2021-03-15 Central 301 BOE Live Stream

001brown johnson nolan rabe here gorman here we need a motion second to approve tonight's agenda second i'm sorry me thank you i was second first okay um brown yes johnson yes hellenberger yes nolan yes yes rabe yes gorman yes please join allegiance us the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all hi everybody i'd like to welcome everyone listening at home and who came out through uh some slush and ice tonight um dr stern you'd like to recognize any visitors we have um of course members of our community with us tonight welcome uh we have our ca leadership with us tonight welcome we have mr athief with us who will be a new board member starting soon

002welcome and um steve diversity our athletic director will give us an update on athletics so thank you for joining us tonight i'd like to be a public comment we have a few people um hello my name is i waited until after the friday email to see how this would affect my children and other remarkable learners going into this i've always known going back full time would hurt equity in education because this board has said over and over face to face with importance that importance is totally important to me it is also important to get all of them back not a selection all of them back safely for the safety of the community safety of me the safety of them safety the teachers have gotten vaccinated the community has not they're still waiting i've done this

003for an entire year now i've waited watched listened and voiced my concerns the questions posed and surveyed where do we want to go back fully remote or do we want to change teachers be that one the question should be in the middle of a pandemic still you told us last meeting that this system wasn't broken so why fix it eight weeks let this school year end the way it started let us influence these learners and show them the good in their community let's keep them safe in a global plan i am here against doctor's orders and my husband a three-in-one grandmother she wished nothing but seven years ago i made a cross to a little child in a box i said if you live out of the country no matter what i might be dying

004but she needs this education and she needs it to be equal but she needs to be right next uh here grab it okay all right my name is kira grab and i'm speaking as vice president of cea each tuesday since the start of the school dr stern and dr mangan have had town halls for the staff so they can get information they can ask questions only after ca requested a special town hall so all staff could hear the district's plan did one take place last friday otherwise staff would have found out about the new plan via email at the same time or shortly before the rest of the community did after the special elementary town hall meeting on friday staff left the meeting with many questions unanswered staff were posting questions in the chat box

005throughout the meeting and as the town hall took place at noon and all the kids were coming back at one and the questions still weren't answered dr stern and dr mongan were asked if they were going to take the time to answer all the valid and important questions staff had we were told that there wouldn't be time as they needed to get communications out to families and that maybe they would try at the next town hall which is tomorrow that is a day too late there are questions and concerns that need to take place now they things need to be approved and talked about before anything is approved leaving staff with more questions than answers friday left elementary staff feeling undervalued and unheard staff report repeatedly by dr mangan there would be no change in

006schedules the only change would be is that they'd be coming back full day if this is a true belief by dr stern and dr mangan then i don't believe that they know the dynamics of the elementary building every teacher's schedule is going to change classroom teachers and service providers will need to modify schedules to accommodate one another's schedules as well as luncheon specials it's impossible for the current elementary schedules to stay the same with students returning full day special teachers who have been teaching remotely all year will have significant change their schedules for instance pe they'll need to revamp their schedules and how they accommodate their students in a different learning environment which can change at the drop of a hat depending on whether especially since they don't have access to gyms and these will

007be utilized for lunch staff need adequate time to plan for these changes not only administration but more importantly you the board need to look at the eight pages of questions that came out of that town hall as well as the hundred elementary staff that took the time to put their concerns in the cea survey that we provided our members only until that is done can any kind of decision be made and any decision made should by no means be rushed thank you all right our last public comment is jennifer benson hi first off i just want to say that i do have a tremendous respect and um for the teachers and all they do and i do appreciate um all the hard work that they do i really do and i love and respect them

008so i just want to put that out there up front um and um and i just i believe personally that um it would be best for students to go back full time the suicide rate has has gone up dramatically i've had some parents that have actually sent me pictures of their students just on the couch and they're just they look so lethargic and um and not motivated and they're just depressed and you know and they're telling me that their kids are not they're not doing well because you know a person without a purpose is you know well we just i believe that god created us to be with people be with one another and create us to need a purpose in life and um i i believe that god also created us to need one

009another as people um and just to be with each other and i i know how i understand both views and i understand both sides i really do and the different perspectives um but i believe it is really hurting these kids not to be in full time and not to um to be with one another and um and i know some of the teachers and i know some of the students are just craving that and wanting to be back in and um and i know it would just be good for it's not because of what i want i believe it would be good i know it would be good for the students and such an encouragement for them to be back with one another every day and the teachers as well and there's been so many

010schools that have been opening up full time and there's either even some that have even been opened up since august some public schools as well as private schools and they're doing very very well with everything all the guidelines in place and so it's been proven that um you know that it can be done and um and it can be done successfully um but regarding the email on friday i do have some questions because it's just a little bit i guess a little bit confusing um it did say that currently you're planning on keeping a remote and through the end of the year and also hybrid until the end of the year unless there are there are parent volunteers and i'm i'm all for volunteering and one of my questions is for central high school it

011said you needed two people for the lunch hour to volunteer and i just my question is does that mean two people per day um starting april 5th or does that mean two people total that you need so that's one of my questions i wasn't sure what that meant and then another question is i'd like to suggest because i know other schools are opening and they're not requiring um parents to volunteer and i talked to lake zurich high school today and some other schools and they said that they they are not requiring that and they've never heard of such a thing honestly they said that they that's not something that they would ever require of their parents is to volunteer um in order that a school would open now again i'm fully supportive of volunteering and

012i would love to volunteer i've talked to other parents that want to volunteer we want to see our kids back in school and we love our kids and we want to help and i believe in pulling together as a community especially during this time and this crazy time for all of us we're all affected you know in different ways it's really hard for all of us honestly um and so i just want to be clear i do believe in supporting one another and volunteering but i don't believe that it should be a requirement to open up the school so i guess my i'm asking even if you can't find enough volunteers because some people actually you know work and i know they can't and um they can't volunteer during lunch time or they can't volunteer

013you know to um to drive their kids to school but a put on a mask please and then b um you're gonna have to wrap it up because oh yeah yeah sure i'm sorry yeah yeah um so i basically i'd like to ask um if it could open without being a volunteer and then uh or if you didn't have enough volunteers and then also i know there's a budget of a million dollars i wonder if you guys received that yet if and if so if that could pay for extra but buses as well as far as the volunteer you know instead of volunteering could you could the million dollar budget that was given by the government pay for more buses and also for um for people watching at lunchtime so that's all my questions one

014other question is i had um last year i talked about a book called plain song and i want to know okay i do want to ask about plain song if that was taken out of the curriculum uh because the inappropriate uh of it is called plain song and it's page 55 and it just talks about pale ass cheeks rising and falling so basically it's plain song by kent harris but i want to see if that was taken out of the school curriculum because i believe that's inappropriate thank you we're going to move on to action reports second to discuss and approve the consent agenda the move second revenues and expenditures are in your summary packet revenues are currently tracking at 48.51 compared to 46.89 a year ago expenditures are at 50.80 compared to 52.06 a

015year ago since last board meeting the districts received 113 563.63 in impact fees for 17 home starts and then transition fees came in at fourteen thousand four hundred and twenty dollars the bills payable reports for both northern cain and central are normal for the month of march and then also in your board packet you should see a um an annual approval of part of the grant process when we're filling out grants we have to have board delegate certified people to approve the grants so in your packet you'll see the list of all the different grants or the state risk assessments and things that we have to fill out and who's responsible for those reports questions for dana johnson yes kellenberger yes nolan yes panera yes rave yes brown yeah garment i need a motion that's

016listed approve the resolution of the dismissal of part-time teachers lisa blake taylor clark karen corbett mandolin emma tessa farwell christie gardon heckman sandra gutierrez sorry mallory kennedy joanne muller jamie netsky jordan pastorek kristen rasmussen annie roder andrews very michelle cher so for the part-time resolution if you recall every year as part of the process of the law we're required to bring all part-time employees foreign for uh non-renewal many of these individuals be re-hired back fairly quickly it's just a process we go through due to the 10-year laws and so they're just coming forward for that purpose and as we look at sectioning for next year we'll look to be bringing them back if necessary questions right yes okay um okay i got a motion for the dismissal at first i need someone to read that

017same thing that's what laura did i can read it i moved to approve the resolution of the dismissal of first second or third year probationary teachers catherine taylor shayna nicole lauren rickard at the end of the 2020-2021 school year second so again these are first second and third year probationary teachers who are being non-renewed which means they do not have any recall rights part of the process in education is we can do a reduction in force which allows employees to come back on a recall basis based on when they are hired by the board of education these employees are being non-renewed and so on will not be returning for next school year okay nolan yes yes yes brown yes madison yes kellenberger yes barman yes uh i'm up to approve the resolution for the dismissal

018of fourth year probationary teacher lee ann huntley currently for the reason listed at the end of the 2020 2021 school year welcome for the fourth year teacher uh nonprofit teacher there is a reason for cause if you look within the memo we must submit the reason for cause releasing a fourth year probationary teacher and so uh you'll see that within the board packet uh for you to see any elements in terms of why we are releasing this employee again they will not be returning for the twenty 21 22 school year right an hour yes yes brown yes johnson yes yes nolan yes gorman yes right next week motion in second to discuss and approve the adoption of the new ap stats textbook remember last month i brought for the ap stats book i think you've

019looked at it's been out on the shelf for 30 days so we're looking to make this purchase for our ap students in statistics any questions for me based on the number you received last month or after you've looked at it all right rabe yes bro yeah johnson yes kellenberger yes nolan yes canara yes gorman yes next week motion second to discuss and approve the annual agreement with the fox valley educational cooperative superintendent to serve on the board of directors second so um we currently have agreements we're part of the northern king county efe-110 for vocational services and then consistently i've served on the board of directors for the fox valley vocational center as we're looking to enhance those programs as well and strengthen our partnership north and south all right [Music] yes gorman yes next

020we need a motion second to approve a live auction for the treatment of the natural gas second the district's current national gas contract with constellations up in june so we were going to do the same services we did for the electricity we got a really good rate with our electricity renault so we're going to do the same process with the natural gas in your in your board memo you see the timeline of when the auction's going to be would be march 31st at 10 a.m last about 15 20 minutes i don't even think it lasted that long last time so as part of this approval you're approving [Music] central's administration to authorize the award of the contract directly after the live auction so we can lock in that price any questions this is the second

021year we did this or electricity electric okay okay pam nolan yes yes rave yes brown yes jason yes kellenberger yes gorman yes all right to discuss an approved veterinary affiliation agreement the barrington square animal hospital and the puddle this comes through almost monthly as our efe is working hard to get us business partners we have worked with barrington square before so this will just be an updated agreement the puddle is new to us as an opportunity to work with them as a business partner so we're excited for this opportunity and look forward to you approving it aqua fitness and pet rehabilitation correct seriously fantastic yeah don't tell my daughter it's awesome don't tell my daughter about it diversity is here to give us an update on athletics and activities good evening so i'm four weeks

022ago i stood here kicking off the winter season now i stand here with the winter season closed so it was a blur and the greatest thing is uh we survived it all so i'll start with middle school because i think uh you know they're doing some good things down there and you know first off before we get into that i still want to thank you know buildings and grounds because i can tell you cleaning in between games and and the manpower that it takes to shuffle people in and out of the gym get it disinfected so we can keep the games rolling was you know phenomenal i think we had it took us we got it down to about 12 minutes so the turnaround was really quick and efficient and then uh you know really

023a special thought shout out to tech and matt mccarthy especially because doing the huddle focus there was many times on the back end where he had to do things from home getting a text from me saying the cameras are flipped what can we do and he would fix it from home and you know i think we only ended up with one major headache through all the games and it just started to loop and there was nothing we could do it wasn't on us it just was a streaming thing so we ended up losing like five minutes of of course one of the big games but it is what it is we got it back up and luckily it went in double overtime so people still saw the end um but we did start with streaming

024the middle school games we invited the seventh and eighth grade girls to come up and play at the high school which they were all super excited but very intimidated as the coaches said just because they're like oh we hope the varsity girls aren't going to be here to watch us and all that but uh you know surprisingly i go back and see how many people viewed it they averaged between 200 and 350 viewers for a seventh and eighth grade game which is pretty awesome and i think because they play early mom and dad were able to turn it on at work you know and still do their things and watch because i know that they didn't even come close to maybe 20 of the 50 50 people they could have and i think a lot

025of it is just their four o'clock and a five o'clock start is tough for everybody so you know that's a great thing that uh you know they're able to do that and they still have three more games to go so next week they wrap up with middle school girls basketball uh they completely finished uh successfully finished girls volleyball boys basketball cheer and football is starting now they're going to do a three-week practice session now and then they're going to take a break when wrestling and track starts because they use a lot of the same athletes and then they're going to come back when those two seasons are done and finish up their last three three and a half weeks of football going into the summer so then this way they know they could be guaranteed

026outside things will be a little drier a little bit you know better for those athletes there um scholastical was a was a complete success for them as well uh so moving into the high school so i stood in front of you before we had dance cheer girls basketball and boys basketball a lot has happened in that short six week season four weeks of competition you know dance finished second place in the fox valley conference which is huge because usually it's huntley jacobs and you know we we finished second jacobs finish first and then uh qualified for state again i believe it's their fifth year in a row and so they finished fifth place which every year they keep getting higher and higher and you know that's you know a great feat considering we go from

027one a to two eight next year so they're moving up a rung which makes things a little bit tougher but within the conference you know our coach feels confident because we're still scoring higher than the other 2a school so it's it's a good thing there uh cheer they finished seventh overall cheer was an interesting one because a lot of things we do well they took out no stunting you know that's one of our strong suits you know the the tumbling piece and some of the other things that's not where we score most of our points so that's where where we kind of finished where we thought but they still qualified for state finished 17th out of 25 that qualified so that's still out of all the high schools it's still pretty good so we're not

028complaining there moving into our two uh record-setting programs and both coaches are very disappointed we don't have a state run but it is what it is uh the girls basketball team finished uh 12-0 in the fox valley conference um with a point differential of plus 138 so some games were closer but they never finished that close uh the only two losses they had were carmel to carmel catholic and bartlett and they were the fox valley conference champs they won the tournament last week and you know it was probably one of the best girls games i saw the score at the end of the first quarter five to two because it was the best defense around it was fast paced it was like wow you know very nerve-wracking because you know you want your team to

029be on the other side and our big players stepped up towards the end and it came uh came out in our in our favor so then we turned around saturday morning came back for boyce conference championship game and and uh we beat kerry grove you know 52 to like 29 you know it was not super close at all but our boys is a very electric group there's four juniors and one sophomore that started and they're really fun very athletic they finished their overall season 16-1 so basically in the last four weeks we've had 32 basketball games and so and and i say that and i kind of chuckle we've had zero incidents you know and and that's a great feat because practicing every day we know when these kids leave they do the kid things

030and we stayed safe so that's a tribute to our kids and our coaches and you know being very diligent with with everything and we're hoping to carry that into you know our next season which is volleyball boys soccer and football and i know football's been the biggest question mark like what are we going to do and and dr stern and dr mangano with all the mass regulations it was two you know football just started and 48 hours after now the mass regulations change and so it was that quick okay we're gonna we're ordering these masks for the helmets which in turn it helped us because we had a lot of football community that were worried about wearing a mask on their face under the helmet and the breathing and now the max masks are attached

031to the face mask so now you have about two and a half inches and so then from there you know we provided them the gators for the sideline so that way when the helmets come off the gators around their neck they just pull them up because those of you that know football you have no pockets so where would you keep a mask on the sideline so you know we're providing our athletes what they need to be successful and so and we open up football this saturday and uh as a conference we decided the first week the entire conference is going to play at huntley because they have the turf and luckily with what we just got now we wouldn't be ready for friday so you know we're playing there 11 30 and 2 o'clock on

032saturday so we're back to back which is great uh once once we get the spectator information i'm going to share all that how they know everybody's on pins and needles but i'll get into that in a few minutes but it's a mathematical equation that for some reason you just can't get it to add to enough so boys soccer opened up last week against carrie grove they tied uh our coach was ecstatic because we we have a lot of state perennials in boys soccer he calls him up he goes steve we scored more points this year we did last year already because they get points for ties wins and losses so i said hey starting on a positive note so it's it's a lot of good things and that's what we keep stressing is do the

033positives volleyball opens up tomorrow and we're excited i know the girls got in the main gym today set up the new volleyball nets and it took them half the time they're like wow this is great because with the new floor we had to get a new system and so they're excited to open up this week so now as far as spectators with all the mitigations that have come out and have changed not not too much has changed inside we're still with that 50. um you know our spectators are going to be in the bleachers what we're going to and a lot of it is based off a roster size so with varsity volleyball being the only ones in the main gym we might be able to go up to three people per athlete versus two

034and still be below that 50. um because the other athletes and the press and the media are on the main level and they're considered game personnel so they don't count in that number where it gets a little interesting is your outdoor because they tell you capacity of your stadium well that's an intangible thing that we don't know we know what our butt in the seats capacity is but when you say capacity of the stadium there's not one stadium in illinois in the high school that says okay well this is seated capacity this is standing room so we're trying to go off of our seated capacity on our home side we have 384 on our visitor side we have 108. so it gives us a little bit of flexibility right now i'm working with uh band

035director strike our cheer coach and our dance coach to find out how much are they going to participate because that can affect our numbers you know the other piece is we're trying to figure out do we want to try to bring some seniors in only you know and figure out what is best the dates that we have so this saturday we're at huntley our next home game is april 1st which is the thursday before easter spring break not sure how many kids are still going to be around or would come back and our last one is april 16th so we have some time my ultimate goal is at april 16th would be our senior night and i keep my fingers crossed that things are still moving in a positive direction that maybe by april 16th

036we have a little bit more leeway to a lot more to come back and we get more student body at least for one or whatever it is so you know i wish i had a concrete answer on that now but i'm trying to roll the dice and see if things get better so we can do more you know for our outdoor sports soccer when it comes to a spectator standpoint they're going to play in the football stadium so we have never had probably more than a hundred and that's both schools combined so we don't have a limitation for soccer which which is great um it's not neces you know they're not 100 ecstatic about playing in the football stadium because they have a beautiful field behind hbt but at the same time when we get

037the the huddle beta camera up for football we can stream soccer so there are some other reasons why we're going to you let them play up there as well and the coaches are on board because they know that it's going to help so that's let me flip over yep so that's all i have in a nutshell you guys have any questions for me i want to thank you for everything that you're doing uh the athletic directors and the athletic staff are doing for our student athletes and for the community for supporting those efforts awesome thank you thank you thank you next uh dr will update us with the in personal learning status well steve diversity said it well when he was talking about football and the mask mandate and how quickly things can change and

038we had one of those changes occur to us last tuesday so every tuesday we have town hall meetings with our elementary staff and then later in the day with our middle school and high school staff on tuesday new guidance came out from idph and is beyond transitioning back to school we had been functioning under the old guidance and we've consistently said as a district that we will follow idph and isb guidance for transitioning to school that's the guidance we followed in the fall and now this new guidance clearly states that the new guidance supersedes all previous guidance so this is the new guidance that we've received now where some good things have changed uh just the timeline because things do develop rapidly and it's it's important that we all have patience flexibility and grace on

039wednesday morning dr mongan and i reached out to a ceo president chapman um asking him about new guidance if he was aware of it and he was then we scheduled a meeting with president chapman and vice president gravitt on thursday where we discussed that guidance and then coming out of that meeting we decided to have a town hall meeting on friday where we could lay out what our thoughts were and then answer some questions and we did try to extend that time um and there were um additional questions that were asked but the highlights of the change are what i really want to talk about right now some good things occurred in the transitional guidance some things that um the superintendents in king county have been advocating for which was reducing the social distancing in

040the classroom from six feet to three feet so that we could accommodate more students we were hoping that that guidance would at least be in place for the fall and we were as surprised as anyone else when the guts was released tuesday because as a school district we had no advanced uh notice that this guidance was going to be released so it was released to the community the media and the school districts at the same time so we spent time going through that document looking at what we could do and also barriers so some of the highlights that i would like to to share with you is that yes one of the most important things and we're very grateful is that for in-person instruction in the classroom the social distancing can be reduced down to

041three feet six foot social distancing still remains for lunch so that caused us a little bit of a scramble which we'll talk about in a little bit and then the other thing which is a cause of concern is our transportation which i will also talk about so with this updated guidance from idph and isb it provides us a pathway to really widen and improve our full and personal learning at all levels and that's what we desired to do that's what we desired to do in the fall and now with this new joint guidance that's what we desire to do now this new guidance will help us return to a full in-person learning schedule but we do face some barriers and these barriers have to be overcome for us to be able to increase our number

042of in-person learners while we can why we can reduce the social distance in the classroom to that three feet we still have a bus capacity limit of 50 students on a bus some districts because of the location of their schools the vast majority of their students can walk to school the very nature of our school district means that everyone on central campus howard b thomas central high school central middle school lilly lake praying you because of its location all of those students need to be bused to school we do have some lockers for prairie knowles middle school and we have some walkers for country trails elementary school but we still bus quite a few of those students we do not have enough buses in our bus fleet nor can we acquire buses in this short

043notice that we could just accommodate the 50-person capacity limit and still be able to bring back potentially everyone who would like to come back so i just want to explain the rationale of why we're reaching out to parents and asking for volunteers to help us out with that because of the nature and dynamic of our school district what i'm happy to share with you is that we've had 231 families respond and volunteer to help drive students to school to make this plan a reality now we still have to work at matching them to routes and getting those logistics worked out so but we're happy with the with the feedback that we've received from the community and the support to help get our our students back to school lunch guidance well we were hoping for three

044foot social distancing for the lunchroom as well that that would be the recommendation coming out of idph however we're still when students are in line to receive their meals when when they're moving through to get their milk as long as they're proper mask use they can be within three to six feet of each other but when they sit down and they're eating without the mascot they want six foot social distancing so we worked with our administrative team to try to make that a reality and we're going to be able to make that a reality by using various spaces within the school particularly at the elementary level we'll be using the gymnasiums we'll be using the gymnasium so we can space out the kids in six foot increments for eating to help keep things safe everything

045is disposable from the food packets the if they're getting the school lunch to the utensils to all that so um and then disinfecting and sanitation will occur uh at those eating areas between the lunch periods one of the things though that's still a challenge with us with these lunch periods is supervision and so that's why we've asked the community to see if there were parents who would be willing to supervise and help us supervise these lunch periods i'm happy to report that we have currently about 50 parents many who can only do one specific day but still 50 parents i'm amazed they're willing to step up and help us out and now we're looking and we will be looking to see how do we shake that out to match those parents to their buildings so

046we'll be looking at that and we'll be following up then uh with our community it is our goal to bring back hybrid students back to in-person learning uh beginning on april 5th but also based on some of the feedback we've received and thinking about things like spring break we are now considering maybe delaying bringing students back to a later date either a 10-day quarantine period following spring break or 14th period where we would still continue in our current model of instruction with hybrid and remote learning and then following that spring break with travel and those type of things then implement our new schedule at that time which would still provide like seven weeks of having everyone back we've been fortunate up to this point um following the thanksgiving break there was an adaptive pause that

047was caused by the county uh we did participate in that although we did not have any outbreaks then following the winter break and new year's there was concern about would there be outbreaks after that and there were not but when we're looking to implement a new plan and bring back even more students within that three-foot um space we're thinking it may be wise uh to delay the implementation of the plan until a little bit after that spring break uh just to see if there's any clusters that occur that's something that we're examining and looking at and more details will be shared with the community as that becomes clearer and definitely the plan will be solidified before the spring break based on some feedback we also received we sent out a survey today based on the

048education structure and how instruction would be delivered and i'll ask dr mangan to speak to those areas i just want to add a couple more things regarding the lunches so part of the challenge too not just elementary but at the high school and middle school levels is really finding the space that we can expand them out one of the things we're considering uh billy's grounds maintenance is looking for a tent for perennials middle school that we can run adjacent to the door that exit outside to allow some students to go outside need lunch uh even in inclement weather for using hallways uh along with the cafeteria as well as we may have to use library spaces so some i think somebody asked how come five spaces or why three spaces it's really to get the

049amount of students when you think about prairie novels or you think about the high school you think about the number of students at one time that have to eat lunch unless we wanted to serve lunch all day from when they walked in the door to when they exit it really is like you're looking 150 to 200 kids 250 to feed lunch at one time so to get them through there and define the space and keep six feet it is going to require us to expand uh out throughout the building some of the areas is by the field house uh if you can imagine that concession stand sits by the field house we have a long hallway with tables that will be another space that we'll be utilizing and then using supervisors to cover all those

050spaces especially when you consider the size of the high school i mean even the size of furry knowledge in that long hallway it's going to take some supervision of adults to assist us in doing that we have great teachers that have stepped up and they do that every day for us at the middle school in high school uh but you know they would have enough that had that time off to help us so we just need additional support from parents to assist us because of those elements and to find people who have the schedule in the middle of the day sometimes is difficult um in terms of the schedule i think you know i think uh dr stern said it really well in saying that the challenge here is we need people to be flexible

051and we need people to have grace we're trying to do the best that we can to determine what's best for all the students and we appreciate the con the conversations that we get from parents and we appreciate the emails that we get um they're always very kind and respectful and we and we really appreciate that they have some really great ideas for us to ponder and think about i think we're trying to build this we just received it less than a week ago so we're trying to build this in less than seven days to make sure that we're communicating uh the day it came out we had a lot of parents asking what we were doing so we wanted to get something out to community members prior to the board meeting uh hence the reason

052we met with uh ca president chapman and grab it and then agreed to speak with our teachers on friday even though it wasn't completely baked right we had the oven going but we haven't baked the plan yet so we're doing our best to listen to what people have to say and to try to make adjustments uh that can be made one of the big questions that we've been getting is why not remote why can the remotes just not come back and so we sent the survey out today primarily because we kept getting that question we're like well maybe we can we have to see how many parents really want to bring their students back and remote and how many parents want to switch from hybrid to remote what kind of shifting are we going to

053be looking at in the survey today this is from three o'clock today uh in the survey today for the hybrid survey we had about 44 of the parents have responded for hybrids we have a pretty good number and we have very minimal shifting going on between hybrid back to remote uh by each grade level those would be pretty easy to accommodate to have them go to remote their spaces in those remote classes i think the challenge is that we can't just keep changing schedules right teachers have made relationships with students students have made relationships with uh with the teacher so we want to try to keep that as consistent as we can because we know that relationships with teachers really matters in making sure we get the academic success that we're looking at for our

054students for the remote servings we only have 29 percent of our remote respondents in but we still have about you know almost 30 percent and then again the switch to in person is manageable fifth grade might be a little bit of a stretch the challenge will be do we have teachers that we can put them to so they're probably going to have to shift teachers partly because we have room across the district we just may not have room in their home school or with the teacher that they're currently with we'll do our best to see if we can match to do that the numbers are very very manageable right now but we only have 30 percent of our respondents in so we'll continue to watch that to see if it's doable and then try to

055make a determination on if we can do that in talking about that we we talked about the schedule at the elementary school currently half of our students a through k come in the morning out through z come in the afternoon and we have an hour and a half break in the middle of the day we're looking to bring all of them back uh in person that can come back a through z and they would be serviced in school full day to try to make sure that we're covering the content one of the things we talked about on friday with our teachers was we're not expecting you to change the way you're teaching you can stay with your morning routine but maybe in the afternoon we know part of our challenge is interventions skill deficits what

056are we not covered what content do we need to get to looking at what's most important for our students to get to the learning progression for that next school year how do we intervene with students who are getting d's or apps or not being successful those are times guided reading groups we haven't gotten together reading groups very well this year because of the rotation are there ways that we can station that at elementary in the afternoon to be able to accommodate and put some of that stuff back in to the students experience and education with remote learning i keep hearing about um six hours of screen time we're not looking for six hours of screen time i think for remote the if you can imagine this it will be like the two and a half

057hours of synchronous instruction we've been used to then you look at the exploratory specials pe art and music will still be in there to give the students the break throughout the course of the day and then you still have that two and a half hours that used to be asynchronous but that will be as more synchronous so how do we build again interventions guided reading groups small group work math groups some of those things that we need to do that maybe we don't have time to do in the half day how do we build that into the schedule to cure gravity's a point i think we do know that our related services people are going to have to reschedule unfortunately you know we're going to have to do some scheduling of our related services like

058our speech language pathologists our special education teachers our reading teachers some of those services will have to try to to work around some of these schedule changes that have to occur unfortunately you can't make a shift like this without some adjustment occurring for our students but we do not anticipate that a student is sitting behind the screen for six hours well i think we understand that's not appropriate and so our remote teachers have done a phenomenal job this year and i plan they will continue to do a phenomenal job they're very creative in what they do they do a great job of really working with those students and making sure they're getting where they need to go and i would i would i think i understand they really wanted more time to be able to

059do some small group work and i think this will allow them to do that in the middle school schedule we heard from many people that we got a 50 50 split so we had heard please please keep wednesday's the same can we just have it where they stay home and we do um asynchronous learning in the morning our secret story in the morning and then we have asynchronous work that we can do in the afternoon while the teachers do some of their collaboration that they need to be working on um and then other like no no we'd like to keep it just you know the same or different when they come back half day when we pulled the survey we had about 40 percent of our respondents and it's a 50-50 split there's actually two

060people less for staying the way we are and and so it's really right right in the middle so i think we're going to have to make the call what we think is the best we'll wait and see if there's more in to make the determination but that survey is very very close um in terms of the time frame is exactly the same 730-208 the only difference is we're bringing all kids in every day at least four days a week if not four and a half days a week to provide them really more engaging times within their classroom the specials have always been integrated anyway that will continue i think the biggest stretch for our middle school folks is really that lunch time and trying to figure out how that's going to look for our students

061for remote only again it'll be just what they've been seeing it's been pretty much synchronous time for the remote kids as well all day long with their special rotation they're in their same schedule that would remain constant at the middle school as well oh here i have it 431 parent responses 214 want full day remote and 217 half day in person so it's almost a 50 50 split so 22.5 percent of our respondents high school high school has been our most difficult schedule in this type of environment primarily because we're asking our teachers at the high school almost many of them to do both remote only to do the hybrid kids all integrated because of the content specialty that they have so i teach you this teaching chemistry or physics or algebra one they need

062to be integrating those students in there and so when we look at in-person remote only i think that's where it makes the most sense if we can get remote back in and there's space in their classroom which there should be when we scheduled this year we made sure not to break the class size limitations of the contract so there's specific criteria in how far a class size can go for every grade level based on the contract and we stayed within that class size so it's a very easy meld to bring everybody back in especially in their remote and hybrid for every single class if parents wanted to where the challenge comes is if a student wants to shift schedules because you can imagine the intricacies of a high school schedule it's very difficult to make

063movement because you don't just take one section and put it and then replace it with another section that matches it's all over an eight period day um so our challenge would be there and that's one of the reasons we said that remote parents should stay remote to students and hybrids we should remain that way i do think there's some flexibility there when i look at the numbers that are coming in very minimal shifts i mean we're talking single digits right now so if we're talking the low teens even maybe the 20s or 30s depending on where they can go many of those we probably could accommodate um it just really looks at what content they're in if there's flexibility in the schedule and if it matches for all of their courses because it's not just

064one course at the high school it impacts all of their courses same thing at the middle school impacts every single course that they're coming into so can all six or seven teachers that they have accommodate each individual student that's coming in if i already have a class of 30 which is our contract number i can't add another student in there that student would not be able to come full day so those are some of the challenges that we're looking at from the remote only and in person so we said you selected that we understand you didn't understand we didn't know we were coming back full time our full day or have the opportunity to bring back full days we're doing the best to marry or match where we can but i do not think that

065will be a hundred percent uh doable for every single person every single student there's just too much fluctuation in some of those choices um you know we really do appreciate the parents that are coming out and volunteering we are getting good responses and that's with very few we haven't even less than 50 responses one of the questions was what buses what bus numbers need the help so we will put that together get that pushed out so we can say bus 53 needs whatever many of our buses we have five buses at the high school that are already over capacity if we combine our a through z kids together and so we know there's already five of those that we need assistance with at the high school so we'll push that information out to our community

066members so they can make a good decision if they can assist us or not um but that's really all i have left here for tonight for curriculum unless you guys have some questions for us the board yes let's go to k5 let's start there so um we got i mean we're all in emails i think we got quite a few emails over the weekend i want to say from four or five of the uh k5 teachers that are specifically remote only um uh terry lynn who i've known since you know 1985 she sent one as a former teacher you know and as expressing concerns for as a teacher of course and and for some you know some family stuff and really you know at first glance it was kind of you know reading emails and

067figuring that out and and the more i've talked about i've talked to two other board members over the weekend um and and i think the the parents who i think we've all echoed that i certainly appreciate hearing from parents and and and really the sentiment has been kind of the same from every email that we got specifically for our remote only teachers i i feel for the the schedules that they have and i think you know this kind of balance between allowing teachers some autonomy so if they we had you went from 10 in the morning and 12 in the afternoon both remote sections putting them together what would that look like and i think that given you know the reasons that people might have chosen full remote which as we know is myriad why

068that might be i think that we really really need to strongly consider listening to the the teachers at lease that we heard from and the parents who are in this and really consider keeping remote only at the exact schedule that it is with allowing again i think we can still allow some creativity on the teacher side if they say oh i have a special unit i want to see who's available maybe we can still somehow bring these kids together but i think just having even if you're not on screen needing to be available from 9 10 until 3 35 at the elementary level i think uh you know is going to be trying for a lot of different reasons and let's be honest 4-5 is going to be different than k1 but we're not going

069to split the schedule you're not going to have older kids do one thing and younger kids do another um so that's a concern that i have in line with i think the basically every email that we got at the board level from teachers and from parents so that's something that i think um that really needs to be strongly considered for that population and the the challenge with that so we understand that the challenge of that is if you if you remember where we're at we have am a through k and we have l through z and the pm clear across a k5 pendulum that means that our exploratory teachers our specialist teachers pe art music are dispersed in different chunks so we have to pull them back to give us the services inside the classroom

070when we pull all them together into one classroom to be able to service them as a whole group their schedules have to shift and if i have to shift their schedules i have to shift the remote students schedules so there's no way to lock them in and find the sectioning that we need in order to do everybody that's face to face we've looked at those schedules so there's there's no way to be able to keep those set and not impact who we have in class face to face in person because we've gone from two half days to a full day in terms of what's happening inside the building so there's a scheduling issue there we can surely service them but the time change the time has to change in order for us to give them

071the plan time that they need because remember it's all contractual with plan time so you have to do plan time requirements and you have to be able to maneuver those uh so that you can assure that when we go into a full day part of our challenge is that this year we gave everybody that hour and a half in between so it was easy with am pm an hour and a half was their plan time we're now dispersing that across the day across all k5 and that creates a problem for our specialist teachers that we have to we have to put them in a different location in terms of the schedule to be able to unlock all of those shifts we don't have to have an hbt teacher doing a remote section that's for hpt

072you know i mean just knowing that the sizes of the buildings are different and so you know doesn't it is an hptpe teacher the only one that can service hbt remote kids now we have uh in order to make this work we have other teachers in other buildings servicing kids from two different schools so just like we do now right so i mean in the same way that you know we're asking teachers to be creative i think you know i again i don't know if it doesn't exist it doesn't exist but are there other ways to look at that scheduling to see if that is feasible that's just one thing i would ask because i mean there's there's a lot of frustration with that group and i think that that's something that i'm more than

073happy to have somebody else come take a peek at it but i've had you know seven administrators myself doctor we have special spent hours on these special schedules we've had at least three or four special meetings just looking at that to try to make that schedule work between last wednesday and today it's really the way we designed it right we designed it so that they would be able to cover um with the hour and a half in between which was challenging so if that's not able to happen where you were to keep the morning and afternoon what kind of flexibility do you think we would allow the the um our remote only teachers for that you know what if they're gonna get four hours three hours out of these kids first and then you know

074can it be flexible can it be regular so that's the thing i i'm blanking on which teacher i think was a classroom non-remote teacher as an in-classroom teacher who said something about the autonomy right that we need to give teachers especially for our elementary side of things where we're going from a half you know 12 again whatever number up to 25 whatever we'll say into kind of the shift that's going to come from that um you know i i i would argue that you know we really need to recognize that we're going from that two and a half right double curriculum which we know is crazy and then all of a sudden come up with five hours of planned time which i know is different and that's what they've done in other years prior to

075may of last year surely but how do we you know support a really really flexible amount of way that they choose to divide their minutes for each of the subjects that they choose to have motor breaks especially as the weather gets nicer like i hope we allow them to just take the kids outside if they need to you know like how can we allow safely obviously clearly um but if it's still their time that they're supposed to be with the kids can we take a five minute motor break and they can take their masks off and run around outside if we're allowing that again yeah we're live up to 20 minutes and i'm guessing it'll be more than that one of the teachers emailed me over the weekend and said that we had another neighboring

076district that was using pe equipment i was using uh outside equipment so i want to speak with them to say what are you doing to get some more information on that but yes i mean one of the things i said here was i think i don't want them to go back to teach traditionally i'm not saying go back and teach six hours a day i think you have to look at that extra half hour you're getting and recognize that we are three quarters of the way through the school year what's the best use of this quarter we have left we have to intervene we need skill deficits changed the teachers at the elementary are being concerned they have been able to get to guided reading groups maybe it's time to do guided reading groups you

077look at small group work so kids are off camera or off in the remote world and off camera doing their thing while you might be having a small group cluster working with them specifically on a skill in reading or trying to get them from one graduated reading group to the next group or working on them specifically on reading skills or in writing skills um really trying to close some areas that you see or look at areas that you know you couldn't get to that you know are essential that you need to plug in and how do you feed that into the curriculum in the afternoon if you're there during the day i'm not expecting them to come all there i don't want them to go back and pick up and i said this on friday

078i don't want them to go pick up what they did last year or fourth quarter and start doing that that's not where our kids are at many our kids are way behind many things we're teaching this year taking one to two days about two to three days for something he used to teach we used to take us one day so we have to cover the curriculum that we've missed we need to figure out where we need to get kids to at the end of the year i personally think of this as a blessing and i said this on friday i think we're blessed we have the opportunity to help kids get reacclimated to the education system we've had kids out of school in some cases up to a year and if we don't get them

079back we're going to have school refusal issues we already do we already have students that don't want to come back we have students who have social emotional issues that need to just get back into a routine we have students that need to come back and learn how to do school we have kindergarten students that haven't learned how to do school the way they need to be a first grader those things are really really important and so i look at this as a way to really close those deficits to help us get kids where they need to so we start in the fall hopefully a little bit more open we started fall we're starting kickstarted with these six or seven weeks we've got now as an opportunity to help our students so we can get a

080little bit further when they come back in the fall if we wait and we pause and we just sit i think we're losing an opportunity for our youth for our students to really make the gains or the academic gains they can make inside of an educational institution to help them get where they need to go um and i know that means we all have to be flexible and change but absolutely i think they have to be flexible they know their kids best so you know just knowing the conversations that i've been a part of through negotiations with jeff and with the cea and i think you know we've kind of had this back and forth about you know sometimes there's the fear right that you're telling us we can be flexible until we're not doing

081what you want us to do and then we're reprimanded or there's the potential for that and as far as i'm aware after what we've talked about in the degrees i don't think much of that is really i i don't think any so i i agree with that but i think that there is going to be a lot of anxiety on the part of our teachers about what does flexibility mean right what am i actually able to do and obviously that can be administered it can be building administrator live and helping to support them which i certainly appreciate i think there is a law of diminishing returns though too so if we delay a week and a half and we miss eight school days and then we have that many fewer school days left is there

082a point at which it becomes it doesn't make sense to go back now again as with what i do as a child psychiatrist we wait five more months to get kids into school i know what's going to happen for my socially anxious kids for my kids who don't like being in school for my kids who really like being at home and i think it's okay to say nobody's ever said this there are a lot of kids who are doing very very well at home with remote learning it happens there are some kids that are doing well with that i see it in my practice um and and it's neither good nor bad it just is and so getting these kids back when this is no longer an option if that's the way we move and

083hisb moves getting them back sooner i absolutely believe is the right thing to do but again if we take eight days off and it's like let's wait a little bit longer so they have 30 days i mean like at what point do you say i don't know so that's why originally i was thinking about april 5th bringing back all the students but i am taking into account feedback we've received from the community and thinking about um not wanting to have an outbreak especially after we first bring back a larger majority of our school population even though even with that delay though we'll still have seven weeks of in-person instruction with our students and that seven weeks we'll be able to do a lot of assessment from where they're at and where we need to go

084and be better prepared for the fall we we would agree with you that as we mentioned flexibility and grace it goes it goes both ways and that's why dr mangan was talking a little bit earlier about on the instructional day for remote with the with the two and a half hours remaining the same the one to one and a half hours remain the same but then we have the opportunity to be creative no one's saying that we want a student plastered behind that screen you know from sun to sun down we know they're going to need some breaks but we could use that extra two and a half hours in the afternoon for some creative ways for both synchronous and asynchronous ways to meet student needs so um she talked about that a little bit

085earlier and i think that's going to be key that that we have some flexibility with that but it's targeted uh to meet our student needs yeah and i think i know there were a couple questions uh i think in the community thing that amy had sent us earlier today about you know what does that schedule look like and that's the thing right you know since we're working we're talking about this now we don't know what that's going to look like so how much of it needs to be required synchronous is that three hours i mean is it still the two and a half by six two and a half hours i changed that which i get it's so great and then what does that look like so i think there is based on the emails

086that we got i think from our teachers and from our parents this idea that oh because in the email that was sounded it did say you know it said 910 to 335 so that's what it said for remote learners but that's obviously not going to be the case and so how do we make sure that each teacher has as i said some flexibility based on when their specials are of course and how that needs to be taken into account for what that day looks like and so maybe there will be less anxiety on the part of teachers when that happens but again i would say what does k2 look like versus three five and can we have the same expectations across even that six year spectrum um and i don't know if that's feasible um

087unless there's just more breaks and then we've got kids that are in between for longer periods of time who then there's the you know there's the child care and supporting issue on the other side of things as well for our younger kids so let's be honest there's no option that's going to be great for everyone and i think we've if anything our teachers have appreciated that over the course this year and the board and our parents have appreciated that over the course of this year but i will i just want to say one more thing i might call todd on wednesday afternoon at about four o'clock um to kind of talk about the stuff that had come out the day before not knowing that they were already in process and i i i'm as somebody

088who in my practice i and i've tried to be in this board as internally consistent as possible what we have said from day one we were going to have the kids in school as much as possible other schools took those three weeks off between thanksgiving and christmas we didn't because we were allowed to bring them back after that one week that was exactly consistent with what we said we were going to do and when i had already talked to todd it's like oh great we're already planning this because that's to you know todd i'm going to be pretty pretty clear you know come monday that we need to be we really need to figure out what we're doing is like oh we're already on it so that's consistent with what we talked about so the

089whole year we've been kind of teetering on the edge of waiting for this information so that has been consistent through the whole year which i think is a really important thing to point out to the community that messaging from my perspective has been thank you for bringing that up because there's been numerous times when i've had to respond to parents who asked for certain things because someone else was doing something somewhere else in a different county a different area of the state and i my response has always been consistent that we follow the guide the guidance of idph is and that we would need those guidance to change and have a loosening of the restrictions for us to bring back more students that have now occurred and that is my desire that we bring back

090students to the fullest extent possible well i do want to say that one of the things that we have to have on the table right is that state assessments are coming alive and we got zero breaks on state assessments the only place they gave us a break was on psats in ninth tenth grade and eighth grade beyond that every single assessment must be taken uh so that does eat up a lot of the instructional time too but it eats up less if everybody's in school every day than it does when we have to try to get our remote students in here and at six feet apart and yet it's going to take us much longer to get through it being able to bring them in three feet apart to try to chop away at what's

091required by the state is going to assist us but some of the instructional time will be taken up assessing where our students are at against the rest of the state and against the nation when it comes to some of the common core things to see how our students fared this year so that needs to be understood too it's not all about the instruction there are some assessments that are going to be required in that time frame that's going to require to be pulled from the instructional day i've got a well concerning assessment so i'm i'm willing to make a bet and again not going out on a limb that all kids are behind you know not only here in this in our district but across the state and across the country you know what happens

092if we don't do assessments we don't choice the the state that we ask for we ask for a waiver from the federal government and the federal government said no that they're requiring everybody against the state you lose funding uh in federal dollars you think about the cares act we got a million dollars you think about title one title two title four our special education services those all come from federal funds some of those come from federal funds so i don't know what that equals dana do you know in our budget what the federal grant dollars are um yeah you don't have to go about it but she's looking that up then the other thing we did is we actually reached out to isb asking if assessments are required for all students if we could assess

093our remote learners in a remote setting to give us flexibility that way and we were denied any flexibility in that i have a few things i thought while we were talking here so um i was three things basically i wonder about liability on having parents transport students number two um background checks for volunteers and the last one is they're going to be would there be some type of training of volunteers um school districts across the united states have had trouble with with trained personnel mishandling students i'm just kind of curious about what thought process was on that we have a system called thank you we have a system called hall pass so when any volunteer enters our door we put their driver's license through hot pass and it looks at all of the major uh

094databases primarily for sexual abuse those types of things that are required for us by law to make sure we get at least a quick check so we scan a license we pick that up from anybody that comes inside of our doors to volunteer um so we would require them to put through their license through the hall pass so we'd get a quick uh report to make sure that they were of the you know didn't have a background that could be problematic for us okay um in terms i'm sorry what were your first two questions it was about liability a lot of i do not think liability is an issue um parents drive their kids to school every day right so they're driving but if we're not asking to drive other students no we're asking them

095i mean i don't know they can right they can't pull all the time parents carpooling they're simply volunteering to drive their school to and from school to alleviate the busing elements that we have and then training building administrators would work with any volunteers okay to cover the training in the building and they would never be by themselves they'd be along with teachers or other people who are already doing lunch division or have been trained in lunch division we don't have any school that doesn't have any lunch advisors and i would i would agree with eric i mean no matter what we do i mean the the emails you know we were pulled in both arms both legs and anything else you know everybody has an idea um but we've always wanted the kids back so

096and i think it i mean to be fair if this also makes just the summer process whatever that's going to look like this year a little bit easier because at least have will have this ideally right we'll have some version of this in person more than we have now right now coming up in fourth quarter hopefully that you know gives us a little bit of insight as to what we can anticipate based on the guidance that exists at the time how we can go about how we can go about doing this i received very good news from kane county health department today related to vaccines throughout king county with 60 of people who are 65 or older seeking the vaccine at least had the initial dose and then of course essential workers educators across the

097country across the county our numbers are increasing in vaccinations across the area and king county health department is is hopeful that by the end of may as a county will be in very good shape i mean once they opened up the scheduling last tuesday same day that all this came out interestingly enough they opened up the scheduling for the batavia one the old sam's club which is really for anybody with a qualifying medical condition which is pretty much anybody i mean king county health department stated today that they look to open up that sam's club facility and begin vaccinations by march 19th well this week all right the question on the on the scheduling you're just you're talking about potentially delaying start changing schedule for two weeks is that and i understand the the logic

098um but we didn't do that in any of the previous of the previous breaks and are these are these is this is this an isb guideline or is it there's there's no guidance on idph is saying that this current guidance supersedes all previous guidance and so if we wanted to we would be eligible to bring all students back on april 5th we we've been consistent as i said multiple times that we follow the guidance um i question why we're doing anything differently at that point that's and i think the only you know from a from a behavioral perspective the only option being you know just i'm hearing about a lot of people traveling in my office which i didn't hear about over thanksgiving and i didn't hear about over christmas so just from a sociological

099standpoint there's a lot more people that are feeling more comfortable doing that so i think the numbers would tell us a larger percentage of our families are actually going to be traveling but at the same time the risk of community and transmission is much lower at this point so i mean i think but i tend to i tend to agree with you on that like consistency i think there's something to be said for that i mean unless unless there's some preparation we can do in the meantime that we need the time to do it that's a different circumstance but if we can do it then i'd say if we're going to bring you know we follow guidance because i got to piggyback onto that why should we as a district make a change because of

100choices people are making for their personal lives i mean we're not you know a lot of people are choosing not to travel we're still in a pandemic they say don't travel why should we delay something because of actions of others that are choosing to do it yeah yeah i mean right the potential risk of clustering right i mean they can do it when they're at home the same thing can happen anywhere you know they do it now i'm sure these kids are together every weekend the one of the key factors that have kept our schools open is the strength of our community as far as following through with the symptoms trekking and if people in the household have symptoms that they keep their children home so whether you're at six foot social distancing or you're

101at three foot social distancing the real key to keeping our school safe is that if you're just if you are exhibiting symptoms you don't come to school and that still holds true right that'll still continue that will still continue we will still require self-certification through the remainder of this school year and we require mosques and face masks and we still have the same cleaning regimens we've got right now correct i mean the only difference we did receive questions regarding elementary because elementary currently gets cleaned in between classes but i think it's important for the community to understand that we're still keeping a pod mentality so we're still keeping all the kids in one class together as a pod and we're bringing art music to the classroom to try not to mitigate any movement uh too

102much movement in inside the building and physical education we're asking them to take them outside for those breaks that they need for the mass to get that six foot distancing to get them outside if it all if if the weather is permitting that we really want them to take them outside uh to get those types of things as well as so everything's going in a pod rotation for elementary to try to keep and mitigate as much as we can that movement and then in the evening our custodial staff has done a phenomenal job of cleaning at night and sanitizing every classroom every single evening and then saturday they come in to do you know even deeper uh thorough clean so i that will maintain the only difference would be that wednesday at the army's hour

103that midday at the elementary school level the other thing i wanted to say was when we met with the teachers on friday uh on the in the special edition uh town hall meeting one request was that they would we would shift one of the calendar days so we currently have two teacher work days at the end of the school year which is kind of when they do you know all of them are packing up getting things ready doing all the things they need to do to get set for summer and turn on all their supplies do all those things they need to do and they wanted to know if we could take one of those days and move it up to some time in these next two weeks to allow them time to do some

104additional collaboration planning with their grade level teams or with their neighbor their apartments those types of things and then take that student day and put it at the end so we'd add in one more student day so the student so the teachers had the extra time to work um and to collaborate with their peers so i kind of wanted to bring that and see what the thoughts of the board was like right now the ninth i believe what day of the week is that oh i think it's a wednesday i believe so the kids the students last day is the seventh oh that's what i mean yeah so the students last day would be the eighth okay and the teacher's last day would still stay the ninth it's just that we're flipping two days we're

105putting a student's day at the end and taking that teacher work day and giving it to us a little bit earlier so that they can plan so students from until a legal standpoint we already have an orphan day on monday yeah are we gonna be doing any learning on a monday and tuesday the last two days of school you have to buy by state coach you have to have the number of days so oh i know when you need to date my question if you're saying let's move it then so they have more time to be together i mean i don't think they're going to be learning on a monday and tuesday that's just my experience and i think probably our teachers experiences too at the very end of the day especially k5 or end

106of the year i mean we have finals obviously at the high school level and maybe middle school too um you know but it is a lot of fun stuff and review and other stuff like that so um you know uh i don't know so you're recommending an institute day between now and when we start essentially well in the next two weeks right because we're this week or next week so we're thinking the friday before spring break that gives parents an extra day for spring break and it gives our teachers the time to kind of collaborate and do what they need to do in preparation before they come back especially if we want to start on april 5th i think that time is necessary if we want to push it back a little bit we could

107do it with return and extend it on that monday after spring break to still extend the time for our parents and families to try to tie it to that spring break so there's a benefit to our families as well as our teachers get the benefit that they're asking for to work together since it's such an unprecedented year and they're asking for that um and we're asking a lot for them to change and things right i'm all for it i would agree separate subjects you talked about vaccinations and obviously there's been um all of the staff teaching administration have had the opportunity to vaccinate vaccinations like sort of so far including the second dosage right correct do we have any idea is there any way of finding out even voluntarily and just in terms of anecdotally

108what percentage of staff have actually taken taken that advantage we have not collected that personal information because the vaccine is not mandatory right um i mean you could you could voluntarily ask staff you know to give that information but some staff would be uncomfortable with sharing that let me rephrase the question in that case um are we aware of any any staff who didn't take the opportunity to um to have to to get the vaccination who now want to because the change in schedule and don't have the opportunity to do they will have the opportunity um and i'll be announcing that tomorrow in our town hall meeting because i advocated for that today and so we got a solution and answer to that great that's great good one more thing just one last thing i

109had at least one teacher from uh each grade school reached out to me over the weekend um and just kind of given some of the stuff that we were hearing and um they all said to me we want our kids back we will find a way to make it happen um and what they all told me was that they were uncomfortable with saying that and i think it's important for the community to know that there was some discomfort in kind of verbalizing that in their buildings because they felt like they were the minority that they could say that they were excited about that and we'll figure it out no matter what so i did find that interesting so i think that's important to know do you know why they were comfortable um i think there

110was some belief uh from my understanding that if it wasn't in line with their perception of what cea leadership thought that they didn't feel comfortable sharing with their colleagues the excitement about that i also had some communication along those same lines and i haven't talked to eric about who or if they were the same people but i've also had the same communication comment about the cell certification that you know the community has been excellent on i know i've been in a situation with my daughter where there's a sports injury or she wasn't feeling well not a coveted symptom do we anticipate any issues because there won't be i'm not feeling great today i'll log on even though it's my in-person day um or if you get a symptom and you get sent home now they

111have to quarantine for 10 days and there's no remote option so you're missing 10 days of school which you know so let me clarify this and we can include this and um future correspondence we push out to the community as i mentioned earlier the of the idph and isb guidance supersedes all previous guidance so we're waiting now for the updated symptoms chart because symptoms have been removed from the coveted list so in the past where some families were concerned because the child had a runny nose or had some congestion like doing allergies and they're like really we have to get an ultra diagnosis or a negative cova test those are a couple of the symptoms that have been removed other symptoms have also been removed so um for student service department mike potsik and i

112and assistant director of one meeting with our district nurses uh going over some of that then we'll be pushing out those updated symptoms the updated symptom list for quarantine or alternative diagnosis or negative cova test later this week but jeff i think also to your point um we've i forgot to mention that so i think the challenge is that if our teachers are fully in person and have no remote students i do not think i want to add additional stress by saying you must now do synchronous learning too right so what we've told our teachers in the conversation we had on friday was that you have a canvas account and in the canvas account you have everything that a student should need so not unlike when a student in pre-covered not like when a student

113was absent or a student on a vacation or a student was gone they would talk to the teacher in advance get the materials work those things and then our teachers are really great about checking in with those kiddos and so i think that process will continue i know we have a lot of parents that i've seen at least in the emails you know can they do synchronous can they do this i just think it's a lot to ask from our teachers if the teachers are already doing synchronous um you know i think that they have those kids when you've got 25 kids face to face and five kids out there and then you got to add another one in there that's a lot to manage and so i for this point i think it's where

114we say nope i'm sorry if you are an in-person person you have to leave we get it campus accounts are up to date our teachers have been really great about this this year parents are really good at it we're going to ask that they check the campus account work with their teacher independently and try to make up the work as they're coming through understand that's one day every day they're absent they get to make it up when they come back but hopefully as they're at home and feeling a little bit better they can work on those types of things but i just don't want to add that extra pressure to our staff i think they've they've done a phenomenal job this year and i feel like i kind of wanted okay that's kind of our

115our point of no return if we start doing that and trying to manage that i wasn't requesting that no but i forgot to mention that when i talked about the scheduling because we todd and i have talked about that and we've spoken all the guidance may be completely different right so i mean we just have to wait and see they're going to be coming out i was told today that we can expect upcoming guidance again related to a quarantine period related to schools only uh related to the three foot social distancing of students because the data is really showing demonstrating idph that students are not the cause of the spread of co event that that these new regulations will apply to staff as well as students right correct so that should help with the substitution

116issue yes i have to say another thing that i think everyone should be proud of the staff um the students the the family members our due diligence with really monitoring the symptoms and watching that across the county our positivity rate is low but our district positivity rate is very very low and i'd like us to continue that trend and again um i think it's because of a team effort due to our custodial crew that are doing a really good job with sanitation disinfection our bus crew with transporting the students and then disinfecting those buses between routes our teachers helping in the classroom and working to keep the classrooms disinfected as well it really is a team approach and i'm grateful for that i agree i think uh with this guys coming out on tuesday it's

117now monday we're not bringing all kids back tomorrow everybody you know i have to appreciate everybody's concern everybody in the community is concerned for their kids their neighbors kids the big picture i don't think any of our administration or teachers have ever demonstrated that they're not trying to do what's best for kids so i think we often remember that we have to be patient they're not going to stop working now that this beginning of a plan is out there they're going to keep working until april 5th or april 12th or april 19th refining this so um hopefully all questions will be answered at that point you know but more and more will be answered the closer and closer we get so thank you for your continued work thank you thank you yes thank you well

118just final question is that we are we're keeping up with the ticket reports oh yes we keep the ticket reports i think we've been a little busy with this stuff it's it's been sent out to the board we're still doing very well it's it's a great interactive way actually of making sure that sort of everybody's on the same page in terms of maintenance as well we'll send them out yeah once mandy can put them together she was working on these remote surveys for me and other surveys yeah today was one of those days that it was very busy why don't you get nothing else to do so i understand that all right business manager fluke is going to go over some capital uh the capital projects plan so um kind of just going through our

119project list we have you know a five-year project um capital project plan um trying to tick off things off that plan and then keeping up with things that might jump in the line if it's more more pressing some of the things that we are looking to do over the summer doing some hvac upgrades to our entec systems kind of automating them behind the scenes so hbt and prairie view the whole building and the lighting controls will be updated um that that controls the boilers and the pumps and everything lily lake is going to get a piece of it i think lilly lake in a year or two is going to need a whole entire brand new gutting of everything so we're just going to fix the back end of it and then some little at

120chs cms pkct they just need some lighting things they've got more of the upgraded version already so we're just going to fix what needs to be fixed to kind of get them all up to speed and we're going to upgrade cms's windows i think it was almost might have been last year we got a 50 000 grant um and we had to match at least fifty thousand um the project's gonna be more than that it's gonna be about 180 maybe um to fix cms's windows on the backside and the shop in the library and then um with that bid that when we write that bid we're actually looking into doing some of getting a cost an alternate bid for the high school windows that are very drafty and i think those are on the south

121side of the the main hall so those ones that whistle when you're in meetings so we're going to look into that some roofs cms and the d.o gym roof need to be upgraded and then a dump truck and a pickup truck for maintenance is going to be probably on the docket and then the normal just district-wide painting and cabinets countertops and some of cms and pk's offices and the flooring carpet whatever we can do for that so those are the main ones all right we received three foias between our february board meeting and in this meeting the first meeting came from the first play that came from abc news where they were looking at attendance data and as a district we kept attendance data last spring there was a previous foia asking for attendance data

122in the spring and we keep attendance data through our skyward system well we were able to answer our in-person attendance rate for every school our remote attendance rate for every school and then our total attendance rate for every school so you're able to comply with that foia the next problem we received was a foil from a group called reopen illinois schools that foil was on fairly extensive with 12 bullet points that asked for quite a bit of material so we invited them to narrow their request and then the final foia came from the chicago tribune in pro publica and they were looking for um how many how do we refer students to a resource officer if there were any arrests or citations given by a resource officer at school we were able to reply to

123that foia request as well we were able to provide them the information they asked for but in a very protective way because we have to protect the rights of minor students all right that concludes tonight's meeting we need a motion and a second to adjourn from open session go into executive