001your comment to us first jamie clark inclusion is not about bringing people into what already exists it is about making a new space a better space for everyone educators superintendent and school board officials who have been voted in by their constituents i jamie clark mother to blake and parker clark stand here before you today with the hopes and dreams that school district 301 will rise to meet our students where they're at specifically by opening a blended kindergarten classroom something that does not currently exist in our district therefore my son is being sent to an environment 60 minutes away a foreign environment for him a self-contained special ed classroom that offers less of the things that my son needs for his social disorder autism therefore i require district 301 to do better you see we live
002in a highly ranked district for a neurotypical developing student but if you check greatschools.org you will see that we are failing our special education population evidenced by the reviews themselves being less than favorable this district makes this makes our district less desirable for parents and children with special needs if you don't know this i encourage you to visit greatschools.org and read the reviews for yourself and then i ask you is that really the reputation that we want or that we are willing to settle with does this already vulnerable group have to continue to be invisible when all they want is to be seen heard and accepted like everybody else there are many children with special needs in our district children's with with ieps and 504 accommodations and greatschools.org shows us that we aren't making the
003grade we demand our teachers to differentiate their learning and dismantle the idea of one size fits all but as a district we too must consider why this population is not closing the achievement gap the system is broken and we need systematic change not just for my son blake but for all the families who struggle to find adequate placement for their children after speaking at the school board meeting last two weeks ago about inclusion i can't begin to tell you the countless parents and teachers who reach out to me expressing their support the outpouring of love for this cause did not just come from special needs parents but also parents of neurotypical children and teachers that thanked me for speaking out i was thankful and presently surprised by the calls from the parents in blake's blended
004preschool classroom who consider themselves friends of my son they wanted to see him back in school with them next year i can't express the joy that brought to me because i know how sweet my little boy is and to see other children appreciate and understand his differences is what education is all about one of the biggest reasons for selecting to have a blended early education classroom program is to integrate children before they see differences and to offer peer modeling for children who need it these children then create strong bonds and many of the children in the self-contained classroom are sent away from their home school their peers the familiar faces and the teachers their safe place to start kindergarten in their community the idea of being buffed away from all that a child knows seems
005counterproductive to me when we are currently in a model that helps them to flourish versus the possibility of regression they need their typical peers to include them and to play with them at recess and in the classroom because they struggle with speech and social skills school is a number one place to improve social skills especially when you consider my son blake and those like him spend 24 hours a week outside of school on additional therapy because we know that early intervention is key but these are one-on-one hours and so school is the only outlet to have consistent peer interaction my son is not the only one who wins with inclusion everyone wins with inclusion this is how students learn to be empathetic and compassionate to children that are different than themselves inclusion takes more than
006students reading it in a book they see by learning they see by experiencing they learn when they actually get the opportunity to put it in action blake longs to be included and the biggest mistake would be to not include a child because all you see is a disability and not the holistic child and what he is actually able to do when given the opportunity and support to do so and by not doing so you limit his potential as a human i think about the countless family that will be coming into our community in the upcoming years we need to stop treating our district like a farming town and start realizing that they are building hundreds of new homes in our community our neighborhood alone which houses country trails is slated for 925 houses this is
007400 more homes than we currently have in our community which means we'll be countless new kids coming over the next few years that is roughly 13 million in tax dollars every year from our neighborhood alone we know our four elementary schools are already bursting at the seams or we'd have a classroom in our district for these children and with the prevalence of autism being one in 54 as the latest cdc statistics that were published on march 27th of this year i should not have to stand in front of you today imploring the district to create a classroom that supports my son's needs or to give him a fighting chance in a gen ed classroom with support nor should i have to be the one talking about the importance of inclusion we are all stakeholders in
008district 301 but this kind of advocacy should be coming from you the educators and the decision makers yet every single day another mom calls me in our district asking me to be the voice for her child as i stand before you today fighting for mine i knew that there would be a day when i would need to realize that what i'm advocating advocating for is not just mere accommodations but instead i'm advocating for someone's basic human rights today that advocacy is for blake clark and those like him who deserve to be included and the district doesn't have anything that fits his true needs because we have only been given one option an option that takes away more opportunities from him than what he currently has now and so i will say it again inclusion is
009not bringing people into what already exists it is making a new space a better space for everyone today i stand with blake clark and i hope the district is wise enough to make some thank change jamie uh next mary jane battaglia do you want to say something go ahead mary jane and anthony i'll say this i think it's disgraceful how a little boy is being evicted from school where he should be and it's breaking our hearts and it's putting so much stress on our family should all be ashamed of yourselves that's what i have to say anthony battaglia we lived here about 30 32 years now started in saint charles illinois brought our family here look for places that we can move our family for better housing for a safer community for our children to
010learn better and to be safer recently we moved into highland woods uh my daughter also moved out of chicago area came all the way here to highland woods to grow a family start a family she started a family here we pay an exorbitant amount of taxes that 87 go to schooling and i am totally disappointed that we are lacking any education that saint charles uh lomborg or even huntley which is another community further west than here has and that's for children with with extra needs so i also back my daughter and state that you know if you want people to move in here if you want this development to happen i see a lot of new developments coming in i see a lot of new builders coming in here should we tell them that there's
011no education for children with needs with special needs and see how many will move in here you need to your your educators you need to build a formation or foundation for children to be able to grow in and to learn in and we do not have that at this point and i'm sorry to say i'm disappointed and schleicher good evening everyone my name is jen schleicher and i'm a parent at country trails currently about 1 in 20 children have some kind of disability that gives 19 kids the daily opportunity to learn about diversity collaboration and inclusion the fact that this district and the administrators in charge are not jumping at this opportunity completely blows my mind if you are a parent of a kid without special needs they are missing out to why is it
012that a child with disabilities spends hours every day being taught how to interact with others but we don't spend time teaching those without disabilities how to interact with them people fear the unknown and the unfamiliar fear leads to prejudice mistreatment inequality and bullying this is not my opinion this is a fact and the fact that i am forced to stand here and point out the injustice is being carried out onto many of our community's special needs children disgusts me and to those in this room and listening remotely it should discuss you too anyone who sits back while knowing that this is happening should be ashamed and i encourage the board to dig much deeper into this because it is happening to many families in our district if you want to learn a new language what's
013the best way to do it to become truly fluent you have to immerse yourself in it right how is inclusion any different kids listen to social stories about diversity in school about inclusion and bullying but that is much different than actually living it every day adults like everyone in this room have to take online training and seminars at their jobs to talk about the importance of diversity and acceptance some still don't get it maybe it's because they were never exposed to it growing up everyone right now do me a favor close your eyes for a second imagine a situation where a student was being sent to a different school away from his friends away from their family and community against the parents wishes because they were different imagine the parents fighting for their child to
014be given the opportunity to play with their friends develop relationships and just fit in imagine the parents and child being given reasons like the other school is more equipped for your situation or we just think they're better off as special needs parents we are all told that we are part of a team and part of the decision but it is honestly never felt like it now imagine that the reason the family was given was their skin color or sexual orientation or gender raise your hand if this would outrage you i really thought that we were past this i thought this was a fight that was already won neurodiversity is no different than any of the other diversity covered on the daily news to exclude many of these children in the district because their brain works
015a little different than yours is completely unacceptable inclusion is a right not a privilege for a select few we will know that inclusive education has really become embedded in our culture when the term is obsolete thank you next week grab it [Music] good evening my name is kiera gravitt and i'm a special education teacher at prairie view and i'm also the vice president of our teachers union i'm speaking to you tonight about special education which is one of our most vulnerable population i ask you to please look at all aspects when deciding what the plan is as we head back into school such as meeting iep minutes effectively which was very difficult during remote learning as well as student placement myself and others be very happy to sit down with you and have a discussion
016so we can work collaboratively to come to a best outcome for these students i hope to hear from you all thank you so much dave chapman good evening district 301 board of education members my name is dave chapman and i'm an eighth grade social studies teacher and president of the teachers union thank you for all your time i'm preparing to reopen schools in a few weeks i know this is a difficult and challenging time for everyone involved the union has been discussing with the administration return to school plans some of which i'm sure will be shared with you tonight the union continues to reiterate that safety should be a driving factor in decisions made we have a great and hard-working educators in this district who have and will continue to meet the needs of their
017students no matter the platform please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about returning to school to better understand the perspective of our educators thank you for your time i will receive some public comment video this time we'll read those you want to start laura all right um two people text me that they can't hear anybody or so we haven't seen yet just the people up front they said they couldn't hear too so hopefully we'll do our best all right okay um will there be any orientation to acclimate students so they know what to expect when school starts on august 31st regardless how they return to school thank you stacy and bob miramamba sorry hello pam i am sure this someone has commented on this but i was wondering if the board
018had considered putting kindergarten and first graders as a priority to be in person and spread out in the building hire more teachers if they decide to go all remote i am concerned that my kindergartner will not learn to read and write as well as at home and maybe make him behind for the rest of his school career thank you for your time and good luck despina caras dear 301 board members my name is kelsey hendry and i have been teaching first grade in this district since 2014. i didn't always want to be a teacher growing up but life has led me here and i absolutely love my job i have my masters in literacy and my reading specialist endorsement both degrees i obtained so i could increase my expertise on how to help six-year-olds learn
019to read my absolute favorite part of every day is when i get to meet all meet with my small groups for guided reading i try to have two to six kids in a group where we just pause the world around us and explore books we question authors purposes create character analysis charts and make predictions at every turn of the page we work on skills that build the foundation of strong readers these small group times are when i get to know my students best because they aren't competing with 25 other children in their thoughts and ideas to be heard if we go back to school and face to face i strongly plead the district to find funds to create or purchase some type of clex sorry plexiglas contra contraption so that teachers can still continue to
020use this small group time effectively giving up our small group time would be extremely detrimental to our little littlest learners who need this time to work on so many skills one of my biggest beliefs as an educator is children learn to love reading when they are an environment that encourages and supports their exploration of reading because of this i have over six thousand books in my classroom i have teacher read-alouds two student libraries and two bookshelves of my own guided reading book sets all brought with my own money because i know how important books are the handful of districts who are returning to school are requiring teachers to empty out their classrooms of all non-district purchases which includes books sure we have electronic books that the kids can access but is that really building up
021the children's ability to read one of the first skills we teach when learning to read is directionality directionality is reading words left to right and reading top of the left page to bottom of the left page and then over to the top of the right page how do you teach children that very basic and beginning skill when they can't even hold a book if we go back face to face my second request is that the teacher the district research and provide a way for our books to stay in our classroom at least in the lower elementary where our kids are learning to read a few suggestions are a pair of germ gloves for each student to hold touch books and then a few extra plexiglas contraptions that kids can put up on their desks where
022their arms and books can go behind the glass the kids could wipe the glass down after they are done with the book the germ gloves would then stay with each student for the year teachers have a lot of heart from the community over remote learning i'm not sure where all this hatred is coming from because let me tell you prepping remote learning for first graders is not easy i normally only work 50 hours at school during the week and 10 hours on the weekend i arrive at school every day by 6 40 and leave by five even as a sixth year teacher when remote learning was sprung on us i was putting in 60 to 70 hour work weeks consistently with a three-year-old and baby at home i was prepping and engaging i was prepping
023engaging and six-year-old appropriate activities i trade making the lessons purposeful i recorded videos for every activity with directions and screencasts to show the kids what to click and where to click i did weekly video check-ins whole group and each day did a few small check-ins on google me i met with students ranging from nine in the morning to six at night because i know not every student could meet me at the assigned time slot i wanted to give remote learning wasn't perfect and there were many learning curves teachers had to conquer but many of us put everything we had into providing the kids some type of education while schools could not open currently the district's plan is to have me teach some kids four days a week a day of remote two groups of kids
024two days a week and two days of remote and one group of students full remote that is four different class groups groups of students i know we're being told they'll be learning the same but really to accomplish teaching four groups of students and providing each group in equitable education realistically speaking teachers will be putting in 80 to 100 hour work weeks trust me when i say i have three degrees and only making 50 000 while having two little kids at home is a hard pill to swallow when i look at working 80 hours a week i want to teach every child who i am giving but i also want to be the best teacher i can be my request to the district is that you honor the research make our class sizes smaller for this
025year 12 to 15 kids and please please give students who choose remote leaning their own separate teacher that way that group of children can receive every bit of instruction social emotional support and everything in between they need please do this for the children and so that our teachers are not stretched to their limits thank you for your time kelsey hendry 301 admin and school board members everyone has their own opinions on how schools should open and what would be best for their families but we need to look at the safest option for the whole 301 community a safe and equitable plan for all is what is needed during this unprecedented time we need to stop acting like sending our kids back to school is going to be normal there will be nothing normal about it
026i know the school board and district administrators have tirelessly been trying to put together a plan that appeases everyone and unfortunately in the end it will probably backfire because you can never please everyone when you try to simultaneously offer so many different options to fit the needs of everyone in the community you end up with a mediocre plan at best i believe one plan should be focused on so it can be the most effective as possible under these unfortunate circumstances there are too many community members parents and district leaders advocating for a return to school with no regard to the negative consequences of that choice it's sad to see the lack of common sense towards safety being ignored it is also sad to see the misinformation being spread about a virus that we are still
027learning new things about daily i am sure the pressure from politicians and parents telling you to open up schools is overwhelming everyone wants to get back to normal but since when has this virus operated on our schedule i am hopeful that a federal incentive for reopening school does not cloud your ability to make the safest decision for all the safest decision is started the school year with a full remote learning plan just like many area school districts have already decided including u-46 district 300 barrington 220 arlington heights district 25 huntley 158 among others u-46 superintendent tony standard states i cannot accept the loss of life we will main we will remain predominantly distance learning through the first quarter district 300 will start with fully remote learning due to a rise in covet cases and corbin
02819 cases in king county i think is this is the safest way for us to approach this right now said fred fred hyde superintendent of district 300. arlington heights elementary district 25 superintendent lori being defended her decision to start the school year remotely after originally planning for in-person learning over the objection of nearly half the parents in a survey who wanted a full return to classrooms i do have the responsibility however to answer all employees questions with full honesty and transparency and as i find areas where i can't do that and feel good about the answer i have the responsibility to face that the answers are not yet fully formed it is apparent there are still so many unanswered questions please be honest and own up to that and don't put students and staff in
029harm's way because you don't know we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has already taken 150 000 lives so far no one knows i am begging you to please err on the side of caution when the health of our student community estate is at stake thank you carissa lafleur this is a public comment from kelly mckay hello pam and dr stern in light of the upcoming school board meeting tonight i'd like to reiterate my hope for the performing arts continue this school year my hope is that the district will work with the music directors and all the schools in 301 to continue the arts in whatever way is feasible and safe music is playing singing and performing yes but it is also an avenue to learn about humanity to engage the student
030beyond the playing and singing is a fundamental at any level our music directors teach music through discussion listening reflecting composing and comparing music through the ages the music directors are creative outside the box thinkers it is my experience that some music is better than no music singing over zoom playing an instrument over google me or learning the historical con context of a musical piece keeps the students engaged in communicating with their music director it is not the best learning environment but is doable and feasible one many parents of the district students have reached out to me to express their genuine thanks for the work that all the music directors did during the spring 2020 e-learning they appreciate all the online extra work our music directors did to maintain a pulse on the students their emotional
031well-being as well as their musical skills thank you for your consideration kelly mckay next one is from vicki hi pam for parents that requested four-day in-person instruction for their children does the district have a target date to inform the parents if their children will be enrolled in the four-day program also if there are multiple children in the family if one child gets into a four-day do all the children in that family we personally have children at each level high school middle and elementary and are anxiously awaiting to know how many days our children will be in school versus remote learning at home kind regards next one is from allison morris hi pam i'd like to have more thought put toward the a b split in-person and e-learning plan with the deep cleaning schedule happening on
032weekends and wednesdays the current plan on monday thursday and tuesday friday split exposes the students with names beginning with m to z to the unclean school building has there been any thoughts put to this this doesn't seem to be the best solution thank you the next one is a public comment that was missed on july 20th but we did inform the submitter that we would read it tonight it's from mr lloyd miller good afternoon i will be watching the remote session of tonight's school board meeting but i have some questions that i would like answered one why is it that like every other month the students have a half a day followed by a full day off for teacher institute days this is extremely difficult for many parents many families who now have their kids
033for two days during the week i've inquired with other school districts and none of them have day's office 301 what is happening with these half days and teacher institute days there that cannot happen at another time number two you stated that wednesdays every week will be the remote learning for deep cleaning of the schools that is going to happen what is going to happen on those wednesdays that cannot happen between the hours of 5 pm and 7 a.m the next day this is yet again another day that working parents have to be the teachers when we have jobs in the school of our own to tend to number three you are discussing moving the start date back to the end of august why are children already missing out on so much class time with other
034half days teacher institute days now you want them to miss out another additional two to three additional weeks of class time we understand the school district has certain mandates from the state when it comes to coven 19. the school board needs to realize that every day off and every half day every delay in the school year puts a tremendous amount of pressure and stress on the taxpaying families of the district many of us do not have options to watch our children when they're not in school next one is from jeff why are the board meetings not video streamed and only the agenda is shown especially if this is something you want your teachers to be doing when school begins the longer it takes to make a decision the more time that is wasted for teachers
035who could be preparing for how they will be delivering their lessons parents still are not able to make plans for child care with so much unknown at this point the district does not seem like it will be prepared to reopen with all safety measures and kinks worked out if we cannot keep major league baseball teams safe even with tons of precautions how are we going to keep keep teachers school staff and students safe with basically no precautions it would be much easier to start out all remote so that when we do return to in person all safety measures can be successfully put in place and daily schedules made so this is not disorganized chaos next one is from julie arnold for the board meeting monday i'm fine with my question being part of a group
036request for cross-country information will pk and central middle school cross country be competing this fall now that the iesa has reversed their position if so when will practices start next we have a comment from michael lafleur 301 edmond and school board members most of us agree that remote learning for the general population is not as good as in-person learning but the measures we need to take to keep students and teachers safe in our schools this year would eliminate most if not all of what makes in-person learning so great collaborative group work nope one-on-one conferences at the teacher's desk no partner discussions nope active learning now you get the idea normal learning is not on the table this year and asking teachers to teach in a hybrid model simultaneously with the students at home and the
037students sitting in front of them is unfair to all i assume student and staff safety is your number one concern focus on a remote learning plan and make it the best it can be for all students if we reopen our schools right now we will be inviting covet 19 into the classrooms along with our students as jeff gregorich a superintendent at arizona says he had a teacher in his district die of cover 19 this summer when she worked in the classroom with two other teachers for a virtual summer school program all three were masks had temp checks didn't share anything her brother got it and died her husband was hospitalized the other two teachers were positive and had it bad for the next month there were three responsible responsible adults in an otherwise empty classroom
038and they worked hard to protect each other we still couldn't control it that's what scares me these kids could very easily catch the virus spread it and bring it back home it's not safe there's no way it can be safe if you think anything else i'm sorry but it's fantasy kids will get sick or worse family members will die teachers will die i'm sure you have had many sleepless nights over this decision but i cannot imagine the guilt you would feel knowing you put your employees and students at risk if you chose to physically open the schools i'm sure you're aware that in the past couple weeks of schools and camps opening there have been numerous outbreaks of coca-19 among school-age populations there have also been more studies revealed that show how school-aged kids spread
039the virus as well as how children may carry high levels of the coronavirus up to a hundred times as much as adults i believe the safest and most equitable plan is full remote learning for all if you are still considering sending staff and students 301 into the buildings please consider the following number one you're sitting in a meeting limited to 15 people how can you have schools open with hundreds of students and staff present two you mentioned in the last board meeting that you didn't offer any sports camps or practices this summer for your athletes due to the liability involved you mentioned the lake zurich sports camp outbreaks these are mainly outdoor events with limited students are you really ready to open up your schools to all students are you still concerned with liability number
040three you should meet your employees safety's needs before you can expect them to be productive and effective with students i would like to board an admin to take full responsibility if a hybrid model is chosen when it fails please do not project the failure of this plan onto the teachers who had no say in the model chosen and can already predict the faults of it it is unfair for teachers to take the verbal abuse from the parents who are most certainly going to call the start of school a failure just like they did with spring e-learning there were things mandated by the state that a teacher had no control over that contributed to its failure might i add i saw no failure in the e-learning that was implemented in the spring number four you did
041choose any model that has students going back into the buildings i would like to ask all board members and administrators to sub at least one class each week so you can see what you are asking of your employees and students thank you next is a comment from rebecca franta hello i would like to submit the following question and comments to be read during the public comment portion of the central school district 301 board meeting on august 3rd what is the district's criteria for determining when it is not safe to conduct in-person classes as reported in the news positive code cases continue to rise in king county across the state and across the u.s the king county chronicle reported on friday july 31st that daily covet 19 cases keep rising in king county with five days
042of positive positivity increases the idph reported on july 31st that king county is now at the warning level for new cases per 100 000 because we have passed the threshold criteria when schools closed in march to prevent the spread of coven 19 there were 405 new cases reported across the united states according to the cdc there were over 68 000 new cases reported on july 31st as kids have started to return to activities such as summer camps sports camps and even in-person learning in a neighboring state the results are that when children are gathering in groups they are contracting the virus and testing positive for covenant 19. on july 31st the cdc reported that over 250 children tested positive for covid19 at a summer camp in georgia according to the cdc children between the ages
043of 6 and 10 had the highest rate of infection at 51 percent followed by teens between ages of 11 and 14 at 44 percent this was the latest among several reports of children contracting the virus at summer camps including 85 campers at a ymca camp in georgia and 82 children at a summer camp in missouri in july 36 lake zurich high school students who were attending sports camps tested positive and at the time the health department warned that the number could be much higher as the community awaited results of testing for many more individuals at greenfield central junior high school in indiana this past week a student who was attending the first day of in-person learning received a positive coven 19 test result on the very first day of school many school districts in the
044area have decided that in-person classes are not safe at this time and will begin the year with remote learning including district u-46 which serves families in 11 communities including eligible south belgium and bartlett school in bartlett sorry school district 300 which serves 15 communities including hampshire pingree grove and algonquin and school district 158 which serves families in huntley gilbert's lake in the hills tony sanders is the superintendent of school district u-46 so the loss of a student or staff member as a result of the decision to reopen schools is unacceptable please consider the fact that remote learning is the only option at this time that will guarantee that not a single life is lost due to the school-related exposure of kova 19 for students staff families and community members thank you for considering this question
045and the information provided next is a comment from marlianna wozniak hello central district 301 i have four kids attending elementary school when we filled out the survey for returning back to school we chose that there's enough space to do it a four-day option with every wednesday remote learning two of our older kids actually did pretty well with remote learning and were independent in getting their work done without much of our help however our younger two kids who have ieps truly struggled and did not want to participate much with the video chats and it made it very difficult for me as a mom to get them to want to speak with their teachers and helpers on the video chats my two kids with ieps not only needed to video chat with their main teachers but also
046their speech therapist social worker and their special ed teachers it was extremely difficult and overwhelming as a mom that i needed to be fully present when they had to do all these video chats with their teachers helpers that is why we chose the four-day option of in-person schooling because i feel that my two younger kids especially will benefit in having their teachers teach them face-to-face even if it means having to wear a mask my question is depending on what gets decided as far as returning to school especially if the district decides possibly to do all day remote learning will kids who have ieps be expected to follow the same schedule like non-iep kids for the whole day or even need to be fully present for live instruction the district decides to start the year with
047all remote learning will the teachers be teaching remotely from home or will they be at the school teaching the kids remotely the reason why i'm asking is the teachers happen to be at the school is it possible for kids with ieps who get speech therapy occupational therapy and possibly help with math or reading can they go to school in person to receive help with these areas thank you for your time i think that concludes public comment um before we go on to information items i wanted to say something to give some thanks and give some information so i'd like to express my sincere gratitude for the hard work and support of the administration and staff for the tireless hours that they have dedicated to leading the district through this crisis in response to the ongoing
048challenges the district formed eight committees to assist in gathering data and planning for the reopening of our schools these committees include the governance committee the wellness committee the post-secondary committee the instruction committee a facilities committee along with the facilities subcommittee the school operations committee and the special education english learners committee thank you to everyone who has dedicated your time and supporting these efforts i would also like to thank our district 301 community and ensure everyone that the board hears and shares your thoughts and concerns we appreciate your cooperation and continue to encourage constructive feedback i am personally extremely proud to be part of the district 301 community and i'm grateful for the collaborative efforts of the whole district over the past several months our nation has experienced experienced two crises the collective responsibility of the
049board the administration and our educators has never been more prominent is that heightened awareness in this time of uncertainty that demands we identify new approaches acknowledge setbacks and embrace constructive discussions to develop and adapt to ever-changing circumstances i want to assure the community at the health and safety of our administration teachers students and families in addition to getting the education of our students back on track as our primary objective while our goal remains in-person learning the reality is that intermittent closures may be unavoidable as a board member taxpayer and father from a two-income household i appreciate the challenges that every family will need to confront the uncertainty and frustration that this may cause the plan for the 2020-2021 school year has required working through the comprehensive guidelines established by the state isbe and idph while
050also coordinating with the teachers and support staff to address the challenges safely returning students to school all recommendations will honor our local community acknowledging that district 301 is separate and unique from the surrounding areas with the support of our teachers we are hoping to develop innovative instructional practices that will reduce and hopefully eliminate the learning loss experienced by all students while acknowledging and working to meet the needs of our most vulnerable students educating our children takes on a whole new meaning during these unprecedented times and it will require fiscal responsibility flexibility creativity and embracing new opportunities while at the present we cannot return to the way our classroom operated in the past this can be an opportunity to develop skills and identify meaningful new ways to communicate and convey lessons as we enter a school
051year unlike any before confident the administration board teachers and staff that work together to seek opportunities to identify how to best serve the students and to meet these unique challenges while in-person learning remains the goal the board continues to support the establishment of flexible learning options that emphasizes face-to-face interaction and authentic and differentiated learning opportunities to help students stay connected to teachers and classmates while there are no simple solutions we are fortunate that district 301 has worked closely with the local and state government and health officials to adopt a transitional schedule that will provide both remote and blended learning opportunities district 301 has always paved its own path towards success it is our collective hope that the district will now set a new standard to meet the quality education and experience our community expects and
052deserves schools are an important part of the infrastructure of a community and they provide critical services to families the cdc the illinois department of public health and the illinois school board understand the unique and critical role that schools play by enabling students to receive both academic instruction and support as well as critical services we have worked diligently to plan for and adhere to part three transition joint guidance from the illinois school board and from the illinois department of public health we're doing this for the return of school this fall part of being able to return to school this fall is to have proper ppe and disinfecting protocols in place director of buildings and grounds dan polloway is joining us tonight to outline what measures we have taken and continue to take to prepare for the
053reopening of schools dr mongan and our entire administrative team have poured over the data that we've received from our surveys and looking at the request appearance and we're willing to she will lead us in guiding us through the process of how we examine that information the various options and our recommendation for the reopening of schools tonight so mr powwey would you please update us on what measures you've taken and continue to take to prepare our facilities for the return of students thank you dr stern thank you board for allowing me this opportunity to share with you uh the plans that we've put in place that we've worked very hard on for safe return for our staff and students i first want to share the hard work that all of our buildings and ground staff does
054every year and did this year to make sure that our schools were prepared that we were our facilities were ready to accept the return of students whether it was full or part-time we strictly follow the recommendations of the cdc in the illinois department of public health we utilize the guidance for cleaning and disinfecting as our our protocol standard and the cdc's readiness and planning tools have been intricate in how we plan and how we look at opening this school year in particular a few things that we've done differently for this year is we've made some modifications to our air handling equipment we added a disinfecting process to our cleaning coils on our rooftop units to just enhance the cleaniness of the cleanliness of the air that's brought into the buildings we've added additional filter changes
055to the systems and the uni ventilators in the classrooms as well as low air handling systems we've upped that from typically three times a year to five this year and then we also through our our control systems we're upping the amount of outside air that we bring into our schools typically nine percent is what's recommended for that air exchange we're increasing that dependent on the building building by another three to five percent um to just increase the volume of air that's running through our classrooms nine nine percent is the recommended guideline we've also added some additional uh disinfecting equipment and i've just kind of brought an example of the electrostatic gun that we're utilizing for disinfecting we started utilizing these last school year and it was a great process we used it in response to
056a flu outbreak to any kind of you know particular issue in a classroom and we would bring in what we call a deep cleaning process and that's what this gun included so we've expanded the use of that we'll be over 35 of these units in the district plus a backpack sprayer and the whole idea is to try to have every second shift custodian have one of these available in their disinfecting process nightly as dr stern mentioned we've added an increased amount of ppe for our staff and having equipment available for teachers as needed like masks safety goggles the sneeze guard partitions movable partitions just to name a few things we gloves things like that as as those stockpiles become available we'll we'll be able to get them we work with multiple vendors on making sure
057we have access to all those supplies gloves and n95 masks are something we're requesting we do have a small supply to start the school year but those obviously are secured by the medical professionals and we'll get them as they're available we also added a alternate disinfecting product as we kind of looked at the needs and how we're going to have to function moving forward we added an additional disinfecting product that has a shorter dwell time and it's going to allow us it's a food grade sand sanitizing product that we'll be able to use in the classrooms in our food prep areas and cafeterias to allow us a quicker turnover for staff and students so we can make sure that they're disinfected and sanitized and available for the next group our our typical product the alpha
058hp has a 10 minute dwell time to disinfect properly so that didn't allow us the time that was needed so that's why we went to an alternate product this product's a little more expensive and not as available but i think it's going to be very helpful and transitioning in the ways we need to to get students and staff back in the building we've also added we we're also we've also purchased additional signage we'll have a lot of signage communicating the necessity for masks social distancing hand washing hand washing isn't going to be a big focal point we are going to have hand sanitizer available which up until now has not been allowed by the roe alcohol-based sanitizers we've not been allowed to use those we have worked with the roe to be able to make
059that available we have a stockpile of that that we were able to get access to so we'll have hand sanitizer available but again we're going to really push the hand washing process and and talk to students and staff about the the necessity of hand washing signage will be um we're looking at directional signage for hallways and stairwells in so traffic's not crossing paths we're going to be marking off bus loading and unloading areas to keep social distancing as a reminder especially for the younger kids and then also staff training we do staff training every year on a multitude of topics our staff in particular is fond of hands-on training that's that's the way people in our line of work learn so we've done a lot of hands-on trainings but we brought in some some vendors
060and we actually just did the training today on on specifically on the sanitation and disinfecting process and what the difference is in those two terms uh the term disinfecting is actual killing of germs so that that's the process where you need that dwell time sanitizing is strictly just the wiping down of a surface not allowing that dwell time where you're killing a great percentage of the bacteria but you're not killing everything so that's where these guns come in handy our processes there's been a lot of questions about what our processes will be and the difference between those mondays and tuesdays and wednesdays we will we will clean every night cleaning of our buildings is is a priority and a necessity before we can sanitize you have to clean the surfaces before you can sanitize them
061so our monday tuesday thursday friday process we'll be cleaning the full clean of our buildings as we normally do and then the last part of our staff shift will be the sanitation process so they'll utilize we'll we'll be going we'll use overtime we'll use extra hours to do that during the week where they'll be going through their sections and highlighting definitely all the classrooms and all the student occupied areas common spaces hand rails all the high touch surfaces that will either use the the bioskew on a microfiber cloth or we'll be utilizing the disinfecting guns so there's we will disinfect every night the conversation about wednesdays and and saturdays is that with that flow of students and and the occupancy of the building it's just challenges to give us the amount of time that i
062i think we could use so that's why we we got into the conversation of utilizing those wednesdays and saturdays where literally every single surface in the building on wednesday and saturday will be covered by disinfection not that they won't be during the week but with traffic and people coming in and out of the building and everything there's a little more challenge to that but we are gonna to do that to to the best of our ability but wednesday and saturday we will focus staff hours um on specific disinfecting of of every single space so that's kind of the difference in those in those two days with with teachers being the building on those wednesdays that allows us less cleaning time less time that we have to spend cleaning so then that allows us more more
063time to focus on disinfecting we've provided these to transportation will be utilizing these on the school bus on a on a regular basis we worked with that staff on on the sanitation and disinfecting process so they understand it we've talked to the food service staff all of our support staff is is been made aware and and shown how to utilize these things so every area of our operations can be disinfected and maintained so it's a safe environment for staff and students this this particular chemical the bio skew would be what we would provide and utilize in a classroom on a regular basis it's a food grade sanitizer so there's no necessity for ppe to utilize this um it has a shorter dwell time and a quicker kill time so that's why we started demoing this
064in the driver's ed vehicles and we'll be utilizing this in classrooms and food prep areas um that was a lot in a short few minutes i believe i covered all of the questions i believe i covered all the questions we're taking questions from the community this is the board meeting so board members if you have questions we already had public comment and i have a couple of questions actually yes um i mean firstly thank you for all the hard work you put in over the last number of weeks i mean i know it's it's a it's been a task and a half right um one of the concerns obviously i mean and the the concern for everybody sitting around here is is maintaining safety for all right and that's going to involve not just an
065initial batch of work but an ongoing amount of work right as you've outlined um and one of the biggest areas of concern is disinfecting objects between use in particularly high touch points actually around the building during normal normal school day um particularly bathrooms um and whilst i hear what you said there's there's always been an ongoing concern that perhaps the maintenance department hasn't had enough resource historically in terms of personnel do you have the people to do that yes what we've what we've set up and put in place again utilizing these these type of tools with the staff we have our day staff will be closing down washrooms on a regular basis to do a clean and disinfecting again we got to clean before we disinfect so isolating bathrooms working on schedules with building administrators
066to maintain bathrooms on a regular basis our day staff will do that and then they'll be walking the building utilizing this product with the microfiber and cloth covering handrails we're going to look at some options for for holding doors open so we can alleviate traffic in those touch points but our day staff our day staff understands the the role that they play in this process of getting students and staff back in the building and they're going to be a very active member of that process feel comfortable we have not just enough people to actually do this on a daily basis but you have coverage in case of sickness or absence or we we have what we call sub staff on full-time staff we have to we're still looking to hire two people for the night
067as our subs but we do have a staff member during the day and we utilize our other departments we utilize our grounds department and maintenance department to help support during the day okay for the for when those needs they're gonna be they're gonna be trained up in the same places as everybody else all of our buildings and ground staff has been trained the same yes on the question of the overnight cleaning um prior to staff and students coming into the buildings the following morning i'm assuming you're doing an inspection there's an inspection process is that correct correct our our my supervisors and myself will be doing random daily inspections we don't have a documented inspection process at this time but we will be doing regular inspections with our staff working collaboratively with our staff our
068staff has been trained our staff knows what the expectations are so we'll be following up on a random inspection process i mean but you but your staff will be actually doing a full inspection in their own right correct do they have the um is there an active process of approval prior to the doors being opened every morning saying yes we're ready to go not a documented approval process would that be an issue if you put one in place it would be something we would have we would have to talk and look into how how myself and my two supervisors could do that at each building but i but i no no you must understand me you have your staff in each building um should be obviously they're making their own inspections and obviously they they're
069the ones who are actually there at the time so they know what they're doing right okay they should be able to say to you yes we're good to go the doors can be open so what's what's ironic is we utilize that process in the summer so every one of our classrooms has an inspection sheet that's attached to the door that could be something we could we could implement in the disinfecting process our subcommittee of facilities is made made up of our buildings and ground staff we're working on what that task sheet per se is because we work off of a task sheet what that task sheet would be look like in the disinfecting phase so we could definitely look i i mean personally i feel that it's very important the fact that there's a positive
070yes we're good to go as opposed to nobody said anything so therefore we assume it's going to be okay and whether that's a checklist or whether that's whatever approach that is and with the people on the ground should have the authority to be able to say no we're not only the doors we're not ready right absolutely that's done at the end of the second shift right when the building's clean and closed for five hours or six years correct says yes we're good to go we can unseal the door and and also be able to say no we're not good to go we're not there yet which i know it's a big decision right well we we would expect if that was the case that our staff would reach out to us and we'd have that
071conversation before we get to that i would just say it should be a positive process rather than just say nobody said absolutely right absolutely um and again i'm just asking you one more time i mean is it is there anything else that you you don't have that you think you need you mentioned gloves you mentioned 95 masks that you think would be helpful in terms of any other resource that you feel that you would need to actually do the job properly i think all the res hand soap we stocked up on hand soap when all this happens we have a good supply of that we're modifying paper towel dispensers to make those easier i think all of the equipment that we need we have available or we will have here before this before staff arrive
072because i would say with that equipment whether that's personnel whether that's time with that input whether that's whatever it is i'm sorry but this is actually the most important part of what we're talking about right now we actually solicited the input of our staff knowing we're going to have to have some overtime so we utilize that survey process to survey our staff and almost 90 percent of our staff would be willing to work overtime if we could work with them to schedule it so we've already broached that subject with them that that may be a necessity and you haven't had any pushback from the administration at all in terms of anything you've asked for so far no no we've we've worked all of our committees all of our committee groups we've been sharing information back
073and forth from the instruction committee to operations to facilities all those committees have been working collaboratively on this plan right thank you appreciate it any other questions dr mangan would you like to start covering the data that we've compiled sure first i want to thank all the committee work that's being done the collaboration we've had with both uh cea president chapman and ca vice president kira gravitt as well as many teachers who have reached out to me other grade levels that have reached out to me music teachers have reached out to try to come up with some solutions to some of the more challenging elements those conversations have been very very beneficial as we looked at this i first want to give you the raw data of the parent results that came out so you
074know what we were working from to us i think maybe not surprising to parents we had most of our parents select the four day option we had one thousand eight hundred eight parents uh select the four day option um we had 1 324 parents select the a b schedule 59 parents in our district chose to not attend central 301 for next year 649 parents selected remote semester one 156 parents selected a full year a remote and then we had 459 undecided and as we said last board meeting we'd move the undecided up to the a b but even with that the four day option went out at 1808 in the combined was 1783. so it left us with quite a challenge in a dichotomy of okay this is what our parents want what can we
075do is this feasible and so as we work the data and i've given to the board kind of the data that i've crunched by building at elementary because that's really our most expensive because we have four of them um to see what that would look like and if i gave all the parents that what they requested and if i granted that request it would cost us over two million dollars to be able to function uh just in staff alone so unfortunately that's not an option there's just no way fiscally we could add another two million dollars to our budget to find staff to actually teach i think one of the teachers who spoke an open comment said that we were expecting teachers to do all of these at one time we've never said that we
076weren't quite sure what this was going to look like when i ran the numbers i ran the numbers a b four day remote all requiring a teacher all requiring a section because it's very difficult for a teacher to be able to mix all that up together so i talk about the two million dollars i'm not mixing any of those that's teachers for an a b schedule teaches for a four day and then teachers for um the remote section only which we're looking at right now so that's not an option so then i said well what do you think todd what if we try two sections in each of the classrooms so we said we give everybody two sections in the building for every grade level that we had enough for um and that still was
077at a million dollars so again really not feasible so then we looked at well can we at least give one section of four day and there's a lot of conversation here because we recognize that students with special needs we'd like to see them in the classroom we'd like to see them into school each day if possible and then it came the question of well part of the challenge of special ed is that you want to make sure they have their general ed peers as role models so if we wanted to do that you'd almost have to have a full section but it's it's even more difficult than that because it would depend on the number of special ed students you had at each grade level in each building and then making sure you had enough
078general ed uh students to be with them to pair them up so it was least restrictive we kind of put special ed off to the side and said okay well how much is it for just one section of four day in within each building and that came to 625 000 which is a pretty large cost that's just for elementary for the four elementary 625 thousand dollars so the last option we looked at was removing all four day options at the elementary to see what the cost of that was and that's still a cost of 250 000 dollars you might ask why um it's because we're trying to maintain class sizes that match the contractual requirements splitting them in half to make sure that we don't exceed what we can put in a classroom to keep
079that six foot distancing that the guidelines are calling for and so when you try to establish that we're looking somewhere depending on the size of the classroom somewhere between 13 to 15 or 18. at the high school we have something contained 17 or 18 when we looked at them so i diced these up i really had to keep within the class sizes that we have in the contractual requirement that we have as well as i try to maintain that lower class size so that each day so that we had we could manage to keep those six feet distancing that's why you've seen the cost of 250. additionally the guidelines require that we offer remote learning to all parents that's the requirement of the guidelines from the state board of education and if we're going to
080do remote learning separately having a separate teacher for those remote students which i believe is best practice than having a teacher try to mix all that together it's going to come at a cost of 250 thousand dollars for the elementary school along with the data then we looked at the middle schools there was the opportunity to run um one team of four dayers and then one team of a b at both middle schools we could have probably managed to do that the problem became the number of classes that we had classrooms that we needed and we don't have the number of classrooms that would be required to do that additionally if we couldn't run it at the elementary school level i didn't think it was probably equitable that we would run it at the middle
081school level but i provided for you at least the cost of that for a four day with the ab at prairie knolls would be another 390 and at central middle school will be another 261 thousand dollars you can see we're back up to a fairly substantial almost a million dollars if we kept just one section at the elementary plus these a little over a million abs are pretty neutral we were actually unfortunately we would probably reduce the minutes in ela and math currently they do 66 social science do 44 and we would be moving everybody to a little under close to 40 41 including math and ela to pick up additional sections which would leave us with some teachers who could then absorb the remote only kids so some could teach their content part of
082the challenge at middle school and high school is that they're content specific their licensors don't cover the whole span they're very specific to math or ela or social studies or science so we have to make sure that we have enough content teachers to cover the teacher or the students that we would need them to cover so at the middle school level we maybe have to have teachers do both a b a section of a b or two and maybe a section or two of a remote just depends on how it would break down by schedule at the high school level in talking to kim when she's able to get all of the students rescheduled in what their elective courses were in an a b maintain class sizes and where they need to be as long
083as we may have to shift some teachers from one classroom they're used to to a classroom that could absorb a larger size we're trying to make sure we have one classroom to every teacher i'm not sure yet if we can get there we'll have to report that out she's kind of checking that out with kerry mccaslin our recommendation is for all districts to go a b only and remote um and drop four day at this point in time we just do not believe it's feasible for the district to do that and then special populations but for special education special populations a lot program life skills lead star those are our self-contained independent classes we would want to have them come in all four days then there's another population out there that have a lot of
084related services that go with their academics so a student might be very high need they may get math or write reading they may get writing they may get speech they may get otpt they may get social work services so a lot of their day might be pull out related services so if we only gave them two days a lot of that might be related services so we looked at our population of special education students who had severe needs or a lot of related services and we have about 16 students that we would want to pull in as 4-day as well based on having high needs in those categories and the reason we took 16 or we took that route instead of all special editions there's no way we could fill all of the classrooms based
085on where they're all sitting and some kids are pretty much either collab you know they're they're just getting ready to exit special education they're doing well in a general education classroom they made you go to a remote setting and so we did not pick up those students and mike and michelle are the ones that selected those students based on that criteria so based on our analysis based on what we looked was attainable achievable sustainable as dr mangan said we're recommending the a b schedule for all levels with an alpha split so a k and one group all through z and the other with one group attending on mondays and thursdays and the other group attending on tuesdays and fridays and middle school high school um changing to a start of 7 30 to two middle
086school be 208 just because of transportation to pick up kids elementary being from nine to three thirty um for their their time frame uh transportation can accommodate all those um i will say though in the in the midst of all this and since the last board meeting to now there's been some pretty creative solutions and i think you heard a parent uh mention that she wished we could do something with k1 and one of the solutions that we've we've talked to uh kieran dave about is maybe kindergarten being half day you know and coming in so ada k would come in the morning l to z would come in the afternoon and they'd be there all you know so they would be there every day and have the experience at the um elementary and whether
087we worked on it or not so then when uh kieran david worked with us again they said well hey could we maybe think about that for k-5 you know could it be an option that early childhood through fifth grade could do something like half day for a k half day for lz so those are some ideas we're still having i don't know what the board's opinion of that would be or what you think from a parent's perspective i know it could be daycare larger daycare issues than the two days because it's half day every day but those are some things that we've been kind of batting around as we're trying to work on solutions and meeting the needs of some of our younger students who have are learning literacy and numeracy and some of those
088skills that are really really important as they progress into the education system those are very valid points from one question i have is how are we going to keep the classrooms clean between the shift of kids there's an hour and a half okay so if you did a 9 32 or 9 to 11 30 11 30 to 1 would be a break one to 3 30 would be the second shift and talking to transportation because that's first thing right can we get the buses cleaned they felt they need an hour and a half to transport pick up transport and clean buses the maintenance would come through with their guns and we'd work on a schedule with each teacher so that when they went in it would have that dwell time that they would need teachers
089will have the products one of the things you know kira i talked about some kindergarten teachers talked about is some of them will wipe off products that they know like they're working on a blocks they would wipe their blocks themselves take care of some of that stuff um kieran knows what she'd need for the next period she'd take care of those things but the primary classroom stuff we'd come through with the um guns or the wipe down to do the kill okay in the time frame for that hour we broke a schedule up 8 30 right i talked to dan how long you know i said to daniel how long would it take dan to go in there because i was thinking 10 minutes he said no literally it would take you know them to
090go in and spray a minute two minutes and then it needs that dwell time of 10 minutes so a teacher would need to be out of the classroom um when they're doing so work on the lunch or whatever they need to do to kind of rotate those teachers out while it's dwelling and drying um to get those cleaned the two things that stand out for me from a just a curriculum standpoint so you know this idea of having you know our teachers with teachers and this just our feedback from the teachers you know different three five right then k2 especially so you know would they teach the same content afternoon and morning and then the same kids would have their reverse you know like online where sometimes math might be remote and then math might
091be in person reading might be remote reading might be in person and how do we prioritize that well one of the things we're thinking is that we would do specials as remote so the two and a half hours would be all core maybe specials would be remote so the pe art music would so if a morning class is coming in for the core construction in the afternoon they would do their specials the pm class would do their specials in the morning and then they would do their core in the afternoon when they come in so math ela socialist and science will be handled in that two and a half hours that they're there part of the challenge is two and a half hours part of that loading a bus unloading bus taking bathroom breaks washing
092hands you know some of those things so you're probably down to maybe two hours of instruction but it's still direct instruction with the classroom teacher and so i just i you had a i think about a two week two weeks ago i think you had a rough schedule for nine to three i think it was roughly six hours on the clock if you will and so in looking back at that you know or kind of the way that some of our existing teams do it obviously i know hbt and so thinking about how many minutes of our six hours and 25 minutes at the elementary level you take out lunch recess specials roughly are we looking at three hours of existing core science math readings studies so you're looking at an hour and a half
093of ela 60 minutes of math and 30 minutes of social science but they alternate those so it's three hours a day roughly okay of direct instruction we're losing a good percentage of that but i would argue the same way right that being in person especially for our littles is is a good option um what about i mean again we get fifth graders who you know from my perspective you know very different than our kindergartners who need movement breaks in there but can we expect fourth and fifth graders to have one five minute break if they're only there for two hours and 15 minutes i would argue yes that developmentally they would have the capacity to do that with moving around the classroom very clearly um and so you know how do we kind of flex
094that one thing and talking to dr stern last week was you know provided this is something we're able to make happen as safely as possible and as effectively as possible you know do we take advantage of neighboring districts so if we had if we have for instance district 300 and they have buses and is that a cost that we're willing to take on and say hey can we get some extra buses does that help get more classroom time if we don't have to spend all this time loading and unloading buses if we have more buses so the routes aren't as long and we can cut down i don't know but we actually talked about this i think i think the challenge there is that they're only most of the districts are saying quarter one so
095they're not going to give us buses for a whole cement right so they're still depending on those buses at some point right sort of to to lock those into us probably not going to happen uh yeah it's probably not feasible so that's why we're kind of locked into busing uh the other challenge we have at central is you know 85 percent of our students robust we're the only district that has that maybe cainlyn i don't know what their number is but we're very very dependent on transportation to assist us in that um so if i have a question but i'll since we're talking about this right now i'll just make a comment so i've heard it heard from um somebody works and works with teachers in other schools not in our district but another district
096but they said that they in the first kindergarten first lower grades it's very if the teachers really would like to have those at least in this neighboring district would like to have their students in class for those reasons at least to start the school year because of relationships and relationships and things like that so i certainly would be open to listening to that my other question was as if as if money and district or classroom space wasn't available would we even be able to find teachers you're talking about like a ton of extra staff people oh the two million one yeah late in the year and even defined elementary yes um middle school in high school gets a little bit more difficult when you're looking specifically at content sciences are very hard chemistry physics some
097of those uh elementary though generally speaking yeah we can usually find elementary teachers and that's what a b only with remote if we did that elementary's the only space we would need teachers according to this that's correct yes we would need five teachers across all four buildings i was able to put in four teachers in the cares grant so um we were able to cover four teachers through the cares grant for the year okay i had a comment regarding the half day thing um you go two hours of teaching you know it's 10 hours a week they had two days i think it's actually a little more it would seem and then the other thing for the community there's been a lot of outcry on daycare so we did the alpha split but now if
098you have five days a week with a half a day i think that's a lot more difficult to find child care for a half day compared to three full days or two full days or something like that and then if the older sibling is going to school you know thursday friday then the half day when normally they would be together you know a remote that's gone yeah that's correct right daycare is definitely with the half day is definitely um one of the issues um with that in terms of parents but i think academically um i think the argument that i heard from the kindergarten teachers um because other ones i spoke to mostly about this this was kind of their their idea at first um was they felt that if they could have them as
099a set time not being interrupted with encores or specials which they are in the full day remember that part of that time they're being pulled for specials they're going to lunch they're doing all these we're not talking about serving lunch for these kiddos either we're talking about sending them home no lunch being served at school um in the two and a half so you're not giving up that time that you might do in that longer day they also felt for that age it was much more appropriate for the wearing a mask not to have them all day a shorter period of time but they felt that they could get more covered because i asked the same question them they but they really felt they get more covered in that set amount of time uninterrupted than
100what they could do in the course of what they would have for a full i day see it for kindergarten the older elementary we used to do kindergarten anyway yeah we did and they said they hated to go back to even talk about that because they fought so far to get further so we're not looking to move it so when do you anticipate i mean if if there are still logistical things to to figure out about this whether that's the classrooms i know you guys work diligently over the weekend and again with these two uh in the back you know with ca of course to figure out like what we need uh or or getting feedback obviously nothing's gonna be unanimous um you know it what did we look at we have another board meeting
101in two weeks or three weeks yeah we don't we don't have time though i mean our recommendation tonight but we have a recommendation is to go is to go a b um although um you know we have a lot of logistics we'd have to work out on the other one with both the union making sure teachers were on board you know all of those elements um so right now as we sit so people can make a plan our recommendation would be to go a b remote learning special education for those 16 students outside of the program special education students um so we can service the ones that are the highest need and i think then as we look at other parents that maybe you know mike and michelle can work with other parents that maybe
102feel like they didn't make the cut for whatever reason and see what they come up there we're kind of trying to develop a specific procedure for that yeah that was something i was going to mention earlier i would just assume that we're going to have parents who who would feel like their kids would not only benefit but require based on that and you know i think if i had if i would like to see early childhood in kindergarten come every day if it was my you know that than everybody else uh a b but i i don't know that we can get the transportation for kindergarten and we would need to definitely work with cea to see if that was doable so we've given our recommendation which is the either a b schedule elementary middle
103school and high school or full remote for the parents that want it those are really the two options that we're moving forward at this time can we clarify this question of before we even talk about anybody coming back do we have the resources in place to make sure and i keep banging on about this but for example do we have the nursing staff in place that we need we have a nurse in every building yes is that sufficient yes okay we also have an administrative assistant where we are putting in a secondary administrative assistant uh temporary to assist in some of the paperwork to help reduce the workload for both our secretarial staff and our nursing staff and will that person be trained in terms of what to do in the case of yes okay
104and the the other the other big question that i keep hearing a lot is what happens when there is a a student found with the code virus what is the process we follow the cdc and idph guidelines which are very uh kind of delineated they're also in the book that we have and we have to update that it's in the opening plan okay on what the guidelines are there they did change it they actually reduced the time they actually cdc went from 72 hours to 24 hours so their time frame has reduced in terms of how long somebody needs to be out of the school okay i'm in there last guideline so we have to update the opening plan with those new guidelines under what circumstances we would be required to close there is no
105there is no specific percentage cain county will not give us one idph and cdc will not give you one um it's really monitoring what's going on it's up to a local decision so what do we do so you work out you work with the kent county health department on those individual outbreaks and then you follow the guidance that that is recommended but if they're not giving us guidance no it's going to be based on situations oh i see what you mean right situation they will consult essentially on a given circumstance right status correct it's situational based on the circumstances of that case of that outbreak that makes sense because i think this that's that's one of the areas of concern obviously for parents and staff and everybody right what happens when it's in the guidelines
106of what what cdc has told us they did they did make it much looser uh which we will update um but we'll be following the guidelines there okay is there any recommendation anywhere in the united states from health departments that um that school districts do temperature checks of students or staff the guidelines require us to we get pre-certification so we need to require every parent it would take you all i mean imagine putting 40 000 kids through a thermometer check and how long that would take before they get a school bus our concern is to make sure that our bus drivers are safe as well so we want to make sure that we're entering kids on our school bus with 85 percent of our kids riding a school bus getting entered into a school bus
107after parents have pre-certified them that they actually have no temperature and don't have any of the coping symptoms do you feel like that's a reasonable expectation to put on bus drivers it's a a lanyard with a plastic coating with they could they should be able to see the check marks very easily one quick look that came out of the operations committee recommendation loading of the school bus also because if anybody's at school when you unload or get on it is a massive crowd we're using multiples we're using multiple entry points now so bus loading will be in multiple locations in each of the buildings okay um and then we'll have uh six six mark six foot markers for students to walk on we'll have signage to control flow one bus at a time a bus
108okay so it's gonna be more of a bus at a time okay that was my question well it won't be a mass unload anymore okay yep perfect that's why i say it's gonna take a little bit more time to load and unload buses for sure how much time have you allocated for that extra time we haven't we don't know we're gonna find out but we don't i mean until we do it and each building will be different we don't know what that will be any guess i'm guessing because you know if the kids have to go what six feet off it could take 20 minutes for them to exit the bus well we first of all we know kids are going to have mass on the buses and we know they're not going to take
109six feet off the school bus i mean let's be real right they're gonna light up and they're gonna come off the school bus we're gonna try to walk them in and train them to go six feet but they're on a school bus together they're gonna we know how students are gonna do our best to teach students how to to do that but that's going to take some some training faster no no well i understand that but you know that's logistically it's going to be a nightmare for a while yes and i understand that and that's going to be a stack up and what kind of training and can you do that training before school starts send out videos or anything like that oh we could we could have uh our drivers work on some videos
110and those types of big fifth grader oh man you want to be a big fifth grader happy to be a big fifth grader i'll let pam portal know that yeah we could work on that has there also been discussion about i'm assuming as a parent there will be more parents dropping off and picking up until i know that's something i'm thinking and planning on just the i you know is that is that something that's being discussed because i'm even thinking traffic flow because i know like pk gets crazy and there's nowhere for pk to go it's the way it was it was built yes that's why you kind of wave way around something that's been just i know you have so much time is problematic ct is problematic for sure those are our two issues
111when they were built you know they were not built in a way that manages a large traffic flow primarily because we felt that most kids would walk at perennials and we really have much more parents dropping off kids at prairie house middle school than we would have anticipated um in terms of we know that those will be separate entries in the buses so buses will be different locations the the parents will be at a different location but the managing of pkms it doesn't matter what year it is not even just pk all the schools in general because i just think there's going to be at least at the beginning i think people will probably do more maybe i'm just wondering if you get our parents are discussing it apparently they said they would send their
112kids on buses so i don't know maybe that's it they didn't seem to be a substantive difference from what we're already seeing at the building level not according to the survey but again when it comes closer you know and hpt would be a non-issue because we'd have half the high school is there anyway so we'd have that front lot that we could pull teachers to and use the other lot to snake around the exit that they already go out of now it will take longer for sure in all areas loading the buses unloading the buses it's going to take more people to supervise i know the middle school has worked a schedule out for teachers to supervise and some of those things to make sure that we're able to get those kids in and out
113safely the recommendation obviously is that is is a b a b schedule for everybody other than those who've and then others that go remote basically right um uh special ed special ed we all of our programs leads a-lab star those are programs that are self-contained kids in a specialized program those kids will come to school every day and then we have about four days they'll come four days four days okay and then our students that have severe needs with a lot of related services about 16 of those students that'll always be fulfilled 16 students will be coming also four days okay and those parents will be reached out to by michelle and mike and you're looking looking to make a decision on that when which one on the whole plan as it stands right now
114today that's our recommendation okay and then when will the only variants i would like to consider if we can get it worked out uh with uh cea um and ourselves and we can come to some kind and the teachers it would be to allow early childhood and kindergarten specifically the opportunity to come in at half days four days a week because there is not a mandated time frame by the government for either one of those populations kindergarten's really a choice right you don't have to come to school to summon by law um so i think there's some option opportunities there um that we could we could take in on especially for early literacy and early numeracy um for that population i would like some leeway that i could adapt to those two grade levels if
115possible so we we i mean we all know this stuff this i mean people need certainty in terms of their own planning we know that right yes um when are we looking to review this situation we're currently in talks we're in talks all weekend but once once the decision is taken when we when are we then making a further decision at the end of the year first of january oh no uh all for this year we believe these days for the entire school year we don't know where we're going we have to plan in staffing we can add it we're going to make adaptations to people who are remote only that want to come back at semester which would increase class sizes which could be a cost to us to increase that we recognize that
116um but overall we would like to stay with this plan for an entire year so make a decision for the years home okay i said two weeks ago um i'm glad we got the extra two and a half weeks to start this year um but i also people need to know what to plan for and so we know 40 percent of people aren't going to like whatever it is that we recommend and certainly you know put our backing to but i think that having a decision is better than no decision i appreciate the creativity that kind of came in at the end here with the half step i mean i look i mean i'll be honest i would love it if my kids could have two and a half hours a day at school but
117i i agree with jeff on this one that logistical nightmare for for parents that are already stressed about what is going to happen for my kids when they're home all day if it was five half days so that that would be i think even more challenging and cumbersome quite frankly and so i think you know maybe we can still do some creative things with specials for our kids that are in there two days a week and how can we have more classroom learning time with our team i don't know i mean we have i know we have our minutes never how do we get creative with that yeah the guidance requires that students get uh five hours of sea time right um now five hours of seat time includes specials but it still would require
118some activities to be sent home from their two and a half hours of instruction to be done at home um to get that five hours required and if we do a b with remote would the the in-person kids be on our exact same time schedule as last year or would there be noticeable tweaks 10-minute tweaks to a start and end of a school day for remote only for you know for our kids when they're at the buildings i mean is that the same as last school year uh middle school and high school would go 7 30 to around 2 208 and then our elementary would go 9 to 3 30. so fairly close about 10 minute difference okay they get out about 10 minutes earlier and much earlier at the middle school but they also
119start later they started 18 they're sharing right was are they sharing transportation they'll be sure that's why we need to do it in order to get the buses turned around to get the middle of the elementary yep on the question of self-certification right we raised this the last meeting we're relying on parents basically to be very honest about the whole process right um but do we need to change any of the the handbooks to yes we're working on that right now that i'll come forward in two weeks currently we are looking at every handbook and updating everything we need as well as board policy coming forward that'll be happening at the next board meeting and we're clear the fact that should there be sort of deliberate um uh mistakes being made by the parents should
120i say that um there will be that child will get full remote because they can't be trusted or a period of that in the handbook underneath discipline so if a child isn't wearing their mask for example right now we have if we have medical reasons why a child can't wear a mask they have autism sensory issues some of those things that'll be in medical documentation and we'll work with those students in some other means otherwise students who can wear masks and do not wear them they'll be disciplined appropriately and we will warn them the first time called parents second time they'll come down the office we'll call parents to have them picked up and the third time they will be home permanently for remote only okay and the same if they're self-certifying incorrectly uh i
121don't i don't know how you'd prove that um that that's a that's a tougher one i'm not sure you could i mean i i short of them not having a temperature and yeah there would be no way to discipline further it's a tough one but i don't know that we could honestly give a an honest referral on that one what about a possibility of a spot check purchasing an infrared thermometer and we have the random children that come in the door we have the ability that if someone's displaying any type of symptoms or you suspect they may be displaying a symptom even though they did the self-certification maybe something starts to occur during the day we have all of the equipment there to to um do a symptom check temperature check and if need be
122isolate uh with appropriate protective equipment but again i think it's just worth stressing the fact that this whole system only works if everybody actually goes into it with good faith yeah and if they don't then realistically wood's putting everybody's health and one of the reasons we chose to do pre-certification the way we chose to and we're one of the only districts that's requiring and i know you know eric said it could be kind of laborious right for a parent but we want them to think every morning that they're signing off that their kid is healthy and they have to fill that form out every single morning and sign their name on purpose we want them thinking every single day and making a decision that my child is healthy enough to go to school same thing
123with our teachers every one of us us included we will be pre-certifying every morning that we're healthy enough to come to school would that be on the our building administrators i'm assuming to track the teachers will be filling out a form every morning before they enter the door and principal's retracting that our district office people will be tracking or we're tracking every day and then students uh one of the reasons we wanted that other person for administrative will having them taking them collecting them once they come off the bus and then we'll be tracking every student to make sure we have pre-certification this has been a current expectation for administrators that have worked all summer long in district office um that has been opened uh non-stop since the beginning of this pandemic we self we
124self-check and self-certify every day so it's just a continuation of that for for all levels yeah good luck that thanks for that i think things have changed society wise too that if you're not feeling well at home it's okay to stay home now you know where before it was like i you're fine just you know the child doesn't feel well they can stay home and jump into that remote learning for that class you know not the other one but you know there's an option i think that's easier you know so hopefully you know all we can do is have faith in our parents and kids yeah and i think it's important for parents to know that we're still going to educate your child if they're asymptomatic or they just aren't feeling well leave them home
125let them go on the remote let the teacher know they're absent but they're not missing class they're going to check in on that remote piece right so they're still going to learn from home same thing for staff the staff is ill call in let us know one of the guidances that we're waiting for is we believe in the past you could not leave a parapro supervise a students without having line of sight there is guidance we hear that's coming out that's going to allow you to let a parapro in a classroom to monitor students while a teacher is teaching remotely so if a teacher is sick they don't feel 100 but they don't want to take a sick day they want to teach from home because they feel they're good enough to teach remotely from
126home we can try to figure out if we can work on those types of things um those are some things we still have to kind of work out and okay what's going to happen with this so how does this look these are things we still have to talk about um with both cea uh best you know all of those groups as well i think there's some solutions to that we really want them to stay home i don't want them to be afraid that they have to come because they don't whatever right so we want to be thinking creatively about those solutions as well so yeah i think your recommendation stands unless anyone has any i think that's the best of a lot of not great options based on our limitations with size especially with our
127buildings the way they are right now um and i support that option at this time let's do it [Laughter] i definitely think there needs to be some time spent on instruction for the children before they get to school on mask usage and how to use a mask and look around the room you know your nose and mouth are supposed to be covered by your mask there's a requirement we do gcn modules and in the gcn module there's actual requirement that they have to watch one on covert 19 it's a new requirement so every staff member will be viewing the coven 19 within the first week of school first day probably we'll be talking to kids as well about some of those things that's another requirement that we have to do is to make sure we're
128educating students on a proper hand washing proper way to wear a mask you know those types of elements so we'll be teaching you know kind of showing them that in every building wherever the stations are at are located we're going to need to walk them and show them in a classroom somehow so that they know where they need to go if they need to put hand sanitizer on where they can find it those kinds of elements as well every building has its own issues elementary is being self-contained middle school is staying in homerooms teachers are moving but they're still going to move somewhat in terms of specials so when they're going their encore class for pe because we want to get them outside as much as possible or art or music or foreign language we
129still want them to experience those experiences those things in middle school as well uh so they will be going to those classrooms so they need to know where they need to hand sanitizer going in and out we call it foam in foam out they're not really foam machines but you know they need to sanitize in and out it's just training them on all those protocols but that's all part of the the new way of educating our students and there's got to be a lot of that content that's already been curated anyway about the cdc oh yeah and other things we surely can you know spend some time finding what we think are the best for our students videos for like hand washing use of masks things like that and i know i'm the only one
130who's taking my kid outside of the house but i teach them to use a mask and use sanitizer and go out too so yeah my kids remind me if i forget getting out of the car you know got maeve always correcting me she's ready to go we we haven't addressed the question of off the school athletics programs so athletics have been shut down by ihsa and iesa with the exception of cross-country can run as well as golf for the high school so and tennis so middle school will run cross-country high school can run the other three um everything else has been pushed off i'm not quite sure they said they'd push off every other sport until later they're going to play football in the snow i'm not quite sure we'll wait to see what ihsa
131has to say with that uh we'll see what those guidelines are the building um in terms of activities um i think again that's a conversation we need to have with ca leadership to figure out what that's going to look like and we haven't gotten that far yet for things like you know scholastic bowl or you know some of those other elements may have something i could do homecoming floats this year because there won't be a homecoming float um or dances so some of those things we we have to still talk about and do we have a time frame expected or the expectation of time frame to actually be making decisions like that uh we're working with ca consistently so as we continue to work with that and we get uh you know somewhere an agreement
132then we'll push information out how about music and band is that under the same guidelines uh music and band so our music teaches elementary school have been very very creative um so they have a lot of ideas that i think are pretty creative again it'll depend on how we're going to do things there and what that's going to look like for pushing in instead of them actually singing we purchased some things that like rattle you know the kind of shakers it was like an egg shaker kind of thing to teach and beat and those kinds of things so they had some pretty creative things for kids to use and still enjoy music um and so i think they've got a whole spreadsheet of stuff they've got ideas of speakers to go outside so they can
133take the kids outside and still do the music with some speakers that are all fairly inexpensive so we'll be looking to purchase some of those supplies to get them up and going the middle school again has been working as well they have some pretty creative solutions so i've got quite a few spreadsheets and i know the principals have been talking to the middle school music people more than i have i've been doing much more at the elementary in high school of course we know we lost jeff nesseth which is a huge loss to our district severe loss to our district for a course many kids have been touched by him dramatic you know i can't even talk about how many kids he's touched in his lifetime here in his tenure within our district um so
134that position we're going to need to fill um and so it's really jeff nesseth and i've i've talked more to the pianist the keyboard she sent me some statistics and some research and some studies that have been out there which have been pretty interesting um i know that marching band is a staple in our community um so we just need to be talking to jeff i mean to jim to see what his solutions are and ideas one of the things he sent us which i told carrie to get a price on was they're like mass for me for musical instruments kind of they're going to wrap around the bottom of a trombone so first spit and then they said to use puppy pads to drop the spit in you know when you empty out the
135spit things so i thought those are some really creative solutions that maybe quite the visual you made for everybody at home we could use that in our science class and we could bring it full circle people we could do testing but we do feel confident i think that there's um there's community members i think that are worried you know about the future of the fine arts due to kovid we're committed to continuing the fine arts in a safe and effective way and we'll work collaboratively with the with the teachers to establish how how we can best accommodate that well somebody who for when i was here i was here for jeff's first year in 1996 and the first year we had corral was the first year that we had had a kind of a top
136tier choir uh it was extremely important to me while i was here and theater was extremely important to me while i was here and i was in all the shows when i was here and hopefully that i helped the community you know there's people that care about it and i was extremely uh involved in that it was a really important part of my formative years at the high school in particular so uh it is not forgotten we just sounds like have to be really creative i think yep it's and it's they're pretty creative that crew is very very creative they come up with solutions they're very solution oriented so i'm sure we'll get to a good solution there so we're going to move forward then with the ab schedule um and the other plans for
137the other groups that we let out great excellent are we doing this is there anything else emotion and second to adjourn into executive session yes yes yes yes hi yes thank you everyone thank you thanks so much thank you thank you oh yeah they might want it's almost two hours well they have them electronically but we didn't have