001go ahead okay great uh welcome everybody uh to our regular school board meeting on january 21st and could you do a roll call for me please karen anderson present tammy hines here john long here craig meyer here metal camp here greg o'connor lisa schumacher great we have a quorum we're going to go ahead and move ahead item two on the agenda is public comments and uh courtney would you you need to state your your full name and then you have three minutes to address the board so whenever you're ready thank you tim giggin uh a chs oddly social studies american history teacher thanks again right now in my history class i'm teaching the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s i'm not equating that movement with what i'm doing tonight but i can't look
002my students in the eye and discuss civil rights knowing that i didn't reach out to you tonight this is not something i'm comfortable with but i feel compelled so here i am and i thank each of you for listening i am speaking as a former president of the columbia education association and a teacher at chs for the past 25 years my views tonight are my own and i speak for no one i'm not representing ca at this time although i will tell you i think i can speak for 72 percent of the high school teachers i appreciate all the work each of you have done in the last nine months i know it has not been easy we must find some common ground i know of no teacher who does not want things to return
003to normal as soon as possible no one likes the current situation and while we all want what is best for our students we must recognize that our district consists of four very different schools all with different needs what works at parkview chs and the others may not work at the other schools we must also recognize that we may have very different views on what is best for students and staff and we may even disagree on the severity of the pandemic it is my hope that the board is taking into consideration science and not making emotionally based decisions if we cannot trust science what can we trust my room at columbia high school is 23 by 21 feet this is the student's desk area i'm not counting the front of the room where i tend to
004teach from behind my self-purchase shower garden yeah a shower curtain in a classroom who would have thought if we bring back both groups of students my in-class numbers will go from a low of 10 students to a high of 23. this is based on current hybrid numbers my numbers could increase dramatically since most of my classes 25 plus students rostered if numbers remain consistent with our hybrid schedule and we bring both groups back the number of students in person will average around 15 to 17. there is no way to configure my room to social distance if the number is over 12. if one student gets coveted in my class it will mean at least three other students must quarantine and it could be as many as eight i believe my numbers are fairly typical at
005chs frankly the social distancing that is taking place right now in the boardroom will not be possible in most classes at chs think about what i just said each of you right now can social distance yet teachers and students cannot the optics of this are not lost on chs teachers based on a survey of chs teachers on january 13th 72 percent of high school teachers want the current hybrid policy to continue i would be happy to email you the results and the comments made from both sides 28 are basically for a return to normal since when do we cater to 228 percent what kind of message does this send i ask have you surveyed all the parents of the district not just the ones you see socially or the ones who call you or you
006run into at the store right now 71 out of 149 of my students and their families opt for room i'm not sure a majority of parents agree with bringing all students back but admittedly neither you nor i know because there has not been a survey in a recent board meeting november i believe board members said paraphrasing high school students are not quarantining they hang out in groups of up to 20 every night at the legion tim we need a tim i'm paraphrasing tim we need we need yeah we need to we need to wrap this up really yeah okay thank you thank you thank you tim another uh yeah okay great thank you [Music] hello miss clayton yeah this is uh dr pistelli at the board meeting i have you down there wanting to address
007the board this evening okay i'm going to give it to you and we have um you have to state your name for the record please and then if you would uh limit your comments to three minutes okay thank you my name is kerry clayton i am a parent community member and i have had the honor of teaching at chs since 2012. i am speaking today on behalf of myself and many of my fellow teachers who did not feel comfortable speaking to you this evening the first thing i would like to say is that the teachers at chs care so deeply about our students and their education we love our students and have spent the year mourning all of their losses with them indeed they are our losses as well we would like to have graduation
008watch our athletes compete in spring sports enjoy a live band and choir concert see a theater production but bringing everyone back at the same time puts all of us in jeopardy which is why i am here this evening fighting for what is right and safe for chm i have one of the largest rooms in the building and currently in our hybrid plan i am able to safely seat all of my students six feet apart however if my classes were full there was no way i could safely face my students and therefore the risk of cogan19 exposure to my students and myself will increase people may argue that we haven't seen a spread in our schools i believe this is due to the fact that at the high school we have been able to do our
009best with social distancing our students and keeping numbers of individuals low think about this the rooms you're currently sitting in and social resistance is four times the size of many classrooms at chs why is it not okay to have the meeting open through the public attendance but people keep on insisting on adding more young adults into our building we are not okay we feel as though our professionalism and expertise as educators is not being taken into consideration while the board plans for the future of our careers and the education of our young adults in this community this despite such disregard we do everything we can to make sure our students are okay even when we are not okay we are exhausted our teachers at chs have been working harder than ever to produce high quality
010virtual and personal person learning in person learning the limited technology resources available our students are not receiving a lower education if anything their recipients have some impressive virtual adaptations of traditional teaching methods and we do everything we can to make sure our students are learning even when we are exhausted we are frustrated that science and safety is not being considered from discussing the future a recent survey of chs future shows that 72.5 of teachers do not feel it is safe to increase the number of students in the building at this time covet 19 numbers are increasing new strengths are spreading and we still do not know when vaccinations will be available to our teachers and we will continue to do everything in our power to keep our kids safe even when we are frustrated i
011ask that you vote tonight to keep our high school plan as it is now hybrid with half days and add friday mornings as synchronous remote learning this will increase face-to-face construction time from 16.6 hours to 20.8 hours a week while also ensuring time for teachers to plan student-centered lessons that are virtually compatible and reach out to our fully remote learning students decisions should be made based on the safety for all not the ones of some thank you thank you right well do we have anybody else okay great um on to uh item three correspondence can you send something around there's a note card going around that's right great on to items four and five the consent agenda do you want to address that for us uh sure um i want to bring up some things
012we do have a resignation of an eagle view health care provider and we've got the um employment i don't know if i got added to the most recent agenda of kelly christian who's going to be the eagle view health care provider now um this just in we got an email this evening marla bloom camp who is the nurse at the middle school she has resigned and so we're going to be having to fill that position as well um i also have two network technicians as we've gone to one to one with the computers we are replacing um ron with two technicians and they will be plenty busy we also have the two uh third grade and second grade remote instructions so we currently have all of our remote instructions in those are pretty much the
013highlights of what we have um the vacancies sign language interpreter special education teacher and the music teacher based on retirements um and departures and there's one more thing um tammy hines has been subbing for us she does have a check in the consent agenda and so she'll be voting abstention i believe we could we could pull her check out basically the um board members are allowed to receive compensation for work done they cannot make more than two thousand dollars in a fiscal year and no paycheck can be over a thousand dollars and currently i believe you've worked six days correct volunteering yeah yeah but right now um an abstention from tammy's not anything other than she's got to check in there for herself because she's been subbing what if she wanted a board member yes
014any other questions on the consent agenda seeing none i'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented motion by greg meyer and a second bye a second by greg o'connor did you do a roll call vote for me please karen anderson yes tammy hines john long craig meyer scott middle camp yes greg o'connor hi lisa schumacher yes motion carries on to item six communications reports and presentations uh the enrollment that was in your packet had a little mistake in it we have revised enrollment on in front of you on to the principal's report we got mr reeves hello good evening uh first i want to talk about was to get graduation and graduation date approved tonight thinking about what will be like in may i'm in business probably having to try to do
015it outside again and so a little bit of a different proposal would be saturday may 15th at 1pm i know we normally do sundays and the thinking is in case we have a rain out we could do the backup day of sunday at 1pm and that way it would be out there and they would know the dates i'm afraid if we do a sunday and there's a rain out and we have to push it back a week keeping the chairs and everything that we had out there could be a problem so i know we normally do sundays and i just think for this year to try to play it safe to move to the saturday with the sunday as the backup so i'm proposing then that for you tonight to to approve the may 15th
016and then i would have the parents know also that the 16th would then be the planned backup i've talked to some neighboring schools and uh they're going to follow suit and do a saturday sunday as well our times won't our times will not conflict so that that seems to work out so that's something that i i think is on the agenda to approve later uh mr gagan spoke to us earlier he's up the school because he had a scholar bowl match so we do have something a sport going on with an activity going on we have scholar bowl and it's really pretty incredible the coaches at the school the kids are at their house individual houses the other teams are at their houses and the questions are read and everyone's just answering in through through
017buzzers they have it through a phone after they have their house to keep the matches going and things are changing quickly through health department and ihsa so different sports might be starting here days weeks as things have been loosened by the governor finally what i have for you is registration students tomorrow will get registration packets shared with them to start thinking about their classes for next year starting that process of choosing courses and getting the master schedule built so uh keep it rolling on with our normal perceived procedures and stuff and that's all i have to know i didn't have any questions about graduation i meant to do that i'll just say on graduation having it outside um that's something that uh former board member ron longhounds talked about many many times why don't we
018have it outside why don't we have it outside so i can imagine he'll be watching over us orientation night where they came over they come over we're going to offer it through a video and share it with the parents so they can get the same presentation yeah the students might not be walking the building but we'll do that over the summer if we're allowed to at that time but we will still trying to do a different more personalized touch the counselors will still meet with the 8th graders they're going to have individual google meet sessions with each counselor we've worked it out with ms langeng at the middle school to help supervise those instead of them going over they normally go over and meet with eighth graders individually to talk about classes for the high
019school we'll be doing that through some some google meets but we'll also still have an evening event where we share the video with parents to try to still give them that same experience thank you all right thank you mr reeves dr castelli assistant superintendent kind of reporter uh a new role that we have that you approved the revolt teachers that we have hired so we've officially got our three teachers on board uh kim and the principals uh mr dugan and ms becker are working on onboarding them just like we would with our regular teachers they have joined their teams so they have been spending time observing the teachers in the classroom observing how they're doing the remote lessons and have also some of them started to help create those to get used to the tools
020and to start rolling something out um so we feel like when in february we move towards that that they'll be fully ready to take on that curriculum they will be meeting with those grade levels just like if they had a classroom of 28 so they're planning and everything will take place on those half day fridays that we will hopefully still have um moving forward they will spend time collaborating as well so the curriculum that the students have been getting and the students who are in person will remain consistent and the same um mrs anderson when i was uh speaking to her earlier it's kind of like an example you can acquit it if we had somebody leaving on maternity leave and we knew that and we had a sub we would be bringing them in
021having them shadow teaching them all the things and then they would be taking over um the uh remote teachers will be taking grades they will be scheduling google meets to meet with their kids they will do full group and small depending on how many kids are in there and there the schools are going to send out a meet the teacher presentation much like we did at the beginning of the year when you have open houses just in general to meet the teachers and that will be coming out on the 10th and they're going to explain all the procedures and they're gonna talk about what it's gonna you know look like um and just some information about themselves so the kids who are fully remote should be getting to know those teachers and seeing them so
022it won't be like a brand new you know situation for them and um so we have scenarios laid out too for those kiddos that we've had to isolate for a classroom what that's going to look like and so we kind of outlined all those duties but i'm very impressed with how our remote tutors have just hung in and jumped right on board some of them would have more experience with being a real teacher than others but all of them are very eager to start working on their tickets and pe art all the specials will be given to the fullerene students as well so we will be getting our full curriculum awesome great thank you courtney on to superintendent's report all right um foia one of those things i always update you on we did get
023a foia was the quarterly i call it the quarterly smart procure foia we do those for that company and we responded in a timely fashion the facility subcommittee we haven't met for a while but we will be meeting in february the architects have our bid specs for our summer work coming coming ready to be presented and we're going to review it before it goes out to hit the streets for construction workers to look at it and we've been busy meeting with this return to school committees and we've got that on the agenda today about getting the kids back in every day the goal is to have them back in all day all kids by fourth quarter we want to start next year as normal normal as possible speaking of next year as mr reeves has
024already pointed out we're starting registrations we're starting to look at the budgets we're starting to discuss goals for next year and so as we finish out this year we are starting to set the stage as to what we're going to be doing for next year staffing etc and so you'll see more information about that coming down the pipes but that's pretty much all i have great thank you on to item seven items for action uh item a approved date and time for graduation mr reeves talked about that for a few moments set up to hold graduation on may 15th at 1pm understand that sunday may 16th at 1 pm would be the alternate is there any questions or comments from the board on those dates seeing none i'd entertain a motion to hold graduation on
025may 15th at 1 p.m and understand that sunday may 16th at 1 pm would be the alternate some move motion motion by karen anderson and second by john long could you do a roll call for me please tammy hines yes john long yes greg meyer scott middle camp yes greg o'connor hi lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes okay motion carries on to item b approve the second reading and adoption of board policies issue 106. the board policies are there are there any questions from the board members for the second reading of these board policies seeing none i'd entertain a motion to approve the second reading of the board policies issues 106 as presented motion by tammy hines second bye second by lisa schumacher you do uh vote for me please john long yes greg meyer
026yes scott middle camp yes greg o'connor lisa schumacher karen anderson yes tammy hines yes great motion carries on to the return to school plan do you want to talk through that uh with us certainly we've um as i've said many many times we're at a fork in the road and on one path you could go in all day k12 but to do that you'd be adding in a lunch and you don't want to keep the classes as hybrid the other way is to go all in um with six to 12 and to do that you'd be at a half a day and so what we're proposing is that right now k5 is all in half a day uh monday through friday and we're gonna be all in eight to three with friday being the eighth
02712 30 day so everybody's you know it's going to be monday through thursday 8-3 friday 8-12 30 for the k-5 6 12 we are currently hybrid half a day and so what we're changing is to all in for half a day 8 to 12 30 and that'd be monday through friday as i said earlier the goal is to move fourth quarter all in all day we're going to need to get lunches by that time we should have all of our vaccines done vaccinations should be complete and we'll have a better idea of how our contact racing is going and how many people are coming back and whatnot um miss heinz and mr myers were on the return to school committees as was uh mr reeves and dr costelli there's pros and cons both sides none
028of the plans are making anybody thrilled i've had people tell me we're moving too fast i've had people tell me we're moving too slow the recommendation right now is to go all in k five to three with friday being eight to twelve thirty six twelve all in eight to twelve thirty and this the proposed start date is when that would be the day after president's day which i believe is february 16th okay did you talk to john yes he is he is he he thinks this is great he says it's time for them to all come in he still stands by there's been no transmissions at the schools and um he's at the point now where he's saying whatever you need to do to be able to get those kids back in we're ready to
029get them back in so i say mr wagner was pleased to hear of our plans so by going all in six to 12 for half days we are not going to have social distancing correct and that's not an issue as we're going to have to quarantine people and you're going to see people getting quarantined there are i mean people are going to um continue to contract this virus right now the the expectation is is that you control you quarantine the close contacts um it's it's frustrating because the kids that are being quarantined they're not seeing them get sick so why are we quarantining them because we're told we have to so you will have people still going to remote through this process but um i believe that the step we're at right now all in
030is the right choice did you um do the survey how many are going to be remote for the next quarter but we did not do this no how many high school kids are remote right now um they are our school with the largest amount um but it's really hard to say how many are going to be coming back with the all in i'd have to say freshmen and sophomores are going to be returning juniors and seniors maybe not so much yeah i'd say my biggest concern for any group right now is our senior class and making sure that they are all going to be ready to graduate and able to graduate um i think that the phone calls and stuff that i've heard when we've got kids at the top of the class they're still
031at the top of the class and there's not a big concern for them i'm still worried about the ones at the middle to the bottom and i'm afraid a lot of those are our remote kids and i certainly would hope that the parents are emphasizing to the kids that going to school is their job and that they have to be there whether it's online or in person or whatever i do have concerns about having that many remote but and having them all back in i still i still am a kind of like the the hybrid all day because that would if we're not concerned about the social distancing i don't see the issues with the launch as much yeah that was discussed and and um i don't want to say consensus but i think that
032that what was communicated to me through a lot of the various parents is that they want their children to attend school every day and they're the hybrid is is causing a lot of them to struggle and so um there's pros and cons to going either way i mean it makes sense to go either way that's what's so vexing about this problem um i'll just say i haven't had a phone call that says i want my kids all in um the ones the phone calls i've had are go hybrid they like the hybrid they like having half the kids there at a time because um then they've only got half as many that would be in contact and they could have the social distancing um i just would have a question if we're going all in
033what are we doing to take care of our teachers and our staff i mean we've talked about teachers behind shower curtains um and i've got instances of more than than one plexiglas what are we doing to protect our staff i uh more than one plexiglas uh barrier and the health department said that that would not be suffice unless it was a box so i don't think that that is you know in terms of removing from the isolation right so i don't think that adding more is really going to solve the issue they would have to be isolated of course maybe it's reducing the likelihood of some kind percentage-wise of dumb contract you know contracting it um so yes but then the socially you know emotional part obviously for our teachers is is something that we
034look at every year but definitely this year and um we actually today uh had a brainstorming session uh of trying to put some meaningful things into place um to try to provide some opportunities should somebody wish to to partake so hopefully we'll get those rolled out as well the other thing is you know you have the benefit of being able to look at other differences and there's districts ahead of us and there's districts still behind us we're kind of in the middle and moving forward um but the health department has made it quite clear they're not the transmission from student to teacher is really not occurring in the schools because the teachers are staying the six feet away and that's the key thing is is that you know you need to wear your masks and
035you need to stay at least six feet away from the group um for the teachers to be not quarantined but as far as the quarantining that's different than actually getting sick and they're not seeing the transmissions in schools is what i would and i find it very sad that 72 percent of our high school teachers do not want to come back or want the kids all back in when we have the younger grades those teachers are close to the kids side by side doing activities helping them with stuff and i i just i find that very sad for our district that 72 percent of our high school teachers don't want the kids back in all all the time yeah and i think that both of the teachers though said it they want them back and
036they just want them back in safely and so it is frustrating that we are all so divided and and you see it in the covid you see it in the politics you see it just in the world in general and it's and it's frustrating because um there is there is division i i i wish i knew how to unify people but you know when it comes to kobe there are a lot of people that have feelings about it and i can't do anything about that i wish i could on the health department website today i was reading that so starting monday the vaccinations they're going to be moving to phase 1b starting on monday which is like residents that are 65 and over plus frontline essential workers which would be our teachers yeah when i
037talked to mr wagner this week he's doing the 80 year olds now he's dropping down to 75. once he gets through those he'll he'll open it up for the teachers and we're ahead of schedule according to the website today yeah he believes that if the vaccines keep coming in the rate that they are we're expected to get the vaccines the first week of february and uh we've been talking about whether or not we'll take a snow day and let everybody go and get them done or if we can get it scheduled for the afternoon so that you know when 12 30 hits they can go to the fairgrounds and get them vaccinated we want everybody vaccinated and i'm excited to see the vaccines i don't want to say that it's going to be the first
038week of february because i don't want to jinx it um but right now if the according to mr wagner if the vaccines keep coming in the way that they are the teachers are next is there an option for an on-site vaccinations that you do have health care workers in the buildings yeah no not yet we would have to go to him and i guess he they used to come out and do the flu shots i'm not quite sure what the procedure is different than this versus the others but uh what yeah it's probably the tracking yeah or the temperature in the handling storage i spent a lot of time listening to both sides of this argument and i've tried my best to keep an open mind um seems to me the primary concern of not
039returning is unable with inability to social distance but in my experience that the kids aren't social distancing outside of school they're choosing to get together they're obviously not wearing masks i think if even if they didn't social distance and we're masked i think they'd be safer in school than they are the general public and i think it's important to keep in mind we're not requiring anybody to come back to school if somebody is scared if they have somebody at home that they don't want to get exposure to they'll have the option of remote learning so we're not forcing anybody we're making we're providing a choice is all we're doing we're not forcing anybody to do anything well you mean the students students correct right any other comments or questions on the plan and just one
040more thing to add in terms of the all kids back in the parents that have been calling me have really expressed the need to get their kids in just to get them moving in the morning not walk down you know with a blanket wrapped around them on their remote day but to actually get up get ready get dressed be productive and i guess it's basically their emotional well-being as well you know and i forgot we during our committee meeting i brought this up and there is a study that i brought up i think a million or two ago and it's about productivity on people and basically it says that when when you get up just think of all of us on the weekends we get lazy if you don't get up and get moving you
041tend to coast a little bit longer when it's a work day you get up you take a shower you get ready and you're working that's human nature and kids are the same way i think if we we need to get them up get them engaged and then they can they can carry that over into the afternoon instead of vice versa is the afternoon uh remote learning or are they just going half days no they will have uh office hours and they will be doing remote learning and they will be doing some prep the kids will not have instruction time specifically laid out in the afternoon there will be office hours if the kids need help they can get it remotely through those office hours and the teachers also need planning time and you know they
042are getting a double burden with remote learning so they do need some prep time to handle both jobs any other questions or comments on the plan seeing none i'd entertain a motion to entertain a motion to have the students on february 16th return to school every day with k through fifth grade attending monday through thursday 8-3 and friday 8 to 12 30 and 6 through 12th grade 6th through 12th grade attending monday through 3rd monday through friday 8 to 12 30. i'll make the motion a motion by lisa schumacher second second by tammy hines can you do a roll call police greg meyer yes scott metal camp yes greg o'connor hi lisa schumacher yes karen anderson i'll go yes tammy hines yes john long yes great motion carries uh on to the next time on
043the agenda discussion items i don't have anything to do okay board president's prerogative i um i just want to say that this is another step forward i think we've been been trying to make incremental steps forward and getting the students back in class and i think we've been doing it cautiously and really looking at ways our best ways to do that we don't want to get to a point that we have to go backwards but i think this is a good next step and not to jinx anything but looking forward to fourth quarter right and we get all in i did see on the news tonight that if the vaccinations continue to roll out as they have nationwide that by august we could be back to semi-normal and so hopefully by fall we should be
044ready to roll into school if all goes as planned on to item 10 executive session we don't have anything uh necessary we have one next next month but we will have one next month yep uh on to the last anime agenda adjournment i'd entertain a motion to adjourn i'll make that motion motion by john long second bye second second by greg o'connor could you do a roll call vote for me please huh scott milk camp yes greg o'connor all right do you want to go home lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes tammy hines yes john long greg meyer yes and we are done motion carries we are adjourned and it is 7 38. great thank you taylor you