001wow [Music] where be0 you got [Applause] [Music] medical emergency my daughter got her first J on [Music] said it she had a little bit of a lum she felt slightly tired but she's a mom of a 10-month old so good and enough feel tired she was fine she she was giving them are you guys good yes' here it is right [Music] here but yes after that did it go um just oh that all is this an s or it's an S capital S it's Cas S no plus sign [Applause] go back to it yes I'll leave it right so you can try again okay all right well good evening and welcome welcome back everyone to a new year it's great to have uh everyone in attendance and we are going to start out with the
002pledge so please stand I pledge alce to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you very much you may be seated we will going to start out with oath of office [Music] and Mr Becker and you want to come on up here okay would you rise your right hand please yes I I an Engle har an Engle har do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution I will support the Constitution of the United States of America of the United States of America and the Constitution and the constitution of the state of Indiana of the state of of Indiana and the laws of the United States and the laws of the
003United States and the state of Indiana and the state of Indiana I will Faith Faithfully execute I will Faithfully execute the duties of my office the duties of my office as a member of this government body as a member of this governing body so help me God so help me God thank you [Applause] [Music] you can also raise your right hand please I will I I Kim Woodward Kim Woodward do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support the Constitution the Constitution of the United States of America of the United States of America and the Constitution and the constitution of the state of Indiana of the state of Indiana and the laws of the United States and the laws of the United States and the state of Indiana and the
004the state of Indiana I will Faithfully I will Faithfully execute my duties execute my duties of my office as a member of my office as a member of this governing body of this governing body so help me God so help me guide congratulations thank you thank you Mr Becker well that was very um very overwhelming to be honest and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to serve our community another four years and um really um just a community that is amazing your parents show up it's just that's what makes the community great and so to be able to be sworn in and share and serve for another four years is just a privilege and an honor and I'm grateful for a community that supports um through election and wants to see our school corporation continue
005to be really the pillar of our community and the pillar of what makes our community so great so it is my honor and I'm just so grateful thank you so much yes I echoed those comments it is very humbling when you run for public office and you're elected um and at first you get over the shock of it like oh my gosh I was elected and then suddenly you uh um feel such um such gratitude for um the confidence and the um uh affirmation that a community places in you I can think of no higher calling honestly than to serve um children and public education in this um seat um and so I thank you for your support um I pledge to you that um I as a board member will continue to be transparent
006with you U to listen to your concerns and certainly collaborate and uh with you on what is best for students um I often remark I serve at the state level also in on the Indiana School Board Association um and I often remark about how when um many school board members from around the state um ask me where I'm from and I say Avon there's a certain kind of a well jealousy quite honestly that um I serve such an exemplary School Corporation and I'm very proud of that um I feel that um our leadership uh in education has been um astounding and I look forward to serving you and our community another four years thank you I too would like to congratulate Ann and Kim um it's been an honor to serve with them and you
007were both there when I started this back 3 years ago and guided me on what to do and what not to do so thank you ladies for that and I'd like to also congratulate you both and uh and I've only been board two years you guys are the varsity and I appreciate the leadership you've given us and I'm I'm so glad that you continue we continue to lead us and Mentor us newer board members so thank you thank you and I would like to congratul you both as well and thanks for all your help in answering all my questions I'm a year member myself and I appreciate thank you thank you very much we will move on to um our favorite activity and that's recognizing special Orioles um amongst our community amongst our staff and
008tonight um I think this goes without saying it's probably everyone's favorite group in that school nurses and the School nurses um from the moment we received the phone call back in March um about all that was coming and all the changes and all the issues that were before us our School nurses have been right there at the table and they um have guided us they have taught us they've educated us on practices they went in and they um received a lot lot of training on their own they revamped their their clinics so that it was useful for the students who were both maybe not feeling so well and the student who just was feeling fine but just needed to see the nurse and um our School nurses just like nurses across the whole country our
009School nurses are are just pillars for our school corporation and for our students and um my children they're all now have graduated but they can tell you the nurse's name in every building because that's what nurses do they leave an and they influence them and they leave an impact so it is with great honor that tonight I will hand this over to Dr but to honor our our nurses who um really deserve more than honor and we just is just a small gesture from us to say thank you yes thank you Mrs angelheart and you're exactly right when we were talking about who we wanted uh to celebrate as uh as special Orioles to start the second semester it seemed only fitting that we should recognize our School nurses so nurses I'm going to talk
010about you for just a little bit and then I'll call you up and the board will want to take pictures we'll do that in probably small groups with Mr Carr helping us so that we can uh have social distance but I just wanted to talk a little bit about the impact of our School nurses uh before I introduced them I did want to recognize Dr yavon C pepper who is here the chief nursing officer and Chief Operating Officer from Hendrick regional health and then also our school nursing supervisor um Jennifer Wright who both of them have been just tremendously instrumental in supporting all Hendrick County Schools uh uh during this pandemic but I really appreciate that they are here to support our nurses as well it was in 2015 that the school board approved us
011partnering with Hendricks Regional Health that our nurses would become Hendricks Regional Health employees that significantly enhanced the training that they received and the support that that they were able to receive being affiliated with such a great hospital as Hendricks Regional Health however little did we know in 2015 just how critical that was going to be and that we were going to be navigating a worldwide health crisis and a pandemic so here's some interesting pieces of data about our School nurses in first semester they supported 336 students who tested positive for Co 3,728 close contacts who were quarantined and and worked with our nurses uh to make sure that they were healthy when they returned to school 27,7 185 clinic visits across the district where 12,412 medications were administered to our students so even as they're
012navigating a pandemic they're making sure that all of the other typical uh needs are met from our students as they come into the clinic Mrs Wright shared with me that uh we needed sub coverage in our Clinic 71 times and every single time they were covered so throughout the entire first semester we never had a clinic that was not covered with a qualified nurse as M Mrs angelheart talked about part of what they had to do this year was set up separate clinics so that we could make sure if students were covid symptomatic they were in a special uh location so our students have been able to be in person for the majority of first semester and that is the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people but none um
013have have worked as hard to keep our students healthy and in person as our School nurses so we are very thankful to call them Orioles and to be able to recognize them tonight so nurses as I call your name if you want to come forward we have a letter for you if you just want to assemble in a socially distant line and then Mr car will we'll call you up here a couple at a time uh that we had a few that were not able to attend because of other commitments and one at the high school who is doing her job right now working through a a positive case at the high school so Amy gtis at Avon High School Angie Hines at White Oak Candace bwick at intermediate East Martha Acres at Cedar Sarah
014Murphy our nurse coordinator Julie Wade at Pine Tree Stacy Jones at Middle School North Deb Worley at Avon High School Jennifer denbrook at Avon High School Kimber Walters at Middle School South Stacy Edwards at Sycamore Tracy tyen at Intermediate West Connie naby at Maple Amber Walker at Hickory Leanne Jones at River Birch and Jennifer Wright our director of school nursing so Jennifer if you'll come up as well we'll get uh get you your letters and I'm sure the board will want to take uh a few pictures with you as well so board if you'd like to come Kevin how do you want to set this up you guys come on over here with Miss single heart thank you so such an honor to see all right come on over a little bit more great yeah
015thanks da thank you Stephanie few more um let's do ships sure all right so board members if you just kind of want to come and fill the spaces between if you're a nurse step forward yeah there Perfect all right I'm going to take a picture right here we'll get more ready one more all right thank you thank you so much [Applause] thank you so much thank you thanks for being here everything you do every day conations thank you so much we'll stand behind you two one literally and figuratively yeah thank you everybody thank you two pictures thing what a year to be a nurse thank you for choosing such um an incredible profession but your time was now and thank you for rising to the occasion board members yeah I would also like to Echo
016that and thank our very capable nurses I can't think of a better partner than HR um to um assist with training and to really make sure that our um clinics were covered with um high quality highly trained nurses um I'm not very proud of this fact but my oldest daughter who is now in uh her early 30s was what I call the frequent flyer in the uh Clinic World um she would go see the nurse about every two or three days um and when I asked her one time I said really you can't be sick I mean why are you going down there and she goes well Mom she just listens to me and she's just so nice plus she has Hershey's bars so um so if you ever you know if you ever think
017about the impact that you have on children's lives especially those um that I think is kind of an unheralded thing in this pandemic year but those that rely on medication uh that has to be you know monitored and dispensed um just such a great um thing that you do to take that burden off of teachers um and administrators who would have to otherwise be responsible for that um I thank you sincerely for loving our kids for taking care of them and for absolutely being a pillar of um an exemplary nurse in our community thank you Avon schools are very lucky and fortunate to have nurses who care especially this past year um students and staff are lucky to have nurses who are always I can't see always ready for any kind of injury any kind
018of sickness or making sure the student students receive their daily medication being a teacher a retired teacher I would often forget and the student would come up for me remind me I'd have a big note on my desk or the nurse would beat down and say Mrs Simmons blah blah needs his medicine so thank you ladies for that too uh thank you nurses for a job well done so when we think of historically kind traditionally we think of our First Responders who run into the fire when everybody's running away away from the fire we think of police and firemen um I'm married to a nurse so I've always thought of nurses as people who similarly run into the fire when everybody's running away but this year unfortunately could not have been more start of an
019example of how all of our nurses in this country were willing to run into Harm's Way so that they can protect the rest of us and so first and foremost for your entire profession for all you do I thank you second you you need a lot of people to say yes we can or we will try instead of no we won't if you're trying to open a school in the middle of a pandemic and first and foremost everybody's concerned is the safety of of the students and it's just incredible that it was it was you all our nursing group who are the first group to say we can open that school and we'll go in there every day and take care of those kids so thank you congratulations and thank you very much I have
020quite a few nurses in my family and it takes a special person to be a nurse and boy has this pandemic proved exactly that congratulation and best with thank you we're going to move on now to the proposed school start and end times for 2122 and Dr wendam if you'll take it away yes and I do want to say too I know our nurses work very hard so you are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting but if you need to leave to to get on with uh other things that are going on in your evening feel free to leave as well thank you so uh thank you Mrs anglehart members of the board I wanted to provide an update this evening on our work studying school start and end times as I've
021shared before uh and I put a a copy of this presentation on your place for you a hard copy uh now that redistricting is completed we started having conversations about planning around our new structure for 2122 when we will have six K4 buildings and one centralized preschool Center and as a result of that planning process it was only logical that we would but also look at school starting and ending times and what changes might need to occur in our new structure as we look at 2122 so tonight I'll provide a brief summary of what we have shared previously as well as a summary of the feedback that we've collected and the recommendations that we have uh moving forward just a reminder of the work that we've done so far we started studying school starting and
022end times uh in early November with a working group that included representation from each level uh of leadership in our school district we first began discussing this publicly at the end of November at a school board working session and then since that time we've been sharing information in various formats including that we live stream the December school board meeting parents Square Communications about school start and end time social media posts a dedicated page on our website and then a community input session that we held uh just last Wednesday we don't typically live stream our school board meetings but we started that in November with redistricting because we knew our families and our staff were uh very interested in redistricting and some wouldn't feel comfortable coming to a meeting and so we have continued to live
023stream our November our December and then this meeting just to make sure that our community had various ways to access this information so our first goal as we started studying school start and end times and and we have talked about this with the board previously our first goal was to accomplish weekly collaboration time for teachers teachers and in education e we refer to those as professional learning communities plc's we've talked about that before um we have pockets of plc's happening around the district but not a consistent time or a consistent District structure so this means our teachers are often giving up their prep times or meeting before and after school and what we consistently hear from teachers and principles is that they need more time we wanted to make sure it's not just more time
024that it's focused time that is around improving academic achievement for our students so what we know is that teachers collaborating with one another is one of the most effective things that we can do to improve academic achievement and that's not surprising our teachers are great teachers with lots of strategies we just need to have a structure in place for them to uh be able to have conversations and collaborate with one another about improving our students who need more academic support that maybe are struggling as well as students who need to be enriched and and and pushed a little bit more than they are so this was the first goal that we had when we started looking at school start and end times we talked about this in the last session so I won't talk about
025it a whole lot we studied various different options to consider um to get weekly collaboration time for our teachers the we our group eliminated several and spent most of our time focusing on these two options uh one being a weekly delay or early dismissal uh you can see some other districts around us and and similar to us that do that typically that's on a Wednesday with an early release or a late start our group studied that really felt like uh that is an inconvenience for our families that one day a week typically Wednesdays kids would have a different schedule for school start and end times than the other days of the week so we spent most of our time on option number two where we would reduce the instructional day slightly by 5 minutes the
026impact is the same and we bank that time and our teachers would work a slightly longer day on Wednesdays but for students and for parents the school start and end time is the same every day of the week and we felt like that was important for that cons consistency in both of those options the monthly 1hour delay would be removed because we have built in a structure where every week our teachers are able to collaborate and have those professional learning communities our second goal was to explore other avenues for efficiencies that could be gained by examining school start and end time and we spent a lot of time in our previous meetings talking about three- tier Transportation when I've spoken about this slide Transportation efficiency some have focused on the dollar amount of savings but
027that was never really the driving factor of our conversations whatever money is saved and we talked about our Aging bus fleet in our previous meeting whatever money is saved we would just turn around and replace older buses our buses that are 12 13 14 15 16 years old so whatever money is saved we would turn right back into purchasing more buses so that was really never the primary factor as much as our concern is over the shortage of bus drivers and as we look at Transportation efficiencies what really was driving that is our concern that we have not had enough bus drivers pre pandemic we don't have enough bus drivers during the pandemic and it's only going to get worse and I'll talk about that a little bit more as well so we wanted to
028ensure first that our schedule built in collaboration time for teachers and second that we were trying to be as efficient as possible to maximize our bus drivers our transportation department who's here night has been advocating for three- tier transportation for a long time and it was not because of financial savings it was because every day they are navigating the bus driver shortage that we face so that's really what was driving our transportation efficiency conversation so I wanted to spend a little bit of time tonight talking about the bus driver shortage because we talked about it briefly in our previous meeting but I wanted to to kind of help paint the picture for you there is a national shortage of CDL drivers not just school bus drivers but CDL Drivers bus drivers are required to have
029a CDL license the average age of our bus drivers is 55 each year we average about 18 drivers that retire or resign that's about 15% of our bus drivers of course 2020 has been more challenging with the pandemic and we had 24% of our drivers retire or resign so I want to stop right there because I was really touched by some of the comments and I'm sure you were as well of our community our parents and our staff that interpreted our previous conversations about the transportation efficiencies to mean that bus drivers were going to lose their job that is not the case so I wanted to make that really clear that if we have bus drivers that want to drive for us next year they will be driving for us next year any efficiencies that
030are gained will be gained through attrition because of this kind of turnover we would be foolish to let bus drivers walk away from us they would get snatched up by another district and the next week we would need them back so we will not be eliminating any of our bus driver employees we will accomplish this through attrition I also wanted to talk about the bus driver requirements because quite honestly I learned uh putting this present presentation together just how significant the bus driver requirements are they have to pass the same test and license that it takes to be a semi- driver it takes about 8 week weeks to complete the training for the CPL license so if you sign up today and I would encourage you all of you to sign up and apply today
031to be a bus driver it will take about 2 months before you can be on the road driving with students the test requirements include knowledge of break components how air brakes work identification of suspension parts parallel parking on the left and right side and backing the bus to park which of course we would never do but they have to pass it in the test so one of the things our transportation department has said is we have some people who sign up to be a bus driver and walk out after the first week when they realize just how intense the training and the testing requirement is 30 hours of training plus the passage of mandatory driving and written skills tests and effective January 1 of 2022 that increases to a to 100 hours of training to
032obtain the license and the requirement to pass the written test so that's what we're talking about when we talk about this transportation efficiency the importance of Transportation efficiency and why we need to have this conversation is it's challenging now it's going to be even more challenging in January of 2022 once we have the drivers of course we also know that we have absences so we looked back knowing of course since March we've been in covid-19 uh world so we looked back at what was our absence rate for bus drivers it's not just having enough bus drivers it's having a sub pool of bus drivers and a b so in January of 2020 28% of the school days in January pre pandemic we had 10 or more driver absences that day February we had 89% of
033our school days where we had 10 or more driver absences so I uh attach two pictures here this is not unique to Avon this is MSD of Washington Township in Indianapolis with their big bus with the sign this is Dan Bill that's uh Mr rollinson sent me this weekend with their big bus advertising for drivers if you've driven down High School Road Wayne Township usually has one at Wayne Township or at High School Road and moris Street this is not unique to Avon one of our neighboring districts has started sending parent Square messages to parents in the morning to say we don't have a driver for your child's bus we're going to need you to get your children to school that's what we're trying to avoid is those kinds of situations and notifying families the
034day of or the evening before that we simply don't have enough bus drivers Hamilton sou Eastern up in fisers they're moving to a three- tier system next school year they recently were short 25 bus drivers every school district is struggling with this so the challenge is if we do nothing it's highly likely there will time come a time in the near future where we simply don't have the manpower to operate our buses so I certainly understand the frustration of talking about school start and end times and I understand the concerns of our parents saying this doesn't work for our schedule I this is not what's best for our children or for our students why are we doing this now really this conversation about the challenge that we face with bus drivers and the challenge that
035we Face particularly beginning in 22 2022 is really critical for us so I know folks have latched on to the cost savings piece but I just wanted to say really clearly that's not what's driving this conversation as much as these conversations about the challenge that we Face to have the staff to transport our children to and from school every day in our previous meetings we reviewed research on school start and end times and recommendations from National organizations that that stated that starting secondary schools is later preferably 8:30 or later is what is most supported in research we also review two other options considered by our working group and why those were not recommended I'll go through those real quickly this is our current schedule for start and end times and you can see of course
036Middle School South and North start at 7:45 and then every 5th 15 or 20 25 minutes we have another group of schools that are starting in our last meeting we talked about this option uh and we went over pros and cons of this option and of course there are pros and cons for every option some people love the options some people hate the options um I'm not going to go through all of those again and in this model the re the main reason that our group did not recommend this model was because it required North and South staying in tier one to start school even earlier at 7:20 and so when the research said so clearly that secondary students should be starting later we did not feel comfortable recommending a model that asked our middle
037school students to start even earlier same thing with option number two that we talked about at the last meeting um in this option it's the most similar to what we do right now with the middle school starting early and the intermediates starting late but again we we could not recommend a model that it required the middle schools to start even earlier than they do now so the one one that we spent most of our time on and that we have shared is option number three this was our recommended model because it moves the intermediates early uh move the high school later we couldn't quite make it to 8:30 we made it to 8:20 um and also mve the middle schools later by having them be in tier three and then the k4s were spread across
038all three tiers some of the feedback that we received asked about well how did we decide which elementaries went into each tier and so one thing I added on this slide that we did not share previously was the number of buses in each tier just so you can understand the puzzle pieces that our transportation department pieces together so you can see in each tier they have it structured so that 59 buses are required in each tier so they knew that pine tree would require a certain number of buses and that that could be balanced as we looked across uh this model the other piece I wanted to share and we talked about this before as well it was important to our group that the earliest pickup time in this model right now well in our
039current structure our earliest pickup time is 6:45 in this model the earliest pickup time would be 6:30 we did not want any children picked up earlier than 6:30 and at the back end we didn't want students dropped off later than 5:00 and in this model we able to do that those were the parameters that we kind of established that we felt like were important as we think about um pick up and drop off we had 1,2 50 survey responses from both our parents and our staff I personally read every comment I appreciate everybody who completed that survey and and I know the board has reviewed those comments as well I know this does not capture every comment but we tried to look at high level kind of what the perception was of those survey responses
040not surprisingly those in tier 2 tended to be more supportive High School Maple Sycamore everybody likes the tier 2 time that's what everybody uh once is that tier two tier tier two time while those in tier one and tier three generally were less supportive East and West staff were more neutral or positive about being shifted earlier while North and South staff generally were more opposed to moving into that later time our parents that completed the survey again not surprising most that if you were in tier 2 you tended to be more supportive tier one and tier three not as supportive our Middle School parents were fairly evenly split some liked the idea of middle schools going later and some preferred that middle schools stay earlier East West and our elementary parents that were in tier
041one and tier three tended to be more opposed to the to the proposed changes when we looked at the U individuals who expressed some concern about the model the this proposal um again this certainly doesn't capture everything but tried to capture the big themes not surprising tier one is too early tier three is too late concern about elementary students being in tier one getting on the bus early when it's dark Child Care challenges when they would get home earlier in the day uh in some cases getting home before their older siblings there were also concerns um from our families in tier three the impact on family time or extracurriculars by kids getting home later in the day and then Child Care challenges navigating what to do in the morning time before they would come to
042school and then the other uh theme that emerged was really the concern about the inequality of k4s because they are spread across all three tiers and of course many of the other comments were specific to our own individual preferences as parents and as family members and as um people who have jobs and and really were specific to what works for our family and of course some people would say that they love the model and then the next comment would say they hate the model and that's just the nature of school start and end times that are so specific um around our preferences and our family needs we asked a couple of questions on the survey where we asked both our parents and our staff to uh evaluate on a scale of 1 to five the
043first was does it align with research on school start and end times generally pretty neutral our staff tended to agree with that a little bit more than parents but pretty neutral and then same thing with they supporting a model that eliminates the monthly 1-hour delays our staff tended to be a little bit more supportive of that than parents but still generally pretty neutral we held a community input session uh this past week on Wednesday and um again this does not capture every comment the board received a summary of all the comments that were made but uh some of the larger themes some of the positives that were shared was the reduction in the number of drivers that are needed and the cost savings more sleep for our secondary students that aligns with research and there
044were a couple of comments about you know tier one may work better for some of our younger students who are better in the morning um concerns and questions that were shared again tier one being too early tier three too late Child Care challenges The increased cost for working parents some concerns from our families at Cedar uh for our strive program which is our program for students with more intense disabilities and that because Cedar is the K4 um Pro offers the K4 program for strive that it should not be included in tier one and the difference in start times between k4s being spread across all three tiers also some concerns that were shared at that meeting about uh the feeder schools not being staggered and the transportation challenges that that poses for our families that maybe
045have to get a child from um Cedar to West and they were starting uh in the same tier so that was a challenge for those families so um before I go on I want to thank our transportation department uh based on the feedback that we collected we uh and that meeting was Wednesday night so Thursday at 7:30 we were meeting in the morning to talk through the feedback talk through the survey results and come up with okay what are we going to do what are we going to do based on that feedbook back and based on that input and so from uh Thursday morning Friday and uh Teresa and I were talking on Saturday when when she came in with one of the transportation colleagues to get us some more information so I really appreciate
046our transportation department and how hard they work to hear all of this feed fact that we are receiving and to then talk about okay so now what what can we look at what can we do so as a result of that we have two options that we'd like to talk through with you based on that feedback the first is option number four so option number four uh changes a couple of things it shifts Maple to tier one from tier two and moves Cedar to tier two and that was really a result of that feedback because of the strive program now I will say Maple parent parents and maple staff were pretty happy in tier 2 so while we may have just uh made some cedar parents happy we may have just frustrated a whole another
047group of parents and staff that were pretty content before but that is the nature of any change that we make um the other thing that you'll notice is this pushes back our K4 start time at Tier 1 to 7:30 and that was a result of some feedback Wednesday night uh where some individuals said you know there is just something psychological about starting Elementary before 7 7:30 can we just get to 7:30 and so in this model we did that uh the elementaries would start at 7:30 one of the things I've learned from my friends in transportation is that 5 minutes is an eternity in transportation world and so you can't just absorb 5 minutes if you push tier one back 5 minutes everything else pushes back 5 minutes every change is a tradeoff so in
048tier two that means tier two starts 5 minutes later which we particularly liked with Avon High School that got the high school a little bit closer to that 8:30 Benchmark the challenge is at tier three with Hickory and River Birch that pushes them back five minutes as well so we did see some some comments and some feedback from families in tier three that were concerned that 920 was too late to start school this pushes it back to 9:25 I will say our transportation team did say that even in this model we would still get students home by 5:00 so as long as there aren't road closures or weather delays or those kinds of things on a normal day we would be able to still hit that parameter of getting our students home by 5:00 the
049other comment that uh we heard multiple times um Wednesday night particularly was okay we get it we get the challenge of bus drivers we get the chall we get the why behind this but 15 to 20 bus drivers is there anything in the middle is there anything that's still an improvement but less than 15 to 20 and that is option number five so option number five is not as significant as what we have talked about in the previous four models because in option number five we only reduce s to 10 drivers as opposed to the 15 or 20 that we have talked about previously so in option number five you will see that um we shift all of the elementaries into tier 2 or tier three to try to address that concern that 7:20 or
0507:30 7:25 is simply too early for elementary students to start school this accomplishes that by shifting all of the k4s into tier 2 or tier three we still get that benefit of Avon High School moving 5 minutes later uh to 8:25 and you still have to shift everything into tier three five minutes is five minutes later as well so does this model uh cause our transportation department to still have some anxiety about what 22 2022 holds yes it does because we we would be we would still need a significant number of drivers however we also understand that we have to balance the operational needs with the needs of our family and of our staff and so this option tries to to find that balance of operational needs and also the input from our families and
051from our staff so this still means what we need to work very hard if this is the model that we go with to recruit more drivers uh tell all your friends to sign up to be bus drivers all of those kinds of things we still have to be relentless in our pursuit of bus drivers because this is still going to be a very significant uh challenge for us and you can see in this model and that's why I included the number of buses this is not a full three tier system because there are only 40 buses needed in tier one and 68 or 67 in the other two tiers and that's why you need more drivers to operate this because we need more buses in tier 2 and tier three than we did in the
052previous models so I want to thank our parents I want to thank our staff for their engagement and their input um I hope that everyone who completed a survey or came to a session or emailed us can see that we really did value their input and value the different perspectives that we have heard one of the things um as we were doing our work Thursday and Friday uh I knew that we were we were working towards a couple of additional proposals for the board to consider and it certainly didn't seem uh fair to ask you to make a decision uh on such short notice with these models so my recommendation would be that um the the board take the next couple of weeks to consider these two new options in addition to what you've already
053got and that we would come back on Monday January 25th uh when you've already got a meeting scheduled and we would ask ask for board action at that time that still allows us to meet our goal of having this decision by the end of January that allows our parents to have plenty of time and our staff to have plenty of time to plan for July end of July for start of school and then we will also be start starting our redistricting process for our staff at the K4 level and that will start at the end of January where our staff will tell us their preferences for where they would like to work and we want to make sure that we have our school start and end times established before we asked our K4 staff to
054complete that preference process so with that I will U certainly be glad to answer any questions that the the board has I have one on the white those times is that for uh that's not for seedings that's for that's correct yes we don't provide transportation for seedlings for the preschool just for developmental preschool okay yep um you mentioned that in option four Transportation felt that even though the end time would be 410 that students would still be able to get home by 5:00 p.m. could is the same true of option five yes teres is not in her head yes yes okay so students regardless of the fact that the um the end time is changed by 5 minutes from the original recommendation and both both of those scenarios all students would be returned homei barring
055any unforeseen circumstances traffic accident Etc yep okay thank you on the student start time how many minutes do they get to enter the building and uh get ready to start class 15 minutes 15 okay so the doors would open at um 710 then for 725 that's okay um I had another question which came up repeatedly in the survey results and also in our listening session so if if students in a let's say that in this family there are three students that are at three different schools in the family um and they are car riders once School dismisses how long do parents have to come and pick those students up what is the flex time in arriving to pick that student up um in a car at the end of the day I don't know if
056I know the answer to that question Transportation anybody know the answer to that question Dustin mik I don't know you time R day about 15 minutes through so about 15 minutes and there's always going to be someone there a little longer it okay so um our car riders dismiss after the bus riders in every school that we know of and then those students proceed down and wait to go out to where the cars are lined up and you say that process takes about 15 minutes or so okay so it would be possible um that a parent that has to go three different places might be the first in line last in line but it sounds pretty feasible even with only 5 minutes of Separation that you could get there in time to pick up those
057students yeah and and that was our goal and that's part of why in those models we tried to offset the schools that are on the same campus east and west and Cedar and Hickory um to try to Al alleviate some of that traffic congestion to to try to help that once once we release that that flow of traffic should be maybe a little bit Smo than it is now to try to help that as much as we could okay thank you any other um stuff um feedback and um even bus drivers is there bus driver feedback on this um I know transportation is just worked endlessly but I even wonder about the drivers and yeah I um you know drivers would have received the staff survey and and I know I could tell from some
058of the comments that they were bus drivers um I had before winter break I spent some time at transportation and and had drivers that could just come sign up and and talk with me and a few of them came in and said I hope we do three tier I hope we do three tier not not all of them by any means but I think they're really the ones that know when all of our subs are out when the office staff is out driving buses they know that this is a significant need so you know I I don't know that I can speak for all the drivers but I certainly feel like the ones I had spoken to about it definitely understand that this is this is something we've got to consider yeah it's hard to
059I I I agree that I I hate the thought of elementary students at the bus stop at you know 7 in the morning but I also know that I want to make sure they have a consistent Transportation so the balance for me is trying to figure out what that looks like um you know my kidss may be out of school but I remember those days it seems like yesterday goes by so quickly but I also know that I do not want our staff to have to text families to say sorry you don't have a bus driver today so it's it's a hard hard Challenge and it's a hard balance but I want the students to have transportation and I want them to be safe so that's what's weighs on our minds um which option gives
060us both and um which option keeps um students is the most safe of OD know safer is not really a word but um that's what I'm striving to hear and figure out so all the comments from from the parents have been just incredibly valuable um I mean I was telling one parent I said you know I don't have children in every building so I need parents to be my eyes and ears and that's what our community's been over the last couple weeks is our eyes and ears so I'm grateful for every comment and every email and um every idea lots of ideas have come from parents so um I just want to say thank you to our community for all that and I hope too that we hear comments from you parents concerning option four
061and option five two please all right so I think that's everything on the proposed school start end times thank you very much feel free to stay um for the rest of the meeting um whatever you're comfortable with we are going to move on to election of offic ERS it's in January we always reorganize the board