001order so we could get started on time at 6 30. um [Music] so may we have the roll call please brown is here mr stewalis here mrs galbraith here dr hall mrs walters here vice president group here president albert i'd say brown right all right thank you can we please stand for the pledge mr sawalis will you please read the mission statement yes our mission statement is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay thank you um as people are coming in i just want one last reminder that if you want to make a public comment there is a form we're giving a little a little grace but if you um are finishing it up get it into terry as soon as possible okay so may i please
002have a motion to open the public hearing on return to in-person learning and continuity of services public hearing sr-3 all right so we were moved by galbraith i say it right janine and second by walters whenever you're ready brown is an eye mr sawalis hi mrs walters aye mrs galbraith aye vice president rue aye okay i see mrs perkins is all all set to go there testing but [Music] good evening to our board of education dr cara coghlinis to our community and staff school will look quite different this fall but our focus remains the same every student will receive a high quality education we will return to in-person learning this fall five days a week prioritize our health and safety of our students and staff following the guidelines of the illinois department of health and
003education cdc and isbee colvit19 has greatly impacted the lives of our students teachers and families cm 201u will continue to seek ways to help students families and educators with their social emotional supports and missing social interactions we will measure where students are academically to support and advance their learning and their experiences we will continue to communicate communicate with our families and staff as part of our listening to all stakeholders the esser 3 compliance we will hold this public hearing following the presentation of returning to learning and continuity of services in our plan we will follow up with an emergency operations plan which will give more details on the preventive strategies furthermore a detailed reference guide will be posted to the website which will give more detailed information in august that's all right so when you
004see me raise my hand that's that's the time too far what we know and what we have learned through isbee is this takes a coordination and collaboration across all district department schools and the board of education again the decisions that we make are carefully considered and the recommendations reviewed by the district which relies on the best medical practices released by cdc and the state of illinois according to isbee we will have a two to three year gap of efforts to close any gaps that we have and we are going to provide extraordinary supports to close the gaps caused by coding for further directions are forthcoming as we look into new maintenance and requirements of esther esser3 funding students will benefit from in-person learning and safely returning to in-person is our priority for 2021 in the
005timeline here we have our public hearing and comments this evening at our regular board meeting we have coming up in august our new higher orientation pd for our certified staff back to school night is on august 16th for k-5 and then we have our institute days for all staff on the 16th and 17th with the first day of opening of schools this year being august 18th pre-k 8 and then on the first day we will have freshmen only and everyone else will follow in may isbe unanimously passed a resolution to support the reopening of schools for the fall the policy will go into a declaration from the superintendent of the state dr ayala which will come into effect soon and we will get a copy of that declaration in that declaration it will be resolved
006that the state of illinois will return to in-person learning five days a week and offer remote instruction as by the state for any students who are unable to be quarantined and under the age of 12. the district is putting in prevention strategies to help open the district up as safely as we possibly can and to reduce the risk of staff and students and the spreading of covet 19 in schools again the health and safety of students families and the education of our students are the top priority as we make the decisions to reopen schools this chart shows the mitigation strategies that are going to be in place in the areas where we are going to put the attention to we realize that we are going to have challenges that need to be addressed and we
007are addressing those as more information comes in there are challenges with masking there are challenges with social distancy contact tracing quarantine and testing covet testing again the health and safety of students families and educators are our top are in our top decisions as we reopen schools i am going to have nurse kate come up and talk about what testing cova testing in schools looks like thank you miss perkins try and make that work okay so um right now isbe and idph are working to bring three testing options to every district to help quickly identify any students that could potentially have coved start any of the quarantine isolation process as quickly as possible possible to limit the spread so the three options available is having a weekly testing program for any students that parents gave consent
008for that be weekly through a third party uh the other one is for the district to do the testing themselves with within our own staff and then an emergency outbreak testing which is where we are leaning towards right now and that is just to implement a testing on it twice twice a week for four weeks on any students that were identified within a cluster of an outbreak or within a classroom close contact to eliminate the need for further quarantining so this would be done right now through the shield program and shield says that they would be able to provide the staff to do the testing so we do have two tests available currently to the schools and that is the shield versus the bionx now um shield is the one that was used at u
009of i with their students it's the saliva test where they just spit into a tube that ends up getting sent out to the lab they run the test they give us the results within 24 hours and that one is the gold standard as we call the the rt pcr test so that's actually a diagnostic test that gets run through the lab the bionx now is a rapid test that's an antigen test so it's just detecting the actual antigen the thing that making you know the illness it is not necessarily diagnostic and further testing could be recommended through an rt pcr which would still result in a student having to go home until they were able to get the test on their own so that's just kind of a brief synopsis of what we're working with
010we're still waiting for a lot more guidance from idph to determine what are the recourses based on each of these tests and how we would have to move accordingly from there questions so as a requirement of the sr-3 funds we have to discuss how we are spending those funds as we are reopening schools so it was established as part of the cares act and the funds are distributed through isb as we present this evening you'll see that we have opportunities to address learning laws but also move our students forward forward we will focus on the academic and social emotional health of our students and a safe and healthy in-person learning environment we will also look at emphasizing our students and subgroups that are affected like children with disabilities ell and homeless this chart shows how
011we are blending funds that we have through title and other grants that we receive like the after school programs grant as well as the esser funds and the percentages of what we are spending from summer learning over the next three years to professional development high impact tutoring again the learning loss social emotional needs and operational needs due to covet one of the things that we know that we need to help support our students is the ability to have human capacity and the number of team members that wrap themselves around our students and we are proud to say that we have partnership developed a partnership continued our partnership rather with governor state university where we have teachers in transit transition to teaching and each school will have at least two individuals to help support the learning
012facilitated by the principles of those buildings in order to help with the learning laws we are also required to make sure that we have a continuity of services and that we again continue to address the academic needs of our students their emotional needs their mental health and other needs that our students have because of the pandemic and so in the reference guide that will go up in august you will have we will have detailed information on how all of the departments will work in that capacity so what to expect by all grade levels when we return early learning center students will be wearing masks taking maths break plans have been established our pre-k program will run the full engagement we will return to specials including pe we will continue to use technology we will limit
013furniture in order to maximize social distancing and then we will blend the lessons learned that were pre-coveted and covet lessons we learned during covet again to make sure that we are creating a safe respectful learning environment so that we can continue to engage our students that does not look very different from our elementary middle school and high school here it describes again wearing events taking a break with maths with an established plan students fully engaged in all content areas including all of their core subjects and specials changing rooms using lockers again we will have some things that are are different protocols and keeping social distancing as much as we possibly can but giving them access to their learning experience again blending best practices that we know from pre-covert and coding with the continuity of service
014we want to make sure that principals are working with their staff in collaboration our academics our core academics will be strong principals will work with their staff in increasing the collaboration as well as best practices with instructional practices as well as a multitude of assessments and continuing to work on social emotional and that again it looks a little different at every level from elementary to middle school and high school and that is posted on the website so isb declared when they made the declaration the resolution all students 11 and under have access to instructional learning if they are quarantined because they have not had an opportunity to be vaccinated however in pre-money 201u all students k-12 will benefit from having access to stream learning instruction and what that looks like for us is that teachers
015will live stream with students under quarantine so students have to be under 11 or it would be for us i'm sorry all students but they have to be quarantined and nurse kate will work with families and buildings on what the quarantining looks like students will participate as observers in our streaming program all students who are also medically compromised could meet the criteria for homebound instruction details on the the details of this will be put in our guidance document here is a draft of that plan and we are working with our memberships to finalize what this plan looks like at the pre-k level if we have students who are sick quarantine or homebound we from our lessons learned we know that they will do better with packets and the support of their parents and we will
016give them instruction that is developmentally appropriate for them students who are sick for the day or you know are out for a couple of days the work will look as it has always that they will have time to make up those assignments and work with their classroom teachers in our streaming instruction design we again will tease out what the details of that are but it offers teachers to give real lifetime instruction broadcasting live and students would view and observe from home they will not be active participants however they will be able to ask questions of their teachers and then get support at some time during the day to help support them with any questions that they have additionally we are putting in virtual academic learning labs so that those students can have some after school
017tutoring and and work with assignments at each grade level it looks different but it will be available for all of our students from grades k to 12. and then we have our students who are medically compromised that would could qualify for five hours of instruction per week and again the last chart here table here shows that the virtual academic labs will be open from 4 30 to 6 30 daily and would run remotely with certified staff supporting the needs of those students that closes the presentation here and then mrs roop do you open it up for public comment yes unless there are any uh questions from the board i just wanted to be clear so the only option for streaming or any type of remote learning is for students that are quarantined under this plan
018that is correct okay does anyone else have a question or comment yeah i do have a question just on that same note i'm i'm a little unclear about who justify a student being quarantined is it the school district or the student parent so we would we would follow the same guidelines that we followed during the pandemic last year which was the call goes to nurse kate whether it generates the principal colleen nurse kate the parent calling nurse kate and then nurse kate goes through her protocols and the notification goes to the principal the teacher the nurse at the school site so there are protocols in place for to determine who is quarantined and who does not get quarantined okay you know that students that are not vaccinated nurse can correct me if i'm wrong do
019not have to be quarantined is that correct if they come in close contact asymptomatic okay on that note so if a student is deemed to be quarantined they will get the screaming learning right correct but a student that's sick and not able to attend regular school setting they will get a different type of learning e-learning right well it's not e-learning those students it would be pre-pandemic and you missed a day of school then you get your assignment from your teacher the next day when you return or you know if you're lucky enough your brother or sister brings it home to you okay i guess my question is well my other question is why is it such a disparity in the type of learning between a young student that's ill and one that's quarantined that's i'm
020just kind of having a little uncertainty uncertainty about how those two jive together or not jive together just a little not clear on that well i think that quarantine offers an opportunity for students who have a student can be quarantined up to i believe 10 days and maybe even longer and so it gives them an opportunity to not lose 10 days of learning versus you're out for a day and the planning that has to go into getting our quarantine students ready for 10 days of not being in school and those quarantined students are not seen as being absent right we are waiting on the definition of how that is to be coded from the state they usually at this time and we're still attending our weekly meetings with um isbee and cdc and idph and
021all the other agencies but they will give us guidance on how we are to record them and usually they come up with some funky code that they are quarantined but they are working streaming remotely whatever it is so they give us coding of how we're supposed to record their absence okay thank you dr cogwinnis and your staff for really putting a lot of effort into this process appreciate it ms perkins one quick question um it says return to in-person pe what is that gonna look like in regards to masking we as far as i know we are requiring masking unless that that changes but as far as i know we are requiring masks we are looking at social distancing um and and we have talked about um as much outdoor activities as we possibly can
022okay at least for the time being thank you okay anything else okay thank you mrs perkins thank you all right that takes us to the public comment portion and these cup public comments are just on the topic of the public hearing which is basically all the public comments that we have um we have several in person and several written we are going to start with the in person so when i call you up you can come up to the podium we're going to start with sarah valerio the topic is reopening plan good evening everyone my name is sarah valerio and i have been at the high school as a teacher for the past 18 years first i'd like to start off by saying how proud i am to work at 201u especially from march 2020
023to this past june the way our district handled the pandemic was by far superior to other districts the students worked hard and the teachers worked hard every day teachers had to think outside of the box then when we went to teaching online and in person we continued to think outside the box i can honestly say that last year was by far the hardest i have ever worked in the last 18 years teaching online and teaching in person is hard it is hard physically mentally and emotionally i came here tonight to speak about the reopening plan for the fall my major concern is in regards to live streaming as i stated before teaching online and in person at the same time is very difficult i know it took a toll on me and it took a
024toll on my colleagues i went into teaching to interact with my students to be in the classroom with them and teaching both in person and online forced me to sit at my desk i want to be engaged with the kids in their learning live streaming poses a few problems and i want to speak about those problems at the high school level first hour at the high school starts at 7 25. if we're required to live stream for quarantine students that would mean i need to know who is quarantined by 7 25 every morning parents at the high school have 48 hours to get an absence excused for their students a student could be absent on monday and the parent can get it excused on tuesday or wednesday that being said i would have to live
025stream every single day every single class because i don't know who was quarantined that day a second problem with live streaming is students who choose not to come to school that day when hybrid started i had on average seven to eight kids in person in each class as the weeks went by that number started to decrease significantly some students said that they would stay home because they knew the classes would be live streamed some said they were exposed to covid some were sick with another illness and some just wanted to stay home a third problem i see with live streaming is that will force me to split my time between the in-person kids and the kids online i will be tied again to my desk and if the answer is that students online will be
026muted and just watch that is not realistic if a student online needs something i will definitely not ignore them i can't ignore them one sector will be compromised the online or the in-person kits i encourage the district to reconsider live streaming a solution instead of live streaming would be to treat the absence or quarantine as we did last year if a kid missed a day for a doctor's appointment or just because they were sick with some other illness we posted their assignment to google classroom and that's what the students know and that's what they are used to this worked last year thank you for your time thank you thank you and sarah you did a great job but i failed to say before that that we are limiting everybody to five minutes that's kind of
027our our limit so thank you for that um next up we have kathy seifert talking about cmea concerns good evening i'm kathy seifert president of cmea i'm here this evening to share concerns with the district's reopening plan on behalf of our membership before i begin i did send an email to all of our board members and our cabinet members just with some things that i'm going to reference here so you have some data points and some other information to reference i'd like to start and kind of echo what sarah said that throughout the pandemic we've met with our administration every two weeks to address questions and concerns at our final meeting of last school year we discussed this upcoming school year we all agreed that asking teachers to lead instruction for in-person and remote students
028simultaneously was not effective we also shared our concerns with masks in our non-air-conditioned spaces which as you know was the majority of our school buildings in my four years as president the working conditions and our non-air conditioned buildings have been the top concern we were fortunate last school year to have several remote learning days for the students and staff in those buildings i met with administration last week where they shared the highlights of the reopening plan and to be honest i was caught off guard to learn that our teachers would be expected to stream instruction for quarantined students since we all had previously agreed this was not an effective instructional strategy when i questioned why we didn't hire any additional guest teachers or even short-term instructional staff i was told there simply aren't people applying
029for positions the reality is that we never posted these positions after our membership had an opportunity to review the plan we pulled them 92 percent of our teachers are opposed to streaming their class for quarantined students now to the non-teaching audience it might seem really simple to turn on a camera and stream your class but in reality it's a lot more work for the teacher teachers have to set the stream up ahead of time they have to be notified of who the quarantine students are they have to contact those students to share the link and what time that's going to start they have to respond to any questions via email for those students they also need to make sure that work is getting completed during those 10 days and then also stay in contact with
030our parents and we learned last year managing at home students is incredibly time consuming and let's not forget that's also on top of our in-person students and attempting to make up for learning loss our younger students present a different challenge many of our primary teachers are going to be moving away from chromebook-based assignments and back to paper and pencil to work on basic skills like writing cutting and pasting in the event a student has to quarantine the teacher would have to create an entirely different lesson plan for those students i asked this question last evening in a meeting that we had with administration and i'm going to ask it again if we are going to move forward with asking teachers to lead instruction for quarantine students then what are we taking off their plate to
031ensure they have the time to meet the needs of all students and if we're not taking things off their plate then how are we compensating them for the time that they're working outside of their contractual hours we've worked countless hours outside of our contractual time last year and a portion of the year before and we haven't asked for anything in return we won't continue to do that this year we did discuss this topic at length and i know ms perkins talked about the the learning labs but again we have to find people that are willing to do that and i made our stance clear that our association simply does not see this streaming option as acceptable this is one of the reasons why there's a teacher shortage we keep piling onto the plate of our
032teachers and we're not taking anything off and we're not giving them any additional compensation when we talk about emergency funding that can be used for staff matson right down the road gave their teachers a fifteen hundred dollar stipend to acknowledge their work and sacrifice throughout the pandemic other districts like frankfurt 157c are hiring short-term teachers to lead any quarantine students in grades k-5 our teachers have done the heavy lifting since march 2020. we want what's best for our students but that also means that we need to do what's best for our teachers managing the instruction for two student groups is not in the best interest of our students or teachers we just want to be heard and i hope you listen thank you thank you [Applause] thank you so much all right next up we
033have another teacher julie pappas talking about reopening teacher view [Music] i am julie pappas i'm an eighth grade teacher at crete monee middle school starting my sixth year in the district my 18th year of teaching i'm genuinely proud to call this district my home when i returned to the classroom six years ago after teaching uh for olivet online actually ironically create money was the only school that i applied to six years have passed and i'm still so incredibly happy to be here every august i'm overcome with the excited yet nervous feeling teachers experience approaching a new year i am the nerd that gets excited in june i mean i have two weeks off and then i start thinking about what i want to do with my classroom and that's me so just so we know
034what kind of teacher i am i always think about what my journey is going to be what what are we going to learn from each other i think it's fair to say that even if i'm in my 18th year the honeymoon phase is not over i'm also the president of beecher school board i have been a unique asset to my community by being both a teacher and board member the advantage i bring to the board is my classroom experience which has allowed me to allow the other members to view the everyday occurrences teachers experience through a more direct lens during covid cremoni was used as my exemplar for results oriented oriented practice health and safety and the inclusion of faculty and staff in the decision making process i was very proud of my district i
035was always very happy feeling that the board and dr cara listened and discussed issues with our union president kathy seifert resulting in a staff that felt supported respected and valued approaching the 2122 school year i expect nothing less i implore you board members and dr cara please listen to our teachers and staff please take our feelings and capabilities into consideration when you draft this final plan in beecher we discussed our plan as a board at our regularly scheduled meeting both the union and public had the opportunity to express their concerns and possible solutions to issues arising with the potential reopening plans being proposed the superintendent sent out a survey to community members giving them further opportunities to participate in the process the process in which this school board completed its reopening shows that they care
036about their employees students parents and community members so i'm pretty proud of the process that we have laid out together as with most schools in our area masks will be optional for vaccinated and unvaccinated all quarantined students will be treated as a typical absent student this plan is conducive in its consideration for both educators and community members in march the district urges employees both districts all districts to get vaccinated for the consideration for the well-being of all according to the cdc and idph individuals who are vaccinated should not be mandated to wear masks these are two agencies we look to for guidance throughout the entire pandemic please consider the experts at a time like this it's fair to assume that most of you with all due respect having sat in a full classroom at 90
037degrees with kids and snot and everything i mean let's be honest right it's not realistic or even remotely healthy for our staff and students from a teacher i want you to try to imagine the emotional toll the last year and a half has taken we have been asked to do more as you can hear from what that we've ever been asked to do we rose to the occasion and did so without complaint we were all exhausted experiencing burnout and hopelessness by the end of the last school year even i was i mean i still got incited at the end of june but we were continuously told and believe that this year would we would experience a return to a more normal experience we took this summer to refresh rejuvenate and set our sights on the
038promise of a new year where we'd be the teachers we were once again that is until we received this news the fact that live stream has even been considered shows a complete disregard to the entire staff i would like to personally invite you to my classroom to witness what goes on into live streaming it sounds simple but as for a teacher like me i can't sit at my desk i have it set up so that the kids at home can can talk on the speaker so that the kids in class can talk on speaker and so that i can walk around the room and the kids can see me at all times plus share my screen at the same time and give individual attention it's a lot and that's in an 8th grade classroom i
039mean in a kindergarten classroom you're going to have the kids also showing their pets which is a whole nother thing we did it when it was completely necessary into the best of our ability but we were working two jobs to be completely honest hearing that we will be required to livestream our classes again immediately reignited the feelings of defeat dread and exhaustion last year ended with me being convinced we wouldn't have the same experience again i had to tell myself that for my own sanity i am not quite sure how we're going to begin another year with these requirements and expectations i'm begging all of you please listen to the teachers and reconsider this plan we need quality teachers in our district but with this disregard for our mental and physical limits i'm hesitant to
040believe we will continue to receive or employ quality teachers this announcement alone has made a great deal of us question returning next month live streaming does not have to happen we can find a plan that will still support the student but not push the teachers to our limits this can be problem solved per school for a way that can help students be successful and support the teachers please consider allowing this to be worked on without live streaming most districts in our area and those comparable to our district are not live streaming to quarantine students from all of my studying from isb and also asking multiple sources there is nothing that stipulates we are required to live stream for quarantine students there are other remote instruction options they will not be left behind the quarantine students
041are treated as absent students we want masks optional for those who are vaccinated and recommended for the rest we need quarantine students to be treated as absentees we need to come up with a plan for the quarantine students that does not include include live streaming we cannot be expected to continue this thank you [Applause] thank you all right next we have andrea kinnan on the topic of mask mandates thank you so much and good evening everyone my name is andrea canan and before i begin i just want to acknowledge with respect and i'm sorry you might have to be just a little louder thank you i just want to acknowledge with respect the comments before me i have sincere compassion for your concerns and i sincerely hope that all of you are heard i am
042a parent in the district and i wanted to discuss mass mandates upon returning in the fall on may 17th idph repealed the mask order in the state of illinois opening the door for persons of conscience to more freely exercise their rights under ilcs sections 5 through 12. more recently the state of illinois has made mass optional for illinois schools and has left it up to individual districts to decide if reflecting the will of the public they serve is represented best by masking or becoming mask optional illinois high school sports central has compiled and is still compiling a list of ever increasing number of school illinois schools that will be returning to a learning mask optional in the fall as of last evening when i printed it it represented 132 districts and individual schools that are
043choosing to empower individuals to protect themselves in school the same way they choose to protect themselves outside of school with or without masks according to what they and their parent and guardians feel is best for them since that printing i have personally added four more illinois school districts to that list those being district 220 in barrington district district 200 and wheaton district 47 in crystal lake and homer 33c further there is proposed legislation hv 4083 co-sponsored by several state representatives proposing to quote amend the school code prohibit the state board of education school districts and elementary schools from requiring teachers other staff or students who are masked during the covet 19 public health emergency disaster declared by the governor pursuant to the illinois emergency management act effective immediately end quote our state wants to open
044up fully to all areas of our population and i'm speaking to implore you on behalf of those students and parents who do feel as i do and teachers as well and may not have the ability to stand up or speak out or be here tonight in re to return our students and teachers to a school in a manner that is fully mass optional all of us can cherry-pick these days from the science of our choice but the illinois right of conscience act prevents persons from having to engage in medical practices they find to be against their conscience illinois attorney thomas devore has supported this information from shelby county illinois that says while the rest of the economy has returned to normal children in schools have not been afforded the same opportunity already being pressured to
045acquire masks again this fall the illinois department of public health had repealed the mass mandate on may 17 and shortly thereafter the illinois state board of education had issued a guidance to schools that they should mask again in the fall there are several key problems with this ispe is not a law making or health governing body everything isp isbe does is controlled by state law 105 ilcs nothing in the state law gives ispe power over schools to require masks that is the freedom of the district issuing this guidance many months ahead of time implies it is not based on the metrics and guidance is not the same as law no laws have been changed for our legislator that allow isba to control masks there's plenty of data that suggests that mass may not be the
046best choice there is no data that supports that mass did anything to change the outcome in the schools whatever your thoughts may be on the matter as a district we have to respect the multitude of differing viewpoints present in the student body and standing community are the metrics in crete so different from those in homer glen wheaton barrington tinley park if so what is the specific threshold for when the masks come off and stay off what data is cited that lends the confidence to say that this district knows best what is one child what is best for one child or another or the population or a population of children more so than their parents and guardians do with each school deciding what is best for their own community why not leave it to each child
047each parent and i will add each teacher to decide what is best for themselves for their children and for their lives moving forward in this very unique world thank you so much for hearing me thank you for your comments okay the next public comment is carrian galagos reopening plan [Music] hi my name is carrie ann gallegos um i'm going to resist the urge to take this mask off to speak with you because we are not going to be doing that for our children we've been teaching this way for a long time and as you've noticed i'm sure it's difficult even for adults to do that we come to the microphone and we automatically take that mask off because we know it muffles our voice we know it's difficult to enunciate clear enough for you to
048be able to hear what we're saying that being said um i'm coming to you both as an educator and as a parent in the district the past year and a half have been very difficult for all of us i love this district um which is why i'm no longer just an educator i'm an educator and a parent here we moved here because i love what we do and i believe in what we do um i've been trying to maintain balance not wanting my child to end up in the hospital as many of my relatives did um at the same time socialization is very important at her age and so maintaining physical and emotional health during this time has not been anything easy to do we did the best we could and i'm very thankful to
049everybody involved for all the hard work that we've put in to finding a solution to every problem that we've run across last year the educators in this district showed flexibility again and again we adjusted to huge changes we managed our own chaotic lives while trying to guide our students through the chaos of a pandemic we changed course on the drop of a dime because that was what was needed of us our workloads became heavier in many cases we do this because we love what we do and we care about the children many of us were reluctant to move to hybrid to a hybrid model last year knowing that masks would be required when in person don't get me wrong i strongly believe that we should take precautions to protect the lives of our colleagues and
050our students however we knew that this was going to be a challenge it was going to be difficult to teach phonics to teach language through masks teaching anything is difficult this way as we cannot hear our students sometimes and sometimes they struggle to hear us we push through and we made it this far hoping that the pandemic was coming to an end the number of people vaccinated has gone up and we have watched the number of coveted cases decline unfortunately the numbers are increasing again in many places including illinois this puts us in a difficult position once again in this district we try to provide students with the best education possible this year we are being asked to teach students in person while live streaming how will we stream our classes to students at home
051when best practices tells us that teachers should be moving around the room not in one place how will we live stream activities where students in the classroom are actively engaged and the lesson is not taught primarily from the board what is the strategy that we will do to make sure that they're actually being able to receive the lesson lesson in the same way that the students that are in the classroom are receiving that lesson um without compromising the lesson that's being taught in the classroom we are essentially being asked to teach two classes at once it is impossible to give our full attention to the students in the classroom while simultaneously giving our full attention to students at home we already know that there's a teacher shortage and this is one of the reasons that
052we've been given as to why we're being expected to do this however being overloaded and not paid extra for the ever-growing workload is part of the reason why we have a teacher shortage in the first place i strongly believe that wearing masks is one way that we can protect each other from another way of covered related illness and death i myself am wearing willing to wear a mask in the classroom at the beginning of the school year knowing that it will make my job much harder at the same time i understand that some of my colleagues only teach students who are at an age where they can receive the vaccine 12 years and up i can see why mandatory masks would be frustrating to those teachers we are not all in the same situation and
053teachers want to teach in a way that will provide the best possible education for their students it is important for us to focus on the health and education of our students as well as the well-being of our staff my biggest concern is for my colleagues who teach in the elementary buildings without air conditioning their students will not be eligible to receive the vaccine yet so it is understandable why we want to protect them however the conditions of those buildings make mask wearing a bigger burden to them and their students than to anyone else having a space to cool down and take breaks for masks is inadequate frankly i'm not as at a loss as to how it is acceptable at all to have any buildings without air conditioning in 2021 regardless of the pandemic i
054would like to ask how we got to this place was the referendum the only way to get air sorry i tend to talk too much so i'm trying to try not to okay um so with the referendum the only way that we can get air into those buildings and if so why did it not pass was did we disseminate the information adequately do we not have a strong enough plan in place or more importantly how do we move forward from here how do we fix it so that our children and our staff are teaching in a building that is safe for them where they're not in 90 degree weather trying to breathe through a mask and trying to learn when they can't even focus so we have a dilemma one that we knew was coming
055how do we address it i really don't know i don't have the answers but i know that the current plan does not thank you [Applause] okay thank you and the last in-person comment is actually a question from tamika connor and it might have actually been answered in the presentation tamika did you still want to come up and it was actually all right okay thank you i appreciate that okay well thank you everybody that made an in-person public comment um someone has a hand up but we but i haven't heard nothing from the parents the last person came up and said we should protect our children however there's no however we're protecting children nobody here is going to go to one child's funeral if they die for coffee who is going to talk to their child
056when they go to school get covered give it to their grandparents they their grandparents pass away who's going to tell their child it wasn't your fault that you caught this and gave it to your grandparents nobody's talking about that well actually and we appreciate your comment um we do have several differing opinions in our written public comments that came in that we're going to go into right now so i think you will hear some other other sides of it yeah and that's what i'm going to do right now is start start reading all the written comments we got we got 13. so um so here we go they're on both sides of the issue this first one is titled no masks optional at best by jim tenecott it says do the right thing no masks
057on our kids please follow along with many other districts in illinois the kids have suffered enough with this political theater for nearly two full school years lost don't make parents make the decision to send our monique children to other districts or private schools thank you the next one is um entitled covid19 hearing it says dear board of education i would like to provide data from the centers for disease control for the years 2020 2021 as of july 14th on covet desk for children ages 0 to 17 in illinois with our strict lockdown and masking policies there have been 11 deaths involving kovid please note the word involving which the cdc gives no explanation of what that means indiana has zero deaths involving covet 19 in the same age group with basically an open state michigan
058very similar to illinois restrictions some even more strict had zero deaths involving covet 19 for the same period this three-state data comparison tells me that illinois is quote cooking the books end quote on child deaths involving covet 19 which is not hard to believe with illinois's track record of political corruption in comparison child overdoses for youth 15 to 24 in 2019 which is the last dead on the website was four thousand seven hundred and seventy seven three thousand three eighteen for males one thousand four fifty nine for females and 109 alcohol overdoses deaths from influenza in illinois in the zero to 17 age group was 186 for the time frame 2020 to 2021. will we quarantine students in contact with any child with the flu deaths from all other causes in youth 0 to 17
059such as suicide car accidents murder child abuse etcetera was 1793 for the same time frame i could not find data on whether or not any covid 19 involved deaths were in children with underlying medical conditions i think you get the picture individual freedom is the bedrock of american democracy anytime we as citizens are willing to give up any of our individual freedoms we risk becoming another china or russia or vietnam or venezuela or cuba or any number of socialist or communist countries where individual freedom does not exist and those people live under tyranny i urge you to think hard and long when and if you try to limit any child or parent's individual rights for the so-called public good when the almighty data just proves the threat infinitesimal in fact far less dangerous than a
060child driving to school or crossing the sidewalk or playing on the playground by the way the data for young adults through 60 years of age in relative good health is very similar thank you michael turay senior all right the next one is entitled public comment just simply says i'm a parent of a student that will be going into the sixth grade i have concerns about her and all the classmates under the age of 12 who cannot get the vaccine i feel we should as parents have the choice of remote learning or in-person learning i don't feel safe letting her go into school unvaccinated and possibly bringing home something to myself her grandmother or possibly even my daughter getting sick if the school district would allow remote learning by our choice until the kids can get
061the vaccine and possibly review it after that i know the sentence wasn't that's how it's written and it's just a sincerely a concerned parent the next one is entitled 2021 policy it says hello i have some concerns about the 2021-22 school year i have heard some districts are requiring mask only if the students are vaccinated actually i think that's supposed to say unvaccinated i see many problems with this policy the main one is bullying i have witnessed this in adults and believe it will be worse for students kids will be shamed for not having the vaccine yelled at left out isolated it should be all or no one also i don't think the younger students should wear masks in many other states it is not required and the numbers have not gone up especially in
062pre-k k n1 also the staggered schedule did not work students were not keeping up on school work they missed out on a lot of activities and friendships were lost teachers were not keeping up with grades they seemed overwhelmed with the online work and only with a group of students one or two days a week i hope you will consider opening the schools completely no mass for the younger grades and either all or no mass for the older grades thank you and that's from kim lakowsky stewart the next one is entitled return to in-person learning it says we have three children in the district two of them are vaccinated the other is eight years old too young to be vaccinated it is not safe for unvaccinated people to be inside without wearing masks we think that
063it is best to offer a remote learning option for those who want it until all students have an opportunity to be vaccinated if the state will not allow that the policy should be that everyone wears masks indoors the cdc still recommends that all unvaccinated people remain mass while indoors the american academy of pediatrics recently recommended universal masking for everyone in schools because many students are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine and because enforcing a max requirement for unvaccinated people would be too difficult additionally kids should be allowed outside as much as possible including outdoor recess every day lunch will also be a problem as kids must remove their masks to eat so parents need to have the option to pick up their kids from school for lunch vaccines are working but not enough people
064are vaccinated yet the elementary and some middle school students don't even have the option to be vaccinated yet infection rates are getting worse again and will likely get worse in the fall and winter the virus is affecting children more than it has before if we don't take these precautions kids will get sick possibly seriously wearing masks indoors is an easy step that will greatly reduce the risk of kids getting covet and that's from matt and amy bartling and then i'm going to ask miss walters to read some more okay this next one is titled unmask our kids hello elected members of school board for 201u as you may be aware the cdc and idhp released their guidelines today regarding masking my child for school it seems like the guidelines have changed to put this decision
065to local school board school boards which is good news as i believe most of you would vote to have a mask optional school year for our kids also the language changed to recommended not required for the cdc guidelines i look forward to hearing 201 will be masked optional this year soon i assume the 7 20 board meeting and i'll pay for our school fees once it's official i will not have my child mast at school nor will i have them being discriminated against for their vaccination status this district was the only one in the area that did not return to full day last year enough is enough it is especially comical to consider mandatory mass as kids have been mask-free everywhere but school since may masks are not without consequence there needs to be a
066choice and that choice is for the parents to make sincerely miss broda okay the next one is reopening plan 21-22 school year good evening i'd like to start by saying thank you to everyone who truly went above and beyond last school year i know that it wasn't an easy task for teachers parents students etc but we all survived and made the best of a difficult year with that being said i would like to voice my concerns for the upcoming school year i'm not even going to touch the subject of masks because that is a battle no one will ever win people will be upset if masks are mandatory or up to parents to choose for their children my concern is with the elementary schools we are starting this year earlier than previous years our buildings
067that our youngest children occupy aren't air conditioned it's always a miserable first few weeks of school due to heat now we have a factor in masks etc what is the plan for excessive heat i don't feel that the year will start off on a positive note if we are having more remote days due to heat my next concern is for kindergarten students this is a huge transition for them majority of our kindergartners have missed an entire year of preschool due to this pandemic studies have shown that younger children do well with play-based learning will our kindergartners be able to be in a learning environment with plenty of time interacting with their peers or are we sending our children into a sterile cold environment with minimal play based learning activity centered etc in closing i'd like
068to say i don't envy any of you that have to make these decisions i am fully aware that there is a never there's never going to be a perfect plan that everyone is happy with or comfortable with i wish everyone a wonderful and healthy start to the 20 21 22 school year with minimal disruptions this school year thanks erin the next one says dear dr kara kaglinis and crete money school board 201u board members there is no doubt in my mind that there is division in the community the teachers the staff members the board members and parents of crete monee school district 201u when it comes to the health and safety guidelines in schools none of the decisions made in this area should be taken lightly especially by those making the decisions or refusing to
069the truth is that it is hard to believe that the community is large the community at large actually wants their children to go back to school with masks when they currently do not utilize masks in places like the local grocery store church walmart restaurants parks pretty much everywhere these children's are maskless and have been since school let out in june i'm asking that the school board promptly removed mandatory mask wearing for all children and staff of our schools and make mask optional this school year the mass mandate was lifted in the state of illinois it is unnecessary and not healthy to continue to require our children and school staff to wear masks at school or while participating in school activities it is our duty as adults to not only protect the younger generation but also
070do as much as possible to ensure that they thrive there is no statutory statutory law that mandates masks i am appalled at the guidance recently handed down from the illinois department of education that suggests things like keeping the youngest of our children in mass with the justification that they are ineligible to be vaccinated i am asking you to rise above this guidance that is clearly not what is best for our children i applaud other area schools for their mass optional plan that is being implemented this school year i believe parents families should be able to perform their own risk assessment considering all physical mental emotional and psychological risks and benefits for their own children when it comes to all medical decisions including masking i officially i officially and respectfully request you immediately make masking optional
071for all children and staff in our district and this is uh marie jarres oller okay the next one student face masks i think that it should be up to the parents to decide if they want their children to wear face masks data shows that infection from covet are very low among children and i feel that wearing them for six hours a day is abusive who knows what psychological issues will evolve from these kids constantly wearing masks in the classroom please leave it up to the parents to make that decision thank you for your time bobby walters and i'm turning it over to mrs galbraith okay mr smallish i've got one here from miss rhiann wary first i would like to thank the district for their work and difficult decision making that kept the district's students
072and families safe during the 2021 school year a big thank you to the teachers and staff my child's teachers miss ryan miss mcknight work tirelessly and with endless patients as they help their students and families navigate remote learning i appreciated the board using the data following the safety metrics from the state and county during last school year as we head into the 21-22 school year with vaccinations now available to some populations but not all the decisions are no less easier elementary students are still not eligible to receive the vaccines to those only 12 years and older we are also watching the highly contagious delta variant sweep through unvaccinated and low vaccinated areas and groups today the cdc says 83 percent of the sequence covet 19 cases are now the delta variant yesterday the academy of
073american pediatrics updated their recommendations for opening schools this fall quoted from the news release in addition to vaccinations the academy of american pediatrics recommends a layered approach to make schools safe for all students teachers and staff that included a recommendation that everyone older than age two wear masks regardless of vaccination status the academy of american pediatrics also amplifies the centers for disease control and prevention's recommendations for buildings ventilation testing quarantine cleaning and disinfecting in the updated guidance dr sara bode of the aap council on school health states there are many children and others who cannot be vaccinated this is why it's important to use every tool in our toolkit to safeguard children from covet 19. universal masking is one of those tools and has been proven effective in protecting people against other respiratory diseases as
074well i think it's imperative the district continues to follow the data in science as we continue to work our way through this global pandemic optional masking for those unvaccinated is dangerous and as we watch the newest variant make its journey through our nation and hitting those most vulnerable vulnerable the cdc along with the illinois department of public health are still recommending masking and proper spacing for unvaccinated populations having the data and guidelines available the decision to continue masking in the elementary schools in elc should be an easy one brienne wary and i have one more hello my name is barb gerk and regarding the challenges we as a community face as we push through the phases of management of coven 19 i'd like to share some thoughts first please know how impressed i've been with
075the district as a whole our schools and the ones who lived in our homes last year our teachers my children had the chance to watch their teachers turn on their heels and change direction to respond to this pandemic the new classrooms were built in all of our homes and we all carried on i will never forget how these incredible teachers learned right along with our kids it taught our children by example to be lifelong learners thank you i'm a parent of three students in the district i am also a health care worker in the community and have had a unique opportunity to see many perspectives throughout this pandemic returning to a sense of normalcy is one of my hopes but returning carefully proactively and with a commitment to continue to make safe safety and priority
076is most important for a successful transition i am most concerned with the younger students who have not yet become vaccinated they are at higher risk for becoming ill and spreading the illness our area saw a high ratio of respiratory illness the winter of 2019 supposedly before covet 19 was identified in the united states my children told me that the most of their friends and teachers had been ill at some point while attending school all three of my children were diagnosed with pneumonia that winter and i do not want to see a repeat performance in any other school as a parent i know that i must keep my children home from school when they are sick i must have a plan a a plan b and even a plan c to make sure my children are
077attended to if they do get sick because my both my husband and i work full time i'm not sure all of us parents have a plan b or a plan c so children do go to school sick i have no statistics here but through observation it is clear that sick children in our district historically have been allowed to stay in the classroom exposing all their classmates and their teachers to illness and this needs to end the ripple effect of illness acquired in school is tremendous on my family my work and i know i'm not alone now that we as an entire district have the capacity to use remote options such as google classroom we need to use the technology for children who are sick and who should stay home also with continued use of remote
078learning for students who are sick there should be less stress on those who want to achieve perfect attendance awards as well in short there is no longer a reason to allow sick children to expose others to illness any longer spreading any illness has consequences beyond that of mere inconvenience as we approach return for on-site learning please let us learn from the past year i also feel it is crucial to require mask of all grades all grade schools and the middle school as well as a high school if there are any questions of vaccination status thank you for your time barb gerk and apparently i think i have one more hello first i want to thank all of you for allowing guidelines and putting our staff and students health and safety at the forefront for the
079last year and a half even when it wasn't always the most popular choice secondly i want to thank our dedicated staff again for working so hard and tirelessly in what has proven to be one of the hardest school years ever i am so proud that my children are students of cm 201u as a parent i send my students to school each day and put my trust in the teachers and admin to take care of my children and to keep them safe with covid19 this trust is only highlighted even more we are all eager to send our kids back to school they miss it so much all i ask is that this district please enforce mask wearing until this vaccine is available to our elementary children yes i know those grade schools are hot i know
080it's not comfortable to wear a mask all day however our children have given up 16 months of their lives to protect the most vulnerable they have sacrificed so much to keep help keep everyone safe now our children are the most vulnerable they do not have the privilege to receive a vaccine yet so now it is our responsibility to protect them the most vulnerable we as a family as a community and as a district have worked so hard to keep everyone safe please do not let kovid fatigue change that it would be a real shame for all the all this sacrifice to be for nothing if kids got sick because we weren't wearing mask protect them now thank you jamie healey thank you mr sawalis i unfortunately have a blinking light above me and i have
081old eyes so thank you for doing those good evening i want to thank you in advance for putting the safety of students and staff first as the schools resume operation at full capacity this school year i was pleased to see that the district plans to proceed with caution as we pack our classrooms again and require masks inside the buildings particularly for our non-air-conditioned i'm non-vaccinated young people thank you with that said i do have concerns for those in non-air-conditioned buildings having worked in the district for over 10 years and in three buildings with and without air conditioning i can attest to the extreme inequity of working and learning conditions this has been an ongoing issue that is only magnified by our current circumstances when the need for masks eventually subsides the extreme heat will continue
082to be a safety concern for those in non-air conditioned buildings i hope that the district and community will recognize the urgency of this and make it a priority sooner than later thank you melissa huff school social worker moani elementary thank you everybody so i want to thank everybody in the audience that's spoken that came tonight and i want to thank the board members for reading all that you see we have a lot of public comment on this topic and a lot of things to consider so right now i need a motion to close the public hearing and return to in-person learning and continuity of services public hearing sr-3 so moved one second all right so moved by sawalish seconded by walters and roll call please brownies and i mr swalish aye mrs walters aye mrs
083galbraith hi vice president ruth aye motion carries terry do we have any other public comment in general okay thank you so i'm going to turn it over to dr kara for administrative updates oh it's not okay good evening board members staff and our community this evening i would like to continue our conversation with a little bit more depth of some of the decisions that were made some of the plans to move forward and more specifically how to address some of the concerns that were brought up this evening [Music] and i'm going to have to use my glasses here since i can't see in looking at our reopening plan there's quite a bit more depth that we wanted to share this evening in looking at our district prevention strategies our main concern obviously is to make
084sure that we are having all of our students return to a very safe environment they have been away from us for quite a long time and we want to make sure that they are coming back safe so that they can learn and enjoy the environment of the classrooms in order to do that we have the responsibility to make sure again that it is safe and these are some of the guidelines this evening that we'll be talking about in the purple box on the left we want we made sure that we provided opportunities for vaccinations for those that were eligible consistent and correct mask use physical distancing screening and testing ventilation hand washing and hygiene staying home when sick and getting tested and the discussion of streamed instruction for those only that would be in quarantine
085and cleaning and disconfect disinfecting next slide so why would schools need continued prevention strategies certainly we're not out of the woods yet with a variant that is coming we are very cognizant and want to make sure that our environment continues to be vigilant and stay safe so we want to make sure that we safely reopen in-person instruction children can still get sick from covet and certainly they may not be sick but they can certainly pass it along to family members and not all students are eligible for the vaccinations especially our younger ones mask use that seems to be a topic of interest the district is supporting the use of mask use and it is required for all cm201u students staff until further notice and that supports our board policy outdoors in general students do not
086need to wear masks and during school transportation passengers and drivers must wear a mask on school buses heat mitigation that is certainly an area that we are concerned about as well we do have several of our elementary buildings and mec that is not air-conditioned so we have been working to explore a variety of mitigation plans as well as some strategies to utilize in the event of excessive heat in each of our classrooms air purifiers have been placed in all the classrooms they were there last year and they are going to maintain being in there this year we are ordering additional fans in each of the buildings for the hallways as well as an additional in those classrooms we have create created rotating math schedules to allow students an opportunity for frequent snack breaks drink breaks
087going outside to get the fresh air excessive heat days and i think this is what we are focused on in utilizing the guidelines that we've been given we can utilize e-learning days we have five e-learning days that we can utilize on days specifically for those buildings that get excessively hot and we can call those and we can have those e-learning days after those five days are exhausted we can move into emergency days we have five of those that are available and those are built into the calendar schedules at the beginning of the year now after that they are called act of god days those do not need to be made up and there is an indefinite number that can be taken so we do have three backup plans if we needed to move students back
088for remote for those e-learning days that are available and also could be altered schedules that might be 300 minutes might be coming just for the morning and dismissing that depends on transportation schedule so these are a variety of strategies that we can use in going into the year to help mitigate some of those buildings with heat the next slide really talks about again our priorities and that is to take a look at the guidelines that we have to keep our students safe as referenced tonight we have heard often the cdc has made recommendations for schools to make up those determinations but what they have said is that we need to be able to maintain three feet of social distancing in order to do that in taking a look at our buildings we cannot our buildings
089our classrooms are set up in a fashion that we cannot maintain that and so that would increase the risk of spread for cover 19. elementary children age 12 and under are unable to be vaccinated at this time the low percentage of vaccinated at students at cmhs through our clinics was we had only about 184 students that were vaccinated that's a very low number of students and then more recently that was also referenced this evening the american academy of pediatrics recommends universal masking in schools for everyone ages 2 and above so these are some of the variables that we were looking at to determine mask or no masks and moving into this next year and again we are starting off the school year with these guidelines but we will be monitoring what's going on with the
090statistics and we will readjust and modify the guidelines um as needed the next area talks about the outbreak testing and i think this gets to what we've heard this evening about quarantining and what does that look like with streaming so in the event that there are students that contract covet or in exposed to that we work with our school nurse nurse kate to identify students at risk those students are then determined if they've had been vaccinated or if they've not been vaccinated we also determine if they have symptoms or no symptoms but the next piece we want to maybe emphasize a little bit more we are going to be asking that if student if parents would like to give their consent to have their child tested they do not need to be quarantined we would
091provide on-site testing for four weeks two times a week the guidelines state that they are trying to then monitor and they can catch students before it would erupt into ex further exposure so again the more that we have parent consent helping to help screen our students the more limited exposure for having students go into quarantine because we do not want our students quarantined they've been home long enough we want to keep them in the classrooms so students that would be tested would go be sent back into the classrooms and they would maintain regular instruction so we believe that there will probably very few students that would be quarantined throughout the year parental consent is required for students to be tested in an emergency outbreak now emergency outbreak would be a cluster of students of at
092least two or more in a particular area a classroom on a bus and then once that outbreak is considered nurse kate works with the idph cdc to take a look at our protocols and then the contact tracing is is put together students with proof of vaccination are not required to be tested and may continue to be included with in-person instruction if no symptoms are present if parents do not consent for testing or prove vaccination then they're the children that would be quarantined and that would be for 14 calendar days or two weeks during the week two weeks of school only students who don't do not have a parent consent form to test will participate in the quarantine google livestream access on and the academic learning lab will provide for these students so as we mentioned
093earlier live streaming is a little different than what we had earlier with the co with the hybrid because we knew that was difficult the live stream is turning on the live stream access for student to be an observer but not necessarily a participant and we have been working to put together an academic learning lab that would address students questions after school and that teacher or the instructional person that's working with those students would be working with homework and addressing those questions at that time so we are still working out several of these pieces right now the parent consent form will be available on skyward family access so we encourage all of our families to go on there it's going to be open beginning august 1st and the forms will be due by september 3rd so
094we are really looking at providing several strategies for making sure that we can keep our students in school next slide physical distancing in school the district will continue to implement physical distancing to the extent possible we have all of our students coming back it was a little easier we only had half of our students here but all of them will be coming back so we will encourage it as much as possible when feasible classrooms will maintain at least three feet when they're not teachers will layer multiple prevention strategies we will continue with cleaning and disinfecting once a day to remove potential viruses that may be on surfaces and we will continue our hand washing and hygiene protocols the district will continue to monitor and reinforce behaviors such as covering up for coughs and sneeze use
095adequate hand washing and antibacterial supplies limiting touching of hands mouth eyes and others providing community opportunities for vaccination the district offered several opportunities we had a total of 184 students and families were vaccinated at the district vaccination clinic this summer at cretemoney high school the cdc recommends that every one ages 12 and older get fully vaccinated against cova 19. the cdc promotes vaccinations as leading public prevention strategies to end covenanting pandemic we encourage continue to encourage students and staff who have symptoms are encouraged to stay home and refer to their health care providers for testing and care the district will allow non-punitive and supportive paid sick leave policies and practices people who are fully vaccinated and do not have coveted symptoms do not need to quarantine or get tested after an exposure to someone with
096covet 19. we are continuing with our ventilation studies have shown that improved ventilation reduces the number of virus particles in the air in an effort to keep virus particles from concentrating inside the district has purchased portable air filtration systems in classrooms with limited air flow and the funds through the esser programs will help support that streamed instruction during quarantine students again who are under the idph quarantine will have the opportunity to continue learning via streamed instruction that again would be through google live stream daily guided instruction of core curriculum not specials and again access to the after school support to address any other questions from the day through the academic learning labs next slide again we are continuing to focus on getting our students back to school safely and following up on various strategies and
097our last slide just re-emphasizes our key takeaways we're very excited certainly to start our brand new year we're excited to have our students back we're excited to start getting back to a little bit more normal students we know benefit from in-person learning and safely returning to in in person is preferable for starting our new year these current strategies that we've discussed may be adjusted over time in the response to the risk of kova 19 in the schools and community as we continue to monitor the situation as you know things are coming out all the time we've been waiting all summer for the latest updates and we are still waiting for updates as they come through and we are implementing them as soon as we get them vaccination is currently the leading public health prevention strategy
098to end covet 19 and masks should be worn indoors by all individuals ages 2 and older who are not fully vaccinated to continue to emphasize a health and safety environment in the following slide could you could you could you clarify that last bullet item there about the masks worn indoors yeah see if we can go back to it yeah we're just again emphasizing to have masks be worn indoors by but for everybody you're saying and this is saying who are not fully vaccinated so you might want to for everybody yes change that and one quick question another question i have how are you going to determine if someone is fully vaccinated or not we are not as far as with the quarantining with the quarantine yeah so how yeah how do you determine if because
099there's confidentially that's confidentiality that is involved with this so if a student has been identified as a contact trace the school nurse contacts the parents uh the children are given the opportunity if they have the vaccination they would like to reveal that they may otherwise we would be moving them into quarantine situations so it would be self-disclosure at their point at that point okay if you could just verify that have our nurse and you look into it is that action actually a violation of the hip or hipaa law to ask someone if they have been vaccinated or not i'm not sure if that is a violation again i'm not a doctor or anything but i'm not sure if that is a violation because i think it's more towards a medical doctor and a patient something
100like that so if if it is i just would like to know [Music] uh so schools work under ferpa which is different than hipaa so the issue comes into play really just comes on the hr side and my understanding is as long as it stays confidential and you're not disclosing it to anybody else so for a staff member is one thing but for student it's all ferpa so as long as i'm not telling people who don't need to know we're good okay so it's no different than a regular vaccine okay so so for our staff members or employees is one way and for the students is under another well i i i ca lyle's not here so i mean on a staff member's side they could disclose to me i would keep all their information
101come from you know confidential and then hr would determine what they need in order to you know alleviate i believe we haven't had an issue with it in the past people are self-disclosing and show proof they would have to show me proof of being vaccinated lyle would ask and i'd be like no they don't have to quarantine got it okay okay thank you while you're there can i ask a quick question is there data then that shows let me make sure i say this right that a vaccinated person who's asymptomatic doesn't spread it i mean because there's people that are asymptomatic that have it right so is there data that shows because it says over and over again that if you have the vaccine and you don't have any symptoms you don't have to quarantine
102nope so that is actually very good question mister because that has been all over the news this week they are trying to get to like the breakthrough infections to determine what their viral load is the science would indicate that the likelihood that they would be able to spread it is very low because a they're they have antibodies as it is they're asymptomatic so they're not holding enough to be able to infect somebody else as opposed to somebody who has not have the antibodies are immunized and although they aren't symptomatic their body is fighting it they would still have a higher viral load that is what the initial science is saying they said they they have to do a lot more studies on the breakthrough cases to kind of determine but that's where they're at right
103now so you're saying that a person that's fully vaccinated they can test positive but is that a low risk of spreading it right and that person if they tested positive would still have to isolate the same as anybody else would okay so that part doesn't make a difference if if you are fully vaccinated exhibiting symptoms you would still need to test without you know unless there is like another reason so if you if you are vaccinated and you are not exhibiting symptoms but you were in proximity of someone that was known to have the virus that person do not have to be quarantined either they do not they do not now if they so chose to go get tested out of whatever purpose and came back positive they would then have to isolate the same
104as anybody else would a lot of moving parts here isn't it it sure is and it changes every day all right yeah you know i see a couple hands up and that was what the public comment portion was for and we're now past that portion so i'm sorry we can't take questions just following the procedure they can send an email to dr yeah you could email them email any questions into dr cara and they'll all get answered quickly but we can't take the questions right now in person please email and i will respond to you dr care i have a couple of questions um the first one is on the heat mitigation strategies for buildings without air conditioning um to me this is a huge burden on the parent and the teacher um if we
105decide at eight o'clock the night before we're not going to have school what are the parents supposed to do with their children if they're working i mean i think that we need to really address this because we know it's going to be hot let's be realistic we've had a hot summer already so i'm concerned about what families are going to do if we just start calling these heat days and they have no way to have their children at home or whatever so i i don't know about this but i i am concerned about this this item right there about how we're talking well we have five of that five of this an act of god whatever we if and i get it it's hot in those schools i know it is i've been there but
106i think i don't quite understand how much notice we're going to give them and how we expect them to be able to deal with this at a at random i mean before they knew the kids were going to be home now we're a day here and a day there how how do we expect our families and our our teachers to deal with this just like our just like our snow days we are able to monitor the news and the news is fairly accurate so we are able to look at at least you know 24 hours to determine if it's going to be hot if we think it's going to be hot we'll take a look at that and call it 24 hours in advance okay so it's going to be a 24-hour notice all the
107time because we do recognize we have working families but parents that have students in these buildings you know we want to tell them ahead of time these are going to be our mitigation processes and be prepared for that if they're seeing the heat is coming you know you know to be prepared for those possibilities okay my next question is on this video streaming stuff the parental how i think ms valerio brought it up that how are they supposed to know if the class starts at 7 25 who's supposed to be there i mean are they just going to see a visual of the of the students but of course they can't speak and how are they supposed to know who's supposed to be there and how they're supposed to be be reporting students that aren't
108there i mean i guess to me this just sounds like we're really putting a huge burden out there for our teachers who already have a huge burden so what we're doing is we're putting together a process and we're looking between 4 24 to 40 hours notice for the teacher to know exactly what student is going to be in quarantine for example a student you know doesn't have the consent and they are going to be going into quarantine for those the two two weeks the process will then start the building principle will be notified the teacher will be notified and then they will be working with our tech group they will have between 24 and 48 hours to set up that link to work and get that established while the student is at home until we
109can activate that okay and last but not least i'm very concerned about the stream instruction after listening to all of our employees and getting different emails i don't know exactly what this looks like but i think myself as a board member i'd like to see what this entails because it sounds to me like this is also a huge burden that they've already they've been through a lot we all have been through a lot and now for them to have another facet added and they're saying you know they'd be stuck at their desk they can't walk around i would like to know what this looks like i think i don't know if any other board member i would like to know exactly what we're expecting of our teachers by putting this piece in i agree and
110just feeding off on you i think holistically our teachers came with a plight they they have some concerns some major concerns and we hired you dr congenies to drive us through this process and and i think again you're doing an excellent job however i see some gaps here i see some gaps just challenging and if it takes some additional funds or anything like that don't hesitate to come to the board give our business manager to support the teachers at the end of the day you know we are in a abnormal situation and we can't do things normal in an abnormal situation so but we have to do the best we could because at the end of the day it's our kids that who we are ultimately serving here and the teachers is the main component
111to do that so we need to give them the tools they need we need to give them the support they need and again if it takes a little additional funds or whatever don't hesitate to come to the board we are continuing to work on this we just were working with our union leadership just within on monday night to to work out some of these pieces you know before we had to present so we are working on determining what this would look like how we would manage the after after school piece so we will continue to work on putting together some protocols we'll probably go in a little deeper and you know apply this as a practice round to see what it will look like um so we'll have a little bit more deeper in look
112at this and probably within the next week just what happens if it doesn't work i mean what happens if it's unrealistic i mean we haven't tried this we don't really have support from the teachers right now because they know what's going on in the classroom what what happens if you like you say you just started this what if it's unrealistic what is our plan b well that's what we're working on i know some of the suggestions was again to you know do we hire other teachers that are out in the community we would have to have at least one or two per building that's quite a few staff members that would need to manage this and we don't know how long this would take place you know if it's you know first semester all year
113so we would be hiring you know potential candidates to come in and we don't know how long and they may not even have any students for a month or two so so real quick too let's so i'm not big on the live streaming but i am big on the google classroom but we i think we need to differentiate we're mixing things up a little bit sick kids are not part of what we're discussing it's quarantined students only my assumption okay is that by the end of the day the nurse will have a list to send out to the buildings it's not going to be at 8 o'clock in the morning or 7 20 in the morning should know by the end of the day who's going to be quarantined and who's not that's going to
114be in the school day the sick kids that come in onesie tuesday there's no way a teacher is going to be able to figure out who's coming in who's going to who's going to teach live stream so the sick kids that are coming in sick should totally go to google classroom but i really don't see any reason why the quarantine kids couldn't go to google classroom kind of in the same theory just because now we're focused 100 percent here and this is what it is here if we give the if we get the parent consent then at that point i think you said there could be no quarantine kids this year that's correct if we get that parent consent but if we don't then that should be a very easy decision that you just say
115um okay you're going to go to google classroom you're going to get it almost like an elementary student that's under 12 years old how are they going to get their homework if they're sick three days they're going to get it from google classroom they're going to get from their teacher they're going to get from somehow at that point we got to get back to teaching the kids but we got to make sure that quarantine and sick kids or kids that don't show up that's a total they're totally separate issues because i think we keep mixing that up a little bit sorry i i i agree i did mix it up i'm sure we were left and right here but i think you have to remember we're in the business of educating our students and one
116of our goals is we have these gaps to make up so while we're concentrating on bringing our children back up to where they need to be we don't in my humble opinion don't need to keep dumping more avenues on our teachers so that they're running over here to do this and we're here and we're here i think we're spreading them too thin already and i get it god bless them all everybody across this country who was in education ought to get a medal of honor but i think we need to make this as simple for our educators as we do for our families and our students and if it means that we can do google classroom and not do live streamers i just think we're we're kind of all over the board and we didn't
117quite understand and that's why i said i'd like to see a demonstration and they're really two different things and i i truly think that we're doing a fabulous job we've really gotten good recommendations but i think we have to go back to what are we here for and remember that we're here to educate the kids and one of our top priorities is to to lessen this gap this learning gap and if we keep having all these different facets i'm afraid we're going to get deeper in that gap instead of back up where we need and that's my opinion i could be a thousand percent wrong but i'm listening to the teachers i'm hearing what they're saying i'm listening to the parents and i just think we have to put all that together and make sure
118that we have all those bases covered and we're not making our teachers and our other staff members so thinly spread that there's no way to recuperate them that we lose them in the google classroom still more work it's not like i think someone just mysteriously puts it up there so teachers still going to have to enter it into the system meaning they're going to be doing more work at that but i think it'll be less stressful worrying about the classroom and that's it but i want to touch on one of the things heat days okay i understand we have four buildings in administration here if we can't forecast a heat day i can tell you right now sunday monday tuesday next week's a heat day i can tell you it's tuesday i'm in hvac and
119anybody watching the news should know more than 24 hours in advance if we need a heat day and i understand ball moral crete csk talala and mec i understand that okay so i think our administration can do a great job and get the information out there and i think you we can make a you should make an email of some sort of contact to the roe or sb five excessive days is ridiculous especially the fact that we have buildings with no ac in it so the five should we should have at least ten and i only say that is because we start in august we're gonna have a couple in august we may have a couple in september and we might have a couple next may so in our district being unique not having air
120conditioning we should not be limited to five excessive heat days where we're going to be where the teachers now are going to stay four extra days at the end of the year because we have to use those emergency school days that should be an email or a phone call just because our district's unique unfortunately we don't have ac but i think we should be able to work around that and i think um for our teachers well and for our kids we're trying to provide a very as much of normal as possible environment for our kids to come back to and i think with the live streaming the teachers already have such a job on their hands to get these kids caught back up from what they've lost and so i just think putting an extra
121workload on our teachers with this live streaming i'm i'm really not for it either i think they need to be able to provide the best quality they can right now to get our kids back to where they are and if they're worried about all this other stuff and all this extra work on them i don't know how we're providing that for our kids to get them back caught up from this pandemic also i think it was mrs valerio that said um with a live stream option that it kind of enables you know the option for kids to have excuses why not to come um they might come up with you know a sickness or they can sit home and they know they can go online so we're trying to encourage them to be back in
122the building that goes through our administration a child cannot determine themselves if they're going to be home but i'm saying a lot of kids will say oh i don't feel good because they know that that option is there for them you know in the morning hey mom i don't feel good because they know they can get up and go online and do it and you know they might not want to come dr carrick can i add to this please please the option is only available for students who are quarantined only the live stream is only for students who are quarantined and only for students that did not get the parent consent for testing if they get the parent consent for testing those students are put back in the classroom so we're looking at a very
123small amount of students through the course of the year some teachers would never do live streaming for the whole year but the question came up by by a couple that's pretty squeaky testing testing okay the question came up about the issue with live streaming and teachers said that that's not a good approach okay and again these are abnormal more abnormal times and we're trying to do as best we could and some type of normality here but what i did also hear from the teachers and i just want to make sure that we are not violating any contractual item or task we want to make sure we not doing that for sure so then i heard the teachers say if you're going to do the live streaming do the prototype of training or what uh teaching
124so i'm not sure exactly what that's all about and not nor do i want to know that at this point i'm going to lead it up to the experts like you doctor coghlinis but again i heard so many gaps [Music] it is not for feedback been disgruntled the tonight and youth in the glory last year when we tried different methods [Music] well our team will take all this feedback we will go back rework this we will continue to work with our teacher association to fine-tune this and to try to find something that is a little easier yes go ahead [Music] you're under the speaker that's what it is anywhere better okay i just want to provide some clarity we must provide a remote option for our students who are 11 and under and under quarantine
125we must provide a remote option for those students again the recommendation is that they have 2.5 hours of synchronous learning with the teacher what we know is that our kids need in-person learning and our teachers did a one and all of the staff not just a teacher everyone who dealt with kids and educators last year did a wonderful job and went over and beyond but we must have an option where we provide remote instruction to those students who have not had an opportunity to be vaccinated and so this is our way of giving that to them students who students do not receive the link so we don't have to worry about a kid that said oh i'm not going to school today you are not you do not meet the criteria to even get into
126that classroom and so we are in the process of working out what those protocols and procedures look like on one day we could have zero children across the district that is our hope that we have zero children that are not um quarantined but in other cases we could have a few and it would require that our our teachers um streamline and we'll continue to work with cmea to work out what those policy procedures look like for them but we want to give them live teaching as much as possible because those kids could be out of school for 10 days i know what they went through with hybrid and i can only sympathize with them because i'm not on the front line but are so you're saying if i understand this correctly uh child age 14
127if they're not quarantined they're not going to get the virtual whatever correct they must be under quarantine they're going to have to go into google classroom and find out what their assignments were those students would make up their missing assignments so yes so teachers post missing assignments to google they send them home with their friends they get it two days later when they return to school so whatever the school school procedures are of how those students who are absent because of you know they were sick they they get their classroom worked the normal way that they would their makeup assignment so is the virtual only for 11 and under it we it we are required by isbee to have it for 11 and under as a district we have said in the best interest of
128all of our students we would like to offer that to all students so every classroom might have the opportunity to have to use virtual at some point yes so it would be across the district that that opportunity may take place correct okay with quarant if you have a student who is quarantined if you do not have a student who is quarantined then that does not apply to that teacher for the day okay so virtual only applies to quarantined students period period period so a teacher in a classroom they don't have any quarantined students they're going to do normal in-person class is that it that's it yes okay sorry i'm just you know i'm just trying to i'm trying to visualize what their what they're going to have to do when school opens yes okay all
129right so so we're talking about clear quarantine students what if a staff member or teacher gets it are they under the same exact rule meaning if they get tested by the nurse that they're not going to stay at home for 14 days um if a student or excuse me of a teacher yeah not a student contract or a teacher so again a lot of it depends if they've been vaccinated or not and what if we don't because of hipaa what if we don't know that if they volunteer that information uh we do have subs available that would cover their clients i get i guess what reason would we test a staff member we wouldn't test the staff member if a staff member volunteers and says you know i've been i'm not vaccinated and i've been
130exposed to covet or i'm not vaccinated and i have covid we would follow our typical protocols and have that teacher removed and we would have a substitute come in for how long i guess the question is if we're putting a kid you know a student back in the classroom why is a teacher or a staff member or a custodian why are there assuming it is the same time period i mean so if if a parent gives consent to a student to test twice a week or however much as they need if they test positive why wouldn't a staff member teacher anybody why wouldn't it be the same that's a question we will further explore without lyle all right so is there anything else in regard to emergency operations plan you started this sandy well we
131also had a lot of parents with public comment regarding the mask option and i do think there's a lot of things we still need to look at with that if 12 and 12 and over has been has the option already to be vaccinated uh i guess i'm i'm not sure why the necessity it would be for masks because i would think that if you're compromised concerned you would have made that choice already be vaccinated so if you're vaccinated you shouldn't be so concerned about catching it and i guess as a parent i would not have i guess i don't want anyone having jurisdiction over the decision making for my child if my if i believe one way and someone else has an opinion another way so [Music] it statistics have shown that young children are
132not super spreaders and so at the elementary level i think we don't have as big of concern because the rate of infection at that age is very very very low um i think we have to consider the heat obviously as a big concern for our kids i know i had asked about pe i'm not sure how we're going to wear masks during pe that's a big concern too we've seen kids on the news passing out from that i i don't know what the right answer is here because obviously you have people with different on each side of the fence with all this but i think we still have a lot to try to figure out that's going to try to make everybody as happy as we can in some way i don't i don't know
133that's going to be done but i do think we need to look at you we've looked at statistics with everything else i think we need to look at young children are not as vulnerable they're not super spreaders and again if someone is compromised or concerned they have had that option to be vaccinated and if they want their child to continue to be masked then that is their decision but on the flip side there's people that have an other opinion with that and to force people i i still have a struggle with that so i don't know what the right answer is but i think again we have a lot of concern from parents both ways and i just think we need to address it and with the heat and not having air-conditioned buildings that's a
134big concern so you have your work cut out for you thank you for that it is challenging because either way any decision we make you're going to have people that are not happy with it so we always just have to say we're going to out of an abundance of caution try to limit our exposures we don't want our students quarantined we don't want to have to go down that road because once you go down there you can't take it back and then it's out of control so we want to do slow and steady slow and steady slow and steady and my hope is that after one month after first semester we're going to start getting some new directions you know from uh cdc and so forth to see if that um i guess just because
135like i said you know the people that were commenting were saying how our kids you know over the summer have not been asking whether it would be at a store church wherever it might be and now we're going to have to start the masking up again so the difference is we have children that are sitting all day next to somebody that's less than three feet when they're in the grocery store because i've been to the grocery store i've seen that too people are moving around there's free flow there's ventilation they're moving in and out you're in a restaurant where you're with a small group but a child is sitting all day with somebody right next to them they're in a building with 30 other little people that are breathing that air it's a different environment
136and i think that's what the cdc is saying triple layering is taking a look at several of these precaution factors and one of them is wearing the mask so that's where the error in abundance of caution comes from in trying not to go down and open up that road and this has been difficult i'm telling you this has been a difficult decision because either way you know there's students out there you know the masks they're not masks it's difficult yeah so we're hoping that we can move through this pandemic we can get through this year and we can start this year and we're hoping to see some changes or modifications in some of these guidances okay thank you thank you dr kaglini i just want to make sure with this board that you are going
137to make the final decision to implement the plan we let you make the decision when this whole saga came out when lee learning and all of that is that a true statement we're not you're not going to come to us for the board to vote on the final plan is that correct it is my understanding i'm here to hear your input and try to make modifications to this plan this is not the final plan no i'm just saying whenever that comes the board is not going to vote on the implement implement implement implicate or implicat if i can say that word maybe if i take this mass off amplification of the plan the board is not going to vote on that right and not to my knowledge okay okay i just want to make sure
138it's my understanding we gave her the authorization to make this decision that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be a vote for the board to say okay yeah so we will come back with some of the feedback that we've heard tonight very thoughtful feedback and i do enjoy hearing comments from our community members i enjoy hearing comments from our staff and just our staff has done an amazing job this year you know i probably haven't said that enough you guys were amazing this last year and to hear our community members and parents and even teachers that are working here you know it touches my heart it really does and you are very much appreciated and we want to continue to work with you to try to figure
139out the best plan that's best for kids easier for teachers so that you can feel good about coming back to school we're excited about having you back and our students back we want to make sure we can find a plan together so we will continue our dialogue with you to see what we can do to come up with something that is a little bit easier and a little less kind of scary coming in okay okay so is there anything else on the emergency operations plan thank you all right um next up then is our healing paws therapy dog program this should be a lot lighter topic who am i calling up here patrick and dave lucy and biscuit [Laughter] good evening everyone um we're gonna give a little update on our therapy dog policy today
140the healing paws project uh so dave hall and i will uh give the presentation you ready don all right so the healing paws project began in 2019 at mec with uh brian mortel director over there in gracie so that's how the program got started then when i when i got hired dr kara asked me to look into it and we we advanced it a little there between dave and myself and brian uh here's our picture of our therapy dogs lucy's on the right that's my dog lucy's a district dog so she's going to be with me at the central office and she's going to be utilized at all the schools throughout the district biscuit is dave's dog dave hall's dog here to my left and biscuit is going to be primary primarily at the high
141school the next slide will show gracie brian wartell's dog and gracie is at the mec center and she's been there since 2019 yeah so so you got to be you got to be asking why right why why bringing dogs into a school the research the research up is up there about lowering blood pressure making you more relaxed reduces and anxiety depression all those kinds of things and the thing is that we're coming back from students who have not been in the school um for years now you know uh with the covert that like we've been talking about staff when the staff came back i brought biscuit in from for to meet when they came back and they were just so just some of them had dogs with them while they were sitting at home doing
142remote learning and they were just so thankful to have and and that the content because we can't touch each other right but guess what you can hug a dog you can pet a dog so that that's one of the reasons we want to make sure that we have these for our students and staff these these animals for the benefit when staff and students come back and besides the other anxiety and things that we're going to go through the benefits again reduces anxiety uh for traumatic uh situation situations uh we know that a lot of students are you know we're we're trauma informed schools here so we're trying to reduce that drama uh our sun eye drama trauma um mo the emotional trauma incidents uh it's the idea of animal increasing compassion for animals uh it's
143decreased the number of retaliatory viral violence in schools improved self-esteem and again it's in my job especially as administrative dean it's it's about building relationships and having a dog it seems like a weird thing but i i can tell you that i was a little bit of a naysayer at first when i got the dog what's the dog gonna do right um but i can tell you it open it really does open up people and it opens up students um so we want that's another reason for the benefit of the dogs um i wanted to tell you the difference between uh service dogs um and emotional dogs and therapy dogs so service dogs are service to the handler um if i have a disability uh the dog will work for the handler uh same with
144emotional support dog an emotional support dog is for emotional like on a plane and stuff that's emotional support for the handler with these therapy dogs it's different uh the the support the it's the handler that's bringing support to other people so that that that's one of the difference between if you've seen the different you know oh is your dog a service dog or you know i'll say no it's a therapy dog because it's not for me even though a biscuit does you know i do you know he's my boy right i have three girls at home so he's my only you know i got two boys and two dogs so but um he's third before but it's therapy for everybody else not just a handler go ahead so here's some of the overviews of the
145program if you want to read those i want to go through all all of these but we have detailed these out we have an administrator's handbook we have a handler's handbook we established a therapy dog committee um all these in in uh collaboration with different partners and uh through the superintendent's office and we're gonna make sure that you know we support the vision and the mission we want to make sure that everything remains beneficial to the students and also the school district overall one of the things that we were surprised about is the the response from the staff we had a little bit of a pilot program where we had the dogs in our school and many staff members they greet the dog before me they know the dogs and they might not even know
146my name so the response has been really really uh fantastic about um how the staff's responded i've actually had so many few people come up and just hug the dog and kind of had tears and say i needed that and left i didn't know why but it seemed like it was you know beneficial for them and then they moved on with their day so one of the things i do want to stress with everything with the dog is everything is voluntarily we're not forcing anybody to interact with the dog we're not forcing them to do anything when we get to our part about the parental consent we want to make sure that's clear that we don't want to put any stress on anybody it's meant to take stress away it's just a resource that's there
147for them if they choose to use it if they select to use it yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry so here are a couple of things uh that we thought of to make sure that we are thinking about everything here they're therapy dogs the way that the school's using them is very different than uh anywhere else we're utilizing and deploying them differently here so there's a lot of things that we had to consider the age of our student because we may utilize them different in high school than we would at mec or talala or whatever it is we want to talk about the physical capabilities mental understanding it gets all the way down to religious considerations so we address all this in our documents allergies phobias all this is addressed in all our documents so i
148believe we left we have a very comprehensive program here and we didn't leave anything unturned where we had the dogs from uh dr carrie asked me to kind of look into this we were talking about purchasing some dogs through some contacts in my law enforcement context i was able to get all the dogs and all the training donated to us for free we have a very good partnership with this organization it's called the paws and stripes college it's in brevard county florida that's where dave and i went to pick up the dogs and they are very very happy with us they they take the dogs the dogs are trained by the inmates they're brought from shelters they are they're trained this they're that they don't train any canines or any other police dogs this paws
149and stripe college only takes dogs from shelters trains them for therapy and then puts them back out in the community because of the creep money school district and some of the documents that we've created they are now getting far more into education because of us with the support from some of our documents so this is a wonderful program it's a win-win right after covid they had a really hard time getting dogs because everybody was donating them i was just down there last month and they they had some more dogs but they're really moving forward and this is just a great program it helps everybody out that's lucy that's me on the right you can see well one of the inmates uh training with the dog one of the female inmates on the left there you
150can see the bob wire in the back lucy was there about four months before i got her and then pictures coming up you'll see dave she was there dave's dog was there about six months before we got there and trained her there's a little bit of lucy's bio all trained certified therapy dogs and they're also have a training to be uh to work as an interview and interrogation dog be in courtrooms if there was ever a need for it they do have a couple different training like i just said the the therapy dog training and the interview and interrogation not interrogation yeah victim interview certificate so it it's a really good program and obviously it was totally free the dogs and all the training uh this is biscuit uh he's a boston we're gonna look
151at his resume in a minute but he he was in brevard county for uh he was a rescue uh he was in brevard county for around six months and was betrayed by the inmates uh it's an amazing program it's a win-win-win rescue dogs with the inmates working with this with them and then coming out to schools and law enforcement here's our certification again like you said that's uh we can we're certified we have to go through a process where they watched us work with the dogs um and we had to actually work with kids and they watched us interview uh we had to interview um um kids my one of my st i i think it was like six or seven year old we i had to interview he said my dog looked like a
152panda and and he kind of i kind of went with that so we actually actually had to process you know practice that so our dogs can be used in the school are also used in the courtrooms uh will county already has kind of their own set of dogs i don't know if you guys know in the courts um and they'll bring the they'll do they'll bring them into the courtrooms when they interview when children testify with our dogs we can if the law enforcement needed to interview um young kids we could we're certified to do that to bring the dogs in um so yeah so biscuit uh uh boston terrier black and white dog um but um they paired us up too uh we'll get the gracie admit but they paired us up they wanted
153the school district to have a bigger dog and then a smaller dog uh this for many different reasons it's kind of a mixture of you know different reasons now gracie she's the mec which is brian wertel's dog and she's a poogle which is a beagle in a poodle and i guess she's been an embassy for a while since what 20 yeah not 18 2019 the uh the picture on the left there that's an interesting story that's the the male lady firm you um she changed her entire route so that halfway through her route she would be able to be with gracie and then kind of reduce stress and then continue on with her day that's kind of interesting one of the things that we didn't put in here real quick is the dogs provide service
154to a lot of other people or have the opportunity to business owners veterans home hospitals that's a lot of therapy dogs can do that we haven't done that yet but the opportunity may be victim victim centers we have one in park forest are we are we doing that right now no but the opportunity and certification is there if we ever had to provide services to somebody else in the community like the fire chief chief waterman has asked us if there was ever an incident that sometimes as firefighters have to deal with tragic accidents and something he's he's he said he might utilize this at that point too so here's uh like i said we i believe we have a very comprehensive program here's uh some of the handbooks and things that were created we created
155these and then we met with uh the principals and obviously the executive staff and we went over all these and we think we have a a a very detailed comprehensive program all the way down to creating a code of code of ethics simply for the therapy dog handlers and then like i mentioned before we have that therapy dog oversight committee to make sure that we're staying aligned with our vision and mission for cm 201u you can just go through i think we just got some pictures just some more pictures left just to that's uh that concludes the presentation has anybody got any questions do we have any plans that we've had the response that we've been that we've had throughout the district and the community is is really really fantastic and we're uh we're really
156proud of the product we created do we have any plans for any more dogs coming well they they have um they uh they are very pleased with us they they like us we have a great partnership with them and they've lost our they've often offered us and guaranteed us as many dogs as we want at no cost it's just how many that you guys would like well thank you thank you for doing that and for the relationship and i think now there's a an award to present yes just real quick before you present that award and so we have three dogs right yes and we bring the dogs here every day to the district pretty much bro the dogs might need a day or two off once in a while it depends like she's had
157a long day today but uh for the most part yes uh if we know we have a long day we got a lot of meetings that might be her day off but the dogs do come come to work with us and they go home with us and then they're at home that's what everything that was my uh okay so each person you and and and mr hall takes the dog home correct yes sir and grace was it gracie gracie stays with brian yes okay and i hope the district is compensating you to take care of the dog food and things like that yeah i mean some good food the district does supply them with bedding and so forth for here otherwise the other kinds of things they um pick up themselves and i saw one
158of the dogs like chicken there yeah i'm sure okay all right go for it well we are very excited about this program um you know we first wanted to recognize and thank brian wartell he was the visionary that started this program he could not be here tonight because he is on vacation uh but gracie uh he started that at mec as you know over a year and a half ago now and it was so successful when uh patrick came on board you know we said we definitely want to expand this to the district as best we can so they've been working in collaboration between building dogs district dogs to really expand the program we want to thank both patrick and dave for their work they were pioneers in this program there's not a lot out
159there and so i think there's a lot of eagerness to learn more about a formalized program there are districts out there that have dogs but there's not a formal program with policies and procedures and a special thanks to patrick for taking the lead on this he's done a lot of work with codifying the program with written procedures a manual as well as coming up with a committee that works for it so that as we start to expand the program we have a committee that looks at our handlers to make sure that they have the right temperament in in bringing these dogs into our district it's not just anybody that wants to do it they have the dog running around the school there's definitely a program and procedure for that and so a committee will be
160put together to review the candidates and then also help and support them selecting their dogs through broward county so based on your fine work patrick has gone down to broader comedy certainly with dave to get the training but specifically he used his vacation days to go down there and work with um sharing the work that we've been doing some of our manuals and so forth so broward county sheriff's office sent us this they wanted to recognize the healing pause program but specifically um our director and certainly dave as well um for their canine and lucy i should say at the school district in appreciation of your continued support of the broader county sheriff's office paws and stripes college these are our graduates for it and that was presented so please work with me and give
161him a hand of applause for this put your paws together dave had a lot dave had a lot to do with this he just couldn't go with me i got i got invited to be an instructor for the program because they loved our documents everything that we did i think we did a great job and appreciate all the guidance and support i got from the superintendent but those documents that we created here at the crete money school district are now going to be used as the national standard for the therapy dog project through the brevard county sheriff's office so i'm pretty proud of that so thank you can can give him his vacation days back and also you'll see ms nash in her her way she's going to be taking pictures of our employees they
162will be their resumes will be posted on our website and they are now employees of the district um so you will see their pictures are there so she's going to grab those pictures and we're going to be uploading this website a dog is a man and a woman's best friend huh okay all right well thank you so much patrick and dave we really needed that to reduce our blood pressure and anxiety [Laughter] right okay next on the agenda is our consent agenda approval and before i ask for a motion i want to see if any board member would like to remove any item to vote on separately hearing none uh may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second all right so moved by sawalish and seconded by galbraith and when
163you're ready roll call brown is an eye mr mr sowalis hi mrs walters gracie no no that's biscuits [Laughter] mrs galbraith aye vice president ruth aye motion carries all right next up is action reports um the first one board policy seven colon one nine zero student behavior uh may i have emotion or do you do it first or do i get the motion first go ahead and do this okay may have a motion to approve board policy 7 colon 190 student behavior moved second all right move by galbraith and second by walter [Laughter] all right sorry dr carrera go ahead i was just going to draw the attention this was just so i have to take a call roll call no no first we're going to discuss i got it got it okay there was
164just a slight word change in the document we were adding the word in designated areas to the policy to be a little bit more up to date so that was the only change that was for this policy okay any other questions or comments roll call okay mrs galbraith aye mrs walters brown isn't i mr sawalis aye vice president rue aye motion carries next up may i have a motion to establish a date for the 2021-2022 tentative budget public hearing september 14 2021 so move second all right any discussion i was going to say are we going to see ken tonight oh yep there's ken put my glasses ken tonight no i'm just here in case you had a question that's all nope questions all right well thanks ken i don't you mean no i'm just
165i'm just in case you had a question we're gonna let him come up to that podium and not ask him anything yes i do how was your day good it's been a long day but it's been good okay so hearing no questions roll call mrs walters aye mr siwalis aye brown isn't i mrs galbraith aye vice president rupert aye motion carries next may i have a motion to approve a certificate of payment in the amount of 935 thousand one hundred and twenty seven dollars and fifty eight cents to r l sohal general contractor inc for the 2021 renovation work at talala elementary school and the early learning center so moved second all right any discussion or questions on that and again board just to let you know i'll jump in on this one just to
166let you know also the uh the work is going well we are on target for substantial completion on august 6th so we are on target i was just over looking at the facilities today and it's going well this amount does include also there's a 10 percent holdback amount that we do hold based on completion of the work at the end of the project so uh just so you know that so that will continue so far uh is the 10 hold back on any payment there will probably be two more payments taking place one in august and then one the final one probably in september once we do all the punch list items okay so district office next month right permanent meetings we'll be back at district office yes our plan is to have uh board
167meetings back there i believe on the 10th is the committee the whole meeting uh with the regular meeting the week later yes so is it fair to say ken that it's 900 and somehow a thousand dollars i think the contract was for like 3.2 million dollars almost 3.2 about 3.144 million dollars so i think we've expended right now off the top of my head about 1.4 1.5 million dollars so far of that amount has been expended so is it fair to say that they are at least a third of the way completed oh they're they're farther than that i would say they're about two-thirds of the way completed actually yeah i uh i was really happy when i walked the facilities today uh again as i expressed to the board uh in a previous meeting
168i'm very happy with soho and the work that they are doing you know also keith and his crew have been doing we've actually started i will let the board know this and let the community know this we've actually started taking over now parts of the building to get them cleaned and ready so soho has worked great with keith and his building in ground staff so we're actually getting into classrooms starting to clean and all of that stuff we've told staff um that they can report on august 9th to begin getting the buildings ready both the administrative offices elc and talala we're looking to have extra help there to help the teachers get their rooms prepared and all of that and we do have kind of a cleaning service on hold in case we need to
169use that to supplement all of our building and grounds workers so so are we i know we are changing the boilers at elc yes we are are we replacing boilers at talala i don't believe we are are we keys no no we are not we are replacing pipes in talala uh yes replacing all the water pipes yes bringing in a new water line i believe um yes so we're doing all of that work have we closed up the walls yet for the pipes or have they replaced the majority of the pipes yet i don't like that oh yeah all the pipes have been replaced all the sprinkler systems are in all of the everything closed up not all not everything is closed up there's still some bathrooms that they're doing block in oh uh but
170i was just there i'll give you an example i was at elc uh today and some of what i'm going to call the gang toilets with our which are the boys and girls washrooms some already have all the partitions up because all new partitions were put in all new fixtures are put in like in the boys all new urinals toilets all of that has been put in however if you go into our bathrooms outside administrative offices those are not done yet so they're kind of working their way around the building and that they are um in talking with the site supervisor joe today i mean they're working 10 hour days they're working on weekends um they're doing all of that so they'll they'll hit their target i'm just curious again these pipes they were deemed
171life safety issues for the most part because they have the pipes themselves and galvanized and things of that nature extended their use for life i'm curious to see just what were the conditions of the pipes i don't know if you saved a sample or anything like that your predecessor daniel boom he showed us maybe a one inch pipe two or three feet long that had the inside diameter of like a quarter inch because of the hardness and the calcium that built up inside that pipe so i'm just curious to see what was the conditions of maybe a section of the main pipe i don't know we're talking about six-inch pipes for the mains or what yeah i can talk to i can talk to joe and see if we have something i know she has
172informed us that a lot of the pipes uh you know were good corroded and restricted flow and all of that yeah i was like maybe some photos or something some before and after yeah i know joe took some and so what we're hoping to do for the board in august is i'm actually asking the contractor come here to kind of give you a little presentation to see kind of a before and after yeah quite honestly you're not going to recognize elc when you go in there because it has changed we are putting drop ceilings in to cover up all the piping we're putting all led lighting i was just telling bill today um you know we are putting motion detectors in uh for that led lighting to you know to save costs and all those
173type of things so we're we're upgrading a lot of the systems uh we're painting the front entrance all of that stuff so uh it's it you know it's going to look good it's going to look different you'll you'll see a difference so you know i'm very pleased with it so far okay i might be hitting hitting on you up or or our director up uh by the end of this week and you guys all friday you are all friday right there on friday yes okay i may hit you up thursday night about 10 o'clock p.m for a tour at one of the schools i'll contact you guys well we can go over there tonight if you like mr brown no problem that's all i have okay okay any more discussion all right thank you ken
174uh roll call please okay brown hasn't i uh mr sawalis aye mrs walters hi mrs galbraith hi vice president rupe aye motion carries moving on to personnel and culture may have a motion to approve the personnel report including the certified staff employment leave of absence reassignment intent to retire and resignation and educational support staff employment leave of absence resignation intent to retire and resignation moved second all right i know lyle's not here is there are there any questions or any discussion no that last part was just reassignment in intent to retire and your resignation you said it accidentally twice just so just okay well one was for certified staff employment and one was for educational support staff employment okay and one is reassignment one is resignation yeah or if i repeated myself i'm sorry but
175that's what i don't think so okay no other discussion roll call please brown isn't i mrs galbraith aye mr silas aye mrs walters aye vice president group aye motion carries and finally may i have a motion to approve the goals of the superintendent for 2021 2022 school year so moved second all right we had a chance to review these and close last week any discussion all right and when you're ready roll call please mrs galbraith aye mr sowalis aye mrs walters aye brown is and i vice president ruth aye thank you motion carries next item is old business does anyone have any old business no okay moving on to new business i don't know if this isn't considered new business or not but um i did have someone come to me and they're having difficulty
176logging in to register has anyone else had any problems not that i've heard of not that you've heard of if they're having difficulty have them uh phone okay one of us and we can assist with that okay all right thank you thank you any more new business hearing none um we don't have a need for closed session right yay okay then may i have a motion to adjourn so moved second oh all in favor opposed