high school students it mentions having separate sections if there are enough students so if there are not enough for a separate remote section does that mean that they would just live stream into those classrooms because that there also will be some classes that will not be available okay uh and i know i'm sounding very wishy-washy but until we know the numbers of students that we're talking about it's very hard to predict what all of the thousands of courses that we offer um we can do in the various forms right and so then edgenuity it says in here would be potentially an option at that as well okay correct um are we combining i know at the elementary level we're combining across all buildings are we doing the same with the junior highs

106and high schools yes okay um [Music] so i didn't oh page 17 where it talks about the um the timeline here so saying the video with description of what the options are will be shared may 14th they will need to have a medical professional complete the in-person exemption form and return it by june 4. that seems like a fairly small window to get potentially a medical appointment and get this thing filled out right would there be a possibility of a family saying we intend to get this we have an appointment scheduled our doctor couldn't get us in until june 10th or you know like yeah we we can take uh here's what it looks like we did push out the form on april 30th to parents to give them the heads up that they needed

107to be making the appointments uh if they're going to need that but yes we can be flexible if they have a doctor's appointment and we'd rather know about the possibility and start building it but we don't want is for people to wait until august and then we're scrambling to hire all the different people and the coordination of all of those classes because the more we know what our numbers are the faster we can get to working on hiring teachers and building a quality program but again if a student is diagnosed with a condition that would make them unable to come in sometime over the summer they wouldn't be excluded from remote correct but we're envisioning this for the students and families that already know i think the rest of my questions were answered um i

108have a few questions and a comment or statement regarding the reading interventionist i when i saw that when i saw the idea um it just made me question was it a need or is it more of it's a it's a best and a best in class idea to have a reading interventionist at every school or is it a need that we have it is a need and it's not just reading interventions uh it is also math interventions with younger grades okay and we do not have math interventionists at any of our schools that are district provided so anything that is being pulled out or doing interventions for math is on our gen ed teachers or by some title one funding that schools that have title one have put in place so i would this is

109something i believe strongly that we need to be doing even if we were not at the end of a pandemic that this is really what is best practice to be able to really make sure whatever interventions and things we can put into our younger grades to ensure that they are where they need to be that eliminates the need further for some of our special education services it makes mental health better it reduces discipline all of those pieces the stronger that we can have our students really know basics of literacy and numeracy makes all the rest of it work better and i realize the state of illinois says third grade is when we should start assessing and we pay all this attention to act and sat but elementary and curriculum piece if we can't get it

110right k through three we are forever playing catch up agreed yeah okay and i totally agree i just was interested in was it driven by need or was it driven by it's something that we want to elevate to so is that interventionist the same for math and ela yes that's one uh to provide and based on that will be utilized by each building by what they identify as needs for the first six weeks of school at elementary will be different this year that we won't say okay you are now in this intervention for this amount of time it will be all hands on deck of how do we differentiate give students a lot of experience and watch them really zoom and grow hopefully and then decide who needs to be in very solid interventions so

111a lot of intensive time at the beginning of the school year to differentiate and find out what is some schooling loss what is really learning loss and then move forward from that thank you very much for that um regarding um social emotional and kind of setting benchmarks for where we're at embedding it in classes throughout the day are we where are we benchmarked so right now are we embedding in let's say math and ela and social studies and we're looking to embed and this is for each grade lesso elementary are we looking to embed in more classes how are we elevating it i guess so with our climate for learning there's a couple of different pieces there's explicit instruction that we really need to solidify and you can feel free to jump in if you'd

112like i don't mean to always uh jump in the microphone but yeah we really need that explicit instruction to this is what it looks like and it's not just embedded and we kind of call attention it's really even putting social emotional learning targets up on the board and sharing with them like this is what we're going to talk about and then embedding it throughout the day and going back i think it's really important that our students know what skills we're working on and have them reflect on how they're doing on their own uh and thinking about that and that causes more um time in the day and really some explicit and and reflection time not just the teacher knew that we put it into science and social studies on what that looks like and then

113really amplifying student voice is a huge part of that with diversity equity and inclusion of what how are they feeling about those pieces not only for their own um mental and and social abilities but how they are fitting into that community and how that community is teaching them so i'm sorry was there anything you wanted to at the elementary level um currently what we've done past practice has been once a week for a half an hour there's a second step lesson and it's kind of follow the script and then move on we're going to be offering sel support time every day and the new resources that we will have too will enhance that instruction and then we would like to see the teachers referencing that and utilizing that within the learning targets and all the

114the core curricular areas too yeah so we really do it two different ways within the core content one is very skill based so especially as kids get older when we teach them skills i think earlier kids uh reference goal setting or when we teach them how to advocate for themselves or we teach them you know that we work on that those growth mindset pieces we work on those specific skills to help them grow we also identify points within the curriculum that those five competencies live so that happens most naturally in social studies and in in english language arts so when we talk about a character in a novel and we talk about the decisions that they've made the ethical you know implications of that would you have made the same decision what is the process

115you would have used to make that decision we're tying it directly to those reading standards and the social emotional learning standards living together in social studies we're looking at historical perspectives different different ways that um you know those things have come come into being over over time so we do it both through the actual you know they're learning the math or the english content and the social studies content with a social emotional perspective we're also directly teaching them skills that they need in those academic content areas to be successful i appreciate that which it just kind of leads me into my final it's sort of a question and sort of a comment we're in this kind of position and everyone every school district every um educator where we don't know what we don't know yet

116when we come back to school next year we are coming out of a pandemic hopefully and we don't know what those social emotional needs are going to be not only for our students but also for our educators and so um i guess my question and comment is i hope that we use some of this extra time whether it be in the plc's whether it be in professional development days to support our our educators and our administrators through what we're going to be coming out of so that's sort of my comment and then for our students as well because we don't exactly know what their needs are going to be and um and it's going to look very different than and and we can make some educated guesses but um we don't know what that's going

117to look like and in one of those ways and this is where what my question comes in is um we see like for instance um students right now you know they'll have let's i'm just going to use a very simple elementary example they're using youtube like um go noodle or whatever it's called for their you know for social emotional or for brain breaks or all this kind of stuff we're using a lot of technology based um teaching you know in that and so i'm just wondering is there going to be kind of an adjustment to that so that we can get back to kind of the you know manipulatives and hand over hand and that type of stuff and this is much more elementary jeff and i apologize but um kind of getting back to

118that collaboration because students learn from each other and so forth and kind of pulling away from technology a little bit yeah it's just because we're getting chromebooks does not mean that they should be in front of chromebooks all the time and and i like to talk a lot about the ability to get and keep a job is the ability to talk to people to set up relationships to get up and give a speech to do all of those things that we really need to do in the the soft skills if you will although i kind of don't like that term are really what is going to make it for a lot of our students and that happens best without chromebooks so there needs to be time and part of the thing that we're talking about

119with the even the high school instructional coaches are systems of okay is class today and all green and you can use your chromebooks all the time or is it a time that oh nope all the chromebooks are going to be done we even have to do that in meetings sometimes we're like exactly this is going to be done because i can answer emails and i'm not fully present so yes there needs to be the of the emphasis uh on that covid even when you bring people back it has a little bit more difficult because right now i think i can read your non-verbals but i'd be so much better if i could see your whole face but even manipulatives and sharing all of those things has felt very different when we come in because we're

120not supposed to be sharing a whole lot of materials first graders that want to get together and play don't naturally sit three or six feet apart from each other so that collaboration piece depending on what the guidelines are at the time will need some some tweaking and some reminding of what's still possible with face to face and and collaboration yeah and i and i i should have prefaced it with of course i mean safety is is tantamount right but also just having your you know your you collaborate with your with your cohorts in a different way and you learn in a different way so um just making sure that we kind of get back to the little bit of the basics and and so forth as we move forward thank you yes looking forward that

121actually reminded me of something else i've been seeing on here or not seeing when we talk about the social emotional is that while i'm totally all in on we need to start kids pre-k through three the reality is we've got all these older kids that didn't get that pre-k through three and are still struggling on that but we also have nothing in here about additional needs for social work or counselors at the junior high high school level and we know that the needs for those are probably going to be greater have you guys given any thought to one discipline changes when kids come back sometimes discipline is more sometimes we hope not but um how will we be allowing for extra time for discipline for extra social work needs and for the fact that these

122students are going to need a little more guidance at the high school level than perhaps they do in normal years so one of the things that isn't staff related but is more of a system we use in this district called the significant 72 where you're really working on the first three days of process and positive behaviors it's going to be a lot longer than three days we've talked about the need for teaching and reinforcing that and the high schools are working very hard at having a common experience about what are positive behaviors and what are the expectations which is not something that we've had in place before uh to be able to do that the junior highs have that in place but we've already talked that we're going to have to remind and rethink and

123reinforce and be really positive with that there are things that we could look at for more staff again we were being cautious with creating positions that might not be there later on we don't yet know how many students would be in a remote and what that looks like we are really working on the proactive approach right now to building that climate for learning that would be really supportive of all students we have been looking at different ways to support our behavioral teams and those people that teachers need to call on when they have a case that they're concerned about on how to deal with that we're using our elementary instructional coaches um and the plan has always been that they would be reading in math and tech and now we're adding behavioral to that so

124that the teachers have an expert in the building that has a direct pipeline to a lot of professional development to help with teachers provide that differentiation for behavior and support we could look at i mean yeah it seems like it there's a lot there for elementary but the junior high high school piece i mean there's there's those same needs we have a couple pieces that are in place that um you know we are expanding from what we currently have so one being we have a district partnership with family counseling services so we have expanded that memo our current agreement ends in june and i'm working with them right now in our agreement for next year to include more group therapy sessions availability at all of our schools but primarily some targeted schools as well and

125then also the availability of individual students being able to receive therapy needs that they have during the school day in partnership either individual themselves or with their families so we're able to expand that program with no cost to the district we also have three postings out at world university right now we have a partnership with them for interns and we're looking for masters of social work level interns to work in um we have a junior high posting a high school posting and then one for our alternative program in order to be able to provide some more um some intervention triaging data collecting support working directly with those students so those are things that we wouldn't have to look at eliminating down the road those are two things that we can continue to grow and expand

126we also are looking at other opportunities for mental health supports within the district and we're also looking at expanding our youth mental first aid training options for our secondary staff so that they are able to identify early early warning signs and sooner know how to respond to those students and then refer them to the students the student sports that are available within the school so those are things that we would be able to build on and continue over time rather than have to look at taking away that's exactly kind of what i think i was thinking of thank you for that right and the work of the committee for the high school with sel really focused on transition school-wide supports and classroom-based supports so some of the transition is expanding the summer orientation that's optional

127not just for incoming freshmen but also having days for incoming sophomores they're going to rebuild the orientation that's mandatory typically it was just the first day of school for freshmen they're building a freshman orientation a sophomore orientation and a junior senior orientation and then as faith mentioned and heidi the significant 72 well they've um increased and are building out what they've been calling beyond the significant 72 because it will definitely be more than the first three days so there has been conversation and planning both as we transition back then school-wide and classroom based thank you and what are our thoughts on um like hiring restorative um practitioners that's a part of this can sr funds be used for that there is a lot of leeway with us or funds on what that looks like the

128with the restorative practices yes with restorative discipline i think there are some steps that we need to put in first to having common uh expectations for behavior and looking at those systems piece first because i think putting that on place of a shaky system wouldn't be the best i think we really need to look at tier one or universal with that but on restorative circles and having those pieces and having training like that within the classrooms i could see a real use for that that could be something that our secondary instructional coaches i know i'm spreading them thin already but those are things that they could do because as they provide a lot they get a lot of professional development they will have that access to be able to train other people and what's really

129great is that they could go into a classroom and model it and teach it and have it recorded and have other people do that we'd have to be careful about student privacy in those pieces but rethinking what professional development and coaching would be to utilize all of the things that we've learned through covid could really expand that i just have one comment one thought well first of all just thank you for your time and thoughtfulness that you guys put into this plan is great but first so many of the items that are listed within the budget are fixed costs but based on the budgets that you all have listed and the funds that are being received like what was the projected number of years that you considered for the staff positions that are here i

130think i know what it is based on what i'm reading but i just it's just two years for the positions that are salaries in here because then we will be out of funds so any new positions that we do we could re-look at where we're at in two years and whether we've had ebf and whether whether we saw that there was a really great need i could re-allocate one of the things that i am a proponent of doing with budgets just say okay you'd really like to keep this well then what else could we give up you know if we need to and and this may play out to be we really need math interventionists so okay what are we willing to do to tighten the belt elsewhere but i can't guarantee that these positions

131would be here for a long term and then also growth is always happening i'm seeing a lot of builders trying to start up i my suspicion would be that there might be some student growth ahead of us if we ever start getting lumber back um whatever we're gonna say is the reason i heard there's a chicken shortage too um so that would be my guess i have one more question sorry um that's maybe this is a non-um person like not a staff staffing position but can we just talk for a quick second about spelling um maybe i'm old-fashioned or old school but i feel and i know spelling is not required by the state but i feel like we are doing our kids a huge disservice by not teaching them spelling like a formal spelling

132like my kids are terrible spellers and my older two have had spelling in elementary and they're not so bad but my youngest my kid i mean it's pretty bad so i don't want to steal the oh i know lindsay's gonna kill him so um we have been working really really hard over the past two years on a k-8 literacy framework and i will say i have never been on a committee where we've been able to put elementary and junior high together and wow you guys will see this probably um closer to the start of the school year right after school year starts but there is a huge focus on their k-8 for word work and word study and so we're talking about what does that look like we're talking about you know phonics phonemic awareness

133spelling what all of that looks like together but not just at elementary not just at junior high but k-8 and how does it progress through there and what resources are we going to use and what professional development are we going to do on an ongoing basis with our teachers so that will be coming just give us a little bit of time that's excellent news dr alan because my kids use google and spell check to learn how to spell and i don't feel like that is the best plan and i think that part of our you know we see some test scoring ela issues and i think a lot of that stems from they can't read as well because they don't know how to spell that's just my i just want to say that again you

134you highlighted very briefly the k-8 component bringing junior high and elementary school together for these conversations and to me that is just such a fundamental shift but so needed because kids are not going into junior high fully formed so thank you for doing that and i am very much looking forward to seeing those plans it was great working with the junior high where they listened to this is how we progress from kindergarten through fifth grade but then we also learned wow what does it look like when you go into junior high because it's a totally different world from ours so we really learned a lot from each other and helped through the help uh create this literacy framework to in what's the word that i'm looking for to grab all of that information and put

135it down but in a way that will be very teacher friendly um and and we actually rolled it out all to the junior high english language arts teachers uh just last week on it went very very well yeah and for elementary it'll be a little slower since we teach every subject we'll be taking it one step at a time well i had the privilege of seeing at a previous teaching and learning committee meeting the presentation for the math framework last year or prior to the um covid and it was pretty spectacular so i am definitely looking forward to that one thank you mr gabriel i feel like we cut you off before were there more questions okay you answered it you answered it's just something that i knew we would have to think about two

136years ago right make sense any less comments before we thank you i this is such a great thing to see having sat through the phone calls and the the oh my goodness i don't know if we can do this to see this come to some kind of potential close and start to look toward recovery it it is a great thing to see so thank you very much i know that it's a relief for all of you as well and i know how many meetings and how hard you guys have been working so thank you very much definitely definitely thank you item 8.1 approval of bills for payment can i get a motion for item 8.1 i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of 1 million 360 269.65 as presented

137mrs croner aye mrs johnson aye dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mr swanson mrs doyle aye mrs simultan aye motion passes 7-0 8.2 approval of building administrator contract can i get a motion to approve this i make a motion to approve the building administrator contract as presented second mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mrs corner aye mrs simonton aye mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye dr marino aye motion passes seven zero can i get a motion for the approval of the 8.3 district administrator contract i make a motion to approve the district administrator contract as presented second mrs swanson mrs simultan aye dr marino aye mrs croner aye mr gatewood aye mrs doyle aye mrs johnson aye motion passes seven zero and can i get a motion for 8.4 approval of personnel report i make

138a motion to approve the personnel report as presented mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye mrs doyle aye mr swanson aye dr marino aye mrs simonton aye mrs corner aye motion passes seven zero nine point one can i get a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn a second