001prior to that when classes weren't running in person would not make much sense because the classes that they would need to attend and need support at the time i believe that you were asking no general education students for coming in we do want to continue to provide a lot of support for our 504 students our iep students all of our students and as we are building in student support time increasing the amount of in-person instruction looking at what our wednesdays look like we do need to continue to reach out to the students that our secondary administrators and teams are reaching out to students and families that are struggling and we're attempting to put as much support in place as we can just add just a note to crystal this plan is by no way admitted
002i don't think by anyone a good or the best plan out there i have a student with an iep a 504 he gets 10 minutes of pull-up time when in school i struggle to find out why it's even a waste of everyone's time for 10 minutes by the time they get together open the books what what are we going to work on what's the problem what's the struggle so i admit there's a lot of fault with it is it perfection by any means no not at all there are a lot of people a lot of kids are getting affected by this so i point that out merely to say that we have kids that are getting screwed out of this as well okay i don't want you to think that our kids get priority or
003you know this plan works for us as well it's it's affecting absolutely everybody okay thank you i appreciate that all right next question i think we already answered but i will ask it for the record why can't you look at kids performance in class on their master connect report cards and do an assessment comparing this year and last year with how they are doing in school in regard to remote learning with their grades so i think that was asked and answered by mrs swanson i'm going to add on here that part of what this has allowed for us to do when we have town halls is to provide an opportunity to share how this branch of governance works and where the separation is between our administration and our board so generally speaking the the school
004board wouldn't decide on how to look at data regarding report cards and assessments and compare them because that's what we hired dr sparlin to give him the direction on where as a board we agree to go and he will then assign out to his leadership team the way that that will happen um so i just wanted to kind of point that part out so that it's a moment that we can learn from since we have you here as our audience which we're delighted to have i would also caution using last year's data because remember it was march of last year when everything shut down yeah so even you're yeah it's probably two years old faithful we have talked about this recently was it about two years ago for state assessments yes yeah right because that's
005part of the issue that with this requirement to have state assessments in grades three three please let me know if i'm missing one they do change but three to eight and science at fifth and eighth and junior year junior year and then what other state assessments levels do they check the sct and the sat sat also so um kindergartners and access for english learners at all levels yeah so right now we have to use in person yeah and we had been talking about when this would happen who would be deciding this would be this be a federal decision would it be sorry would this be a state decision and will there be a waiver process would we qualify for the waiver process at this point what percentage roughly of our 18 000 students do we
006have that have not yet been in a building that are in group c do you know about that would not it differs it differs by level we have more of our students that have come in at the elementary level than have come in at the high school level and junior high falls in between those two groups so for instance right now at our junior highs we have 61 percent of our students coming in in person so you've got 39 percent that have not the majority of those students have not come in yet for the school year so when we are needing to take the state assessments those students would have the opportunity to come in but i'm guessing that they will choose not to so do we have any idea if and maybe well i'll
007save that question because it's not actually part of this now i want to go through these um that just made me think of the question okay so the next one is have you considered revamping the summer school program to provide more daily and weekly feedback to parents about how the kids are performing in summer school and perhaps weekly or daily emails as to how the kids are performing i enrolled my kid in summer school once and i didn't get anything brought home until the very last day of summer school we received a report card and it seemed to be more of a daycare program and i got academic help from sylvan tutoring or in individual tutoring so the question here is the question on are we doing a summer school program will that be revamped
008to provide more feedback to parents and how they're performing yes we're looking at greatly expanding our summer school and to be more academic and less field trip types of things especially at the elementary level expanding it to include close to 2000 students with much of the focus being on reading writing and social emotional skills and math anyone else i think it's a really good time to remind teachers because this is the bane of my existence with my eighth grader what is in the google classroom doesn't always get put in the tyler system and then it's three weeks later and i'm looking at his grades and he did have an arb and all of a sudden he's got a d or an f because he didn't do four assignments but i didn't see those assignments because
009i can access tyler it's not google i mean i'm sure i could make him no that's the sunday night argument in our house yeah yeah i gotcha so it's a good time to remind our staff that it would be really lovely if they could up those regularly and thank you for those of you who do i appreciate you anyone else want to weigh in there on summer school you just got to introduce yourself at the microphone oh i'm so sorry she had her hand up oh you i'm so sorry i can't see you very far and i'm good sorry i just can't like there's like lights right here and sometimes i am reading and can't see at the same time sorry uh michelle pine uh question was summer school my son has failed last semester
010this semester so how is he able to catch up over a shortened summer school schedule like i don't understand how this is going to work for him that's why we have here the professionals who can answer that so it will depend on the number of courses or what that would look like we have offered in the past and will continue to offer credit recovery types of courses i don't know if those will meet the specific needs it may be beneficial for you to call me or heather kincaid or even the high school administration so we can talk through about your specific needs okay sounds good thank you i think that brings up a really really good point that i just want to make sure i've put out there on the record which is that all
011of our administrators they really want our kids to do well not because they get any more money they don't they get they get to have the satisfaction of a job well done when you get to a level of administration like this the fact that we want to still know from your students is a really important thing this isn't it stops at your teacher it stops at your administrator it stops at your building principle this goes all the way to dr sparlin who still checks in with people as well and i just want to make sure that people are aware that the people who know your student best really do want to help and if they're still struggling to find some support to be able to help we have a lot of methods that we can
012implement for them that our administrators have created to be able to more individually pick out each one but it's really hard for eighteen thousand kids to kind of blanket say what will work for yours would be what works for 18 000 you know yeah that's all i wanted to add anyone else you gotta just come up and say yeah go ahead sorry crystal casper again um i know for a fact that my son is behind he's a freshman are you guys going to test the kids at the end of the school year to see if they need summer school that is also a good question um mrs douglas i believe you first had started looking into that recently sure so we have a committee that we've been putting together to look at that we don't
013want to take a whole lot of time away from instruction to do the assessments especially with the state coming in so we're trying to find that right balance between looking at assessments to identify those students and taking away instructional time to do that so we have a committee that's looking at those pieces some of it at the secondary level maybe off of grades and teacher and parent recommendations two since you have a high school kid too you need to take a look at the graduation requirements so you need like for instance you need two years of science you need three years of math you need four years of language arts so as you're kind of going through and looking at it and when you're looking at it with maybe his counselor maybe sit down and
014talk about you know i know that i need to make up a credit of science i know that i need to make up well he doesn't need to make up anything i just know that he's very behind he had to be put into that literacy dynamics class this semester because he's very behind in english and i was just wondering if they're going to test them because i mean these kids have been through so much i don't think sending them to summer school is even an option they need to enjoy the summer go on vacations you know spend time with their family i mean they're just so stressed out right now and i just i don't i think throwing them into summer school is just it shouldn't even be an option but to be honest i
015am going to say i hope that it doesn't become a requirement um i know that that's one of the considerations at the state level had been that they require mandatory summer school for all students and at our local level that does not feel like that's going to be the best fit for 18 000 kids any more than anything else because for some kids what you're saying absolutely true for other kids their families are sitting somewhere saying oh my gosh we need to have summer school so one of the things that i really liked about how the culture here has changed is to instead of going just from one test which can indicate a bad day or a kid who doesn't test well we're using them have parent recommendations teacher recommendations and assessments to figure out
016how to address the needs a little bit more specifically um i think that that's pretty much i'm capturing what i've heard you say i'm really just sharing the knowledge that they've earned um but and can i add please um you know in addition to um in addition to looking at you know in our enhanced summer school options for this year to address the concerns and and some of the learning loss that that we're worried about for our kids you know a lot of planning is going in right now to how we start the year strong next year strong for our students knowing that we you know want to take some time to see where kids are at catch them up as best we can and address any deficits that we might see but there is
017you know a lot of a lot of work and a lot of thought and a lot of planning happening already for of course the beginning of next year i know or for next year i know i heard that come up a number of times that work is being done and there and it looks very different than it has in than it has in years past understanding and acknowledging that we're going to be and our students are going to be potentially in a different place than we would expect them to be how did this been a normal year so that i know is some committee work that is our teaching and learning department is you know actively thinking about that and working on on what that will look like for our students thank you i just
018have two more in writing and if we have time before nine i'm happy to encourage more folks to come ask questions as long as we're continuing to have answers or be able to say i don't know i think we can get somewhere what is the percentage of kids per class that are struggling crying and running away with remote learning have you considered collecting some data on that because it seems very high so one of the things i'm gonna i'm gonna leave this to dr sparlin for the specifics but one of the things that i can say on this is that considering that students have privacy rights some of this stuff and and sometimes it's how how sick our kids or who transmitted what to who sometimes that's not shared publicly because students do retain privacy
019rights and we're just not allowed to share it it doesn't mean that it's not known by the people that are required to know it it just means same things like this the crying and running away i i don't know that we would share if students yeah i don't know if you can say how many kids are crying and running yeah because it depends on the day i'm sure some of you who are here know i teach remotely depends on the day one day some kid will cry some days nobody cries everybody's fine so i think that would be very hard data to come up with as a district no matter how hard you tried you'd have to have somebody observing while the teachers trying to teach to count how many kids are crying and or
020running away so i don't know that that's a statistic we can gather dr sparlin care to comment i was just going to add on the uh the uh percent of students who are struggling with the in the classes i think it's already been said but we obviously track the kids who are not uh obtaining a c or better in class the building administrators are working with their teachers and administration at each of the buildings to track that we know how we compare from this year to last year um are there more kids that have these nets yes there are and uh and we've also put in the different interventions at the different schools to help with uh help identify those kids and then provide the interventions for those students who need it and that's one
021of the most important pieces i think that i have been listening to also is the piece about the extra student support time and i've heard different teachers at different levels using it in different ways just based on which students need what but i've seen our teachers come up with some pretty spectacular solutions for individual issues um and i know that they're wanting to um but again yeah that's that's what we have to to know to be able to make good decisions anyone else want to jump in on that well you know i think as it's been addressed it would be hard to get very difficult to get hard data concrete data on this but what i hear in the question is that we know kids are struggling we know that this is not easy for
022for many kids and for some kids it's going okay but we know that there are kids that are struggling we know kids that are not thriving and we know families that you know have these struggles so um again you know i don't know that we have a percentage other than you know monitoring of course and um how students are doing based on assessments mastery connect and their grades and whatnot um but nobody everybody understands that this is not an ideal circumstances for many many students it's a really nice time to plug in person learning say that one more time i cannot hear you it's a really nice time to plug in person learning i've been teaching physics in the classroom and i haven't had anybody go out crying you haven't had anybody had anybody leave
023crying yet you haven't had anyone crying from high school students try the seven and eight year olds but um i think heather's right and what we have to hold is the fact with all of us here that some students do better on remote some students do the same and some students do worse and it's going to be interesting to see how the data rolls out but you know i don't think any of you guys care about the data in general you care about your own children and your own children's progress and i think you have to look at a package of things for their mental health for their learning and for their relationship with you because all of those things matter and that's what i think you guys are here tonight the people that came
024to speak are trying to balance and that's that's not going to be easy so it's it's an individual situation is what it is the final email question another question i had is why can't you just have the kids go home for lunch and return to school if that would minimize the whole in-person school lunch reason for not doing a full day of school i actually have had this question myself and i don't know that i would do justice to the answer uh there were several components related to student safety and reduction of in-person time instructional time when in person to do drop-off and pick up in the middle of the day right i don't know if the person is talking about elementary junior high or high school with elementary running the buses to run everybody
025home for lunch and then run them back would be problematic and we do have lots of people that depend on bus transportation to do that also to just take the hour for some families by the time you got home and then ate and then came back it's problematic very problematic to do that for some of our junior high and high school students where the lunch period could be very short at the most 40 minutes to be able to get everybody out of the building get into their cars get those pieces and then have everybody come back um i think would be problematic okay that's my last emailed one where what i can't quite see what the clock is saying for me on time 8 41 44. 44. okay 16 minutes absolutely we have 16 minutes
026uh it's jason macenko again thank you so much again so sorry that you guys have to be on the board for the pandemic it must be nightmare um well somebody no there was no comment on that well somebody will somebody from the board uh please comment on why or why not an attendance strike on remote learning days would have any effect because we're desperate for leverage to get the kids back in school and i hear about the guidelines and the mandates and whatnot but i would like to remind you that you are elected officials and these aren't laws they're mandates and you're elected to serve us so how would an attendance strike on remote learning days specifically for my family wednesdays affect the school districts how would it make how would it make leverage on
027you guys i understand what you're trying to get at there i can tell you right now i think attendance is already way down on wednesdays it's not that's anecdotal knowing that i also get those letters on wednesdays sometimes sometimes it's technical error sometimes it's that i choose that from my child's well-being they need a day off of the screen sometimes it's that my child has been fooling me that all these things happen with a good kid so i anticipate that this is probably happening across our district um in terms of funding it doesn't affect funding we're hold harmless it doesn't affect i mean we have students enrolled we're required to have your student enrolled truancy affects your family i think more than it would affect the school truancy does affect the family i took a
028call from a truancy officer in the middle of a grocery store who i had already left multiple messages for only for her to start talking like a robot and talking down to me i'm very sorry that happened a few hours that i had with my child gone to do grocery shopping but yeah i mean it's disappointing i mean we're desperate for leverage i mean our tax dollars evidently don't speak enough in the 70 percent of us that are here wanting in-person school reminding you that you are obligated to your constituency not to the state board of uneducated unelected officials okay i mean we're a constituency mr missing if you could stay and what's your they are not elected so can we acknowledge that the people making these mandates are unelected and dictating from the state
029in a mob mentality forcing you to make decisions that go against what we want well so it's like it's like thug mentality so they bring these mandates right and then they basically threaten you uh-huh and say you're going to do what the state wants despite what your consensus constituency wants mr masenko um let me let me there's a lot to parcel out here and we want to do it justice sure um so i got a little speech in there so i just wanted you did get a little speech in there good good on you uh but i think the question there being uh our our illinois state board of education um they are selected how they're elected by teachers they're elected by teachers no this state board is appointed appointed by the governor appointments so
030these are governors professionals that have also spent their life in education i'm not gonna lie i'm pretty sure they've never had a pandemic before either um this is new for every single person there i mean i i went back at one point to try to find an article that could give me some idea of what this will do to our kids and i read an article from in new york city when they shut the schools down the public schools down for a year due to polio and they found that back in 1918 students ended up losing about seven months after graduation unless at 12 years old they went to work full-time because their families decided it was better for them to work than get to school i'm not sure if that's comment on the public
031education of 1918 or on the resilience of childhood so it's really very irrelevant is the kind of the point um the state board of education creates guidelines not to harm kids they're doing this and and what they presented to us last summer is what they felt at that time was the best that they could provide as guidance to 852 local school districts with what little we knew at that time and that evolves the bigger the system the slower it moves we all kind of know the sense of scale that changes when you become a state governing body a lot of the personal individual needs of each children have to be considered as part of the whole so while 70 of the people in this room as you mentioned might feel very strongly that you want
032five days of education when you look at our entire district of 18 000 that number shifts you know what i mean so one of the things that as the public wants well some members of the public want it that's what i'm trying to say so some members of the public want in-school learning some members of the public are fearful because at home sir if you'd like to speak and ask a question you're welcome to come to the microphone otherwise we're going to try to keep this a little bit in order here so that we can try to ask questions can i address uh part part of so the key word and and i've struggled this in my time on the board is why can't we why not and that word that you mentioned is mandate
033the state mandates it you have a state board of education that's appointed they mandate things there's guidance but there's mandates our legislature meets and they have mandates they vote and they say you have to do this or else you don't get your funding you don't have money to do that so this this i i know the issue right now is a is a hot button with with going back to school and coveted but pay attention i know some a couple of you had made comment before this started that hey this really got us paying attention to the school board this really got us watching meetings and what's going on once we go back to school in the fall don't stop watching call your state reps call your state senators watch what they're voting in watch
034what they're mandating us to do and many of them let's call what it is the unfunded mandates which falls into the whole financial picture as well so that word is a big word so don't lose sight of that word once we're back in school keep watching and keep paying attention to what's going on please can i can i give a teacher perspective on this district-wide strike on wednesdays so i when you say district-wide strike on wednesdays i have two questions and my first is as a high school teacher i give my kids things to do when they're not with me and for us it's it's for us right now it's friday we're going to five days but um so if your child doesn't have something to do that's something that we also need to know
035because wednesday should not just be get up take attendance answer one question go to bed or you know my kids play facebook and that's also a very individual experience so for raising hands and trying i i've seen four hands up now and we are at eight minutes to go so i'm going to try to honor this in the order in which you asked mr masenko do you feel that your question has been adequately answered although maybe not the answer you're hoping for absolutely i'm very reasonable thank you thank you for thank you for that acknowledgement we appreciate you being reasonable all right so then the gentleman who jason was standing up was that j who is that i believe we just i don't know gentlemen with the hat that's what i can kind of see
036from here and a mask so um and a coach i just wonder you guys put out a a survey to the public and to your point um lori yeah uh you said that um i guess that the the majority of the public didn't dis didn't want in school learning that's not true i saw the results of that public so you're well i guess what what i'm not trying to be untrue so maybe there's just something that we're missing i'm just communicating about what my intention is so let me see if i can clarify so here's what it is what's that now do you want in school learning or do you know i have my daughter in in school learning she needs it okay so i don't understand what the problem is for advocating for in-school
037learning and trying to say hey this is what i want this is what my daughter is in we've said we have gone ahead and sent out a a survey to our taxpayers who are the employers of the school district if i'm not correct because if they don't pay their taxes nobody gets paid right so you set up this report to the majority of this of the people majority of people have spoken said hey look we want to go ahead and have in school learning if only that were true so here's what that survey said faith do you remember when we sent the survey out what was the specific question because i think you're going to find this very fascinating i found it fascinating because i felt like this should be a cut and dry answer
038either you want to go or you don't is it a black and white issue on if you want to go faith no there are different parameters about i want to go but only if it's six foot social distancing or i want to go but i only want it you know if it's all in person i only want to go if it's somewhat hybrid there are many different gradients of what people want from in-person instruction so while the one end is saying we'd like to go five full days and there is another end that says i don't want to go at all for whatever reason there's this whole middle section how can yorkville pull off their in-school learning but we can't hear you that is my favorite question we get asked that a lot doctor spelling
039i'm going to let you take this one because i know i've got some resources we have more tax money well let's let dr spawn he's the expert so i would happily let him answer you know they decided on one model at the beginning of the year and you know there's a reason why all the large school districts large school districts in the state are doing you know deciding the same models that we have they've all i mean i have a list here of all the districts what they're doing what they're what they're going to be doing and you know the plans that we have presented this evening that the board that will make some decisions on coincide and if not you know i have more in-person learning opportunities than much of what the large districts
040in the area are providing as well but there's a reason why some district you know the different districts made different choices and uh yorkville that you know what they made a choice and things have worked out for them and i'm very happy for that what what is the reason that there was a different choice i think that comes to speak at the and i got you sir there's one lady over there and then you're next and then those are going to be the last two because we're at 856. what what is the reason that we chose to go this way back in july and august where we chose to go starting remote i think that that's really what and please correct me if i'm wrong but i feel like that's that's the basic question here
041why are we doing this you know we were going off the information that we had at the time based on the based on you know throughout this entire pandemic we have received different information whether it be the idph the cdc uh the illinois state board of education conflicting information information that changes on a daily basis from different organizations just as somebody just mentioned that there was cdc information that came out last weekend i spent the entire weekend working on that with our with our attorney in regards to what is this exactly saying because i had i had hundreds of people reaching out and saying you know what you have to have six foot distancing this is what this document says if you follow in this category this is what you must have and you know
042we've mentioned it today is it it's guidance but we've also learned a lot from this pandemic throughout throughout this uh past year and uh and this is you know this is where we're at we have we have we made the decision on january 2nd when i sent that uh information to the parents letting everyone know that we would be returning in person believe me i got a lot of emails saying how can you make that decision now the metrics are this and this this that and the other we made the decision we made the decision to phase it in to ensure that we would be successful as we as we're as we currently are and tonight we're talking about what that next phase looks like if you wanna i'm sorry i'm going to ask for
043you to limit the follow-up just so that we get those last two people but if you have a quick just really quick did yourself receive different information than oswego it's a different size and scope of scale i was gonna i was gonna redirect because i don't think the question has been answered okay uh completely i think the question is what decision did yorkville make that was different than ours can we answer that they decided to prioritize in person over the social distancing or perhaps i don't know their square footage um perhaps they were able to maintain social distancing with the percentage of students choosing in person i i think that if you want to know more about yorkville you should talk to all the people that work there i work in yorkville i think some
044of you know that and it is not the rose garden you think it is you're welcome to think that if you choose that i know from talking to people that i talk to that it is just as harried and just as difficult as it is here and i know lots of people like to portray it as that was so easy for them no it was not and it's still not easy and it's not easy on the kids and there are some kids that are having a bad problem big problems but what i think matters in any of these situations is the maturity that you show when you talk to your kids i've spent 30 years in education and i've seen parents that have situations that are hideous and somehow they guide their children through and
045their children do okay and it's not just coping that's not the only problem people have people have serious issues but some parents choose to have a positive attitude some parents choose to be proactive some parents choose to be helpful and and do what they can to shore up whatever they can shore up and you don't have everything in your control but you do the best you can and that's the attitude that i would highly promote as a teacher and as a board member to anyone who needs to know what to do in a time of difficulty and that's you know i i don't know that we should ask dr sparlin to answer the question how do we choose this when i was in august honestly i was choosing the safety of people because the highest
046priority for me was everybody's got to live that can possibly live and if you want to make that decision you run for board and then you can sit here and you can decide whether you're going to let people maybe die or maybe live and it's not in the interest in the interest of the fact that it's nine o'clock this is what i'm going to say you can laugh at that but i am very glad you're at a meeting now hold on in all fairness to second guess everything i am glad you're here to second guess i am i'm actually thankful because that means that everybody got to a safe place and now you get to be the you know money back monday morning quarterbacks so thank you for the response if we can all please
047retain some good role modeling all of us would be much appreciated as we move to our last two questions the woman i think it's a mottled gray and white sweatshirt next yeah that's you yay i think i called it right i i hope so how can we how can we answer a question for you hi so i'm i'm hearing tonight that you know social distancing guidelines of six feet are what's dictating some decisions here tonight a lot tonight but decisions that have been made are based off of the six feet social distancing the masking and how can we make schools safe i am looking at a picture right now on facebook of cheerleaders in the high school with their heads inches from each other not going to name names i don't know who's in this
048picture it's very blurry so i'm not saying who they are that doesn't matter i want to know why it's okay for our students to be head-to-head in a cheerleading practice our football players allowed to play football our stu our basketball students playing basketball so the question is the difference in school our kids cannot go to school to learn and be emotionally and physically and socially safe five days totally understand the frustration when this is happening so just to continue just to continue some progress so i totally understand your frustration i'm seeing this as an extreme frustration with the fact that we do offer sports that are occurring that social distancing does not always take place in those sports in fact ihsa considers some of these medium and high risk activities um dr sparlin or i'm
049not sure if we have a more athletic so my question is why is it dangerous not dangerous in that setting but it's dangerous five days a week in the school setting someone please explain to me why there's a dangerous the short answer is there's a waiver parent signed to participate i design a waiver for my kids to go to school we will are we allowed we've been doing a real good job folks trying to answer questions and facilitate some good dialogue here because this is a passionate subject not just for those of you sitting in the audience it's a passionate subject for every educator it's a passionate subject for every board member we volunteered for this guys and we didn't quit we care about this stuff so all i ask in return is to just
050remember that the goal is for us to be able to help [Music] bridge some understanding not to try to facilitate more disagreements so if the question is regarding the difference between why you can do this in sports and why you can't do this for school there's a person who can definitely answer it but we have to just let him give that a shot absolutely you might not like the answer i don't know that i like the answer but there is okay we follow the guidelines from ihsa in regards to sports as you as you saw there was a lot of controversy regarding that the sports are delineated by high medium and low risk sports sports are a choice as this is mrs doyle just said and people have it they have have that choice and
051school you is is you have to you don't have that choice you have to be here yeah so we want to be here we want to be in school but we're being told it's not safe so you're taking the guidelines from the sports association and saying it's okay for sports they're different guidelines i i understand but do you see the comparison i'm making here we have to totally make sense that there's not the same guidelines totally agree right it makes no sense that they have different guidelines they do those are voluntary for staff they're voluntary for students they're not required and staff are not required to coach them as part of their job responsibilities like i said i didn't think that there would be an answer that would make anybody feel better but that's what
052the answer is i mean there are just different guidelines of what you can do and in a district where we're trying to offer as many opportunities to children as it is safe to do by the standards that we are required to hold and remember the guidelines for schools way stricter than for any hospital and that's not by local control that is what we have to do to be able to get the 230 million a year that we need to be able to give kids teachers so i mean it's just safety of children while they're in school but we're not concerned about the safety of them oh no we're concerned when they're in sports trust me i'm concerned every day for the safety of children and whatever then why are they allowed and i'm not advocating
053for taking away sports that's not metrics that you use for school sports in school buildings taxpayer-funded businesses so we're at 9.6 and guidelines totally understand that you five days a week i totally understand that you'd like to have the same guidelines for both i think that that's what i'm hearing from you is that you'd like to have the same guidelines for sports and for school and that you feel that because sports can participate in activities that don't have as much social distancing that don't maybe have basking at some points if they're running or swimming that if you can do that then why can't you be in school five days a week the answer is because the rules and the guidelines and the mandates are just different there is a i have no idea how ihsa
054works i do know that they meet a lot and eventually they make a decision on things i know that they have been working with idph because for a lot of families sports are what keep their kids from dropping out and for a lot of kids the reason that they'll stay remote is so that they can not risk being quarantined for not being able to participate in sports because that can happen too okay and i also understand that idph has released guidelines but these are not mandates is that correct are you guys they said they died to follow the guidelines okay so let me let me ask you a question back and i'm going to make this the last one and if you want to just give me an answer then we're going to go to
055the last gentleman because we're already seven minutes beyond what we're allotted so i'm going to ask you a question back do you feel that this board is purposely trying to keep your children in a harmful position of course not there you go we have the same frustrations we have asked these same questions these are frustrations and questions that have been asked pretty much by every parent across the country for a year in fact i was just thinking before we got here i think the second to last in-person meeting we had was a public forum this time last year and the topic on the on the table was a referendum and questions about financing and money and the things we needed a year ago one-to-one technology was not on our radar we were not going to
056be able to do that for a real long time it wasn't even close that's how much things have changed in a year a week later we're talking about kids not being in school so what we're trying to do is the same thing you're trying to do we're trying to advocate for all the kids just like you're trying to advocate for your kids except for we've elected all of you to make what we want happen decisions for the children's education of public education in this community what you elected was one people that didn't know a pandemic was coming to board members that are explicitly not allowed to cater to one specific special interest group you're required to be a statistician can we get that last question i think that's very unfair to call me a special
057interest group well i i don't i don't know mr doyle can we just can we have an ask question come on it's what's the difference i mean it just depends they're they're both it's a guideline which is an unfunded mandate a guideline which is an unfunded mandate who was the last question uh the gentleman in the blue t-shirt i knew it was blue though so that's good um just real quick i have six nieces that go to the pensacola school district there are thousands more students there in our district they've been in school since august but that's not my question my question that's what that state chose that's their governor and so my question to you is is what is the end game i understand it costs money to offer remote and in person what
058is the end game when do we tell the people in this district when this pandemic when does it come that the pandemic is over and you will no longer have the choice to work from or go to school at home and we need to bring all the kids back to the classroom i mean have we started to think about that end game of when it's time to say the end game i think from day negative one has been how do you bring kids back to where we don't have to do remote oh i wish i had an answer for that one i think what we're talking about with regards to the requests that people that have come here tonight to speak about five full days in person is what we're looking at is the fall
059first day of school next year so for all intents and purposes i guess my question is at what point does it change from being able to get your students what they need to not wanting to have a remote option for other students when that's what they need and that's something that we haven't gotten to yet because we we don't know hopefully we we will soon thank you sure i would follow that up by saying that it would be advantageous to put out a statement or figure out what that statement is that says based on or until this statement is made by kendall county isbe governor pritzker whoever is going to make that statement what is that statement that says we are going in person on august 15th 16th whatever that that date is what is
060what does that look like because now it's like well that's our hope for the fall but what what is it that we have to hear or what is it that the state of illinois has to do that says yep five days a week all day long that's what school looks like again right but be careful that's what i would want to hear we can't make that decision we do know that last summer when june the end of june arrived we received the initial 67 pages of guidelines mandates you know that sometimes the words are a little bit interchangeable it depends if money's involved or this that the other and that's pretty much as far as i can tell what the difference really has been um however there's also workers comp involved there's liability involved there's
061a lot of legal issues that no one's ever had to deal with before when we received that from the state last year are we expecting to see something like that again this year that could help us and be informed a little bit more as to when we are no longer required to follow mitigating any sort of mitigating efforts do you know what that looks like have we been given any indication yet no we haven't been given any indication regarding that yet no but you could always reach out to all of your local and state representatives at any time whether you want five person five day in person or whether you want a remote option for next year i think it's a good point that not only your school districts because it's not just this school
062district dealing with that right it's every school district across many many states i know you have what point are you gonna say hang on one second first we've asked a whole bunch of questions we followed up with the guy in the blue shirt we can ask questions you guys for real i don't know but i think i could ask questions about this and the whys and the what-ifs probably for the next 10 hours and not have answers that satisfy me dr sparling can do that and does do that and not have answers that satisfy him there's a lot of unknown and honestly that's the biggest horror of of this besides the people that are getting hurt the incidental thing happening is that there is so much unknown nobody has that kind of certainty of what's
063going to happen this week they do as long as you can maintain masking and social distancing you know you can even see here that it's sometimes not possible to do that we have different reasons or glasses are fogging or the masks they slip and things like that and there's social distancing involved and there's different risks whether you're three five seven or eighteen i think that and i think that what i have heard several different times tonight is that our goal the district's goal is to return to five days of instruction in person starting in the fall as best we can plans are being made that is what we are planning on and hope to achieve however we will also be following the guidance whenever it may come from idph um isbe and and and all
064of this i think it would be i think that statement in and of itself at this point i don't know how we can make any other concrete statement come you know the summer or fall that's the goal that's what we're doing and working our hardest on i don't how in this ever changing in this ever changing climate how in the world can we guarantee you that where will be come the first day of school i just i just don't know how i just don't know how to do that right can we move on so i'm pretty sure that we are over time i hope that um we all can recognize that there's a lot of the same concerns we need to plan for next year i need to know if i need to start saving
065money now for private school for my child i totally get it we have all made these decisions too nobody can help with that right now there just isn't a way for the people sitting at this table to be able to say i think that it's time for your student to do xyz is the best if i could i would i i really wish that we could give you something more concrete i know that we work on that every day i know that all of the people that are sitting behind you work on that more hours than i think they've ever dreamed they knew how to work and and the goal is there so this is what we can offer and it's not going to be the right thing for everybody but it's the best that
066we can do at this point and we don't know if that will change so um moving forward item we have a few more things to cover this evening one is board member comments um shall we go around we'll start ruth do you have comments you'd like to share for the good of the order sure um i didn't have i don't have anything formally prepared or anything but i just you know we have all received a lot of emails over the past week just like we have all year that span the spectrum of opinions and i appreciate every single one of them every person who has reached out i've tried really hard to at least respond in some way i especially appreciate those that are respectful and thoughtful i appreciate less the ones that are maybe
067not so nice but i read them anyway um i've heard some of my fellow board members make comments and i agree with them and saying that none of none of these plans is what we want to do and none of these plans is what anybody wants to be doing but we need to do something i feel strongly that we need to continue to move forward my oldest son is a senior so talking about next year really doesn't do it many good and i'm concerned about him being ready for college but i'm not here to make choices based on what i want to do for my own kids i probably would make different choices if if that's what i felt like my responsibility was we're here to consider every student from pre-k through our life skills
068programs and not just the students either we have to think about our staff and the students families as well and i have really thought very hard about all of these different plans that were presented to us that a tremendous amount of work has been put into i appreciate the feedback that we've received from teachers and parents in regards to those plans and i will be making decisions tonight based on you know knowing that there are pros and cons to every plan and there's a lot of cons to every single one of them and i'm trying to some things you can't just number where do those weigh out because some cons are maybe worth more points than others i guess um but i appreciate that we've been able to have constructive dialogue and i'm glad that
069members of the community came out tonight and i i know that everyone's very frustrated we're frustrated too this is not what you signed up for it's not what we signed up for it's not what any of our teachers or administrators signed up for and we're all just doing the best that we can and trying to communicate as best we can because that is key i think about my own students who are you know on paper they're doing fine with remote learning um but every single one of them who has been able to go even just a couple of days in person commented to me how much better it was to be in the classroom how things just clicked for them um just because they're sitting in the room you know one of my sons like
070the teacher didn't even present new content but i just got it today being in the classroom and i think that that is important and impactful and this is for a kid who if you look at his grades you wouldn't think that that was a problem for him but it was important and i think a lot of that is because since kindergarten that's where they've learned that's their learning environment that they've been conditioned to know this is where i learn and i think that we should be proud of the fact that our students know that they can learn in the classroom and that that of course should be our ultimate goal is to get these kids back in the classroom that's that's all i have um well a lot of what i'll say i guess but
071ruth said it's like we planned it but um but we didn't um you know i'm a board member i'm a member of this community i'm a parent i have two kids in the district i have a six-year-old who is struggling majorly and it's heartbreaking it's hard to see her left behind it's it's difficult um so please know that i empathize with much of what you have said even if i didn't have a struggling student i think i could really you know i i hear the love and the care that you have and the desire that you desires that you have for your students i just i just want to say that even um you know so in my term on the board i've tried to make decisions and i've tried to vote in the best
072interest of all students within this community even while i know there are many people many families and many parents who you know don't agree with those decisions who don't believe um that these decisions may be coming down from the board how i vote um is the best for their for their child and you guys do know best we do know what's best for our kids and we're doing the very best that we can to vote our pensions votes vote for what's right again for all students not just our own you know i hear and understand and acknowledge and read these emails and understand the concerns are valid they're real all of these things are true for sure but again you know i'm just doing the very best that i can to the to look at
073the information that we're provided a lot of information a lot of research a lot of data is given to us is shared with us we have to sift through it we have to consider recommendations from you know our educational experts up here and make decisions best we can and i've tried in this time to make decisions that are based on you know health and safety guidelines and guidance of our you know of our students and i've done the best that i can i understand that that really might be unsatisfactory for for many of you i do want to just mention um we are going to be we do have some plans some things to vote on tonight and i just want to say i know many of us have said a number of times that
074we're a number of times up today and over the course of the year that we are not in love with the plans these are not perfect plans that's all true too i want to be really careful though about i just want to say that the amount of work that has gone into developing the develop these plans and these options have been has been incredible i truly believe that we have been given the best options at our disposal to to choose from and none of those options are perfect we all know what we all know where we should be which is in person in school safe um but so i don't want to you know we've said a lot of things about the plan and i think it's really important that we not are not disparaging
075the work that went into it that this is again i think a lot of good information and within um the realm of what we can do given the guidance that we have and given you know the opportunities that we have you know in our district so i did just want to say that so i appreciate the staff and administration for developing these plans i appreciate the teachers i know it's a hard job i know it's such a hard job especially with everything changing so i appreciate the teachers that are out there implementing the plan there's a lot to say there's a lot that's been said this evening there's unanswered questions that have been asked for the last several months since the fall since we tried to get back to school well you know bottom line
076is that we as a board have you know referred to them as guidelines mandates that we have to follow and that that's a big part of it we we could say okay we're going to throw out all the guidelines we're not going to do what what is recommended by the the boards that oversee us and if something does go wrong something does happen it's on us um so so we try to make those decisions for the good of the whole you know we'll share personal experiences i shared a negative experience with uh iep pullout time i also have the negative experience of that child being out on medical leave from last christmas who's been out almost you know over a year and a half almost so there is a need to get back in school
077understand that but the need to do it in a way that we are able to by following the protocols that are set forth to us it's not a situation i think many of us want to be in unfortunately we're we're a large community uh we have eighteen thousand students where we spread over wisconsin oh my gosh oswego no no you know portions of juliet i mean we have a wide variety of people and you know thanks for coming out this is a good response for for forums that we've had in the past there are forms that we've had where we've had three people come out and ask questions so thank you for coming out and asking the questions but we have received oh my gosh um tons and tons of emails and it is from
078every every point of view every perspective from in class five days full day to remain hybrid to almost every variation in between so i i think there may be a majority of people that say yes we would prefer to be in in school but as faith said it is in in person in school with a number of different hybrid options that people would prefer they're it's hard to follow but we are trying to do our best we want the best for for our kids you've heard that many of us have kids that need to be in school that's that's where they we know they thrive that we know that's where they're going to succeed that's what we want but we have to work through what the state of illinois is allowing us to work through
079at that pace unfortunately i think you guys pretty much summed it up i'm going to do what i always do i'm going to vote my heart my heart's in the classroom europe that's it yeah i mean they already said it all right yeah well you know it's my turn and not yet mr would like to go oh i thought you said i'm sorry brent i misunderstood what you said so i appreciate everybody's questions everybody's statements tonight um for those of you that have listened to all of us speak before you know that there are seven different opinions up here and that's an okay thing tonight we're we're about to vote on making schools a little bit more open a little bit more normal but it's not what we want i'll tell you you know my
080viewpoint is is that based on the plans we have before us tonight i'd vote on none of the above i want five days full five full days but that's that's not an option and that would not pass this board i'm telling you that's the reality of it and everybody has the reasons for voting the way they do and i don't criticize anybody for it so understand tonight that what we vote for is kind of best of the worst uh right i will ha i have a different opinion than was kind of thrown out there earlier when i thought the great question came up about what does next fall look like what is august 15th or 17th or whatever the day what does it look like and while yes it is correct we don't know what
081the limitations will be placed on us at that time by the state i think we can be proactive and i think we as a school district should say as of march 1st our plan is to open next school year with no remote option back to school back to 2019 and that will be the plan until we are told by a specific entity or person that we can't do that and if that happens and i i was talking with some some teachers the other night it was great to to get their feedback and their input and they kind of asked me the same question well where's the plan where's the plan for next year why why don't we have the i said we have the plan tonight we're approving a phase three plan we have a
082phase two plan we already went through phase one right so all we have to do is say hey we're opening next school year fully open and i hope it happens and if something can happen we've already approved what different plans look like and and i say that for a specific reason one we as a community need to know need to understand what each kind of plan and level looks like but what we can never answer is when right but i also say it for our wonderful folks in the administration that have worked so hard this year trying to develop these plans take the feedback and the criticism that the board has provided and try to curtail these plans that meet the needs that we're asking upon them and they are telling us is the best
083that we can do to provide education for the kids because that's what we're here to do so yeah when we're at 2.06 if i wrote that down correctly at statewide positivity rate i don't know why we're not back full time but we're not so illinois tony it is really my turn now yes it is sorry to interrupt you before brent i really thought that you were just agreeing with ali and then saying you okay um i have to say honestly if all of the people most of the people who are here tonight it showed up last february i would have been thrilled because as a classroom teacher who's taught for a long time and i'm not far from retirement i had a lot of questions about whether technology was the direction we should be going
084because i did believe in the social parts of teaching and in the personal parts of teaching and all of that so it's great to hear a lot of people who believe in that and i hope that when we do go to school in the fall and my hope is that we go to school in the fall and we still accommodate most of the people who go to our schools not just say this group your needs are not important or this group your needs are not important but we find a way to make it work for a variety of groups and not excessive because that's a logistical problem but [Music] i now know that my viewpoint of technology versus in person has become a lot more nuanced and that's not just because i teach remote it's
085because i see what's going on with the kids in all these different situations and you guys bring up very important points about mental health about how do you get kids to not feel zombie-like sitting in front of a screen all the time if we get beyond this in another year i hope we don't forget all the lessons we learned i hope we don't forget that because there was a time we were pushing up to an education where we were just doing that we were saying we'll just have the devices babysit the kids we'll have devices raise the kids we'll have the devices take over and that'll be that and that was not a good plan covet gave us a chance to look at that and say you know what it is too much it's too
086much time on screen so i feel very badly that some people see it as a completely negative thing i think there are a lot of lessons that have been learned i think next year if we offer a remote option it could be a very strong option and i am i am a person who's very much about logistics one of the logistical issues with this year is once we started people were placed in classes and you would have had to un do all these classrooms to go five days a week and that is really one of the logistical issues that has created what we're voting on tonight because you can't undo some of the things that you've already done for all this time unless you want to have a bunch more parents saying i'm not going
087to let my child lose their teacher i'm not going to have my child go to another classroom or another school or a different situation so these are not easy choices when you get down to the people and the last thing i want to say is i am thankful i am thankful for parents who disagree i am thankful for parents who are feisty because i think you should be feisty for your children and you should be outspoken and you should think of every way that you can to try to advocate for them but i'm also thankful for i want to start here secretaries at every school in this district the secretaries are the hearts and brains of this district and we all know that's true but we pretend like other people are in charge i want
088to thank the maintenance people and the custodians those people every day are doing things that make it better and healthier for the kids to go to school and to have a good day and do what they need to do i i just i can't tell you how much work they do the tech tech co people even though like i said tech has a cautious part of it for me um the tech people are are helping so much and there's so many questions from all the different people who are involved in using this technology but thank goodness those people help teaching assistants special ed all the teachers all the staff all the administrators are doing everything they can and as a board i just want to say this we sometimes as a board make it hard
089for everybody in the district don't we we make it hard for the parents because they don't get completely what they want we make it hard for administrators because they feel like they have to say what we want to hear we make it hard for teachers and other staff members who don't feel like they're hurt at all but none of those things is true all of them are partially true and it is it is a hard world right now i'm on the board for another month and a half and i hope that things can go well in the future and i hope that things go really well in the fall i know that i'll do what i can for kids always always but i just i think tonight you guys are good to come out you're
090good to advocate for your kids i agree with with ruth that i wish everyone were as civil as some of the people who write us but um in this particular situation with these plans i'm going to vote based on practicalities that's what i'm going to do so i think that that leads me tony thank you for that too a good point to mention which is that we are shortly going to be having a school board election there are four board members up here who have served us for a good long time that have chosen not to run for re-election mrs moyer has served us for four years mr baumann will be eight mr lightfoot will be eight and mrs morgan will be four and for the last four or eight years they have devoted the
091good of our district and all of the things that go along with it sometimes over the needs of their own kids because that's what we each volunteered to do and so i want to thank each board member for their service and although i understand completely why this would be a graceful time to move to the next chapter i think that the experience that you have given to us and to our community has been very valuable for the items tonight i'm gonna be very upfront about the fact that i do not at this time feel i can agree to move to a phase three and i'm gonna just briefly explain my rationale and it's not gonna be the rationale that everyone else would use but it's it's the rationale i'm using i'm speaking on behalf of
092the families that just barely by the grace of whatever situation they're in have been able to make the decision to put their kids back in in phase two when they couldn't in phase one the families that are in phase two now that would need to pull their kids out if the phase three went through because of family situations because of other things that's a big group of parents that we don't often talk about because it's real hard to quantify it's hard to quantify if i would go now but i wouldn't go then at what point do we do this i'm also choosing this on behalf of all of the individuals we have 2300 employees plus we're the largest employer in the county and we have employees that are so so dedicated and i am seeing
093that they are giving us 135 000 right now and sometimes one more change is just too many and it's not because they're not good at their job it's not because they don't want what's best for kids they do but every time we make a change to plans it doesn't just make a small change it makes an enormous one thinking of the unknowns so for those groups and i do agree we do have representation of pretty much every end of the different areas that i've seen community fall in not because i don't want kids in school but because i do believe that sometimes stability has to be allowed to be given a chance i cannot vote to move to a phase three for april 7th so i just wanted to make sure that i've shared that
094action items item 6.1 may i have a motion to make a motion to approve the elementary phase three plan a no changes to the current plan second second mrs croner i miss morgan aye mrs swanson no mrs doyle aye mr baumann mr lightfoot no mrs moyer aye motion passes five two again i misspoke i the no change plan i would be voting for my apologies item six point two elementary phase three plan b i make a motion to approve the elementary phase three plan b move wednesday's remote court instruction to mornings second mrs doyle no mrs swanson no mrs moyer no miss morgan no mr bauman mrs corner no mr lightfoot no motion fails 0-7 item 6.3 i make a motion to approve the elementary phase 3 plan c to move in-person instruction on wednesday
095mornings and live streaming for remote students second miss morgan aye mr lightfoot aye mrs corner no mr bauman mrs swanson hi mrs doyle no mrs moyer no motion fails three four item 6.4 i make a motion to approve the secondary phase 3 plan a combining a b groups for 4 days five hours in person instruction second mrs croner i'm mr lightfoot aye mrs swanson hi miss morgan aye mrs moyer hi mrs doyle no mr bauman aye motion passes six one item 6.5 i make a motion to approve the secondary phase three plan b keep a group b groups and increase to full two days of in-person instruction second mr lightfoot no miss morgan no mrs doyle no mrs swanson nope mr bauman no mrs moyer no mrs croner nope motion fails 0-7 final comments from
096the board you know we just had them and the orders changed a little bit so i think unless anyone has anything finally that they would like to add seeing nobody wave or anything i'm going to go ahead and say i'd like to request a motion to adjourn thank you i make a motion to adjourn second all in favor hi thank you