November 19, 2020: Board of Education Meeting

001the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of november 2020 was convened in the media center at anthony wayne middle school 201 garside avenue wayne new jersey this statement of compliance setting forth time date and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened please rise for a flag salute in a moment of silence pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay dr toback so good evening um the board of education meeting is being held at anthony wayne middle school again due to the limited number of people that

002may assemble indoors this in-person meeting is limited to the board of education members some administrators and our board of education attorney however the meeting is open to the public for viewing and public participation in the same manner as our other meetings using zoom this week is american education week and this presents everyone with an opportunity to celebrate public education and honor individuals who are making a difference and ensuring that every student receives a quality education congratulations and a heartfelt thanks to every one of our district employees for all of your work during this challenging time community in wayne is fortunate to have a great public school system many generations of wayne residents will tell you that they moved to this community for the school system we're proud to be a part of a very strong

003tradition of excellent public schools in this community and this is something to truly celebrate i have to do some required reporting this evening in this case it's new jersey department of education school self-assessment for determining grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights act okay so this is a required report all new jersey public schools must complete an annual self-assessment to determine compliance under the anti-bullying bill of rights act school scores must be presented annually at a public board of education meeting annually by october 31st however this year the deadline is december 1st due to the ongoing covet 19 adjustments at the department of education each school must evaluate performance in eight core areas or elements which include those listed below hiv programs approaches or other initiatives secondly training on the board of education and approved

004hiv policy third other staff instruction and training programs fourth curriculum and instruction on hiv and related information and skills fifth hiv personnel six school-level hiv incident reporting procedures seventh hiv investigation procedures and eighth hiv recording this year our district average was a grade of 76.21 which is a new seven year high for the district it continues our upward trend in assessing our response to hiv incidents this progress is largely due to our hard work for our anti-bullying specialists administrators and teachers who take a proactive approach to supporting our students and actions to stop bullying there's a group effort across the district total possible score for the hiv report is 78 so we're at 76.21 out of 78. specific school scores are as follows lafayette school reported a perfect score of 78. fallon kennedy randall carter

005tunis and george washington reported a score of 77 apt packing ryerson wayne hills reported 76 pines lake anthony wayne scott colfax and wayne valley reported scores of 75. for more information on how each school rated itself in each category and information on our revisions and improvements to no place for hate 2.0 please visit the district website thank you to all the counselors administrators again to our teachers who work tirelessly to combat bullying and to ensure our schools are a safe welcoming and positive environment for all of our students um so an interesting development with the department of education so for many weeks there has been a dispute between superintendents in the new jersey department of education now the colder weather is here i'm happy to report that common sense has prevailed when it comes to

006meeting the 180 day requirement up until recently the school district was operating under the hybrid instructional model as we are then any weather-related closure could not count towards the 180-day requirement even if it was a virtual day it would not count as a school day now we have the option of including those days of remote instruction towards the required 180 days of schools when um even if remote instruction is being delivered on an inclement weather day however there is one requirement and that is that if there are power outages or wi-fi outages then the community would not be able to count that as a day so you can on an inclement weather day have a virtual school day and have that count towards your your 180-day requirement but in the event of a power outage

007or a widespread power outage or the loss of wi-fi across the community that would be the only data that would not be able to count so that's um that's that's a good development for the district and it allows us flexibility in the event of inclement weather we can still go on with the school day for elementary school news i'd like to just report that ryerson elementary school is in the third year of implementing the leader in me program leader in me is a whole school improvement model that uses teaching practices to promote social and emotional learning for all of our students in grades k to five the goal for 2021 at ryerson is to reach every student every day by having them attend virtually or in person and be engaged in school through the program

008ryerson school staff is able to support leadership culture and academics in a positive way for the entire student body and they inspire every child to find their genius and take on a leadership role in some way the early childhood center is kicking off their no place for hate initiatives spearheaded by gina savittieri school social work with the signing of the preschool pledge for kindness the whole school initiative will bring the preakness early childhood center community together as they address our district and school diversity equity and inclusion goal rollout begins tomorrow and pledges will be collected virtually from students families and staff via the online learning tools seesaw lafayette elementary is continuing some long-standing traditions as they maintain a sense of community during hybrid instruction the socially distanced food drive has been organized and the school

009is planning for additional collections to provide support for those in need during the holiday season over the course of the past few weeks students in third through fifth grade at randall carter learned about and experienced walking meditation purpose of walking meditation is to offer students an opportunity learn what it means to be fully focused and mindful and to experience the benefits of feeling serene balanced and more grounded with nature students took socially distance walks outside and had the opportunity to take an appreciated mass break they were instructed to follow a very slow and deliberate walking place space while placing their focus on their shoes and people in front of them and they were asked to notice what natural sounds they heard during their meditation experience um the other thing i'd like to report on tonight

010is that there were changes to the high school winter athletic season so the njsa recently had to make some difficult decisions when it comes to the winter sports season due to the increase in covet cases the problem with carrying out high-risk sports during the pandemic as a result the changes for high school winter sports teams are as follows ice hockey practice may begin on december 14th basketball fencing and bowling we'll start practice on january 11th swimming winter track and field start on february 1st and gymnastics volleyball and wrestling are scheduled to start on march 1st so a very late start for some of our winter sports um with the hiv report i'd just like to mention that during the reporting period there were two incidents reported as hiv after a thorough investigation one of the

011reported incidents was found to be an actual case of hiv okay so the next part of our discussion um is the reopening of schools phase two so mr bouchard i was wondering if you could pull up that presentation phase two presentation so we can get a discussion going about that okay mr richard if you can go to the next page okay so members of the public who are viewing this meeting i'd like to just go over basically there's a plan to move our school district to phase two in our return to school uh model for this year so um for those who have not been following along just a quick review that there are basically three actions that are under consideration for phase two the first action is consideration of high risk time periods so

012in other words the holidays are a time when people gather um we've heard many warnings from public health officials about the possible spread of covet during the holidays so the action includes all virtual instruction one week after thanksgiving and two weeks after the new year the second action includes virtual wednesdays so the second phase calls for the elimination of virtual wednesdays at all grade levels the third main action is the merging of high school cohorts in other words move from three cohorts to two cohorts so we know the class sizes at the high school or both high schools are already small and combining cohorts would not lead to an inability to maintain social distance so that was a discussion at our last board meeting last board meeting was a public work session the agenda item

013was moved forward for a vote tonight and so you'll find it is on section k of the agenda so mr bashar if we can move ahead some things have changed since last time one of the things that has changed is the covet 19 activity level report so as far as school planning goes um the district every school district uses these maps that pop up on a weekly basis from the state of new jersey and so what we see now is something that um there's a progression so in early october you could see that passaic well this is current so you can see that our county passaic county is currently listed as a high risk area okay in october we were at moderate risk and then um earlier in october um all the way back to

014the start of the year we were at low risk so now we've made our way on this continuum to the point where we are high risk and so that is a development that just happened today um if we could please move on to the next slide okay so basically this is just um this is really for the the presentation once it's posted if anyone would like to know more about the statistics that are on the prior page is it basically a bunch of footnotes there so on the next page you can see the progression right so low risk moderate risk we've been operating and we've been following all the guidance from the department of health um at the state level at our local level and um we've been working very hard to maintain our schools

015even though under some difficult circumstances there's a lot of things that have happened um but right now he said we're at high risk so based on the department of health guidelines you can see there are a number of considerations that um we have to recognize there's some things we need to do we've been in contact with the department of health here in wayne today to talk a little bit more about the specifics about what it is that we might need to do differently now that we are a high-risk area but there's some other planning that needs to take place and there's some other things that we need to look at because ultimately in wayne our numbers are also increasing in our schools and i'll explain um why there's there's a lot of other ripple effects

016when when we get to our numbers so if we can go to the next slide okay so these are our numbers and you can see the dates attached to them and um the next page you don't need to pull it up yet but the next page is our prior prior week okay and so what you'll see basically is the numbers of students and staff members who are either positive tested positive or who are quarantining um during this time period okay so you can see the numbers and you can see those numbers are definitely getting large um the number of students quarantining at 242 um the fact that we have 45 positive student results the fact that we have 39 staff members quarantining and 11 staff members that are positive those numbers are way up even

017from a month ago or even from last week if you go to the next slide okay you can see there's a significant increase in the number of students quarantining about 80. you can see there's another and staff members that are quarantining you can see that the staff positives are eight and you can see the students twos and positives are 26 so these numbers keep going up and they've been going up by quite a bit so the one thing i'm going to talk about is um some of the issues that we're experiencing with staffing so as you can see now we're at if you go to the prior slide mr bashard okay at 39 staff members quarantining okay now those numbers change every day a little bit because ultimately some staff members come back so that

018number is probably a little bit different than what it is now but the point is that even when you get to that level even if you have 20 or 30 staff members staff members who are quarantining the district already has approximately 60 staff members now that already have accommodations so they are accommodated for various reasons and they do not necessarily have to be in school but there has to be a substitute in the classroom for hybrid instruction so you have to have a sub for all those situations plus if you have 39 say 40 you're talking about 100 people that have to be covered on any given day and yes we have a large school district but 100 um substitute situations is a lot plus you also have to consider the day-to-day um situations where

019you have people who miswork for various reasons people who are sick for other reasons not coveted people who have medical appointments other things that they're doing so um all of our staff members have rights to various days and so that's all added on top of this situation mr bashar if you could move on to the next slide okay so at the last board meeting we heard um from some of our board members and also from the community there was a very strong desire to merge our high school cohorts because the fact of the matter is we do have small classes at the high school at this point there were many classes that really have just two students three students so there's some very small numbers out there so the idea is well if we merged

020cohorts there was great hope that ultimately emerging cohorts would lead to a little more normalcy for our high school students it would lead to a little bit of a better opportunity for social interaction and some of the things that the students are really missing this year and um so in response to all that what we decided to do was we we initiated a survey of our high school parents and the whole idea was to determine if parents were interested in having their child if we merged cohorts would that lead to large numbers of students returning to the high school for hybrid instruction what would happen what would would the parent how would the parents respond and so that was the survey and you could see that um you know we got some results that we

021we didn't really expect so one of the things we did expect was the fact that the vast majority of parents decided to stay put and we were happy to see that there was a of an interest of 58 parents between both high schools they would like to have their child return from full remote to hybrid if we merged cohorts okay but what you can also see is there's a significant number of parents who decided that if we merged they would at least they responded if we merged they would switch from hybrid to full remote you can see that's a hundred and what is that 147 students that would be leaving the district okay so um not leaving the district it shouldn't say that it would be switching from hybrid to full remote okay so not

022leaving the district but going to remote um so that was something we did not expect and that was something that was unanticipated in our planning but that's where we are and um you know we also have a unfortunate trend over the past few months where every week we we have been losing high school students for for different reasons um originally our principals reported that a lot of times students felt that the opportunities for that they were looking for in terms of um having some time with their friends being able to socialize at the high school level just wasn't happening and so in some cases students left and decided to go remote as of late the primary reason that parents have been giving to both of our principals is that they're concerned about the spread of

023covet and they just decided they would rather they feel a little safer by keeping their children home so they decided to go from hybrid to remote and so that's um i'm sure that's represented with these numbers here as well okay um superstar if you go to the next page please okay so go back to the the unfilled sub situations okay so you can see one of the one of the things that the district is facing is we have a shortage of subs and you can see we started the year where our fill rates were about 33 which is not great but it was a lot better than what it was in october where we can only get a substitute fill rate of 22 percent that means that about four out of five openings that we

024had were not filled by per diem subs we have other situations we have permanent subs we have class coverages we have different ways that we we have been able to cover those classes with the teachers within the school with substitutes with permanent subs other um ways we can cover them but the fact is there's been a there's a void that we have normally those numbers are quite a bit higher and you can see basically that um we we have sub hours um for september and um of 2019 to november of and then you can see the difference that we have for september to november of 2020 significant number in um 15 756 of ours versus only 310. um you have non-working approved subs so what does that mean what is a non-working approved sub that

025means that you have right now um you have 160 substitutes that have been approved to work by the board of ed but are for whatever reason unwilling to come in to work so in other words they've been assigned they've been asked to come in to be a sub they're just not coming in um last year we only had 59 so we also have fewer subs that even though they're approved are not coming in adding to this is that we have the whole issue of um covid is touching a variety of people in a variety of ways and so in some cases it's people that are contracting the virus in other cases it's people who have family members who are contracting or who are quarantined because of close contact we had a situation at wayne valley

026today where there's a number of people that were close contact of an individual that tested positive over the past few days and so um this is an everyday event in the district there are different situations that we come across where there's discussions about close contact and who should quarantine which explains why the number of students and staff members quarantining is getting so high um and we also have an uptick in 504 requests so in other words i explained previously that we had a number of staff members that were being accommodated now we have additional staff members that have concerns because of the change in cdc guidance as it pertains to those who are pregnant so that that is another issue so those numbers of accommodations are moving from the mid 50 range to the 60s

027to the low 60s and so i'm sure like i said those numbers will continue to increase in the coming weeks um if we go to the next slide so based on where we stand right now okay um what the administration is recommending um to the board is is a revision of the agenda item that we have okay so we are continuing our recommendation to maintain a virtual instructional program after thanksgiving for one week and then after the new year two weeks so that is already on the the attachment um we're recommending that at this point um the elimination of the virtual wednesday is is the timing for that is not good based on the conditions that exist right now so we're recommending that we hold that until january to see where we are in a

028few weeks we know that there's a lot that will probably happen in the next few weeks and we're also recommending that we move ahead with merging of cohorts but we start that on january 19th when we return after the weeks of virtual instruction after the new year um the other thing i'd like to talk to the board about is the you know when this pandemic broke out and we had our return to school plan um everyone worked very hard we read all kinds of literature you know we were all up to speed on some of the things that um you know that might happen some of the things we might be seeing and we plan for that we have a cohort model and that allows for school and education to go on in the event

029that there's exposures and things like that but we expect to see that more often where we'll have cohorts of students that will be out of school we also think that the combination of staffing problems that we have now the lack of substitutes the increase in the number of people that are being quarantined we're going to have we're going to have a very difficult time making sure that our schools are open safely i mean schools are safe and our schools remain safe and you know a lot of people say this and it's true i believe that ultimately the safest place for students to be is um is in school right but that changes when schools are not adequately staffed and so that's what we're facing right now a situation where we really are struggling to adequately

030staff our schools and we're also looking at some other realities that might be coming up is because of the staffing situation um lost instructional opportunities and so by that i mean some of the situations we are experiencing now um in particular at our high schools is that um you know ultimately we just get we today at wayne valley and also at wayne hills um during this week we've had situations where we've had up to 12 um 12 teachers that were uncovered so we were short 12 subs for example at wayne valley today okay so that situation and when you multiply that out each staff member has five classes so 12 times five is 60 classes that um we didn't have a substitute for that and there was no way for construction continue so what happens

031is we merge those groups of students depending on the period in larger areas like the auditorium or in a cafeteria whatever space happens to be available where we can socially distant have our students be socially distance where they can continue their work it is obviously nowhere near the educational opportunity that we want to provide our students and like i said this um this is something that will probably continue to um evolve as a situation we just don't have enough people for a classroom so we are holding our own and i won't say that that's the case at every school that's certainly not the case or elementary schools they seem to be doing okay right now um at least they're not in in the situation that the high schools are when it comes to substitutes and

032covering some of the the vacant or the absences um from staff members which is not you know it's not to say or pass judgment or anything just the fact is that we we just don't have many sons and and even with even with a system of permanent subs um that is a huge bonus for the district and that was something that was a very important thing for the district to do to have these permanent subs um even with those additional permanent subs across the district we're still really having a tough time with that so um i think that concludes this part of the presentation mrs reichman do you have anything that you would like to add to the discussion not not at this time i think you covered it um if there's questions that come

033in i may be able to assist okay ready so um is there another page all right i don't think there is a good story okay are you willing to open this up to the discussion now sure if the board would like to i mean ultimately it's an agenda item it's an important agenda item it's um it's up for a vote and um so i think that it would be appropriate for the board to weigh in and make a determination about how you'd like to proceed okay does anyone have any questions for dr toback based on the current recommendation and mrs kumar um okay so the current recommendations as they stand with our numbers i feel comfortable with um but just as we're looking at the sub recommendations as you were looking at the data that

034we had seen when so what do we have a recommendation as to what might happen with the sub situation right now or are we just kind of waiting to see as far as when we may have to close schools based upon not having staff or do we not have an answer for that yet um so the answer is we we do have we do have a general idea the the like i said one of the things that um early in the discussion about returning to school is what happens if you don't have enough subs and so um we have uh an acceptable situation in some of our schools but what that would lead to it would lead to unexpected school closings like uh like if we had a snow day it would be the equivalent

035of that we would have to just call that morning and you know i know our assistant principals are in very early you know many cases before 6 a.m working on on these schedules because they're there's so much involved right now so at that point they might they might put up the red flag and say hey we just we can't do it we have so many classes that are uncovered um so it would be a sort of an unexpected school closure much like a weather closure or something like that that's that's where we would that's where we would probably wind up going and like i said it might affect some schools not others um at this point we we're still able to keep going we're still able to move ahead for many of our students but

036in some cases we like i said we might end up in that situation we're not there yet um but the numbers as they keep moving in the wrong direction we may be there within the next few weeks this is sure um so i just wanted to say that this is going to be difficult because it's put into one vote and i partially agree with some of the plan like i don't want to take the wednesdays away i think that the teachers and the staff deserve the wins wellness wednesdays however i'm going to go back to the cohort combining here's my problem we put it out to the to the people overwhelmingly the people want the cohorts combined okay um even though there are people that are saying that they're going to leave the schools if

037the cohorts combined it actually almost makes it easier for us because now we have would have less students in the building so now you're taking less students in the building so now those kids that were upset that they only had two kids in a class might end up in having one kid in a class so we're in the same predicament if not worse um as far as the contra our numbers have gone up in wayne however there are a lot of factors that play into that and as far as the contact tracing goes we have not had contact tracing that have that has said that these numbers increasing even with the students is from the school so that says a lot too uh another thing is that the sports are still happening we're still okay

038with sports they're happening um congratulations to a lot of the teams they're making states and everything these are kids from cohort a b and c all mixed together without a mask without being told what direction to walk and i just want to give the board an example so after doing some of my own research it turns out that cohort a and i'm going to go from the end date the last day they go to school to the first day that they go to school so i'm missing a few days in there cohort a the last time they were in school was october 30th they are not going back again until december 7th that's five weeks almost six cohort b the last day they have seen school is november 19 today they will not be back

039again until december 14th which is four weeks almost five weeks now wait for cohort c because this one's the best cohort c assuming they get in tomorrow monday tuesday and nothing stops us the last day of school they will see is november 24th the next day of school that they will see is assuming we start with cohort c when we come back is january 19th that is eight weeks that these kids have not seen school eight weeks has a kid learn eight weeks not in school not seeing a teacher not inter not interfacing with other kids i just i get it i get it we're having numbers jump i still do not see how combining the cohorts at this time so at least each cohort would have more time in school and cohort c would

040actually see the building some point in december i just i'm begging of the board again to please think about this eight weeks out of school six weeks out of school five weeks out of school that is crazy and remember they are all or not all i take that back most of these kids a lot of these kids are on fields with no masks together they're on buses together there's a lot of stuff that goes into play here the contact tracing is not from our schools so i beg of you to please consider that when you're when you're making your vote thank you anyone else this is albanies i do have a question first of all thank you again to the administration um thank you to everyone that we've heard from whether you're staff members teachers

041we've heard from the leadership for the administrators union we hear you we we've we read what you send to us we take everything into consideration um that said i i do have a question and maybe we don't have the answer but when we look at the thought exchange and we see the the parents i assume who are answering for their students that they would withdraw back to virtual from the hybrid model did we ask the question are you withdrawing from the hybrid model regardless of the cohort combining or was it if we combine cohorts will you withdraw because my question is do we have students who will be withdrawing regardless what we do in november what we do january 19th do we have students who are saying you know or parents who are saying for

042their students that i'm withdrawing because that makes a difference in looking at right now it appears from the thought exchange that if we go forward with combining the cohorts we will actually have less students receiving in-person instruction is it because of the combining of the cohort or parents simply taking the opportunity to say i'm withdrawing my child regardless of what you do because i have concerns about the virus and the spread of the virus and the uptick in numbers so i don't know if we asked the question in a broken down method because we haven't seen the questions i would be interested if we have an answer for that thank you so the question that was asked was a very generic question basically the idea is that the district is looking to move ahead with

043emerging cohorts we need to know what your plans are if the cohorts are merged then um what are your plans now to this is albany's point i have no doubt that there were because we have this every week we have a number of students that are going to their their parents are making the decision that they're going to leave hybrid instruction and go virtual so that's there's no doubt there's a pattern of that happening over many many weeks so now we're in a situation where i'm sure that the survey that we completed captured some of that i have no doubt that there was a certain number of people said well yeah i was gonna you know i i was now that now that you ask me i'm i'm gonna go i'm gonna have my child

044go virtual but i was gonna do that anyway so i have no doubt that there are some numbers like that but we didn't break it down in that way again the the that part was unexpected um with the number of people that we we have leaving so we didn't really we probably expected to see the other the other part um those other numbers we expected them to be larger numbers we expected to see more people wanting to return for hybrid instruction and um you know so we did get 58 between both high schools and that's that's a good thing but the net effect is we're losing somewhere around 90 students i believe something like that um in some so i mean mr i mean she does make a very good point and i do understand

045that it is very difficult and it has been a very um hard time for many of our high school students but um i also encourage to the the board to look at the um the the chart from the department of health when you're right now at this moment i'm just the only thing i'm saying is the timing the timing is is definition we'd love to merge the cohorts and it would be a wonderful thing to be able to do that um now because i know that that would that would help many parents i've helped many students and we just think the timing is is is bad timing the fact that we're a high risk area in fact the department of health is um they have as their guidance to really that um we should be

046talking about going fully remote once you become a high risk area that's the guidance from our department of health so that would be you know merging cohorts at a time and then and then you also have dr goldberg's advice in the background um he said if we do become a high-risk area then any action we take to merge cohorts we should exercise extreme caution and um so i just think like i said there is there's some risk involved and there are i agree like i said we have some small numbers but um but as always your your question is a good question and we don't have an exact answer we i'm sure based on the prior history that we've seen over the past few weeks what you're saying is valid that not everybody is opting

047to have their child go remote strictly because of the marriage um so just to follow up would it be safe to assume that whether we merge cohorts in a few weeks we merge cohorts starting january 19th it should be something that we're able to do because based on the thought exchange we expect that there would be no problem merging the three cohorts into two based on the numbers that we see we would not have any social distancing issue so whether it happens november 30th or it happens january 19th again barring many many other factors that could come into play regardless of the time that we do it we do think we would be able to do it we do we think we'd be able to do it we know we would be able to do

048it now we know we could do it last week if we needed to i mean there's there's certainly the capacity to do it the question that we have now and the question that we'll have in january is should we right based on what happens like i said we are in a continuum and like i said we started the year we were low risk went to moderate risk now we're high risk and you can see the next step in the progression if we get there is very high risk and then in that situation the guidance is to shut schools down so it's hard to say what'll happen i mean um as i've said in prior meetings you know a few weeks a month is almost like an eternity when you're talking about this pandemic so many

049things change the situation is so fluid and it's really hard to say what's going to happen thank you anyone else mrs reichman oh did you have your hand up go ahead i just wanted to share um as a follow-up to this is albany's question um i did have an opportunity to speak with a number of parents who requested a call after completing the survey because they did share that question so there were it was mixed there were a number of parents who said to me that their children counted out the number of days with the remote weeks and seeing that they would not be in school many days over the month of december which mr share commented they asked their parents can i go remote however i'll return in january or i'll return in february

050then there were parents who said i'm starting to feel differently because of the uptick and i have increased concerns so at this time we'd like to go remote but i don't intend to do that for a long time and i think the thing to consider is we can safely make the switch to two cohorts it the i guess the bigger question is come january if we have a large number that then requests to return for february then will we be able to safely distance in the classroom that we won't know because i do believe as more kids come back more and more probably will follow suit so maintaining social distancing right now yes long term um that's a concern again that we'd have to address and you know we talked about additional staffing but that's

051an even greater concern i mean so many of these things are just things we can't predict or forecast right now mr pavlock thank you the decisions here there's so many factors involved i am i am yeah uh there's so many factors involved here um i believe me i'm fully in favor of returning the cohorts or dropping moving the cohorts to two there's concerns though one we have our advice from our doctor our specialist and what his concerns are i look at the number of days that if we were to implement this coming back from thanksgiving there's 10 days of school that doesn't mean that the students are going to be there for 10 days 10 instructional days one cohort is going to be there shorter than the other just because of the way the calendar

052falls i know that our numbers in wayne are good i know our numbers in wayne have begun to drop which is a good thing the other concern is what i've heard from a few people that i know whose children are coming home from college they're coming home from school and they're home a day or two and all of a sudden the roommates now positive who they were with a couple days ago the girlfriend the boyfriend whoever are positive other parent the parents of the children are positive so that's a concerning concern to me well you're not going to see that in the numbers today that may be in the numbers a week from now i've spoke to people who are working in hospitals and they have told me the same thing one of the parents

053said in the last meeting it's not as crazy as it was is it great not so but could we be in a worse place yes we can we could be where the midwest is right now what we saw back in the early on when looking at the number of days that we're talking about here i i just i i have a concern about jumping into this for nine or ten days and most as i said before most students aren't going to be in the building for 9 or 10 days i think the move to combine the cohorts in january i'm in favor of that uh i was not in favor of it as today until i started hearing the numbers on the staffing and also talking to some of the students in the high school

054who said you know what no teacher i'm really i don't know why i'm here so i think at this point i think in going along with our doctor is our specialist is telling us looking at the minimal number of days and i i don't mean to to downplay that every day is important to every student in school but we're in the middle of a pandemic here still and i think for the nine days or ten days that we're looking at here i think it is in our best interest to come back on january 19th combine the cohorts we'll see where the numbers we are at that point we'll see the position we're in hey if the num the numbers that we're seeing in wayne now continue the way they are in january we're going to

055have no problems so that's just my my feelings on the subject thank you did you have your hand up mrs kumar uh yeah i did um but dr toback pretty much said what i was going to say in terms of our high risk situation that we're in so i'm good my question is if you had mentioned that the department of health said that we should go remote i don't know if we're referring to the wayne department of health or the county department of health um but if that's what they're recommending and that's the safest thing why are we discussing any of this why are we not going remote i i i don't understand you're on mute yeah um the answer is because we've the direction of the board has always been to try to maintain

056in-person instruction as much as possible and so that's really what we've been trying to do um you know to go virtual i mean honestly there are advantages you have you have a full day of instruction and um so you have a full day of instruction substitute situations all these other things um some of that goes away for the for the time being and a lot of other school districts have moved ahead with plans you know there's a lot of districts now that have gone remote um we've been doing what we can to maintain opportunities for students we also consider the special needs population um we know that the services and and the iep um that each student has is a very important thing we we want to make sure that we fulfill those requirements so

057um that's that's why okay because it's just confusing to me that on one hand we're saying the high school can't have eight kids in a class but the elementaries can and the middle schools can we're not okay with that and we're going by what's recommended to us and then on the other hand we're not we're not going by what's recommended to us so i'm i'm just i'm very confused at this point if it's not safe then close the schools down if it's safe then you can have eight kids in a class that seems common sense to me um i i don't think that there's a necessarily a double standard i think it's really the other factor you're not accounting for is the parental will part right so the bottom line is that parents are able

058to um to make decisions about their their children and whether they're going to be attending hybrid or not so that's i mean that's the other part about the high school part it's not that we're making those determinations parents making those determinations about how they feel about um whether it's safe or not well we did hear them speak and they said that they wanted two cohorts so we're we're not following what they're asking for i'm not i'm not going to argue with this with you i just i'm confused because well some of the parents speak we didn't we we heard there's obviously there's a lot of other parents that responded in the survey and maybe um a copy of the form that was sent out should be sent to the board members just so they because

059i actually filled out the form that miss albany's and it asked for your name your child's name their grade the high school they go to and um if we go to too cool or what are you choosing and it was it was like yes or no it wasn't it was confusing so maybe in the future we do send our forms to some of the border members to look at if there's going to be questions about it well usually usually as far as we reported the numbers and the form as you said it is the purpose of it was to determine enrollment which is what we were talking about a little bit at our last board meeting what impact will this have on enrollment and will we see a surge of students coming back and if

060so do we need to do anything with regard to staffing the answer would be yes so we really didn't need to know that before we moved ahead so we did the survey and it asked it was four simple questions so um but certainly the board can see results um you know if you if you want to see more but it's it's pretty pretty simple i don't think anyone would be confused by it and i don't think that um you know as far as the parents go there's very specific questions because again it was a it was about enrollment not about anything else other than trying to determine what parents would do in the event that the cohorts were merged okay uh just cut up uh i definitely see the wisdom in waiting to implement phase

061two because of the conditions that we find ourselves in in our geographic area um i can't quite wrap my head around the fact that we're going to kick the can down the road as far as combining the cohorts uh i think if we're going to combine the cohorts we should do it right after thanksgiving and give those students who want to be in the classroom at their high schools an opportunity to do so as much as possible before we have to take another look at it in january thank you anyone else this is kumar okay hi so as i was looking at over the past few hours since we got the high risk recommendations from the new jersey department of health that was actually in the slideshow that was just um on the screen part

062of it was to strongly consider going remote and that's based upon a few things and one of the things that has to do with his transmission within the school and as we've seen it seems like the school is the safer place to be in terms of transmission between people again the students are six feet apart there are masks you know we have a good setup in place it seems as far as transmission within the school so for me as you look at the new jersey department of health guidelines under high risk that's what's written there the other thing that's mentioned is on the bottom do not combine cohorts as a definite recommendation so i'm just looking at the guidelines as it's written there um and as mr pavlak said we need to really take a

063look at how many days it is and consider where we should go from there along with the fact yeah we have a lot of people traveling over the next few days and i think it might get worse before it gets better unfortunately people do plan on gathering you know in their homes that is probably what's going to be happening over the holidays i would like nothing more than to see students in school more time in person but where we are right now and based upon what the new jersey department of health says within the guidelines that we just had in our slideshow that dr toback presented it's really important for us to just take a look and take a step back so that's why and how i made the decision that i made about going

064forward okay is everyone finished asking questions about this um i think that students need to be in school um i'm a proponent of combining the cohorts but based on the numbers and based on the fact that in a matter of one day we went from medium risk to high risk tells me that the likelihood of us getting to very high risk which is definitely full remote is looming unfortunately so it's it's a difficult decision but with the number of stakeholders weighing in against it it's becoming an easier decision to make uh unfortunately so we'll continue with the agenda and it'll be up to us to vote at that time but if the discussion is over i'm going to continue um dr bouchard do we have the student reps ready to be admitted to the call

065because i believe they're next okay all right gina we'll start with you welcome with a formidable ten to one record valley's girls soccer team broke into nj.com's 20 top 20 in the state this week the girls have won 10 games in a row and are currently the number one seed in the nj siaa northwest group 3. special recognition is an order for junior goalie astra mcgraw who is named goalie of the year for northjersey.com's girls soccer mid-season awards congratulations to the wayne valley marching band on their 2020 new jersey state championship the marching band defeated 10 other bands and won all captions for best music visual overall effect percussion and color guard the girls tennis team is having a breakout season on their way to 2020 league championship valley zone first single county champ liza

066kissoliva has helped lead the team to a 9-2 record congratulations to wayne valley's cross-country teams the boys won their big north conference division title and the girls faced second junior ryan pena won the boys division in an amazing 16 minutes and four seconds and sophomore devin edmonds had a personal best of 22 minutes and 20 seconds to lead the girls miss amy's marketing students have continued managing the values one instagram page on student live at wayne valley they have continued student favorites like tick tock tuesday and work to feature voices from all around wayne valley from students in the hallways to teachers with their children at home the smoke signals school newspaper has completed its first issue under leadership of editors in chief neha chandra gina fermi and nicole giordino the website has been fully

067remodeled and the staff has worked tirelessly to publish a wide range of articles particularly focusing on student perspectives and reflections on our new normal emphasis valley's literary review club has fully transitioned to an online format editor editors katie carvalho elena oaken and alex reck have led the club in weekly meetings to share original student work and explore the nuances of language thank you go ahead joseph i'm sorry i keep forgetting to unmute myself thank you it's a pleasure to be in front of all of you today and report on behalf of wayne hills and members of the wayne hills math club competed very well in their first virtual new jersey math league contest last month students have enjoyed participating in this competition for years at school and made a successful transition to the virtual format

068jacob hablitz was our top scorer solving all but one question correctly the patriots are currently in first place in passaic county enlisted as one of the high scoring schools in the state wayne hills looks to continue his streak of county titles in this competition as the year continues wayne hill's structured learning students on the public relations committee recognized coaches for coaches appreciation day on november 4th 2020. students created a bulletin board representing all sports teams in the wayne hills high school teachers and staff or coaches coaches also received a poem a treat and some thank you letters in their mailboxes the wayne hills fall drama is called the halloween trilogy and is being held on december 3rd 4th and 5th it is a three classic short stories tale written as plays the cask of amontillado

069by poe the canterville ghost by wild and the mark of the beast by kipling the cast of amontillado is in the curriculum and all three of these writers are prominent english lit writers the plays are performed as a radio play prior to the invention of tv people listen to the radio for all their information and communication needs voice actors in the radio studio acted out these parts and people around the world listen for entertainment a radio play imitates the production of old shows showing the audience the voice actors as they stand at microphones and act out the parts the radio play format will allow us to be on stage at mics safely and socially distance this fall we had to put our traditional spirit week activities on hold in the meantime our student council is

070looking to provide supermarket gift cards for wayne hills high school families in need in the pto food pantry each class has been given a community pass account to be used strictly for this gift card food drive this is where the individual classes will work to sway as many donations their way so when the food drive ends their class will collect the most money which will be added to the point totals for spirit week in the spring the individual class accounts have been live since october 26 and run through november 20th the wayne hills cross country state sectionals were this past saturday the boys team placed 5th overall patrick senior patrick scroble won an individual medal finishing in fourth place 14th place on the girls side kyla leathers also earned an individual medal finishing in 14th

071place as well thank you uh the donations uh did one of you or both of you have donations to read we both have donations okay all right well you want to start joseph and then gina can wrap up sure okay thank you a donation was made from the wayne education foundation including one hovercam solo 8 document camera to schuyler colfax middle school with a value of 381.59 cents in addition the wayne education foundation is donating high interest low like vocabulary nonfiction books for esl students at john f kennedy middle school with a value of 257 dollars and 44 cents as well the columbia bank foundation board has approved its charitable giving program in honor of the atlantic stewardship bank teeth program with a donation in the amount of 250 to wayne hills high school a

072donation of one percussion set and one keyboard and one keyboard with stand was donated to tunis dye elementary school by katie hughes with a value of 400 the wayne education foundation is donating a speaker and two over-the-year headphones for the zen den to skyler colfax middle school with a value of 277 dollars and six cents and lastly the wayne education foundation is donating 900 to student support services for professional development of the district's paraprofessionals okay thank you both and i want to put you on the spot but do either of you care to weigh in on whether or not you want to combine cohorts at the high schools um i guess i could speak to that we'd love to hear from a student so i think it makes sense that we wait until after um

073winter break to combine the cohorts just because with people seeing families and everything transmission could increase and we don't want to really spread that between students at our school so i think that would make sense and as a student i know that i would probably feel more comfortable in school if we waited a little bit to combine cohorts yeah i definitely agree and i think that we should wait until after the winter break just because of the uncertainties with thanksgiving break and students coming back from college i've spoken with a lot of my peers and a lot of them don't feel safe like even right now and i think that just combining them wouldn't make all that much of a difference and it'd be much better and alleviate a lot of fears if we wait

074until next year thank you both much appreciated it's nice to hear from the students themselves and thank you both for coming to the meeting this evening have a wonderful thanksgiving okay on to revisions mr moffat we have one tonight and it is on m human resources item number msn 8 approval of appointment of districts back revised as follows line number three suzanna yellow part we're going to revise from location 2.2 tb 2.2 roi which is and the related related vision control number roi or ry i should say is 0 1-10-0-1 backslash e-v-a which is from budget account number 11-120-100-1101-10-triple zero and that concludes the revision thank you mr moffat okay this is kazan yes i'm sorry to interrupt um just the other issue and i don't know if you want to handle it here or

075at some other point before we vote but we do have to talk about phase two of return to school and the modification because as it stands the board moved ahead the full phase ii plan which begins november 30th that includes combining cohorts that includes eliminating the virtual wednesday so we have to make a determination at some point before you vote whether you would like to do that now about what you'd like to vote on otherwise the agenda item um when we attach agenda yeah so i assumed we would do that after the public portion and uh that will be what we vote on the recommendation that you've presented this evening will be the new agenda item okay thank you okay okay i did consider that um okay public portion this portion of the meeting is

076open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover mr giordano second mrs albanese okay first caller dr burchard you're on hi my name is uh david ginsberg from two amy way um a couple questions for you um first off regarding uh being closed two weeks after christmas and two weeks after thanksgiving uh am in support of that um but why

077is it one week after thanksgiving versus two weeks if we're identifying that as a high risk period for travel or people seeing their families both thanksgiving and christmas wouldn't conventional wisdom be to um go virtual for after thanksgiving for two weeks and after christmas for two weeks versus one and two uh and then my other question is i think one of the board members brought it up um you know last week we were in the moderate risk now i guess we're in the high risk we're not in the very high risk yet but you know the way things are trending you know by this time next week we very well could be in the very high risk red area where we do have to go to all remote my question is what's the plan in

078place between now and december 3rd which is the next scheduled border ed meeting if we do hit that high risk area is there a plan in place in those i guess it was a two weeks or two and a half weeks to be able to switch to all remote if we do hit that next week or or a couple days thereafter would be a question so uh just the thanksgiving um why is that not two weeks it was only one um and then what's the plan between this and the next quarter i mean if we do go to the next red level thank you thank you next you're on hi my name is audrey patterson i'm a first grade teacher at pines lake school and the first thing i'd like to do is thank the

079board of ed administration and the union for working so nicely together and always having our best interests and the students interests i know that things change every day and how difficult this must be for you but i also want to thank you for the wellness wednesdays it has made me well i work on wednesdays i have class i look into projects for my class i try to keep them interested i am busy all day on wednesday but it gives me time to plan for the rest of the week i also have a concern that touched me this week i thought i was exposed to coded and of course i took the next day off i i was i received a phone call tuesday night that i was exposed i took off wednesday i could not

080get tested anywhere the wayne township had no appointments available i went to four other places i made appointments when i got there they couldn't take me i wonder because we have to act because we don't know what tomorrow brings could the wayne schools have a way a quick testing a rapid testing for employees um luckily i'm fine the person that thought they had covered came back negative and so my my worry is over but it was a huge worry and we have nowhere to turn for testing so i hope there's something that we could implement to help out the staff and families to make it a quicker return because we all want to be at school thank you thank you next caller hi eileen d'amico 29 manor drive um as always you know first and

081foremost thank you to all of you i know this is not fun and this is not easy and everybody's been working hard trying to make good decisions and put plans together and backup plans and more backup plans so um you know thank you for for that work um i have to say though and and i've said it before um you know look if if the right thing to do from a science perspective and going with the science is to delay moving to phase two sort of in full um that seems to be what makes sense that seems to be what the science is saying but i feel like specifically with regard to the merging of the cohorts we're kind of doing a little cherry picking here um and i have to say i'm i'm really

082as i was last week with ms cheer on this and and mrs put up i think sort of relayed similar tonight you know the elementary and middle schools have been at two cohorts since the beginning right wrong or indifferent um i'm getting the feedback that it seems in many classes the average is maybe six to eight kids maybe as many as ten i don't know if it's that many um but you know the point is and and the intention it seems is to keep that through you know through the rest of this calendar year during the times that the kids are in school if you will um if that's okay for them based on the science and it's okay to maintain that why is it not okay to move to the same as of november

08330th or whenever it would be for the high schools if and i did join late so forgive me if i missed um if the the number of students would be drastically more than that in a high school class if we combine them but if it's around the same and there's you know the ability to socially distance properly why is it any different for the high school kids than the elementary and middle school kids um you know and and i heard what mr pavlak said and i understand but elementary middle school kids have college siblings coming home too so and there will still be kids in the school at the high school level so if cohort b is in school that week or a or whichever are they any more or less at risk than cohort

084a and a part of b it it just doesn't make sense so i do feel like we're doing a little cherry picking if the science says it's not safe then much to my dismay we'd go all virtual if it's safe for the elementary and middle school kids then it really should be safe for the high school students too to combine those cohorts and if parents and and the kids aren't comfortable they still have the option to stay home and stay virtual and learn virtually through the end of the calendar year but for those of us who really have a need and our students who have a need to be in school even if it's for the big five days or six days or whatever it ends up being between now and winter break if it

085can safely be done it just doesn't seem to make sense from the discussion you guys had just a few minutes ago to not do it again just based on the fact that we're letting the middle school and elementary schools do it so why are the high schools any different thank you thank you next caller hi jenny franklin 21 key lana drive sometime how i always manage to follow eileen domingo um if the first of all to speak to um mrs kumar's point about the do not reduce the cohorts i don't think that there's any other districts in our area that i have heard of that have three cohorts at the high school level most well everything that i've ever heard of has two cohorts so i could understand that that would be the guidance um

086to not reduce them because then it would be everyone in school um my concern too is that you know we tell we told the kids that they made mistakes on halloween and they had parties and they the cases went up and they did and you're right and they did make mistakes and that if they play by the rules and they do the right thing that they'll get to stay in school and then this map comes today and shows us all in this red area and we're thrown in with clifton and wes milford and passaic and patterson i mean if if we're talking about high risk are we talking about wayne are we talking about what we're doing to try and take and take care and be you know careful with our kids are we talking

087about the whole state because we're never going to win that and and it's it's hard to tell your kids that if you do the right thing this is what's going to happen and then maybe that's not what's going to happen and that doesn't that doesn't seem too fair i would definitely be in favor of getting down to two cohorts if we have to wait till january we have to wait but it needs to happen the kids need to get back in school at the high school level thank you thank you next hi my name is donna reaver first vice president of the wayne education association the wea would like to say that we appreciate dr toback's recommendation to go all virtual for the periods after thanksgiving and winter break these necessary precautions have eased some

088concerns among our members we also hope that you consider making the two and a half days leading up to thanksgiving all virtual as the gentleman suggested last week like mr pavlak mentioned earlier many college students are already home and we're learning of new cases each day among our students and staff it's quite obvious that despite everyone's best efforts this pandemic has once again engulfed our town our county and our state the recommendations put forth tonight have the weas full support we need to all reflect a bit more and on the safety and practicality of merging cohorts at this time like was mentioned earlier we are talking about 10 in-person days between thanksgiving and winter break we've heard from parents in the survey and students here tonight who are not comfortable with combining at this time

089it's better to err on the side of question we can all agree that in-person learning is the best possible scenario for all children but only when it's safe i think it was said perfectly in a statement released by njea today our members want nothing more than a return to normalcy but this is not a normal environment it's a global pandemic thank you next hi um this is evie wenting seven seminole wayne um i just wanted to call and say i'm really in support of combining the cohorts you guys mentioned you know specifically the cohort c who is not going to go to school for nine weeks i have a kid in cohort c and that didn't make me happy at all because he's not really learning i mean he's learning but not really they need

090the socializations and i understand that there is risk but there is risk everywhere if you sit down in your car there is a risk you may get into an accident wherever you go there's a risk you may trip and fall so we kind of have to be cautious but keep going because we can just stop and sit in our own little bubbles thank you thank you see no other hands can i get a move to close public portion i'll move it mr giordano mr pavlak okay at this time i'm going to have committee reports who would like to go first i can go madam president thank you very much mr beva okay tonight the facilities committee met with the administrators mr moffat mr blanchard mr stabisky and board members in attendance were myself and mrs

091kazan we went over for facilities we went over the agenda items for that are on for tonight which would be the comprehensive maintenance plan and we also discussed the use of facilities uh update we did have conversations with the pal and the boys and girls clubs both are still deciding whether they're going to even have a winter program so we're not taking any um having anybody in the buildings right now um they don't even know if they're gonna even ask to use the buildings at this point in time uh we also talked about the early childhood uh center plaque for mrs karanski and that's been ordered and should be in any day we discussed the elicit law grant that we were given and the state has allocated 438 000 for vestibules for the schools that

092don't have them yet and the project will actually cost 453 000 in total so we actually did really good getting that much money from the state so we're just waiting to hear when that's going to happen we also discussed fire system upgrades with the new fire official came in and we're going to be doing some upgrades over the next three to five years that are going to total about 571 thousand dollars but we do have uh three to five years to put that together we also discussed kindergarten rooms for the budget for next year for the upgrades for them for the full day program that will be in place this year we'll discuss the backup generators that need to be replaced or added and then the school level proj the school level projects are being

093put together by the schools and once that list is submitted to the business department it will actually be paired down we also discuss department vehicles that we need we need a couple of vans that need to be replaced and we need some equipment that needs to be replaced a tractor that we cannot replace a motor on so we're sharing one between two schools two height schools and baseball field drags we are down to two and one's on its last leg so we're going to end up having to replace one otherwise we're going to be going back and forth to the schools for transportation we discuss the agenda items that we're on for tonight which was the bus evacuation drills which were complete we did very well with and the transportation agreements with the um that

094are in place for this this particular agenda we also talked about the department operations update that that is going to be ongoing and we're going to be doing some research into getting to reorganizing to make the department run better um the transfinder program has been moved being moved to the cloud should be done next couple of days um the aid and lu is being analyzed right now for the students who are all virtual so before we start sending out money we want to make sure that we're actually busing um students bus maintenance and training we are going to be um looking into that to make sure that we put a training in place for um the future so this way we're not missing anything and we stay on top of things we also discuss the

0952021-22 budget we need to replace in the next couple of years two buses and six vans so that's going to be coming up and the other thing was the out-of-district routes are costing a lot more money than they used to and that's because of covid because of extra cleaning extra time staff wise and so the the bill for that is starting to add up and that is my report oh thank you mr bubba who else had a committee this evening this is cher who are you pointing at mr giordano personnel met tonight with myself mr pavlov miss kumar and miss clark um we reviewed the minutes from last meeting we reviewed the hr items on the agenda we discussed the stipend for an employee which we'll be getting more information on um and we discuss

096unionization of the dispatchers and that was all i could share thank you i think that's it for committees uh let's move on to the agenda can i get a mover mr giordano mrs albanese uh are you looking to move the entire agenda mr geo down now okay um i think we need a secondary motion to revise item k1 to the newly recommended phase 2 plan mr duffy and mr giordano so we'll vote yes can i take a recommendation to the mover in a second we move the whole agenda and just pull item k and vote on that separately why are we pulling it we're making a secondary motion to change it we can still discuss it vote on the rest of the agenda well we already have a secondary motion on the floor to revise

097it um so why don't we do that and finish up what we started so first we'll vote on the secondary secondary motion to amend k1 to the to this evening's recommendation from administration okay on the as amended portion by administration thank you just to clarify we're voting to amend the motion we're not voting on the motion correct correct yes mr bubba yes yes mr chairman yes mrs kumar yes sorry i couldn't hear him sorry yes yes this is thank you back to the main motion which is to move the entire agenda uh first of all do we have any discussion once again on any of the agenda items no okay oh i'm sorry mr share you go ahead um i know that we just demanded to move that forward but is it possible that we

098vote on the cohorts separately is that an option or no it's one item anyone else okay so the phase two is k1 and uh i'm going to do the roll call on the full agenda agenda as amended correct yes mr bubba yes mr duffy yes yes mr peplock yes yes mr sheer i'm going to say yes to the agenda except for k1 and my reasoning for that is because you won't remove the cohorts and just to clarify in the writing it says cohorts it says the new jersey department of health is recommend not recommending not to combine cohorts they're recommending not to combine cohorts if you cannot social distance which we can so i just wanted to let you know that miss kumor thank you and mrs kazan yes motion carried okay on to public

099portion number two this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover mr giordano mr pavlak okay first caller hi at allenton rescue 41 gibbs drive um with all the discussion of cohorts remote learning and in-person learning i would like to clarify how it would work as it relates to the fact that we're approaching the winter

100season dr toback if the school district would declare a snow day would all students be allowed to attend school on snow days remotely and would such a day be allowed by the new jersey department of education to be counted toward the 180 day requirement thank you well seeing no one else can i get a mover to close mr pavlock this is albany's okay dr toback care to address some of the comments or questions okay let's start with um with david ginsberg so he had a question i made a few questions but the one question was why after thanksgiving do we only have one week that is set for um for remote instruction okay so it's a good question um there's a few things we considered one of course is that we don't expect as much

101travel as maybe you would during the holiday season it's hard to say but it does give us a weak buffer and the other part is that most people if they're going to be home on wednesday or thursday and so that does give us a significant buffer um in the end you have about 10 or 11 days between when people arrive home and when school would start again so there is a significant buffer there and like i said we have that week to assess if we find out um during that week that there is a number of students or staff members whatever we find out during that week and there's certainly the opportunity if you had to go virtual in the second week you would have the ability to do that but that week gives us

102time to assess conditions around the district post holiday and make determinations about what is um best course of action um the other question was well what what happens if we go virtual um what what what's needed to go virtual and so the district has been working on that really um as time goes by and even these um these virtual wednesdays wellness wednesdays are in many cases ways for the district to be prepared for a fully virtual environment so the fact is now we have our technology situation and for the most part that is solved we did have some problems earlier this year with technology now we're in very good shape as far as our technology goes so that is the foundation that's it um the google classroom um you know staff members are accustomed to

103teaching more so there's professional development one of the things we might do depending on the extent of if there was for example a closure and a requirement to go virtual and we expect that to last for a period of time um we might we might go with an emergency day to allow for professional development there might be some things that we would need to do but in general we're ready we've been um we've been planning we're prepared to go virtual if we need to and we could really do it overnight if we if we had to um then there was a question well it was really common from audrey peterson um so the question well she did wonder about could we as a district provide um testing for employees so that um we might be

104able to get faster test results i know that most testing centers now um they're flooded because there's so much activity out there with covet and so many people being tested that it is tough to get an appointment um however we can certainly look into that i know we've talked to previously our school physician about that possibility of somehow if we could get that through our school physician their office does not provide that service and we also know that township was providing the testing i think that that has come to an end um so that might continue in some way or another but testing is a problem we recognize that and certainly the faster the testing the better we would be although we would be hesitant to give rapid testing only because we know that um

105a lot of times it's really not um the most accurate of tests and we do find that on a regular basis many people that go for a rapid test wind up in a situation where they are um we went up with a false positive or false negative excuse me okay um um the comment from eileen d'amico um just i'd like to talk about is basically the the three cohorts and with her comments um it's important to understand that um when you look around say county and you look around our immediate area you you um you notice that wayne hills and wayne valley are among the larger high schools that you will see and so there are many other high schools that have two cohorts and that two cohorts is for a group of a total

106high school population of about to 800 students right those are that's your typical sized high school we have high schools of 1200 1300 we have much larger high schools so we felt that um at the beginning of the year when you take a group that of that size and divide it into two cohorts you add in the teachers and you talk about 700 and all the other employees 750 people in the building every day so we reduced those numbers so really the cohort size that we have at both of our high schools is probably about the same as other cohorts at smaller high schools when you only have two cohorts so that's why so there's a little bit of a difference with the high schools because like i said there are very large high schools

107um compared to what you see in the other you know the other communities in our surrounding towns like that um so that's why the high schools in wayne are on a three cohort model um the other thing about the three core model and why it's used in a lot of larger high schools is because 020 provides a built-in two-week buffer so if one cohort does wind up in a situation where the whole cohort has to quarantine you have a two-week period before they come back so sometimes that can be very helpful and has proven to be helpful in in number of situations um with mrs franklin and she called in um so i all i have here is a is a comment about the numbers that we have and um i don't i don't see

108a question there so i'll move on um if he went and commented about the need to combine the cohorts and mr tampescu asked a question about um how would it work for a snow day so virtually so yes students as of we just found this out so this is a recent development um students can attend remotely and the day that they attend remotely would count towards the 180-day requirement okay but that is assuming the only um fine point to be discussed there is the fact that you cannot have um a community that has a widespread power outage or a loss of wi-fi so the fact is that as long as the power's in place and you have a snow day or something like that then that day can count towards the 180 requirement i think

109that answers all the questions okay was that okay it seems like i overlooked the retirement so i'm sorry i got distracted with all the first second and third motions uh so if we can go ahead and proceed with those mr pavlak you want to go first i would gladly barbara rapcow barbara rapcow has served our district since 1989 supervising students for lunch and recess periods through three decades we sincerely appreciate her patience and kindness in working with the children of wayne she has spent countless hours serving the district and we wish her all the best in her retirement mrs cher uh i have ellie colace it is a pleasure to be able to write this on behalf of miss ellen collis i'm not sure who wrote it um who for the past 13 years has

110served as the guidance and main office secretary for the george washington middle school for those that have had the opportunity to work with her they know her as ellie there is no question no there is no question ellie knows our school and main office inside and out she could truly tell you what is in every closet or drawer before it was opened this organization and structure identified all that she did at our school whether it was running the daily operations in the main office or keeping the books for our washington dc trip everything had its place and a purpose for being there in all the effort she put into ensuring our main office and school ran well ellie also put forth a level of caring and support to her friends and colleagues while yes we

111will miss how effective she was as a secretary there is no replacing the friend she has been to all of us her caring for our school and each person in it helped to create such a positive environment wherever she was actually when you think about it we would not expect anything less from a person that spends as much time as disney world as she does who knows maybe ellie is the reason disney is the happiest place on earth as ellie moves on to the next chapter of her life and no longer has to split her time between her family at gw and at one and the one at home we wish her all the luck and success and we thank her for all she has done for gw we will miss you ellie congratulations to

112you mr giordana thank you uh i have charlene disaggio miss charlene visagio has been a secretary at the wayne township public schools for the past 24 years well liked by the staff parents and many of the students who have had the pleasure to know and work with her she's known for helping others in all situations and do it with warmth compassion and diligence her dedication to our community is evident in her work helpfulness and compassion miss visagio has been a ray of sunshine and a welcoming welcoming face as she greets staff and students at wayne valley every morning she is well known as work mom to many of the administrators staff and teachers as she is always concerned with the well-being of others and quick to lend a comforting word it is simply in her

113nature to be kind and caring and to lend a hand when she can to the students she was seen as a person always willing to help and always having time to hear and act on their concerns the administration staff and students will miss charlene and her tremendous contributions to our school we wish her happiness luck and success in the next chapter of her life thank you you're next mrs albanese maria casala mrs casala is a consummate and caring educator she has taught italian at wayne valley high school and george washington middle school during her time at wayne valley mrs casala has taught all levels of the italian language from italian one to italian five honors her passion in teaching the italian language and culture is infectious which has helped her students to appreciate the importance

114of learning a foreign language in today's global world maria is an educator who is constantly evolving and creating learning new methods and bringing a fresh enthusiasm to her approach to teaching her decades of service has contributed to the success of countless young people she has been charged to instruct and encourage maria is a role model and mentor to many of her colleagues her collaborative nature demonstrates her unselfish approach to education always with the best interest of her students and the world language department in mind she is well liked and respected by her colleagues administrators students and parents she has never missed an opportunity to help someone or let someone know how much they are appreciated maria we will miss you tremendously and we wish you many years of happiness and relaxation as you transition into

115this new chapter of your life congratulations on your retirement okay old business new business this is albany's um i did just want to revisit a suggestion that was made by one of the um people who called in tonight mrs patterson first of all we're all very happy that you're fine and that there were no repercussions to an exposure but it does raise a good point about teachers who are doing the right thing following the rules and yet having difficulty and trying to get some type of a test to ensure themselves that they haven't been exposed or are exposing others so i think it would be in our best interest as well as our staff and our administrators who do come to school every day um if there was a way that we could set up

116some type of priority testing for employees whether that means setting up something with you know a local urgent care or something like that or even maybe working with the wayne health department to bring someone in so that staff members would have access to testing when it's needed we've talked about having absences we've talked about the need for subs and the lack of subs at certain times often this may be as a result of teachers trying to get testing or staff members or administrators trying to get testing and not being able to so i do think it was a very good suggestion for us to look into something where we could provide testing opportunities for staff members when needed um so i think i think that would just be a good thing for us to look

117into and maybe put something routine in place a place for where teachers could go to be tested when needed thank you thank you mrs albanese i agree i know that there's cares act money out there for this purpose and i know that that's where the money came from to help with the township testing and there's still money at the a county level so if we have exhausted the opportunity to do it locally we could certainly reach out to the county and find out if there's some cooperative agreement we could work on with them they have a rotating sites right now but um to get priority for our staff would be something we could certainly look into considering they're essential workers uh anyone else board comments you have miss kumar be stalled on my screen sorry

118sorry go ahead mrs kumar hi yeah i definitely agree that we need to figure out the testing situation um looking at the cares act is a great idea but the other thing as we talk about rapid tests there are actually two different versions of rapid tests now there's a rapid pcr test now that exists that actually my husband's practice is giving out we can't use my husband's practice he's in new york so don't even i'm not suggesting that we do that okay um but i want to let you know that it does exist as an option as we're looking hopefully into possibly accessing this for our teachers and other staff members it actually is 20 minutes to 45 minutes in terms of the actual test run so and it's pcr so just you know i

119don't know if maybe hackensack or somewhere like that might offer it but i would look at that yeah thank you okay andy uh mr pavlak let's just stick with the testing theme for a moment maybe uh dr toback we can get a hold of dr goldberg and see if we can work something out through st joe's in his office for some kind of testing is testing for our staff on a continuous basis i mean i'd like to even expand it to begin testing students as well give them the opportunity if they wish it we can certainly look at um trying to really ramp up the testing opportunities available to win students and to um to win teachers i mean that would be or all the way in place that would be a very important thing

120so i agree we'll um we'll start working on that tomorrow thank you that's uh awesome idea um okay anyone else no all righty well then i'll conclude uh i hope everyone has a very happy and safe thanksgiving while we may not all be gathering around our large tables like we're used to we're doing it for all the right reasons so you know please try to follow the guidelines and come back in good health when we see you again when school reopens and uh thank you as always to the wayne education foundation and all the wonderful donors that uh keep our schools uh supplied with all the lovely little extras that we don't always have in our budget much appreciated and uh that's it for our meeting tonight thank you and happy thanksgiving to all of

121you as well move to close mr giordano this is kumar i just hate those motions hey everybody happy thanksgiving thank you good night