CUSD4 Board of Education November Regular Meeting

001e e e great it's 7:00 I'd like to call this meeting to order K could you do a roll call for me please yes sir Karen Anderson here Tammy La Tammy hind here I'm just doing it again John H here Greg Meyer here Scott Middle Camp here Greg o Conor here Lisa schacher here great we have a quum uh let's go ahead and get started uh welcome to visitors I see we have a few here in the audience and uh on to public comments I'd like to uh remind folks uh for public comments it's 3 minutes per I think we have a few folks to call in I have one one okay [Music] hello can I speak with Lori please yes this is her hi Lori this is is Courtney castelia Columbia schools yes hi

002I I'm calling because I have a note that you would like to address the Board of Education and open um comments today yes okay um if you could limit your comment to 3 minutes and before you start if you could state your name for the record and when you're ready you may address the board okay um hi I'm Lori Camp I am calling um in hopes over the new proposed possible shutdown of the school to go back to all online learning um the first thing I'd like to do is praise all the teachers and let them know that you know um as an educator also I know that their job is not easy and they've all been doing the best that they possibly can and they're you know trying to keep up with all the

003curves as well and so I just want to you know let them know that it's not anything against the teachers that you know they're doing the best and great job that they absolutely can um the other thing is is I'm concerned about going full remote again um not only for myself but I have four children um I have a fifth grader and I have twin kindergarteners I also have a son that has special needs that goes to school in Missouri he's in third grade out there um when we were doing full remote my children the the kindergarteners were having to log in at a different time because I was driving out to Town and Country to take my son to his school my daughter was having to do her homework in the car why and

004log in and do her Google class meets and things like that in the vehicle because there's just one of me and four children um and of course people are not trying to cross over and you know come over to the houses and things as much as we were before so you know it's just kind of me I don't see how not going for 4 hours or changing up what we're doing is really going to stop the spread I feel as if and I know other parents and I have discussed this that um we're just Outsourcing the kids to further exposures um in daycares babysitters um some families have to use multiple babysitters through the week so they go one place Monday Tuesday they go somewhere else Wednesday Thursday and Friday and I I mean to

005me sitting in class with the same kids for 4 hours is is going to cut down on the extra exposures with for babysitters and whatnot um also that you know our day carees have been open and they really have not had many issues I mean we know that we're going to see some spikes in numbers and things like that but I mean it's it's not showing the numbers aren't showing statistic statistically that it's happening you know so much in the schools itself um any uh IC and other private schools have gotten this figured out um I would hope to think that you know they had had they have had some cases and things at their schools but they have not gone back to full remote they want to move forward and keep going forward um

006I'm concerned about our children's mental health the back and forth the computer depression the drops in the grve um I'm seeing kids you know I've was seeing kids at 10 years old 10 11 years old being left home alone to do their homework and and whatnot um we know that the state legal limit is 12 years old Miss Camp um Miss Camp the three minute time is up okay thank you for for your uh call thank you than are there are other public comments I have one last one um where do you want me to stand right there right there just state your name I'm Mark Jansen um and I'm calling or I uh want to address the board tonight and just urge you just please consider keeping our kids in school um as the

007caller alluded to um if it's true that these cases and from everything I've heard these cases are not spiking as a result of things are going on at school and that tells me that the mitigation efforts that you guys have all put in place and are executing is working and so I commend you all for that I I think the the evidence is there that what we're doing is working and so I hope and pray that we can keep our kids in school I just don't like the idea idea of going full remote and sending our kids home and they're essentially held hostage if you will while the adults try to figure what figure this out and pardon my skepticism I'm just a little worried about how long that'll be considering how well the adults

008have not done throughout all this to be honest so please consider to keep our kids in school um my wife's across the river in education there are no plans in her District to go remote I work in freeberg on this side of the river we have no plans at this time to go remote we're going to keep going and that's how we've handled it from the very beginning is when the things have happened we've dealt with it with that grade level with that classroom but everybody else stays in session and we keep going I think the opportunity is here for Colombia to if we can keep our kids at school to be leaders in this and to lead the way to pave the way and show others how this can be done and I really

009believe it can we're we we're seeing it in the area we don't have to look very far to see it um my 8-year-old made a comment the other day he doesn't like Prospect of going Flo remote and made a comment that he's we're I'm safe at school and that tells me that the teachers and Leadership and the board what you guys are doing is is working and the kids are feeling it so that's that's a testament to you guys and what you guys have been doing and have implemented thus far and I think we can keep doing this I uh I really do and I hope we can get this straightened out as a community and as a as a society but um you know I I want the K kids to stay in school

010I think they need it and I think we all agree that agree to that too so um that's just thank you for the opportunity and uh thanks for your consideration thank you Mark any other public comments seeing none board's correspondence I don't know if we have anything at this point on to items four and five on the agenda uh the consent agenda talk to that yeah there's really nothing of interest we are hiring uh uh few more bus drivers um we're picking them up from surrounding districts that are fully remote holders so needing the transportation leave of absences the hirings just recommendations to approve it as presented any questions on the consent agenda from the board seeing none I'd entertain a motion to uh accept the consent agenda as presented a mo motion by Karen

011Anderson second by Lisa Schumacher do a roll call vote for me please Kim Tammy hindes yes John Long yes Greg Meyer yes Scott Middle Camp yes Greg o Conor hi Lisa schacher yes Karen Anderson yes great motion carries on to item six Communications reports and presentations uh the annual 2020 annual financial report and audit from schw schw and smara Jim smara is here to let us know how we're doing thank you U appreciate the opportunity again to be here it's nice to see all of your smiling faces um if you can see that behind the behind the right and and I I would only mention that those of you who know me will have noticed that uh as a result of the pandemic uh social distancing has created uh geriatric puberty for me now have

012a grown for a nonexistent before u in any event you have before you the draft of the audit of the financial statements for Community Unit School District number four for the year ended June 30 2020 now I will point out that this is a little later than has been in most years for what is probably obvious reasons uh it simply takes longer to remote audit and it's uh less effective and less efficient our obligations in connection with this audit are unchanged the audit standards that we live to the level of assurance that we provide in connection with the audit is not impacted by the fact that we have to do things remotely and so you can when you look through this know that we worked hard to socially distant and remote audit we worked with

013Julie nappier who by the way did an outstanding job in meeting our needs and what you have is an audit not unlike every other year in terms of the level of insurance you can put upon it so we did the audit we did it in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and governmental auditing standards we test the assets liabilities receipts and dispersements of the organization on a cash basis we also tested the federal monies which you received you received in excess of $750,000 in federal monies during this fiscal year specifically you received roughly $769,000 and the $750,000 threshold important because that is the threshold for what's called a single AIT and so you were by virtue of that extra roughly $114,000 required to undergo additional audit testing of the federal monies that you received and

014that included extra testing of the compliance with the terms of the grants under which the monies were received it required extra testing of internal controls specifically over Federal monies it required extra testing of the actual expenditures and you're actually we were actually required to test 40% of the expenditures in total which is a significant threshold so those single audit procedures were performed and you did Julie did Chris did just fine I should mention by the way that this has to be the easiest audit that Chris will ever have since starting July 1 he's just over the threshold as well and and so so he doesn't he doesn't get credit or blame in any event as a result of those he will take the credit though off the BL yes yes sir so in any event

015as a result of those procedures which we performed on all of your assets revenues life uh expenses and and dispersements and liabilities we're able to bring you this draft clean opinion we do have a handful of followup single audit procedures on the federal monies that were wrapping up windows are wrapped up we'll issue the final audit and that should happen in the next few days we did by the way as expected have the complete cooperation of Staff Julie nappier uh did her normal light nice job there were no disagreements over accounting issues no disputes over access to records no disagreements over financial statement presentation no attempts to dissuade us from our opinions in all ways the audit went really textbook under the circumstances and as I said as a result of our testing and Julie's

016hard work we're able to bring you this draft clean opinion which we will be issuing shortly if you then turn to page four let me walk you through just a few of the numbers page four is the two pages in we don't count them all you will see on this cash basis statement that we start with on page four cash in total of 14,1 158,000 and another 4,939 th000 worth of CDs Now if you looked at last year's report you would not find any Investments n ecd and that's because last year as you may recall the tax monies were dispersed late and because they were dispersed late you hadn't had an opportunity to purchase CDs and so all of your funds last year were in cash this year they're spread between cash and CDs as

017a part of our audit we ensured that all of the are assured that all of your cash and CD Investments are either covered by FDIC coverage or or otherwise protected with Investments held by the financial institution in the name of the school district and so you have no danger of loss of funds from financial institution failure you then have the fixed assets under the heading of General fixed assets near the right hand side of the page you see that you have 28 million 377,000 worth of fixed assets under your perview as of June 30 that number is up a net $76,000 from last year but that doesn't nearly tell the story because you have depreciation which is the theoretical wear and tear on those assets depreciation of a, 524,000 which means that you had Capital

018additions of 2,232 th000 in this fiscal year most all of which was funded by the bond issue that we'll talk about in a minute so if you turn to page 21 for just a moment page 21 is a financial table summary of your fixed assets which is to say your land your building equipment and the depreciation associated with it that's on page 21 so you see for example under governmental activities Construction in progress additions of 1,258 438 that's all in connection with the train contract that's all expenditures under the energy saving initiative that you undertook specifically and and generally it was boiler room and rooftop units which were these expenditures as of June 30 that contract was roughly 38% complete and so that million 258 represented 38% of those contracts at that time the rest

019of your Capital additions you see another $98,900 in capital additions consisting of buildings of 77678 the Lion Share of that was the Park viiew roof Park viw roof expenditures were $610,000 in this fiscal year and are embedded within the 776 equipment of $112,000 are three major items in there there's a central State's bus for roughly 9,000 there's an intercom system for approximately 45,000 and then there is a driver Zed car for some $177,000 and as a non audit aside if I were a driver Zed teacher I want a t bank and more than 177,000 in the new car but nevertheless 17,000 is what the expenditure was for the driver's Zed car and then oh and the control systems are also a net number so I name this spoke the central State's bus of 90340 is

020under transportation equipment the equipment was the intercom system a control system and your driver's head car so those are the expenditures now those monies those total expenditures of $2.2 million is significantly more than you would have had in any other year last year by way of example you had Capital additions of some 68,000 so we go back to page four we go back to page four you will see long-term debt of $1,410 th000 and that's how it is that you have financed these Capital additions so I'm going to come back to that number in a minute let me just wrap up the statement of assets and liabilities by pointing out the very bottom of the page well second number from the bottom fund equity and other credits and you will see that every one of

021those numbers is positive and that's important because that means that none of your funds were negative at your end uh you ended the year for example with 7 million in the educational fund 5 million in operation and maintenance and so forth and the net 28,37 7,000 in capital assets under your purview as we just discussed now I mentioned that we were going to talk about how you paid for that 2.23 to in addition 2, 232,000 so if you turn to page five if you turn to page five we're going to focus and start with The Debt Service fund and The Debt Service fund you can see you had tax revenues of 3,392 and those come in as a matter of course to handle The Debt Service payments that are scheduled in the bonds you had

022Debt Service payments on bonds you had interest payments of $842,000 as you see and then you see $1 13,26 th000 that is a result of two different sets of activities that 13 million 208 in the first place there's 2, 865,000 in principal payments normally scheduled under the bonds that were outstanding when you started the year so when you started the year you had two bonds for 2010 one bond for 2014 one bond for 2017 the principal payments on those Bonds were $2,865 th000 most of that was for the 2010 series which was 2,565 th000 you then went out after you made those principal payments and refinanced the 2010 bonds and when you refinance the 2010 bonds you can see if you go down that column $ 12,940 th000 in bond proceeds that is the 2020

023bond that was issued which both provided monies for Capital Improvements which we just talked about and refinanced the 2010 bonds to be specific the 2010 bonds after the principal payments that we mentioned of 2,565 had a balance of 10,341 and so that balance of 10,341 was completely refinanced by the $1,940 of bonds that were issued in 2020 which then left you with and you can see the number a transfer permanent transfer out of 2,5 00,000 and so those are the monies that came out of that bond issue that then flow over into your other accounts to allow you to do the capital additions that drove your activities for the year now you also just to stay there if you look at that 2 mil5 and transfers out slide over to the right you see another

024million5 a million 499 674 that money came out of working capital and that is the rest of the $4 million that then went over to operations and maintenance and those monies are then set aside for the Capital Improvements of which you had 2.2 million this year now I spent a little bit of time on that because that is by far and away the most significant set of transactions for the school district in this last year if we take a moment and by the way the principal payments for the new bonds starting in this fiscal year that we're in right now start at about $3 million a year and that becomes important because that comes out of the Surplus that you're generating each year and we're going to talk about if you look at the far

025right column where it says total memorandum only the third number from the bottom 2,646 1117 that is your surplus of monies this year last year that number was roughly a mil 868 the difference between last year and this year some $650,000 is that this year all of your Capital additions the 2.2 million was financed by the bond issue whereas last year you had some 650,000 in capital additions that just came out of cash flow so that's 650 plus last year's surplus of a million eight gets you to the 2,646 Surplus for this year because in truth your revenues and expenses this year relative the last year are not dramatically different as we're going to see in just a moment so if we go up to the top now receip receipts total receipts of $3,697 now

026can sort of ignore the 7,720 in state on behalf payments cuz that's both an in and an out that's both a revenue and an expense so you really have to focus on the local sources the state sources and the federal sources the federal sources are 769 278 those are the monies we talked about earlier that's your single audit Federal monies last year that number was 686,000 so you are not subject to the special provisions of the single Lo the local sources principally not entirely but principally real estate taxes this year of 8,440 last year 8,349 State sources last year 3,706 this year 3,768 you can see that your receipts are almost identical to what they were last year in truth if you boil out the state on behalf payments as we said earlier the difference

027between last year at 22 mil7 and this year 22,9 is roughly 1% so your revenues your receipts for the year are up 1% versus last year I mentioned that because as we'll see in a second your expenditures for the year in total were up 3% so even though you had a better Surplus this year than last year you're revenues and expenses were 1% increase in revenues 3% increase in expenses and the difference is the excess Bond monies that you raise because remember you have 25 million in bond proceeds net of refinancing and you spent 2,238 so you've got expenses instruction support you see those numbers 9,543 support of 9,3 19 community service cameist other governments those four items are the items that are under your control specifically the rest of those items the $4,490 which

028is the $842,000 of interest and the 13,206 of principal those are required payments under the bond indenture so you have no real control over those those are required in the same way the state on behalf payments that's in out as we discussed earlier so the 9,543 the 9, 318 and so forth that's 19 milli1 145 those are the numbers over which you have control embedded within that 19,1 145 is capital expenditures of 2, 238,000 as we just discussed those are the monies that were funded with the bond issue which then leaves you with other expenses of 16,917 that number is just a combination so that's your controllable expenses less your Capital additions 16,917 last year's comparable number was 16,370 that's that 3% increase in expenditures I was talking about the 16,917 which is the expenditures

029that you had real control over that's made up of 12,362 th000 in salary and salary related expenses like benefits so of your 16,917 a full 73% of your expenses not surprisingly are salaries and benefits and the remaining 27% are all the other expenses you have repairs and maintenance other items and so forth and of that 12,362 and I'll wrap up in a second because I'm throw in as many numbers at you as it possibly been in 10 minutes of that 12,362 in salary and benefits the actual pure salary number embedded within that is 10,738 and if you compared that the last year's pure salary number of 10,514 you would find that is a roughly 2% increase 2.1% so you controlled your salary cost really very strongly and the rest of the costs uh increased a

030little more and of course this was an unusual year if you were to look through our audit work papers you would see numerous notations of these expenses down because of the Corona virus these expenses up because of the Corona virus and so that level of consistency that makes us audit Geeks all so happy wasn't there as it would have been in other years but it was all very explainable relative to what the school district is going through now there are another 55 pages and at the same level of detail we'll be out of here by tomorrow at about but um Chris and and Scott that's intended to give you a flavor of the year that youve had I think a good year a year in which you saw a number of Capital Improvements obviously and

031U I think now I will wait to see if you all want to approve it any questions for Jim we here thanks Jim thank you all appreciate the opportunity sir thank you on to item 6B enrollment um that's packet I guess we're up to 1912 students enrolled on to item C administrative reports we have Mr here this evening hi I uh have absolutely no numbers to throw at anybody so if you're nervous that can start throwing those numbers you can relax uh my name is David aaman I am the Middle School principal at uh Columban Middle School this is my third year at the middle schools sorry I just promoted myself I'm the assistant principal ofia Middle School I hope misses is not watching right now I am the assistant principal at Columbia Middle School

032uh this is my third year at the middle school my third year in the district um November has been quite a strange month for us but in the Scopes of of Co you know it just it just is it is what it is is what we're kind of saying a lot to the kids and staff um Miss Hues and I are uh definitely starting to feel the pressure with the lack of Subs um the revolving door of um students in and out and the uh revolving door of Staff members as they kind of move in and out uh we've both been doing lots of subbing um within the classrooms um and I know there's lots of different teachers that have also will instantly jump in and help I know Miss Alex ER has done some

033some subing for us um and I and I say that because I I I just want to have a huge shout out um I know it's it's it's for us in the middle school but I know it's for all the other schools on on just how great the teachers are and the staffs are with their flexibility and their amazing attitudes when we do need to have to kind of kind of pce meal stuff together um so it it's it really is um noticed and appreciated on our end um a couple other shout outs I'd like to do for the Middle School U Miss Gardner our nurse um keeps all of our records of who's coming in and who's coming out and who is needs to go where um amazingly uh Miss FES and I could

034not be doing what we're doing without her um so huge shout out to her um we do have some great things going on at the middle school even though we do are working in this Co World um Mr H is the sponsor of our Beta Club Beta Club this week has started their annual holiday food drive uh kids are bringing in food um those all go to the various Charities that that are that um receive those items um I'd like to give miss langang our guidance counselor a huge shout out she has been running a remote learning lab um for a handful of our high-risk students uh who are having trouble with uh infrastructures at home home to be successful um with this remote lab so we do have a handful that come in and

035and stay in what we are calling our remote learning lab and they're working out of there and that's been a great help for for that handful of students um tomorrow we have a virtual family reading night that we're all pretty excited for um excited to see how it's going to work but should be fun um last Friday during our PLC time um last Friday PLC and I think we're going to be doing it this Friday in our PLC time um we have had been having our teachers reach out to that that middle set of students um you know if you think of the bell curve you got your high achieving students and you got your low achieving students but there's a big chunk of students right in the middle that show up every single day

036and they do everything that they're asked to do and um you know they're they're just that group of students that often gets overlooked a lot of our teachers this Friday and last Friday spent their part of their PLC times reaching out to families and making those positive calls for those group of students and it was kind of funny to hear the response because you know you you see on the caller ID the the the schools calling and parents are like oh no what's going on and then the P teacher is like oh you know I just wanted to call and say that that Dave was great today in class and just amazing to get that response for um for the teachers um and you know today we had a great surprise from dear Diva desserts

037who showed up with cookies um no I'm sorry dear Diva desserts is the ones who created the cookies but they were donated by the Dietrich bank so dietr Bank thank you very much they they showed up with cookies for everybody you know everybody loves a free cookie so um even though we have lots of going on with the co we do have lots of of exciting and and exciting things going on in the Middle School great thank you Mr assistant superintendent report hi okay um just a few things really um wanted to I shared with you uh today a survey a copy of a survey so if you haven't checked your email that you gave Kim as your preference email it's there um you are getting the live version so be careful um don't go

038in there and change my questions what I'm saying so in there but you can the reason why I did that is because I wanted you to see the questions and then I was looking right at Mr my and then um and then I wanted you to be able to see the raw data I will put it together in some takeaways for everybody and share that with you it closes on Friday the survey is just to our remote learning family so those family who selected that option to see how remote learning is going for them because a lot of times we're looking at the remote in the hybrid world and um we want to kind of look at how it's going for those families that that is their so uh means of Education right now so

039we have 120 responses as of today it opened up Monday morning there's 270 that I'm that I'm aiming for uh so I'll will send a reminder tomorrow but if you want to take a look at that information and like I said a lot of times they anecdotal things that they write are sometimes the most useful um so there's that bit of information the other thing is I wanted to let you know that the secondary schools uh so the middle school and the high school had made the decision for this semester to to foro final exams so I believe Mr Reef sent out a communication yesterday to the families of course if they're in the classes at the high school that required due to dual enrollment or things like that that have a component of a

040final exam um then we still have to comply with that so we will um obviously move forward with those but uh the other traditional final exams um we're setting to the side and using the time to continue and not pause our education and keep moving forward so that's just a little bit about where we're at right now thank you Dr Mr Grody superintendent report all right we had both foas not um I did talk to you last month about bringing forward a plan for strategic planning uh we still need to do our goal setting the who what when where why the lie is is we really do need to have goals and it's our long range Vision who I would like to have on this plan would include the seven board members the ones that

041are here City officials the mayor the city planner police chief um you know people of those an Administration and teachers I'm trying to keep the group to be around 25 you know maybe 30 we want to be able to have a group that can meet over the summer that's the L um starting in June being done by August the group would have three meetings and um they'd be working groups three meetings the first one would be a SWAT analysis if you've done strategic planning before you're probably familiar with the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats those get brainstorms those get created um Dr castelli and I would then be responsible for breaking out the themes and the second meeting would be the pi picture the dream looking at the opportunities looking at the the threats really

042defining in 5 10 years where we would like to see be the third meeting with then taking those visions that that that description of the future and coming up with goals the idea here would be to come up with you know three to five very solid time driven specific measurable goals and then have action steps underneath that our last strategic plan that we had was a lot of action steps but they weren't really root to prioritized and so what we wanted us to do is to really create a vision um have goals for that vision and acted out getting back to the who um when I say board members we're doing this as uh in the summer I would like to have everybody on this board part of that I'd also like everybody that's running

043for the board to be included as well my thoughts are that um those that are running for the board and those that are currently on the board they have a vested interest in the district um I know like Karen Anderson won't be a board member at that time but her years of experience shouldn't be wasted in this in this uh chance for the strategic planning and so um when I say board members I mean those running for the board and those currently on the boards whoever wins whoever didn't win um that kind of Engagement youve got questions or concerns about that process um let me know the time frame I'd like to do it sooner than that but to be honest with you right now our main goal is to survive Co and to try

044and get the back in school to the best of our ability that's been what we're focusing on and we just wouldn't be able to do a strategic planning process right now very well I don't think um you know it's it's kind of like trying to save money for college education but we're trying to get the food on the table we're right now working on the food on the table which brings us to the co update um we're going to have a longer discussion about the return to school plan um I just want to say that right now our numbers are bual I appreciate uh Mr aran's shout outs to everybody you can go through the the the faculty and the staff I mean it's been amazing watching people come together we we've been down to

045one kitchen for a couple weeks now haven't we maybe it's been a week two weeks yeah we have tomorrow we will have two people returning so we'll be up to seven workers we've been doing five plus you know I can make a mean sandwich but You' be amazing who's you know every day we've got different people delivering food from one kitchen to the different buildings and handing them out and everything it really has been great to watch um the substitutes we're we're trying to fill them this is where our imperson learning you know in-person Learning Without Co we're here inperson learning you know with the shorten day is here right now we're taking our RTI teachers and having to pull them into classrooms so we're not doing interventions there's a lot of things that are

046being lost we've got Subs in the classrooms because teachers are are quarantined or they are isolated um quarantined if they're sick isolated if they're just pushed over it it just because of a lot of the mitigations the things we have to do our education is Str the teachers are working harder and harder and harder to make that work but it's kind of like that cartoon where the water coming in faster than you can bail it out and it just it's causing us issues um talking with Mr Wagner and he'll speak more when we get to that action item it's a community problem we're doing a great job of mitigating it you know um as Mr Jensen pointed out the kids feel safe in the schools we're wearing the masks we're doing what we need to

047do and that's a a great thing but the numbers keep coming back because we've got people going across the river to participate in athletic events or they're going to visit family and not taking the time to quarantine themselves before coming back to the schools it's um it's frustrating and it's it's nothing that we can control because we can only control what's happening in these schools but with that said I do have uh some requests and and I guess for the students out there I'd like them to behave out in the community as I see them behaving in school out with their friends they should still be wearing their masks I see them talking and interacting and and and being students with their masks on in schools you go to a friend's house it's weird yeah

048I'm wearing a mask at my friend's house but it's a new location for you you need to be wearing those masks parents um if you travel if you go visit family there's nothing wrong with having your child stay remote for a little bit longer while you assess whether or not there was an interaction with Co um limiting trips the the um right now we had a discussion in our our meeting basketball it's being put on pause and we're trying to figure out what exactly the ihsa means with pause but Athletics aren't being done and I know the desire for our you know our our teams that aren't being able to participate is to go across the river and participate in the clubs there it it's just we're not doing it here for a reason if

049you go across the river and do it it comes back here and it it it doesn't help us we need to start following these rules and and doing it for the short time so in the long range we can start to win CU right now we're going to be facing a tough decision today the recommendation from the health department is for us to go all remote we know from the comments that this is not a favorable um decision it's not a it's not for any of us want to be you know we were talking two months ago about bringing everybody back we thought oh yeah we could just increase this and then everything kind of shifted and changed we're a community that needs to be into this together and I guess that's what I'm saying

050is right now we got um a bunch of action items and we're going to get back to this Co updates I I we're doing a great job we want to do what's right for our kids it's just it's hard and I understand and my son right now his basketball tryouts are polls it's inconvenient but it's it's it is the reality that we're in so that's it thank you on to items for action item a approval of resolution authorizing the estimated aggre tax levy for the year 2020 yeah you got that in your packets the um extension does not require a troping taxation hearing it's under the 5% increases this is in line with what you guys have done in the past in the years past I I jokingly have said before you know we should

051really extend for like $500 million because you only get what the calculations would allow you to get and so it's a it's one of those legal things that we've got to do my recommendation is that you approve it as presented any questions from the board seeing n and entertain a motion to approve uh the tax levy for the year 2020 as recommended it's a 4.95% increase from the previous year and the uh this will be brought back to you next month so if you do have any questions concerns or comments it's officially approved next month the December Bo then submitted to the to the C so just to be clear we're not increasing taxes almost 5% this is what we've been doing year after year yeah what we do is you say this is how

052much money you need and if you try and ask for more than 5% of what you got last year you have to do a truth in taxation um we're right there where we've always been you know ultimately with the bonds and interest I think that the if we get everything that we're asking for it be around 4% increase which we won't which is in line with what we've done in the past this isn't a 4% tax increase this just a generation of the years back that is correct and the the EAB goes up as more property comes on to the the tax R so then that raises that percentage what it does is it makes the pie bigger so that everybody's tax their their property taxes become a smaller piece of that larger P so

053your EAB going up is good for your tax rate it's it it helps you out the my only concern I don't want to increase the tax burden on the public with the trying we're so any other questions from the board saying none I'd entertain that motion motion by Gregor Conor second second by Karen Anderson can I have a Ru call vote for me please can John Long yes gra Meer yes Scott Middle Camp yes Greg o Conor hi Lisa Sher yes Karen Anderson yes Tammy hind yes on to uh the next item on the agenda the approval of the purchase of two buses uh we have two uh buses this is our normal rotation correct yes and one is a large bus Big Bus we call it 71 passenger bus and the other one is

054a Chevy Mini Bus 18 passenger bus with a wheelchair uh uh wheelchair left correct that is correct and so um they went out to bid we have the bids back and the first one is a 2022 2022 Bluebird 71 passenger bus from Central State's Bus Sales for $ [Music] for a child check I entertain a motion to approve those uh the purchase of those two buses before we do that um I did Noti we the the small bus were doing a diesel which is great but the big bus were doing gas I thought majority of our fleet was gas on the big buses as well I'm sorry dies really I can we can do that and get back to you I can tell you that they in the bid specs I'm sure that they asked

055for the any other questions see entertain motion to approve the uh purchase of the two buses as presented so motion by John long and second by second second by Lisa schacher vote for me please Kim GRE Meer yes Scott midle yes Greg o Conor hi Lisa shoer yes Karen Anderson yes Lisa Tammy hind yes John Long yes great thank you g motion carries on to item C approval to engage Architects for summer 2021 project you want talk yeah um the facility committee met and I want to thank the Gregs Mr meting on that committee um to discuss kind of the next capital projects that we have talking with Kurt Steve myself these two gener along with our architect we decided that we should continue the tuck pointing and the sealing of the buildings and so

056what we have for you here is the um this would involve at the middle school power washing and cleaning that white brick and then sealing it so it won't get boldy or turn discolored again and then tough pointing at eag Park View um there is tuck pointing of the brick and then there is a blazing of the tile which is the same thing you take up the gra you added put it's a different process it's called different things anyway that's the scope of the project and if you approve this we will Engage The Architects in developing the bid specs we will go out to bid it will all be done January February March for the summer project is your Conor Mr do you have anything you want to add any other questions from the board

057how many bids will you get for this no idea um like the bus yeah typically what you do is you s it out there and um I would like to think that we'll get three or four um we're doing it early enough that we might get more I found that in my experience when you're bidding big projects if you do it earlier like January February people like lock in jobs for the summer then they can start getting their staff you get a better price and you should get more bids so the important thing is we're getting into a competitive Advantage now where we have actually people competing for job instead of just picking one and asking them what how much they want and what they want us to do and so I think this is

058definitely step in the right direction and technically I mean if we go out to bid and we let's say we get just one bid and it's way too I we're not saying we're doing this project until we engage with the person on that so we've gone through the process of doing bids but we don't have to necessarily do work any other questions from the board just the point of clarification to we in your packet we do have estimations from the architect on what this should cost but that information will not go out to the B correct correct and you don't want to send out what the architect estimates cuz that I like to get the bids without that estimate okay any other questions or comments seeing none I entertain a motion to approve the Architects

059um approve the Architects and developing BD spect with masonry work at CMS uh Eagle View and Park View schools I'll make motion by Greg Meer second by I'll second second by Tammy Hines will P vote for me please Kim Scott Camp yes Greg o Conor Lisa Scher yes Karen Anderson yes Tammy hindes yes John Maul yes Greg Meyer yes great motion carries on to the next item on the agenda the approval of years of service record this is one of those yearly tasks that we need to do to make sure that we've got the seniorities and the years of service correct uh we push this out to the faculty and let them view it give us feedback make sure it's right uh what you have before you is what we believe to be correct and

060no one has told us otherwise so the recommendation is to approve it as presented any questions on the years of service record seeing none I didn't entertain a motion to approve the uh years of service record as presented I'll make a motion motion by Tammy hind second five I'll second second by John Long K could you do a roll for me please Greg Conor all right Lisa Schumacher yes Karen Anderson yes Tammy hindes yes John Long yes Greg Meer yes Scott mid yes great motion carries on to the next item on the agenda item e approval of the second reading of board policies press issue 105 I have not gotten any comments or concerns regarding the the Press issues that we presented um as I said last month is a lot of Title 9 changes

061our administrative procedures will change accordingly we're giving the administration trained on a lot of that title n changes that was the biggest of this um there were some other little things but nothing of of report so the recommendation is to accept them as presented any questions on the second reading of those board policies any questions or comments from the board seeing none I'd entertain a motion uh to approve the second reading of the uh board policy board policy updates as presented a motion uh motion by Lisa shach for a second by second by Greg Meyer call vote for please Kim Lisa Schumacher yes Karen Anderson yes Tammy hindes yes John M yes Greg Meyer yes Scott mamp yes GRE o Conor hi great motion carries on to item F the return to school plan this

062is the big one um we've got Mr Wagner here thank you sir for for coming the recommendation right now is that we would go fully remote um talking to a lot of people about this again it's not what anybody wants looking at the numbers we are um having hard time staying afloat the current situation with pulling people that do interventions and whatnot and and um we're making it work but the education is suffering this the in and the outs the in and the outs the in and the outs for the children is is tough the recommendation that I I think that I I could stand behind would be that we go K12 remote starting the week of Thanksgiving um and if you think about Thanksgiving and you look at that date and you go 14

063days after Thanksgiving assuming that parents will um travel for Thanksgiving we do 14 days afterwards when we stay remote I would be somewhat comfortable in bringing the little ones back on the 14th of December that would give them only seven days before Christmas break but it would be at least bringing the little ones back we' be able to see where the numbers are at um I know that the health department would prefer us to be all remot until January um Mr Wagner and I have talked and and when he first brought it to us or when we first talked about it I asked about special eded students who should stay in we talked about small groups it's not so much the spread as Mr Janson said about the spread inside the schools it's just the

064numbers the bringing in and then the operational aspect of this um reducing our num letting special kids stay in targeting some of those at risk students making them stay in but just reducing the numbers and going remote for a short time um I think is what we need right now um questions concerns comments I have questions and concerns or questions and comments uh can you tell us exactly how many numbers are positive right now I not quarantining how many positive cases do we have in our district between students and staff that are currently existing right now they're as of today um well this this week we have three positive individuals now how many people are new cases this week new cases this this week that I'm aware of um that have been reported to me

065on our document so um and then I I would have to look back at last week's you know to see where everybody is but we have three cases this week we just had one one uh here that shut down a class today in terms of the positives I know you don't have an exact number but would you say less than 20 since school started that been positive no 20 to 40 yeah 20 to 40 since started since school started I would think they were about 20 or less than 4 Mr Wagner would you agre with that yeah students some right students around that and then of that are we how many are we seeing transmitting within the district the the the argument the the hard about that and Mr W talked about this at some

066length you can't prove mean we're quarantining the kids around them a lot of the kids that are quarantined end up some of them do end up getting sick okay however through the discussions that the health department is doing it sounds like most of that's happening at sporting events or at parties or at events that they're doing outside you know we're not suspecting a lot of transmission in the schools itself but if if if was what they supposed to be doing outside I mean when you CU if somebody comes to you and they say yeah I was at school I also went and I played in this basketball tournament no they don't make you wear a mask you know you're going to assume that that's the the the Locust that's happening because it's it's not as

067controlled but if they were wearing their masks it doesn't it doesn't mean that they wouldn't have gotten positive either so it's the number of kids that we have to quarantine when we do have a positive that I mean and now we're going to be even more strict on the buses and stuff now the windows are up on buses we end up with a positive on a bus that whole bus is going to go out of kids for 14 days um in classrooms especially in the younger kids we can't just take out the desk around them it has to be the whole class because there is very little social distancing that you can document in younger kids they have their hands over each other they're not always staying in the same place um especially in the

068very the kindergarten classes so that's where the old kids come out uh it's very difficult for a teacher in the younger classes to say that they were not within 6 fet of a student because of the way they have to be able to teach now the upper grades the teachers can teach from the front of the class and we're fairly certain just because they had a positive student in the class the teacher doesn't have to go under quarantine on the younger kids that teacher has got needs to go on under quarantine for 14 days when they have a positive in the class we're seeing a lot of these kids bringing the positive we know a lot of them are bring you back from the parents uh the parents are at home they're positive the student

069is coming to class um a lot of times it's before we know the parent but it's in that same time frame in a household uh we're we are getting at the health department we're getting lied to a lot us too about who is sick who's not we've actually had Parents tell us that their kids don't live with them when both parents are in mom and dad are in the household and we know we know the kid lives with them but we're being told they live at somebody else's house cuz Mom or Dad is tested positive which would take the student down to class for 14 days we're just you the numbers between now and the end of the year the numbers are not going to get better they're only going to get worse we have

070the holidays coming up with Thanksgiving and then Christmas these numbers are going to go up between now and the end of the year uh it's bad now uh talking with the administration and everything keeping the student in keeping enough teachers in the classroom um I'm even hearing from parents of students who the students are actually afraid because they've seen their friends go out they've seen their friends sick they don't realize that it's not the school that's spreading it they think that they're being put in a place where they're going to get sick because they've seen a whole classro of you know first graders go out they're in the other class but then they think you know they just don't understand it's not spreading we've had in the county maybe three cases that we have actually

071pretty reliably tra traced back to it being spread from a positive student here to students IND Des around them um it do you know the schools are doing a great job with the masking they're doing yes you know they're doing everything they can and everything correctly that doesn't change the fact that when there is a positive student that I have to take out and you guys have to take out either a class or the students around it and it may or may not include a teacher we're also seeing a tremendous amount of teachers turning up positive not from school just from just because the numbers are up so high in the county you know uh when you have the numbers we are six times higher than when I came to to talk the last time

072we were averaging around 8 to 12 cases a day last time I was here we're up to between 60 and 80 cases a day uh this past week our highest was 96 cases in a day so just the the sheer number of it is going to affect how you can staff your school and how you're how your many students you're going to have in a classroom when you say the schools are doing a great job I I'm assuming that we are relatively similar to continuous districts around us like Depot all right now we've kind of and it's all going to equalize over time it's just you know right now Colombia is more has a worse case in the younger grades than some of the surrounding schools watero has more High School schol on upper level

073cases than Columbia does it's just that's just cuz give it time it's all going to equal out you know there's no reason behind it everybody's basically doing the same thing there's no and these other schools that are closing and stuff like if there was a way to keep the students in class everybody would do it I I've been a proponent of keeping them in class and getting them in class as much as possible um but right now I just don't know how you're going to do it I mean you think it's bad right now it's going to get worse we just did 500 tests today or the last two days at our county test site the and just how people don't understand this virus a lot of those tests cuz I sat up there and

074played a traffic cop adjusting trying to keep the school buses because happen to be where school buses come in and out of for waterl um we had traffic backed up on the road parents putting five kids in this vehicle for a two-hour wait in a line to get their child children tested now unless they thought every child in that car was positive then that would be fine but most likely one child was feeling sick so they decided to take them all to go get tested they just spent two hours in the car together now they may not all test positive right there but the other four will be positive shortly from spending 2 hours in a locked up car waiting for a test for possibly one child that was sick saw that in a ton

075of cars even in adults I because a couple people stopped and talk to me oh yeah my wife tested positive a week ago I'm here I need to get tested now his wife's still under quarantine and sitting next to him in the car if he wasn't positive before he went to go get a test he's probably going to be positive afterwards we're seeing that then spread to the kids and uh we're seeing the parents that are like I said not keeping their kids home when they need to be keeping them home they're they're they're trying to keep them in school um and it it's going to get worse before it gets better uh these next you know between now and the end of the year and I don't have High Hopes right after the first

076of the year but maybe as people start adjusting their behavior a little bit we might see numbers start coming back down but from my suggestion that you would not you you'd like to see us go K12 remote until January there's three weeks between three weeks of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas break that's minimal I I hate taking kids out of class anytime but that's just three weeks and when you look at it they definitely need to be out at least for a week after Thanksgiving uh because of the fear of the travel and everything like that that's going to be over if you bring them back that week we're going to be probably going crazy trying to figure out who's taking out who your staff is doing a great job providing US list but they're

077getting overwhelmed too we're getting overwhelmed we don't have the contact tracers available uh you know so it's going to get worse there so then you're really only talking about two weeks of school you're talking one week okay it may have been productive then you got the week right before Christmas break that historically is a finish up week you know anyway so if we got to take him out it's probably the least impactful time I'm also hearing a lot from parents about the 14-day quarantine where they don't plan on they plan on going to work tomorrow and all of a sudden they get a call from user from you guys saying oh by the way your kid is now at home for 14 days they had no time to plan for that child to be at

078home and that's happening a whole lot where it's drastically impacting you know what they can do whereas a planned thing may be better but there again this is just advis recommendation from me I don't know that much about the education as far as the quality of Education yes the the few students that are in class are still getting as much quality out of as possible but it is it as much as you need to make it worthwhile to to do it and can you do it when you're putting Subs in the classrooms you know every day moving people around superintendents are subbing in classrooms to fill them up you know uh what is the quality there versus the risk to the kids so can you explain the quarantine in a classroom cuz I feel are

079we quarantining too many students in my opinion yes are we following the rules that are I have no choice could I could I could I quarantine less people no can you explain to me what the quarantine process is in a classroom six if they're within six feet of an individual that turns up positive for more than 15 minutes they're quarantined or in a classroom if it's untraceable where we don't know for sure which students they were in CL contact which happens in the younger grades where you know upper grades assigned seating we can kind of we know who's there that's the other issue with the buses if they don't have good record on the buses when that student comes up up positive we will ask okay who were they sitting next to in the bus

080we got to take out the seat front forward behind them and left and right of them if they if they say well we don't know where he was sitting no choice but to take out the whole bus and that's not my that's not my decision that's coming from on the bus we know where everybody's sitting on the bus we even have gotten to the point where we've timed from this stop to this stop to this stop because we've had students that have gotten on the bus at the last stop gotten to the school gotten off and we haven't quarantined them because they weren't even on the bus for 15 minutes and so it's that whole we're we're we're looking at a lot of the details and and um we're trying to take out as few

081as possible I mean and if you look Missouri the governor of Missouri just overruled basically CDC but St Louis County's not and City's not paying attention he basically said if they're masked in school and the school has a massed policy you do not have to take out the close contacts that's in Missouri Illinois will never do anything like that unfortunately somebody told me though that the Missouri schools are still still they still are they are the governor put that in effect but but many of them are not listening to they're still going by CDC but so no and like I said I have no choice except to enforce the CDC because of because of the rules in Illinois uh so if they're in six feet or if we don't know who's been in within six

082feet of them for 15 minutes that's when the whole classroom goes out kindergarten class especially there's no way to know because of the interaction and the movement of the child in class how long they were next to a certain other student and that's when the whole classrooms go out I just looked at our I pulled up our sheet that we have information so these are the individuals that we've been notified that impact school so this doesn't include people who parent might call up and say my kiddo's positive and we don't have to do any contact tracing because they didn't meet days prior to symptoms often we'll have an a student call up on a on a on a Saturday and say that they're they just they just tested positive well they were naked so they

083were only Monday or Tuesday and so there's no no quarantine we need to do for that student so does that make sense I have it noted on that particular case they'll be noted in their attendance but not for that so um we have 53 individuals from the beginning of the year who we have had a positive situation that has been not directly linked to the school and that cause but directly linked that we had to do some kind of isolation orage of some kind so that's about 2.5% of our student population corre that has tested positive but from that what John is saying Mr Wagner is saying is many of those cases have been spread by the parents and we've seen very very few within the district spread so we have probably less than a

0841% transmission within the district so when we're looking at the county numbers going up okay the county numbers are going up but still within the district we're not transmitting it so why would we want to take our kids out of school school because that will not taking kids out of school is not going to stop the transmission the kids are still going to be getting together outside of school county numbers are going to still continue to rise but yet our kids aren't going to be in school so actually I argue they're probably more at risk because they're going to be out socializing I exactly because I can tell you from coming to this meeting down in the Turner Hall Parking Lot that Turner Hall parking lot is a racket every single night there was probably

085a dozen cars at least tonight with a big circle of kids not social distancing no face mask and it happens almost every single night down there there is like and that's why we're having to consider to do remote because the problem becomes is that those kids are behaving in such a way they become positive outside of school they come in and if we're lucky their parent is honest with us and tells us then they come in and then they we get the notice that they're positive now I have to go and isolate in some cases I've had to isolate uh let's see 30 students 17 students 16 students for one case because of that students behaviors so now that student's education has been impacted because they are on isolation for two weeks some of our

086students that has happened to multiple times it's not because of their behavior Le said it's not because of they're not doing what they're supposed to it's because their peers around them are doing that and so therefore they have to be at home that's the problem but I don't understand how you think going all remote is going going to help our it's not it's not been proven that it's the students cases that correct but I am now because the numbers of outside transmission the number of kids that are getting it through their outside is impacting the number of kids that I'm having to send home and impacting it and then not only that then my staff is having to go home and then we're having to or they kiddo for example if I have a let's

087say let's say they called me and one of my kids had symptoms all of my other two kids have to go home I have to go home we have many people in our district that are families that work here now that person has to go home until they have an alternative diagnosis or they have a negative test result from that person who symptomatic I don't the subs my RTI isn't happening my RTI for my kids who need it the most at this level isn't happening because we're having to cover the classes it's this constant in in and out in and out these kids are coming in and out in and out constantly over and over and over again we go remote from now till January so what needs to happen is that people need to

088get their act together and do what they need to do so that we can have everybody back in that's what they need to do because their behaviors are impacting not only their child's chance to come back in but everybody else's so if we want to come back back all in do what you're supposed to do but I just going all remote it I just don't feel is going to we can't operate that's the problem it's the operation I can't sustain being a cafeteria worker myself I can't do my job if I'm doing that that's the problem and and I think that that's the biggest issue we've got going right now is is for the staff because um you reported numbers do you have are do those include staff or do those include that's everybody that's

089everybody do you have any numbers that tell how many staff we have out because I know this is a big issue we have a shortage of teachers in this state now and getting Subs is almost impossible so okay if you've got a teacher that's teaching a class of 20 first graders and that teacher gets sick what are you going to do with those 20 kids if you don't have a sub and you know it's it's a filter down thing you get to the high school and you lose a teacher that teacher may be a specialized teacher and you don't have anybody to pick up that class what do you do with those kids and I think the staff um looking I haven't you know we've talked about the cooks but how about the custodial staff

090is that getting to a point where we're losing some of them and are they going to be able to keep up keeping the buildings up um I think that the adults in this whole situation um to be able to service the kids maybe the kids aren't the biggest problem for transmitting it but if they're bringing it in and transmitting it to the teachers and to the staff and we're losing those people you can't have a classroom of kids without somebody there to instruct them we've got we've got two things really kind of going on okay one of them is the operational and just the drag on the system because we have to quarantine we have to contact trace and we have to try and figure out how to make it work and we're doing a

091good job of making it work but it it's it's it's not easy so what's going to happen is in in very soon there's it's going to be a snow day and if we don't do something proactively to tell the parents on this day we're going all remote what's going to happen is is I'm going to have to make an announcement and say you know what we can't have school tomorrow and then everybody's out with no notice getting the phone call that your kid's now quarantined is inconvenient it's it's not fun but us calling them in closing it I'd rather close and say you know you got a couple of days to get ready we're going to close this is the plan other than me just saying okay well tomorrow we can't do it I don't

092I I can't I don't even know what I'm going to do with these kids tomorrow okay so that's the operational side of it on the other side though I'm looking at the educational things um while Mr Dugan's been out getting seeing if he's positive um I've been doing the morning announcements here at Parkview it's been fun um but I I I went into a classroom and I saw Mrs King who was subing she's our RTI teacher you know we've got the kids that are are are doing fine we've got the special ed kids that really need more help when we go all remote we're going to keep those specialed kids in school and continue so that they don't fall behind the kids that are all right are going to do all right remotely it's an

093inconvenience it's not ideal but they still move forward then we've got the kids that are at risk and those kids aren't getting the interventions that we're supposed to give them because our interventionists are covering classrooms and so the education that we're giving as good as it can be isn't good like we normally do do because we've got people doing other jobs you know and so it's just how long can we keep that up and and for what if we go remote our interventionists will be able to provide the services for those kids that are struggling our special ed students can teachers can focus in on the special ed kids we will be bringing kids into the school we're not going to be empty sorry Mr wag no no I completely I I had this discussion

094with waterl earlier in the week no I encourage those small groups the students that are struggling remotely and so to come in in many respects going all remote's not ideal but I do think at this moment based on what we've got going on in our system it might improve the education a little bit it'll at least give the parents a heads up like this is where we're at this is what we got to do I'd like to bring the K5 kids back the week before Christmas I know it's just a week before Christmas or a week and two days because it' be the week and then we're in for two days um it just in my mind that would be 14 days after the Thanksgiving so what we've done is we've closed for Thanksgiving we

095we've forced everyone to you know be able to go out of town and then isolate themselves for 14 days and if they don't do it I can't do anything about that but at least we try to do what we need to do for the community we bring back the K5 that's what L is looking at too right is to bring back they're actually only they're looking at the they're looking at uh no only one week after Thanksgiving and bringing them back for the last two weeks um which obviously 14th days is the best but uh typically if somebody's going to be it's going to be in that 5 to 7 day window so you could go as much as but they're going to reexamine that as that date gets closer so I I can't say

096for sure what they're going to do but I think they were kind of breaking this as a kind of putting it softly out there to start with rather than just saying all the way through to the end of the year but you know there yeah there is that two we which yeah it's possible you know but obviously if uh we're seeing a whole lot of spread coming back from Thanksgiving you know uh you need to be will looking at whether or not you need to not bring them back too you know you could plan on bringing them back but if we're seeing you know numbers jump up from Thanksgiving uh and everything then you're going to have to reexamine that or you're going to end up with a you know so I guess to do

097we want to give our families the heads up or do we want to close it the next day do we want to provide the interventions for those kids that are struggling or do we want to continue to just try and run School the best that we can it's my recommendation is that we would go remote you know for Thanksgiving and then for the 14 days and then we would return K5 and on January we'd be back to K12 in we had a good meeting today about what we would like to see in January we can talk more about that in December because really we're not at the point of bringing people back but I think we're getting very close to getting a plan that that can get them 8 to three and be in school

098where the kids have to go to school every day it it's and it won't be as far as social distancing we've come up with a plan that would allow us to do that but we we we've got to hire some staff so that would be a January start it's just a matter of you know I'd like Courtney and I to be able to focus on developing that plan for January I'd like my RTI teachers to be able to focus on the the the kids that are struggling I'd like the special ed kid you know it's it's not so much we're kicking them out or going remote because we scared it's being transferred here we're trying to get our teachers to be able to do the instruction that they were hired to do the instruction the

099interventions we're missing pieces of the layers of the teaching because we're covering classes because we're not we're not remote and it it's it's sad but it's just our numbers are are are are what they are talking to people and and I don't know if it's because we are so close to the JB bridge and so easy to go across you know do people in Belleville do they go across the river to play athletics every day so they they they just travel that and so I mean they I mean I have across the river too to play sports it's not just us here in Columbia Crossing over I don't I don't I'm trying to figure out why so so high you know it's it's um I have a couple of things here like John you had

100said in the there were three cases spread in the county or three cases in the county that were spread student to student that's three in the county guys we have 1912 kids in our school he also said it he's finding that you know teachers are coming up positive or being quarantined not from school so the we need we I think we need to put out a plea to both parents and teachers you know we want the kids in school to get the kids in school we just maybe have to quit doing some of the things that we want to do and like to do to keep kids in school because I think that's everybody's number one priority is keeping kids in school how do we do that I believe we need to have a plea

101to the parents teachers everybody saying let's do what we can let's come together as a community and do the right thing for the kids the other thing is can we put out a a volun a plea for volunteers to get their sub certificate I got mine about a month ago waterl School Board okay challenge for Schoolboard members waterl School Board supposedly all went and get their sub certificates I heard yesterday but maybe there are people out there who would be subs and would you know step up for for our schools too maybe Subs would come out of retirement and get their certificate yet I don't know I just this is about kids and their education and I think we have to do what we have to do and to hear three positive Transmissions within the

102county it doesn't make sense that's just that's just it's very difficult to track where teachers kids pick it up because they can pick it up for 14 days prior to showing symptoms that's only one case where I were fairly certain just because of the age of the kids it was passed around a table at school the the I get what you're saying but it's not it's not the transmission I don't want us to think about that we need to think about things one do we want to close the schools now and give parents a heads up or do we want it to get to a point where it just breaks and I I tell people we're closed tomorrow and then we also need to say do we want to have every layer of Education like

103we have the teachers hired for or do we want to put them into positions where they're covering classrooms and we're not doing the interventions for those that are struggling because right now you know they say don't let the kidss fall through the cracks our system is having kids fall through the cracks because the ones that are catching the ones or stopping the ones from going through the cracks are covering Regular Ad it's it's that it's that RTI triangle we talked about we've got people that are supposed to be doing interventions that are doing The Core Curriculum why because the people on The Core Curriculum are quarantine why because we've got people that are just we're following the rules which I don't like it either you know but it's that so for me it's it's a

104two-tiered thing do we want our educational system to do whatever it needs to do to stay open or do we want the teachers to be able to provide the education that can be provided and then number two do we want to give parents a heads up or do we want them to just realize that because there's going to come a time in a couple you know I hope not but you know I feel like I I'm I'm being told that the weather reports got this ice storm coming and everybody knows we're going to call school and they're just waiting for the superintendent to make the call you know we're all watching the radar we see it coming in and I'm mad because it's coming in at 2: in the morning and I'd like it to

105come in at 7 at at the evening it's it's when do you make the call but that's a hard one because you're one I want everybody to understand there's been nothing easy about this Co situation but we're but we're being asked to sacrifice one set of students for another set of students I mean all students are important I I I agree and so them all being important if if the ones that can function and do well remotely will do well remotely anybody that struggles we can pull them in we're trying to reduce the numbers the special ed kids will be here the at risk kids will be here the parent the the the administration is going to be targeting the kids that are struggling if there's social emotional issues the fam to call the social

106workers we can do group sessions we can set up we can help you set up systems at your home where the kids study I mean we're we're we're here to work with them I'm just I'm scared that I'm going to have to call School someday and just tell everybody you can't come in we're broken how close are we to Broken like how many Subs down are we or how many how many and if they get ready to close the gyms and we may not be able to have PE and stuff like that that free up yeah the the that doesn't free up because it doesn't free up because if you can't close the gyms and you can't have a gym class those kids still have to have a supervisor or somebody with them so that

107doesn't free up anything actually might we could hold class in the gym and and keep them six feet apart so down we would have to quarantine at that point though and this is this is I guess where I'm getting to at that point we're not an educational organization we're just staying open for as a daycare I mean we can be open and not provide you know and just really Blaze things over so so so little but or or we can close and let the people provide the education that they need to do and and do deal with it I mean I it's a shortterm thing we're not going to let you know when we met administratively and discussed this you know I after talking with Mr Wagner and everything the administration made it very clear

108they know they targeted the kids that really went off the deep end at the beginning of the year because of remote we know who those kids are we can Target them we're not going to let them we're going to have them coming in I think there's too many of them I really do I think if we go remote I think so many kids are going to fall in the cracks more than we can handle you know and I I have emails and conversations with dozens and dozens of parents I mean I spent a lot of time on that I I've heard time and time again where that God were back because they were struggling at home with the for remote and since they're back there's been a miraculous change in their education I I don't

109think the day here I think we're really educated people I I I agree with you but if we don't have enough staff to cover what we need what are we going to do and um I I don't know I when I hear that all of the RTI teachers are teaching in the classroom that tells me we've got X number of teachers out and when I'm hearing that the principles are in a classroom that tells me we got more I mean at what what's the breaking point when there's 20 kids in a classroom and there's nobody to be there with them that's a Breaking Point and do and then this is what Mr Grody is saying do we wait until we hit that breaking point and say look we don't have anybody to be in the

110classroom to provide educational support to your children so tomorrow we're shutting down the school for two weeks or would we or do we decide that we need to take a break we need to get this thing in track and say this is the date we are taking these two weeks off to get this try and get this thing in line I think we're kicking the can down the road because the teachers are going to have family they're going to do things with their families more than likely over Thanksgiving too so so if we take two weeks off after Thanksgiving and go remote they're not coming in and mingling with those kids I think how about we do one week after Thanksgiving let's compromise a little bit here and we all kind of agree that the

111Thanksgiving might be a super spreader we have a lot of does that defeat the quarantine Peri it actually does not that the highest percentage of people are going to become sick 5 to seven days after exposure and that's why waterl took the one week after Thanksgiving versus the 14 days um so 5 to S days is yes they could still pick it up in that 7 to 14 day window but most likely if you're going to get sick you're going to start showing symptoms in that 5 to 7 day window so that would change instead of going from 11 1123 which would be week of the Monday of Thanksgiving week youd be out then the week of um November 30th through November 4th I mean December 4th you come back December 7th and I said

112let the kids go Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving yeah right I would say go take that week of November 30th and go remote that week and give it a chance for that contamination from Thanksgiving to work itself through so that if we've got contaminated people they've got to be out for 14 days they're not going to come back on they're not going to be a eligible to come back on the 7th and then in the meantime people go get your sub certificates it was easy well yeah but I mean to the to this to the sub situation um we're using other teachers as Subs now and things like that and those are educational professionals if I went and got my sub certificate I certainly couldn't do what Mrs Alexander Mrs lck does standing in front

113of a class but they can as far as as far as that goes they yeah they can teach remotely to to students remotely so so if you're he's saying if you're a second grade teacher and I'm teaching from home and he's just a body sitting there what's the difference because the kids are in a classroom surrounded by other kids what does that mean I think we we talked about and we've heard had so many emails from parents about the emotional understand that but how does that help their education well I think that they're not distracted by everything going on but if you have somebody who's not a subject matter expert teaching a class or just being a body in a room how does that benefit their education well lot of the teachers on white or

114teaching from home if they're not sick if they've just been quarantined but if they're home sick then there be a some teaching and you got Scott in there teaching that doesn't know anything about second grade hopefully there's not that many teachers that are actually have Co and cannot teach from home and then if they do you're only out for what 11 days after Co if you're positive 10 days from onset of symptoms within 10 days then you have a teacher that's not going to fall again so and then you hope they don't get really really sick I hope no one gets really really sick I mean the truth of the matter is the majority of the people survive this thing very easily the kids aren't really affected 99.5 % of people under 50 and 0.002

115of children so the risk of bad outcomes from the illness itself shouldn't weigh in on it because the percentages are so low can I ask you a question then and I know that you probably can't answer this because you you don't control the world anymore than I control the world but if the risks are so low why do we have to quarantine well people because we can't figure out how to keep it out of the high-risk environments basically the more you have in the general population the more risk that it is that it's going to slip into a nursing home where the death rate is very very high if we could figure out how could have figured out how to do that and taken the politics out of it completely if we had figure out

116how to lock down all nursing homes and send them to all the one state the rest of the world would go on like a normal flu flu season yes there's always that small risk that somebody got an underlying condition that they didn't know about that could but the percentage is so low that yeah it it the the reason is as the numbers go up you just it increases the chances that it's going to slip into a high-risk facility and we just still have not figured out how to keep it out of those even with all the testing I've said this a few times because it's it's frustrating for me because I find myself struggling with what's the best educationally and what do we have to do as far as following the rules that are handed

117to us and and it's a the quarantine the close contacts is just it's murder on schools I mean it makes it very almost impossible with high Community spread for you guys to function it's just I I mean like it's and after having testing in the county for the last two days we're going to have cases of children cuz I watched I was there how many children went through that testing site we're going to be quarantining a lot of people and once those results start coming in this weekend so what I'm I'm hearing from the board though is there was slight movement from from it sounds to me like if we start this we we prefer to start this on the 25th which is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving so we'll go up until Thanksgiving at the

118natural break and so are we all in agreement that we'll continue to have school until Thanksgiving yes sir okay so then what we would do is after Thanksgiving are we going all remote and for how long or are we going partially remote with a certain group of people or are we where are we at with that I like I got a pretty good read on this room and I see we're definitely split on this issue but I think if we do one week after Thanksgiving I think it'd be a compromise I think almost everybody could look I'm not speaking for everybody but that's just kind of the impression I'm getting and that's what water is doing correct water is yes that's what water is doing yes yeah um it's going to give you a little

119bit of time to you know they're going to review it to see what's happening with that Thanksgiving break I mean if the numbers obviously that week start showing that things are going through the roof then you may have to extend it extend that just because you won't be able to function as a school but hopefully you know it's just going to it's going to go up a little but hopefully it's not going to go up too much you know fully expect it to go up some but you never know when we return on the seven would we be returning everyone back or would we be I would say go back to the regular schedule that we're on right now and do two weeks of have two weeks that is it two weeks that have the

120week of the seventh the week of the 14th and two days yeah and keep keep on our schedule that we're doing now and I I will give a little spoiler alert uh Mr Geroy alluded to our back to school meeting that we had and I for one have been very frustrated in the progress we've been making in this meeting until today and Courtney and Chris had both came up with a plan that I think the teachers are on board with I absolutely love it it's brilliant and I think we just made a giant leak today so you guys are taking the pr for that one but whoever came up with this is is good if I did I pulled it from youe so I think it was me I so this this is a plan

121that you know we understand that we're in trouble times right now and it's not going to work but this is more shooting for a January change so I want people to know that progress is coming now um yesterday I wouldn't have said that but today it's a again it was a huge leak today so I think we have a a bright future and we're moving in the right direction okay so if I'm hearing the the the room to summarize what Mr Myers just said um we would be in attendance up until the 25th and then with our normal Thanksgiving break the week following we would be all remote the week of December or uh November 30th we're all remote and when I say all remote I mean special ed kids are coming in targeted at

122risk kids are coming in and everybody else is remot yeah and um counselor are available for absolutely for whatever the needs are um the other question would be lunches would we have pick up lunches for kids or what would be the plan there yep we do two types of lunches right now we do both pick up for our remote kiddos whether they are remote for choice or remote for isolation and then we have the daily meal so we would continue both because if they're here they walk yeah you have few kids that were here but so we be doing both but uh we would consider and maybe if we took that week with a lot of remote and get a little more time that we can get all those Cooks back I get two more

123and then and then uh so that'd be the week of the 7th would be all remote except for those students you outlin uh and then uh starting the week of the 14th and through the remainder of the calendar school year we would U be K through five all in that's where we are the week of the 7th would actually be in 30th the 30th December 1 second third and fourth we would be all okay so the week of the S through and we resume our current SCH yep I think we should clarify that if if we don't have staff to operate like we need to and I'm talking we're not having assistant super attendants working in the kitchen and principals working in a classroom if we don't have staff we don't have school okay let

124me clarify because if you're saying the assistant superintendent can't work in the kitchen and the two and the principal can't work in the classroom we would have closed already yeah and that's what I'm saying you made a very good point our our administrators can't do their jobs if they're making sandwiches I mean we're kidding ourselves if we're thinking we're providing an ation and that's our that's our sole purpose I mean it it's been very well discussed and laid out here there seems to be this this this notion that daycare is kind of more of the priority than education and this is what we're here for is education so if we can't have Educators in the classroom educating the kids and the administrators doing their jobs to oversee all that we're not fulfilling our mission as

125a business so let's let's make sure we got the bar set properly you know I'm on board with the program we're laying out and the schedule and the idea but it's a changing situation we all know that and operationally if we can't make it work then we don't do it Mr Wagner technically water we out and then they're talking about whether or not they'll come back the we right is that decision already made right and I would say if the numbers stay where they're at right now or if they're increasing slightly I would I don't want to say what they're going to do for sure but this is just that they may not be back not because they don't want to be back same reason why here they don't have the teachers and the staff

126to maintain the schools right for that obviously Staffing is our major issue so with that I know there's a 14-day quarantine can they test out early we can't s them for a test after a week no you can't test out of a close contact or anything no and unfort you know yeah it's like I said it's it's the the contact uh quarantine of 14 days is makes with high Community spread makes it very difficult on schools to stay staff and it's going to get worse and that's why you know that's why I'm here basically because it's not going to be getting better by the end of the year and that's why I said you need to prepare for it through the end of the year it's not going to get better there's nothing nothing is

127changing between now and the end of the year except we've got some holidays where there's going to be more people getting together which is only going to increase cases now maybe people will start adjusting their behavior Behavior a little bit which is always possible to where we see numbers stabilize if we see numbers stabilized then at least we know where we're at and we can decide if you can you can continue to function at that level like right now it sounds like you're still able to maintain somewhat of a school maybe maybe not depending on if you're agree with administrators running classrooms the problem is we're not staying where we're at we're going to see an in increase especially after Thanksgiving um we may see a drastic increase by next week especially in the school

128kids just judging from the testing that was going on a lot of parents taking their kids for tests I'm hearing you say that a one week remote time outside of after Thanksgiving is is is it'll be beneficial it'll tell us it'll give us a little bit Insight of what happened over Thanksgiving um but it could also give us the Insight that uhoh you know those next two weeks don't look good but it it make it may give us an Insight saying okay looks like we can deal with it you know we just don't know so early on like December 1st or 2nd you and I are going to need to have a conversation because we might be host for a special meeting on December 4th saying that we need to extend this at remote situation

129correct is that is that what I'm hearing from this group a possible special meeting on the 4th the admin we could tentatively schedule a meeting on theth we can always cancel it can't schedule it I don't think we need a special meeting it's it's an administrative call if you don't have staff to operate you don't have school and it's it's going to change call school off first no day I mean so I think that's kind of how water is handling too and there's no question how how dedicated the administration is so we know if you can have school you will have school and if you can't have school just say so it's your fault well and me say can't have school can't have in person school yeah we continue remotely continue remotely and give parents

130a heads up that we may just have to call them just like a snow day so that they're not caught off guard that it can happen at any time we are that close with staff to not being able to have school that it could happen I will also like to say just um while it's on my my head is the request is is that this week that we're spending after Thanksgiving let's not extend the plans of travel that we've already got scheduled if that makes sense and if you do extend your plans of of travel then then quarantine yourself afterwards come home yeah come come home and and and spend the week after Thanksgiving with masks and doing what we're supposed to be doing and if we call school it may just be one of

131the schools we may call Eagle View but not have to call the other that's what I'm saying if we're short step on one school doesn't mean we have to take the whole District out and I think that's again to Greg Conor's Point that's administrative call taking a look at all options all right so any other conversation around that Mr one thing that really kind of bothers me I guess is the the different criteria for quarantine and recovery for healthcare workers why is there such a difference healthcare workers are under essential Services uh where healthcare workers can be called back into work even if they're a contact um but that has not been extended to schools and stuff like that you foree that ever happening or probably not you know um healthcare workers can even go

132back into work being a positive as long as they don't are not showing symptoms but that there again you know that's not advisable in any type of situation except in an emergency because you have specialized healthcare workers that can only do you know there's only so many of them that can do that specific job so now it's the 14-day quarantine on the close contacts that it's going to make it you know as we get more and more numbers out in the public it's going to make it very difficult to keep the Staffing levels that you that you need um and what we're seeing and we've only seen in the last two weeks and unfortunately it's taking out some teachers already the parents sending their kids to school when they're safe and then the teacher deals

133with them they're losing nurses I know schools are losing nurses left and right because they're the ones that then are contact with the potential positive but do they fall under the RN the health care where they can be back in 4 days well no there isn't a four day they could come back as a close contact a healthcare worker could as a close contact but not as a positive and see they're coming they're ending up being positive the nurses the nurses like theth workers if they've been in close contact they have to stay gone they have to stay away for 14 days yes but if they had it they can come back after four days if they were if they had Co right in the past if they have if they've had it in the

134past they don't have to quarantine as a close contact up to 90 days but there is no 4 day anything a healthcare worker can go back to work as a close contact if the it's considered deemed an essential position a nurse at a school is not deemed an essential position under healthc care I would disagree I I would you know but that doesn't meet the terms you're thinking essential as life or death well I am know because kids have treat allergies and seiz yeah that doesn't that that doesn't no that doesn't doesn't count when you got follow the rules so let's see if I could any other questions see if I word this motion um well before I word the motion so we will continue uh inperson learning as we are today up until Thanksgiving

135break following Thanksgiving break uh we will do remote learning for at least one week uh and and and during that time it will be looked at and evaluated to see if we can go back to inperson learning the week thereafter and through the end of end of the year but we need to make sure that that we have the Staffing in and the folks available to do that that fair fair so i' entertain a motion to uh yeah to do to start remote learning on uh December 30th following Thanksgiving break and uh evaluate uh our desires to come back on the 7th but we will evaluate during that week to see if we need to continue remote learning through the rest of the I'll make that motion second second a motion by Scott second by

136Karen looll call vote for me please Karen Anderson yes Tammy hind yes John Long yes Greg Meyer yes Scott Middle Camp yes Greg o Conor Lisa schoer no motion carries on to item G basketball season there's really no action necessary I just they came back out right they are pausing the entire winter season and so right now um they're having a meeting tomorrow where they will hopefully clarify what exactly that pausing is but right now all um open gyms all try outs all programs that are indoors have been stopped or paused thank you discussion items Karen did you want to talk about the ISB resolution committee yeah um I've spent probably about eight hours on Zoom sessions with this it was about a 2 and a half hour session and another two and a half

137hour session um discussing all of the resolutions that were out there we went through one thing at a time um and then there was the day that we voted and I think that was about another hour or so but um the biggest um resolution that was of interest to most people was the gun storage and if you've gotten your messages from iasb you would have heard been able to have read this but um that when it came up for a vote um the initial recommendation by the uh uh resolutions committee was not to adopt and the appeals were filed in So what had to happen the way the process works is for there to be a vote on that resolution first there has to be a vote to whether or not the delegates wanted to

138bring it up for a vote and it did not pass that it did not get approval to be brought up uh for a vote I voted to bring it up to vote but that was not what happened so um and that was there was 278 delegates voting and um it was it was voted down by um it was 112 to 147 no 108 to 146 not to reconsider so it did not get enough votes to be reconsidered um the prek teacher lure that was um the appeal was there and again that was voted on whether or not to adopt or to vote on adopting it and that was that was voted down also but there was alternative language recommended by the resolutions committee and that was accepted um the rest of the uh recommendation or

139uh resolutions that were recommended for adoption were adoped Ed and um all of the resolution changes were accepted so that's what um went on it was the discussions were very good and indepth but um the as I said the gun safety one didn't even come up to a thank you uh board president's prerogative uh just just just a couple of words to to reiterate um Dr gell and and Mr Grody um as we as we leave for Thanksgiving break um I would like for parents for teachers and students to do their part so uh after we come back we can take that brief pause and do remote learning um but be ready to come back in uh full force as soon as possible so I'd love to be back in to um inperson learning and

140everybody does their part and uh I would think hopefully and I'm looking at at our health health uh Department director there um that we can get that so I would I just reiterate that for everybody item 10 executive session we don't have anything for executive session so uh on to adjournment item 12 I entertain a motion to adjourn I'll make that motion second motion by Scott cam second by Karen Anderson can you do a roll vote for me please Kim Tammy H yes John Hall yes Greg Meyer yes Scott midle Camp yes Greg o Conor Lisa Sher yes Ken Anderson yes thank you everybody e