RRPS - August 2, 2021 Special Board Meeting

001good evening the rio rancho board of education special board meeting for monday august 2nd 2021 is now called to order if all would arise for the pledge of allegiance catherine cullen will recite worth i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you board member colin and give kim just a second to take our roll call okay we're going to go ahead and do a roll call now you good kim to do that or do would you like me to do it i can do it i can do it okay uh president galbraith present vice president morgan president secretary scott president board member colin president board member coleman president and we

002have uh 5-0 thank you we have a corn present tonight we like to welcome everyone out to our meeting tonight those who are with us here in the boardroom and those who are in on youtube we're grateful to have all the members of the community and from our district staff on tonight um tonight we will start off our meeting with some introductory comments by our superintendent of schools dr v sue cleveland good evening everyone and it's it's wonderful to have you with us tonight this is the first day our our staff is back today and it's a pretty exciting beginning for us so i have a few remarks i'd like to share with you and i'm going to set set the stage for some of the presentations later this evening so as i said our

003staff returned today we welcome them back it's exciting to see them back on day one of the new school year for staff and we certainly welcome all of our new and returning staff as you heard at the last board meeting we are in far better shape with regards to staffing than we have been the last several years we still are short 25 teachers and so if anyone knows of anyone who might be interested they certainly can check our website we would love to have an opportunity to speak with you if we are not able to locate those 25 teachers we do have some alternative plans that we could possibly put into place we also have a lot of brand new staff members this year we had a lot of retirements last year and so we

004have a lot of new faces and we welcome you to our district we're delighted to have you and we're so glad you decided to be part of our school family professional development sessions uh are being held across the district uh for um uh you know for the schools that were unable to access their buildings as of yet uh their staff are all meeting at off-site locations so that went very well today as you know we will have our convocation uh on august the fourth at two o'clock the theme is the hero effect and we have a really great speaker for that afternoon and i really hope that everyone will tune in to attend this session the first report that we're going to have is a facility challenges report and melanie archeback who is our executive

005director of facilities will present the information regarding our two schools are not quite ready to open uh on the first day of school dr cleveland can you hear me for a second i hate to interrupt you would you just give us one moment we're going to have to take a five minute recess i apologize to to interrupt your comments we're going to take a five-minute recess and we'll come right back into your report okay not a problem okay thank you okay and kim you want to go ahead and count us down to i don't know if we actually might still be on our feed but okay um if you're already going to count you down to resume the meeting in 12 11 10 9 8 7. okay this meeting is now called back to order

006dr cleveland are you on i apologize again for for cutting you off but if you want to go ahead and and continue on with your comments thank you okay not a problem as i said um melody archibak will present information regarding the two schools that are not quite ready to open for the first day of school and those schools are cleanest del norte elementary and mountain view middle school both of those schools will start on time but they will start in remote learning until the facilities can be open to in-person learning and so the actual opening in person will be august 23rd to the best of our ability we think that's a pretty firm uh firm date and so if you have ordered anything or if you have tried to buy certain things you find

007they're not available we have a real supply chain issue in the country right now a lot of things that just simply were not available on time and so uh that has been a major factor for all construction whether it's school construction whether it's personal residential business we have certainly had some challenges in terms of getting things here the other uh you know certainly the uh and it was a shorter summer than we've had in the past it was a two month summer as opposed to two and a half so um there were a lot of things but the great thing is al all last year we learned how to do remote virtual and uh so we'll be getting the chromebooks out and all of the children in those schools will be able to go to

008school on day one and we'll get them in the building just as soon as possible and also we will have a discussion and decision related to mass and um so we will uh yeah i want to kind of give you a little bit of information we have been waiting all summer for the the toolkit which is the guidelines the regulations to come from the public ed department and we finally did get those about a week ago and that is certainly the latest information that we have um and there have been some additional changes from cdc uh related to their recommendations but we have not seen any adjustment as of yet with regards to that so we're operating under the toolkit that we shared with you a week ago that's the one that's still in force

009and that's the one that we are following the public health orders generally come out every two weeks uh we were told it was unlikely to have any changes this week if there were to be any we got regardless of which way would probably be another week before we would hear anything we also have a new secretary of education i'm sure you've heard um ryan stewart is leaving the state and going back to take care of some family responsibilities we thank him for his service to our state and working with us over the last two years we have a new secretary of education his name is dr kurt steinhaus and uh we've known kurt a long time he is the former superintendent i get it right the los alamos uh school district and one of the

010things that's really interesting about his experience the last couple of years as he has been very involved with the national lab in in los alamos uh related to all of the research and study related to covet and so he has been in kind of that inner circle in terms of the researchers and the information that the labs have been able to uh to pull out so he's in kind of a unique position he's been a school superintendent he's been very involved with the lab initiative but he's also worked at the public ed department and under the governor in the past so he's very familiar with go with our government with the public ed department and with our school districts and so we wish him well we're you know very excited to see what direction he

011will be taking the public head department at our state um but i know having worked with him for many years he's a very good man and that cares a lot about students and really wants to do good things for our students and our state our goal as a district right now is to do our very best to keep the infections down and and be able to keep our school districts open and so uh everything we think about everything we do we really have that mindset of how do we keep how do we keep infection staff and keep schools open so this summer we have as we did the summer before we have had thorough cleaning of our buildings we have had all of our filters checked we are using the most powerful filters our equipment

012will handle we have done extensive cleaning and we have done everything that we know to do to make our schools as safe as possible and so people have been very very busy but again what we're focused on is how do we keep those schools open how do we keep infections down the one thing we want more than anything else is to be able to stay in person learning for those who want it one of the the current trend data that we have right now uh we are seeing our cases are increasing again in new mexico and sandoval county but sandoval county is not considered a hot spot at this point and um you know that data came from the depart doh department of health website and so that's good news another piece of really good

013news is that sandoval county has a 70 percent fully vaccinated rate which puts us as one of the safest counties in new mexico and so that's something that is also a positive we do know though that most of the new cases almost all but most of the new cases are all of the uh um the delta variable and we know that that um that barium is the most infectious of all of the cobin 19 strands that are out there we certainly do have some beta and some gamma they're all present in our state but it's really delta that we're most concerned with right now uh we were kind of we were very much surprised by cdc when they came out and said that they were now recommending all personnel students wear masks but we don't

014know at this point if the public end department is going to follow that or not in some cases in the past they have followed cdc guidelines and other times they've not so we really don't know where they're going to go with that uh but some of this is certainly driven by some states that are seeing very large increases uh in in the number of cases and new mexico is seeing a rise and it's not an overwhelming rise that's occurring in some other places so that's really good news for us there are some concerns uh we've all been receiving um your emails i received some i know many have gone to the board uh there's been a lot of communication last few days so we appreciate you letting us know how you feel uh and we

015certainly have looked at those and read them the ones that have come to me um really have focused around the concerns of how do you enforce the mass mandate and concerns about singling out students or staff and their concerns about medical privacy and so i've had several people contact me about that concerns that the identification of vaccine status might lead to confrontation and bullying among students themselves worried how we might deal with that and what would be the steps we would take to avoid that um one of the ones i've heard a lot from our staff is their concern about the loss of instructional time needed to enforce these mandates puts them having to take time away from teaching and learning they feel they have so much to do this year they're really excited about

016the coming back in person learning uh and concerned about taking too much time away not only you know from mass but other things that might keep them away from their students and then um some of the individuals said you know i went and got my vaccine uh intestine just anticipation i have a little bit of a froggy throat today um in anticipation of not having to wear a mask and they feel that's a backtrack on the commitment that they received when they got the vaccination then of course i've heard from some who are just simply opposed to max completely so i want to to just talk a little bit about what the parameters are that we have to work around in as a school district and in school districts we are very interesting entity of

017new mexico we certainly belong to the community but we also belong to the state and so there are certain things that are under local border control there's some things that are in the state control and so we're not like all other states and i've had conversations with some people about you know other places they've been and honestly our system doesn't work quite the way that the one they were coming from did the um right now the mandate from the state is that all elementary children will wear masks if they they come to school and that's because children have not been vaccinated the vaccine is not available to children under ages 12 or younger and therefore because there's almost no vaccine protection that everyone including the staff will have to wear masks if they are in

018the building so um that's that's all staff and that is students i do want to really stress that there's been a there's continues to be a totally remote option we have a new spark academy a lot of the teachers that worked with this last year really wonderful creative did a great job and they elected to to stay on and start a remote academy for elementary and that academy will operate out of joe harris elementary school campus it will be a hundred percent remote and uh as of right now we have a very good number about 198 who have signed up but that was yesterday and having talked with janet chanel this afternoon said a lot of additional requests have come in today so i think we're going to definitely have have a a very sufficient

019enrollment to offer that academy and to offer all of the supports that would go with the remote academy and so i think we will be well over that 198 uh before school actually starts i've had some people ask me we still have a hybrid option we do not um now there's only really two options and so it's either in person or remote and that certainly is the choice of the family and we respect either of those two choices we think we can deliver a good program with both secondary is a little more complicated our middle schools and high schools mask at the the secondary level is determined by whether uh you're vaccinated and if you are voluntarily willing to reveal your status you're not required to do that but if you don't if you don't

020provide it then you are still required to wear a mask so you have to provide the documentation and you also have to be willing to show that documentation if it's passed so if the school nurse were to ask you for it you would have to provide the school nurse that that information or another administrator the other thing the system has to do is quickly identify those who are eligible to go without a mass and so one of the ways i think that will be accomplished this year not the only way but one of them will be seating charts and the state and the district are requiring that all staff all teachers have a seating chart and it's not just related to mass it certainly is related to our ability to quickly identify who's been exposed

021when we have to quarantine the students and yes quarantining is still here we will still have the requirements for close contact but they have been loosened considerably and uh you know we will not see as much of whole classrooms whole wings of buildings having to be quarantined anymore uh and so that's really really good news but everyone will have to have in the classroom a seating chart and then our staff has a responsibility to enforce the system that is required by the state and whatever is approved by the board so they do have a responsibility to to to do that and uh and i think as i've shared with you some have some concerns exactly how that process is going to work and not wanting it to take and take head into any of that

022very valuable uh very precious instructional time our first option is going to revolve around the mass pass and beth pendergrass our chief communications strategy and engagement officer is going to present a plan that we believe will meet the requirements of the toolkit it is the least restrictive option that we have within the parameters established by the new mexico public education department it doesn't totally eliminate the identification of students and staff but we believe it greatly minimizes it and there is input from all of our middle and high school principals who are the ones are going to have to make this work and they all agreed that this was probably the best option for option one and then option two of course is to require mass for all who are in the building or classroom uh

023some districts are requiring mass only in the classroom others are requiring them to be boring whenever you are inside and you know it so you know you don't have to wear them when you're eating or drinking there are several districts across i'm just gonna name two but there are a good number of districts across the state that are requiring best for all and that's the albuquerque public schools and we'll sell there's i've sure got a problem with lots today the los luna lunas public schools and then there are many others that are still struggling with this issue you know just like uh our district has been discussing what's the best way to go uh and have not decided as of yet but there are a good number that have gone both directions and so like

024with everything else as communities are divided uh people are divided across the state as to what's the best thing to do and then the other i just you know want to say you we all know it we've experienced it for the last 15 months but everything could change again when the new cdc guidelines come out um and the other is we've been told that if the number of cases start to rise to a certain level uh then it's possible then we could go back to much more severe restrictions so as i said earlier it's at everybody's best interest to try to keep it keep the numbers down we want our kids to be able to come to school if they want to be here and we want them we want to stay open if at

025all possible and off of that live show and we want to continue to offer the options for those who want to be remote and respect my parents choice and not to be in person learning and then last i just i've mentioned this before sometimes we get a new audience and we have new people there are um you know still this months don't have the option of deciding which rules we're going to follow which ones we don't so uh we must meet the media minimum expectations and there are consequences for districts and individuals who do not adhere to state requirements and i've had people say to me well why don't we just go our own way why don't we just do whatever we want and just ignore the state of new mexico and so there are

026a lot of reasons why that won't work very easily but i think the one that is most prominent is that 98 of our school funding for operations comes from the state of new mexico and so money raised by local taxes and you say well i pay taxes you do and particularly the the taxation uh for facilities and technology that we use to build our buildings but you can't use that but anything operation you can't use that for salaries which is ninety percent of our budget you can't use it for utilities you can't use it for any of those things not supplies materials books nothing so ninety percent of our funding is determined by the state legislature and comes with the state of new mexico and so if you decide you're not wanting to be part

027of that uh you would end up having to come up with a way to raise taxes admittedly and you're not allowed to do that either so it's just i wanted people to understand because in in some states um your your money is raised locally 100 but that's not the case in new mexico so um the other thing is that we can start with the least restrictive model which is one possibility as long as we stay within the parameters of the toolkit but we can also move to a more restrictive one uh later if we have the cases starting to rise and we started seeing a lot of problems we could shift to go to something that's more restrictive and then last our courts in new mexico have determined that public health orders i have the

028force of law and they are to be considered as such and uh and certainly have the ability to be able to direct um all entities on certain types of things they can and cannot do during the pandemics so i just wanted you to kind of review what the structure is in our state but we definitely are dependent upon the state there's one other thing i didn't put in there too and the other is new mexico in general and our district is just like all the others we are dependent upon federal money it could not operate without it in new mexico we could not operate without it in this district uh it it would affect our ability for food services a lot of the funding we have for children with disabilities and otherwise so federal funding

029is also an important component and it's also tied into some of these expectations and i'll close by just saying this i i don't know you know i i really hope that mass are not going to dominate the conversation this year our children deserve to come back and have a wonderful school year we are so eager to have them come we are so eager to start a year we want it to be such a good year our children have had such a difficult time as some of our families our staff everyone has been touched by this but we really want crisis beyond the positive note we're excited very excited to have our students back and regardless of which way uh the family chose whether it was in person or virtual i could tell you we have

030so many wonderful experiences planned for both here and we want them to be able to take advantage of that and um and and move their their education their learning forward and we are looking forward to having a wonderful year with our students and staff we thank all of our families uh we're so glad that that uh you're back this year and we hope that it will be a very great year and i stand for any questions okay thank you dr cleveland are there any questions from the board if you want to just raise your hand and let me know or you can hold them until we get into the presentations okay no questions at this time all right thank you okay thank you dr cleveland so much for your um for your comments i appreciate

031that noreen you didn't have anything right i just saw you popped on you're good okay okay get back to my to my notes okay so for our next item we will go to approve the prioritized agenda and propose time allocations um any questions comments on the prioritize agenda as it's been presented is there a motion to approve this board member jeff morgan i make a motion to approve the prioritized agenda okay this is board member noreen scott and i second okay we have a motion by jeffrey morgan in a second by noreen scott kim can you take a roll call vote for us on that oh yes ma'am i can um vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member colin yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes that is 5-0 thank you the

032motion carries okay um for our next item it's our public comment and these are those who wish to um give the board public comment we have a form on our site and we received quite a few this um in the last week and so i um i'm gonna go through uh all of our public comment we got a total of 25 this time and i tried to go through like i normally do so i can summarize those we did get a number pretty late um but i also went through and read through those and so i have those as well and but if you'll just be patient with me as we go through those and so we have like i said 25 we got from angelina nunez and she asked why students um at rio

033rancho cyber have not been issued chromebooks while their students in the district have them and jeremy m asked for no critical race there to be taught in school and also that masks are everyone wear masks or no one wear masks and so that we can keep people's privacy kristen danielle she asked that she stated that the re-entry plan is ridiculous and unhealthy for our students to wear masks and other side effect effects to wearing masks and wants the board to push back on the state with its mandates jennifer d grigorio and she vaccinated her child so that they could go to school mask free this year and is asking that we don't punish vaccinated students and which she feels is the majority nicole shaver asked that at a minimum that unvaccinated students or masks are

034masked and that um we actually go ahead and have all students go back into mass per cdc guidelines john morlock i'm calling for matt calling for masks um would be a regression from our current public environment i'm concerned about a violation of private and medical rights and thinks we should drop the mask requirement um alan collette allen asked that all mass or no mass and not to segregate our students we received two from cheryl daniels stating um several states are not requiring mass for anyone including districts around our state and that school that districts around our state should declare a cease and desist to the state and it should be up to families she's also worried about bullying if some students have to wear mass and others don't danny mayers reconsider masking all children for

035kova 19 and the delta variant is less dangerous for them and less contagious for children under 12. preliminary statistics from last year indicate that suicide rates and minors have risen possibly to 24 percent have risen 24 and there's also an increase in mental disorders and asking us to not give into fear paula renton could teachers teach without masks if and they are socially distant lauren waits mandated universal masking in elementary school puts us out of compliance um with fape and ida um in special education and it's especially difficult for those students that are in speech language therapy and that we should have something on their iep uh with agreements from the families that allows them to take off their mass during their therapy sessions and that proof of vaccine should not be publicly displayed sorry

036if i had had this before we just got so many then i would have summarized them a little bit differently but travis brown and mask the students and let's see massive students and their family has an immunocompromised family member kelly boyles i'm asking for no crt which is critical race theory in schools no mass for students think state and public school system is corrupt kyla murphy no crt in schools critical race theory julianne garcia no critical race theory in schools no mask mandate um jean i'm sorry i'm going to say your last name incorrectly riffenberger no mass in schools also concerned about critical race theory patricia mchale no mass no critical race theory monique brown students should should all mask janae carr students should wear masks melinda kinkade masks should be a choice not a

037mandate stephanie andrews no critical race theory in schools um c rey that we should have no masks i might think i missed these two april marker and she has a personal stance and no child should be masked but because of the guidelines she believes that all students should be masked to avoid any segregation and is also concerned about segregation possibly in lunchrooms katie hannah why are there so many inconsistencies with reopening our rio rancho public schools and some schools are doing in-person meets meet-and-greets assessments and open houses and others are only virtual saying that they're following health protocols there should be equal opportunity for parents and students district-wide that is all of the i believe i got through them all those are all of our public comment for today so thank you thank you very

038much for for doing that you really did an awesome job thank you thank you and usually when we get a large amount i try to just summarize them with numbers but because some kind of came in late it was difficult for me to do that but i do want to tell um all who are watching and who may watch this later we are grateful for the public comment that we do receive and anyone who wishes to give public comment please go to our rrps board page and submit the form there we um we read each and ever as you can see i read each and every one of those comments today so i could summarize them to to you and so we're grateful for those public comments okay next is for our reports so we

039have a facilities update on colinas del norte elementary and also mountain view middle school melanie archibeque our executive director of facilities is here to present good evening madam president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland um as you said i'm melanie archibak executive director of facilities so before i get a little bit into the actual projects colinas and mountain view i just wanted to take a broader approach on how we look at projects so when we start to look at projects for the summer we assess everything that is required we have items that are considered long lead items and so that's something that means it's going to take a long time to order from when we actually get it hvac units are typically 8 to 12 weeks and so we bid out accordingly so

040that we're ahead of that schedule with intentions to have the units on site as soon as the students are out on summer break so we can really maximize the summer so that's what we did going into the summer we were very optimistic started early ordered everything what we didn't foresee was the unforeseen and the volatile nature that we're seeing right now with the covet implications in terms of delays and shortages and materials so the two schools kalinas and mountain view are the ones that um you know where we're starting remote um because we currently do not have all the hvac units in um what we're saying and that's not the only items that we're seeing are delayed or not in the other ones we can manage we do our best to work within the issues

041that we have but there's nothing we can do when we do not have hvac units so i'm going to start with kalinas and kind of tell you where it's at as of today we are doing uh hvac replacements on four of the buildings it also includes interior renovations and some roof work um three of the buildings are looking really well in terms of the interiors and we're hoping to have those complete uh by the end of this week um and then go ahead and start moving again that doesn't have hvac units um the last building which is uh building four we're about halfway done with the interiors and we're hoping to complete that interior-wise by the end of next week and then we'll start moving in and allow the staff to come in and set

042up their classrooms what we're doing in anticipation of not having all the hvac units so today we actually had eight arrive out of 28 need it for that school and so we have ordered temporary cooling units um those have arrived those are being installed in the classrooms um and then we are also putting the hepa filters that we put in all the classrooms last year we're making sure that they're in these syst these rooms as well our hopes are that by the time and i say our hopes because i have no confirmation we've seen on some of our delays them being pushed back four times this summer so i can't tell you with full confidence when we'll actually get all of them um but we're hoping that we will have them by the time the

043kids come back in the situation that we don't as i said we do have those temporary units they are here they are being installed and we have the hepa filters installed as well so we can be prepared for that um so that's where we're at with kalinas mountain view middle school experiencing the same type of delays um the finishes are a little bit more extensive there so as of today they were grinding or polishing excuse me polishing all the floors and kind of finishing up interiors but there's a little bit more work required on interiors we don't have any hvac units that have arrived at that and it's kind of hit or miss some of our other projects that we've had we have all of them come in some of them none um it we're

044just kind of subject to what i will say this volatile implications of cobit um and i wanted to read kind of one of the letters that we received from the contractor just so you can and this is very consistent that we're getting on all of our projects but due to nationwide shortages and raw materials and a global surge in construction activity following the cobit 19 pandemic the construction industry is experiencing unexpected unprecedented impacts to the supply chain for the construction equipment and materials broadly and so on some of these when you think of systems like hvac units it's multiple components that are in so perhaps everything could be there but one component the major delays that we're seeing is roofing materials um duct detectors of course the rooftop units can controls but we can manage

045everything else we saw some lighting delays but we just supplemented it with other lights but we'd really like to get the actual units in so beyond bringing in temporary units um we're just kind of subject to when they arrive i stand for any questions thank you melanie i know it's so it's got to be so frustrating right now trying to get all these things in so um we'll go ahead and just i'll just call out names jeffrey morgan you have any questions for melanie at this time i do not uh thanks for the update greatly appreciate that i i was going to ask was what was the delay but dr cleveland kind of alluded to that earlier about supplies being a shortage because of covert so when you say it that totally get it totally

046understand thank you thank you catherine colin thank you um melanie so you're saying that you're bringing in um these temporary units for cooling so are we renting those because and what is the cost of these exp must be bringing in a lot of cooling units um no so we're actually purchasing them my intent is to roll them over to the next large project which we have we've started designing rio rancho middle school and unfortunately you guys understand how large the hvac replacement projects are i think we'll be able to use them over the years until we can continue replacing everything and then just start the cycle again i want to say that we've spent about 36 000 in temporary units but it's quite a few units we already had hepa filter units from last year

047we received a grant um so we spent that down and kind of put those out throughout all the schools okay thank you noreen scott no questions at this time okay and when coleman um melanie thank you i know that you talked about bringing in the alternative systems and um any anything or you know i'm just wondering about the um safety with the filters and things like that using those units if we are putting our students at a higher risk um if you can just kind of talk to that and i apologize if you had addressed that and i just didn't catch it no that's a really good question um so the toolkit what it has is for the space so we have units that cannot accept um murf13 if you kind of remember all the

048the rating discussions last year we have units that just can't support that so we're doing the highest possible um the reason that we got the funding in the grant is the state put it out there that for any and this is one of the requirements if you cannot if your unit does not support support merv 13 you put in the highest rated that you can get in there and have a hepa filter so we're putting in the temporary units and the hepa filter to assure that the spaces are safe and are meeting the requirements so that we can bring the kids back does that does that address your question still there when we're going to go with that we're good mellie okay thank you how do the how are the teachers and the staff and

049the schools feeling are they feeling like this is going to be okay as we use these kind of units and everything else or is it gonna cause any sort of stress as we get fi you know start to try to get the kids back in jana do you wanna i haven't heard anything specifically from staff um the principals are aware of what we're doing and i i don't know if janna if you can speak more to that but the feelings of the stuff that's okay no i have i haven't heard anything particular from the staff okay i think in the cleanest they have a really good plan that's good okay all right dr cleveland did you want to say anything well i would just have to say you know we this is our first day

050back so they really haven't had an opportunity the real test is going to be when we get students back in and generally i think with staff there's few in the building and we'll have a better feel for that but i know that melanie's looked into all of that in terms of the number of units how to place women and i think it's probably the best that we could possibly do given the constraints that we had but we really haven't had a lot of time to be able to really see how it's going to work um but i you know i i would just add i think based on what melanie has said we've always needed cooling units every year we've ever opened we've had to have them air conditioning it goes out and one portable

051or it goes out in one wing you know we just have always had some issues as we start back up and i think those will those units will be put to good use as not only said we've got several years still to go in terms of some of the um the the installations and they will be used every time we need them so i i think yeah we wish we didn't have to invest in it i mean we really wish we have to spend the money for that but i think it's really clear it's not a waste of all i think it'll be something we will use over and over all right thank you thank you dr cleveland anyone else from the word anything else any other questions okay thank you so much melanie we

052appreciate you coming on and giving that report thank you okay okay for our next item item h we're going to approve the consent agenda are there any questions or is there a motion to approve the consent mr secretary noreen scott i move to approve the consent agenda okay this is board member jeff morgan a second okay we have a motion by noreen scott in a second by jeff morgan uh kim can you take a roll call vote for us yes i can vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member cohen yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes uh it's approved 5-0 thank you motion carries okay moving into our business portion and so for our first item under business we will consider the approval of the unapproved rrps regular board meeting minutes for

053july 26 2021. um are there any changes or anything that needed to take place on that um on those minutes that anyone saw okay do we have a motion for approval this is board member jeff morgan i make a motion to approve the rec um i'm sorry the july 26 minutes i'm trying to look at my screen and see this at the same time but i i was also trying to okay now i'm for that that's it i'll make a motion to approve the july 26 uh 21 20 21 minutes thank you thank you do we have a second this is board member catherine cullen a second thank you all right we have a motion by jeffrey morgan and a second by catherine collin and kim can you take a roll call vote for us

054yes vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member cullen yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes approve 5-0 thank you okay for our next item it's to consider the approval of the rps recommendations for meeting certain requirements with within the ped kova 19 response tool kit i'm including mask requirements and we have beth pendergrass our chief communications strategy and engagement officer we also have sherry carver who i'd like to say welcome sherry carver i'm our executive director of student services here to present good evening president galbraith dr cleveland and members of the board i am here with you again a week later to talk about information in regards to coven 19 guidelines around mask wearing and particularly in the secondary schools and as i mentioned last monday and as dr cleveland alluded to

055this is a very divided topic as dr cleveland said we have heard from families and staff members who believe everyone should wear a mask we've heard from families and staff members who believe that no one should wear a mask and we've seen the protests we've received articles on either side of the mass debate that attempt to dispute and discredit um other side science so i mean it's really hard uh to know what is best in this case um and i can really truly say there's only two things i'm 100 certain of right now and one is that there's no way we can make everyone happy in this and the second thing i know 100 is that we have to work within the parameters of the new mexico ped coven 19 response tool kit which allows

056for some flexibility but not much first slide please so i'm going to reiterate a few points that dr cleveland made one everyone in elementary schools is required to wear masks in secondary schools students staff volunteers and visitors who have provided evidence of full vaccination are not required to wear masks based on the needs of the community secondary school administrators may opt to make mass use universal students who choose not to wear a mask must provide evidence next slide please there's no requirement for fully vaccinated individuals to disclose their vaccination status schools that accept voluntary submission of documentation must keep it protected secondary schools are required to develop a system where we can easily verify whether an individual on campus has provided evidence of vaccine so dr cleveland went through those and i just wanted to

057touch on those briefly next slide again as dr cleveland mentioned the new cdc guidelines recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers staff students and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status we anticipate that the nmped toolkit will likely change to reflect this guidance however we have not seen those changes yet next slide so i am going to take you through our options and like dr cleveland mentioned we did meet with all middle school and high school principals and we discussed everything from the comments that we're receiving from parents and staff members the likelihood of the toolkit changing having to monitor the mask wearing teachers having to police masks the issues with identifying vaccinated versus unvaccinated the fairness between elementary and secondary um the possibility of students who might treat other students differently regardless of

058either side right those who got vaccinated so they wouldn't have to wear a mask our county's current covid 19 numbers concerns over the delta variant and i could go on over all the different things that uh the principals kind of talked about when they came up with these two options next slide please so option one we're calling the mask pass this of course is for secondary students only vaccinated students who do not wish to wear a mask may request what we're calling a mask pass a form has been created for parents and guardians to complete that allows for them to upload the appropriate vaccination evidence next slide this is just a snapshot of the form essentially this form would only go to one to two or three confidential administrators or nurses within each school next

059slide please once the form has been submitted each school would distribute the mass pass to the student through a method of their choosing students must have the mass passed with them each day and show it to administrators teachers and bus drivers etc if they do not have their past they'll be asked to wear a mask schools will have masks available for students who forget their mask or their mask pass students in mass could be those who are vaccinated but choose to wear a mask those who forgot their mask pass or those who run unvaccinated so we felt it makes it a little less distinguishable in regards to those who are vaccinated or those who are unvaccinated it really puts the onus on students who do not want to wear a mask to make sure that

060they have their mask pass and essentially they can have it out as they walk into a classroom and show their teacher their name would be on the back of it and so we know whose card it belongs to they should have the card with them as they go on the bus if they don't have their card then they wear a mask that day so it really kind of helps counter that idea of knowing who's vaccinated versus who's not vaccinated in addition we're learning that a lot of students who are vaccinated are going to still choose to wear their mask and again like we said no masks are required outside for any student and that's for elementary or secondary our timeline if this is the option that's picked we would send the form to families tomorrow

061the mass passes will be printed and distributed to the schools schools would work to get their mass passes distributed as quickly as possible understanding you know school starting and we'd be working as fast as we could so students would be asked to wear their masks until they got their pass next slide for the staff members with this option staff members who qualify who do not want to wear a mask would upload their vaccination verification to talent ed and this is what they've already been doing to opt out of surveillance testing so this is not new to staff members a mass free request form would be sent to staff members to complete including verification that they've uploaded their vaccine to talented and allowing hr to verify their vaccination status with their administrator once they've completed that

062form then a list of approved staff names would be sent to the principal or supervisor so they know who can go without a mask and then of course option two is math for everyone and so there's not a lot involved in this it would be the same as elementary everyone in the secondary schools would be required to wear masks next slide and just as a reminder districts can adjust as needed you could increase based on your substantial or coven 19 transmission in the school so we would start tracking those numbers of course like we did last year when school starts you can change it based on increasing transmission in the community so i just uh dr cleveland already went over the current sandoval county numbers so they're there again as well but we could continue

063to monitor those numbers if the board chose to start less restrictive and then um restrict it more if we find that it's difficult to enforce then we could change that as well or if we hear more from the community and the board gets a feeling that we should move in a direction other than what you'd select tonight then we could adjust as well next slide so i'm going to turn it over to sheri to go through her portion and then we can stand for questions good evening president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland it is great to be back thank you uh so let me just start with what the toolkit says on the mask policy the guidelines that we have to follow that schools will update their student discipline matrices or add

064an addendum for the upcoming year and describe the consequences for violating non-compliance and the school policy will set forth the number of times a student may remove a mask and receive a warning if you'll change the slide there thank you and then last families must be provided a notice of the updates by september 1st and schools will collect signatures from families indicating receipt of the revision we do have a plan to send out the notice to parents and collect those signatures electronically after visiting with the principals we have decided on an addendum as our choice to notify parents if you'll turn it to the next slide there is the addendum that we have come up with again as dr cleveland said you know we don't want we want to keep kids in school we want

065to keep kids in the classroom um so um we're not going to just assume that they're refusing to wear a mask we will approach the students ask them if they forgot their mask and if they did we're going to provide a mask to them and remind them to bring their mask in the future to school if they're not wearing a mask or they're wearing it improperly we'll again remind them to put on the mask and remind them about the correct way to wear the mask but as this slide says if you know the student is refusing to wear a mask then we are going to have to send the student home and then the school administrator will contact the parent or guard guardian to discuss the mass requirements for in-person learning and we want to

066give parents the choice to either remain in person with a mask or the possibility of transferring their student to our virtual options if the student remains or chooses to remain in person they must agree to wear the mask and if he refuses he she refuses again to wear the mask the student will be automatically assigned to our our virtual learning and the last part of this is the placement will be re-evaluated at the end of each grading period the second slide there on the addendum is what i mentioned at the very first you know we want to keep kids in school so we're going to assume that they're not just refusing or choosing not to wear the mask and we will provide a mask clean mask and ask them nicely and you know educate them

067on proper maskware but that's the addendum that we discussed with all of our principles and uh decided to propose tonight to you and with that we'll stand for questions you um before i go to questions dr cleveland did you want to add anything before i go to the board or should i go directly or just a reminder that this applies only to those students who have not provided documentation and are not required to wear a mask at all this only applies this addendum to those who do not have that documentation in place okay is this the whole this is the whole presentation right beth as i go into questions right okay okay so we'll go ahead and start with questions i'm noreen scott yeah how how easy is it to uh replicate the math mask

068pass well you know it's certainly something that someone could always do we have them professionally printed we gave a couple samples to our board members and then the labels that are printed from powerschool or actual powerschool labels that would be on the backs of the cards um so i don't want to say it couldn't be done but uh it would be difficult i think i'm sorry beth i didn't see a copy of the mask pass oh i guess just if you're there in person you can see um so catherine you're looking at it do you could you uh see them being replicated well they're they're not easily replicated by the paper would it be on the same type of paper it is that yes yeah so it's not like you can just i mean i

069guess you could i mean somebody could replicate it i mean people replicate money so anybody could do it if they want to um so it's but it is on a different type of paper um but of course they will still have at the school who's vaccinated who's not so if they have any concerns that somebody might have replicated it they can check with the nurse's office correct beth that is correct and i could if i could just add one thing that uh beth said there's a label that comes out of power school and that will have to go on the back and that would be my that would also be uh somewhat difficult to replicate so you have to have both thank you uh catherine you have any questions discussion uh dr cleveland how many

070did you say was what was the percentage that's vaccinated in sandoval county 70 70 70 700 okay and then um the other question is is one of the the public comments that we did have that i was curious about is with speech therapy in elementary schools will they be able to take off their masks to do speech therapy because of course you know that's a big part of being able to see what they're what they're doing i would have to check into that for sure and if if jerry is on uh joy feel free to to add um there are provisions that are made in ieps for students with disabilities um and if there is a decision uh by the iep committee and and jerry's on by the physician uh a student can uh temporarily

071i believe um be excused from that but jerry is the expert on that so let me turn it over to him at this point for let's say elementary students i don't think we're still able to do um speech therapy without masks we do have some students that have a mask exemption um so it would be with those students but then the staff staff are required to wear additional ppe um you know if we're looking at students at the middle school or high school level that have a mask pass and i then again it's not an issue but um last year we did buy um lots of screens and so forth but i still think we have the six foot or even brief is a three to six foot mandate so i don't think we are

072allowed to at this point and the state hasn't come out with further guidance okay can i add just one favor ask a question jerry can they not be behind the screen very much like the board has where they can see the teacher and the teacher can see them as long as there's a physical barrier there i believe the mask can be removed and i don't know if we have enough of those and the uh you know the the other question is so much of speech therapy today has gone online anyway a lot of it is and and so uh the two-way visual uh gives a pretty good uh indication of where the mouth or the tongue should be when you're attempting to pronounce some words so i know that a lot of speech therapy is

073done that way today we still really value our speech therapist and want it to be an in-person experience but i i would assume the plexiglass is just fine if you have a plexiglass between the student and the teacher we we did ask that last year and we were told no that they still had to happen six feet but i think if we do have the barrier and then three feet between each of them i believe we can well this year the guideline and beth correct me if i'm wrong the guideline is three three feet for students not six i believe isn't that correct unless a staff member is involved then it's six feet why is that so if it's a if it's a student it's three feet but if it's if there's an adult teacher

074then it has to be six feet okay that's that just makes so much sense yeah okay okay wonderful guidelines my pet again and you can explain it to this later because we'd love to know exactly okay um and then you know there was a with a lot of the comments that we've heard um from the community i know that a lot are just in dr cleveland you had discussed this as well um it's just not being just don't abide by the guidelines in ped um that they gave out and uh the public needs to know that we have to do these when they with secondary they must wear their masks there is a school district that voted to make it optional and they now have to go back and look at that vote because ped

075can remove a whole school board and remember when pedro's removes the school board then they appoint who they want on that school board so i just wanted to say that for the public to make sure that they're you're aware we cannot go against peds guidelines on the elementary level okay all right thank you i'm glad you brought that up because i was i was hoping that that would come out so so thank you and let's go over to win coleman can you hear me okay i can yes you're good okay it's just raining where we are so um so i have a question in regards to the circumstances where like i'd like to know how in secondary um if if the decision is made that it you do the uh where it's optional or the

076vaccinated students how you're going to handle issues like lunch and then also too what happens when it comes to for example like the nurses and if students are sick and you know what are we going to have to put the students that have not been vaccinated in a completely different area are we prepared to do that and what other situations do you as a district think that it could be an issue of having to completely separate the two different groups of students thank you for those questions when those are really good questions in regards to lunch you know what the ped requires is that we have that whatever evidence readily available so that would be their mask pass so at you know during lunch any staff member could go and ask to see a mass

077pass but really during lunch students aren't required to wear their masks because they're eating and so i don't necessarily see that as an issue there are no plans to segregate students from other students due to their vaccination status essentially you know the only thing that the guidance says is someone who's a close contact if they're vaccinated they wouldn't have to quarantine at home but we would treat the case the same way as we did last year where we would pull close contacts and have them sent home and then if they were vaccinated they would be able to return to school but even that has changed because our close contacts is going to be different it's no longer a full classroom we're looking at far less individuals who would be considered close contacts and so i

078just want to reassure the community and the board that we do not have plans to segregate students in different locations based on their vaccination status i know there was some confusion you know the ped put out a recommendation one of which was well you could have unvaccinated students eat outside or you know they offered that as a suggestion but that is not something that the district is planning and so just just so i understand that if a student that has not received a vaccination is sick showing symptoms that are consistent with the covid uh virus that they could be right next to a student that uh maybe just have their vaccine i mean so just so i understand and i'm just trying to put it all in perspective so that they'll just be in the

079nurses um station with their mask on and then i mean if if the decision is made to um give people the choice they'd be there with their mask on and then somebody that's had their vaccine if they don't want to wear it then they won't be wearing their mask i i i'm not sure i understand i think what you're asking is if they would if they went to the nurse's office if one would get to go without their mask and one with their mask if they were showing symptoms of of covid um and they're they in they're at the nurse's office that that they would just be there with all the other students and just with a mask on if that's how the board voted i think for the nurse's office or for our care

080rooms those standards would be different from anywhere else in the school and our nurses would determine those coveted safe practices but if an individual is in a care room most likely any individual in the care room is going to have a mask on okay thank you i just needed that clarification in the care room you're still that will still be in place correct correct okay just thank you for that clarification and i don't have any other questions thanks dr cleveland did you want to add on that one well i it was excited i just wanted everyone to be sure that you know that we still have our care rooms which are isolated rooms from the nurse's office anyone showing signs of covid would go to the care room and and so they there's a natural

081separation but it's the same one we used all that shoe and it worked very well for us thank you all right jeffrey morgan i have a question in the statement um comment i should say uh beth uh sherry i'm not sure who came up with the the mass pass idea i thought that was pretty cool that's pretty creative i'm not sure who came up with that but whoever it was tell them tell them thank you and uh board member noreen scott had asked about being able to duplicate that and we discovered it looks like it's going to be hard to do who's going to verify the vaccination cards that has to be turned in submitted with that form that you showed so those forms will be submitted to administration into the nurse's office and the

082nurse staff have access to verify the vaccination records because those can be duplicated as well yes sir and the reason why i know that because i have to when a lady made a mistake and she corrected it but that's the reason why i'm asking those cards could be duplicated and copied falsely signed so i just want to make sure that whoever's going to be verifying this that they are verifying that those vaccination forms are accurate so i think that's important as well there's a state registry um from oregon uh which is the official doh registry and the nurse's cabinet it can check anyone can check actually um who's on that list the only problem with using that list alone is that not everybody is on the list and there are some exceptions on how people

083have have gotten vaccinated for example some people went to other states especially people along with texas the colorado border they had vaccines early and they crossed the state and got vaccinated they're in the they're not in the new mexico voh so there are a few that are not in that list so it's got to be kind of a multiple approach you've got the list you've got the card if one appears to be fraudulent then we would follow up on that and verify whether it's accurate or not but there are some cross checks and and some ways to to generally uh be very careful with that and our nurses are aware of how to do that okay thank you and i would add to um uh vice president morgan that if we do see a lot

084of people duplicating or trying to duplicate or submitting false records of vaccination then the board certainly has the option to go to all masks you know if we see that it's not working then the board could say you know we tried uh you know it wasn't successful folks didn't follow the rules and so now we have to go to all masks all right thank you that's all i have thanks guys vice president morgan i will have to give credit to beth for the mass pass she's so creative uh we do ask that the community be uh patient with us because you know as you know secondary starts right away so it may not be day one that we're able to get all of those mass passes out but we are certainly going to work at

085it and verify you know the vaccine and get those out as soon as we can i see when has her hand raised go ahead win yes this i'd like to direct this to um the district attorney lauren if you would speak to um what we as a district need to be careful careful about in regard to privacy issues which has been a big concern of mine and as we're talking about things like this past and can you just maybe address some of the things that you have reviewed since this has come out yeah um absolutely um remember coleman i i don't think that there's anything uniquely new in the circumstance we've always guarded medical information carefully it's protected by ferpa and that's going to continue to be the the case as we get information about

086who has been vaccinated who hasn't we will protect and guard that information according to the the law in the ghouls um with the with the mass pass itself a person who has one doesn't have to wear it on their on their clothes they don't have to show it to anybody except for an administrator at the appropriate time good thank you okay before we go over to catherine collin dr cleveland did you want to add anything before i just i saw your honesty one thing i would add and just build on what beth said is and we we really are asking for everybody's help to pull together to make this work because if it doesn't work then we're going to have to go to something more restrictive and none of us want that so and you

087know if everyone will pull together uh and make it work then i think we'll be able to continue to offer this option but if we start seeing people are not following the rules and we're beginning to see an increase in cases it makes it hard to be able to continue so it's really just a plea from everyone to do your very best to make it work because we're all we're all benefit from it if in fact that you know we we do that so um the other is um it's just a comment and i i know there are a lot of people that disagree with that but uh it's been said several times and beth may have said it earlier we we don't have the we don't have the prerogative to decide what rules will

088obey and which ones we want and you begin to think about a society where each one of us can decide what we're going to obey and what we're not uh what kind of situation that could lead to and so um you know we all work hard to change the things we don't like that's part of our democratic system we don't like something we go through the right process and we try to change it but we are asking everyone to pull together and not not for the school district or not for our staff but for the kids you know really we want to be able to offer a rich extracurricular we want to have those normal school years classes so we really need everyone to pull together and make it work we're really asking for student

089and parent community support uh to make this a thin year for our kids okay thank you dr cleveland catherine collin um so you kind of mentioned this lauren to with with wen's question so with this pass it could be kept in a wallet or something like that and then brought out to show the administrators is that correct so they they're not showing it anywhere on their um ids or anything like that yeah yeah they wouldn't have to wear it they wouldn't have to put it on their idea i mean i guess they could if they wanted to but that wouldn't be a requirement okay they could keep it in their their pocket or their book bag for when it's for when it's needed and so i would assume that they manage their their teachers are

090not going to have to look at it every day they'll probably figure out who's already you know maybe once or twice just to remember who's who has it and then because i i don't think they're going to be showing it every single day be when they come in the classroom or at the school is that correct but i i suspect that the teachers will probably get to know pretty quick who who should be wearing a mask and who doesn't need to wear one and of course this is all this is all a voluntary process as well nobody has to disclose their vaccination status it's not required however if they want the benefit of not having to wear a mask that is the that's that is what is required for pd that they'll have to demonstrate

091that they they actually have been vaccinated our secondary teachers many of them have 150 170 students but they have a lot of kids and i know some of them have have talked about uh everyone has to have a seating chair if you're quiet this year it's required by the public head department but you know on that seating chart you could very discreetly mark who needs a mask and who doesn't and therefore you wouldn't be asking to show it as you enter the classroom at all the teacher would always do that after the first time and so they're concerned about two things i mean they're concerned about um not asking students for it as they come in so other students can see it also not wanting to waste the structural time to do that would slow

092down let's start a class every day so i they will develop i think very effective ways of knowing and who in their class house the past and who does not the other thing though is it will change and there were students that will decide to get the vaccination and have it have so the list will not always be static but with you know the schools will have a system by which you can update that but i i don't envision at all teachers standing in the hall and asking for a pass before you can enter their questions uh that would be a waste of time but it will also be um it would be frustrating for everybody involved so teachers are very clever and and they know how to work that they'll find a way to

093make it as unobtrusive as possible okay thank you okay maureen scott did you still want to say something yes i have a second question will all our teachers wear masks or not uh sorry you're a little quiet you asked if all the teachers will wear masks will they be required to wear masks no so um in the slide presentation we talk about the staff requirements they upload their verification to our employee portal called talented and then they would fill out a form on their own that requests to be masked free and of course remember this is secondary only because all of elementary is required to wear a mask so middle and high school only and once they request that and upload their verification and get permission then the principal would know which staff can go

094mask free you're muted and i was muted trying to tell you you're muted but um i wasn't clear that that would work for for all teachers then so okay thank you okay and then when coleman yes and i would like um dr cleveland if you would speak to um or anybody else administration-wise i could give some input in what i see as just a contradiction between and i know it was addressed before i'd like to hear it one more time cdc saying that they encourage um everybody vaccinated or not to wear a mask and yet the public education department um is is is passing this off as to the districts uh to make the decision and giving more freedom which is i can respond to that quickly and then you know if anyone else wants

095to jump in um they had they had just they had just delivered the toolkit and they were not going to revise it within a day or two after it had already been distributed they did make it very clear that they will continue to watch and they are expecting to have some additional guidance coming from cdc related to public schools only and they are hope they are waiting to see what that is going to look like and if there's going to be any other additional requirements that are coming from that and that they were only updated at the regular two-week intervals so it may very well be coming to your point at night becoming at the next um you know at the uh at the next public health meeting but it might not new mexico has

096one of the better vaccination rates across the country and one of the things they're looking at is what is the vaccine vaccination rate of that particular area and state so in that area we may you know qualify for a little less strenuous requirements but we really don't know but i think you make a really good point there is that contradiction and it's really frustrating for everyone because part of the time we follow cdc and part of the time we don't and you kind of wish for some consistency in that but uh i did receive an email from one of the deputy secretaries um that said she was they were working on a revision to the toolkit and so i don't know what that means and there were no specifics but i do have that email

097so i think it's quite possible there could be some changes in a short period of time but i don't know that one way or the other and then to your last point is yes if they were going to make any changes it surely would have been nice if it would be done to start school and we kind of go down one path and might have to change it later on but but that's the that's the hand we've been dealt and we're gonna deal with that so uh you know we have a plan up until the time uh if there are any changes uh we we're moving there you go yeah yes um do you know when it comes to that i know that you talked about the percentage of the uh population in new mexico

098that's vaccinated what's the age breakdown so do you know as far as the student pop student age population that's been vaccinated in our state i'm just curious we don't know but we know it's over the age of 12 and that no child under the age of 12 has legally been able to receive the vaccine up till now we've been told that probably we're three or four months away from the vaccine that will be approved for younger children but that certainly remains to be seen so um to your point it's 70 of those that are older and then 12. i i don't know at all but i i've certainly heard in some of the meetings that i've been on um the the number goes down as the age of the individual goes down so a lot

099more seniors have had the vaccine and students who are 13. so you know but i i haven't seen any specific numbers about the breakdown by age uh certainly energy for the older because they have the vaccine first and foremost and uh departments for the original kevin 19 was greater uh for older funds one of the things that we're seeing now though that is troublesome is the delta variant is um is is attacking children early teens and it's a pretty severe case often if you get it and so a lot of the things that we heard about the original covet don't apply to the delta variable thank you okay thank you do we have further questions from the board anything else that came up any discussion that you want to bring up with in regards to

100the presentation dr cleveland as you've been talking to teachers and principals is your recommendation i'm just curious i know you gave us these different options and stuff but where are you kind of feeling that is the right place for our district well it's like everything else it's hard because you see you know pros and cons both ways but i definitely lean towards starting as lenient as we can and seeing if we can't maintain a really low rate of infection you know last year we did a really good job with that our buildings were clean our staff were careful our kiddos were careful and we kept it even in the worst of times um uh better than some other areas did so my recommendation was putting skeletons it's less strenuous uh but with a really clear

101understanding of everybody that if we're not careful and the cases start to rise then everything is back on the table again and we'll be back to the board and asking for reconsideration so i would go with one for now would be my recommendation uh however i certainly understand um the districts that have chosen to do number two and it's certainly their prerogative and and so far i think in the the districts i thought it was about 50 50 in terms of which direction you could go okay thank you dr glenn i appreciate it okay go ahead katherine hey real quick hold on catherine sherry can you mute your microphone real quick you can hear me double there we go sorry okay just uh so we can just start the discussion um i'm for the mass

102pass that's where i'd like to start out of course we can always like dr cleveland said um you know if changes or we have some issues then we can always um tighten it up but that's where i'm at thank you katherine i'm in that same place um so i i you know though we're playing this game that we played last year right where we make a decision and then you know possibly a week later or two even two days later it can all change on us which is unfortunate because everyone is so passionate um as we receive all these emails and then there's not a whole lot we can do about it but but i agree with that as well anyone else from the board want any discussion that you guys want to have any

103concerns that you're feeling that you want to have addressed okay would someone like to make a motion and i have to say that i'm in favor okay so i guess i had it we got to win so the option one which i was looking at the okay am i able to here go ahead well i'll go ahead and i will give my um input after we have motions so go ahead board member colon so was the um because i'm trying to go back there is the option one where we have require mass for everybody and then option two was the mass pass option one is mathematical okay because i think that was different from the other one that was that i saw let me have claudia today is that correct okay thank you so i

104think i have it reversed on my um information here but it doesn't matter so um so this is katherine board member catherine cullen i make a motion to approve the mask pass for secondary students is that how we want to do it i think that's i'm trying not to talk when our your microphone fun sorry einstein okay so we have a motion tube there we go we got it up here so option go up to option one claudia so we have an um a motion from katherine collin and for option one which is the mask task do we have a second i i guess my question is so do we not have to vote for uh the other students i mean the the ask was the approval of the rio rancho public school recommendations for

105meeting certain requirements uh with the pd cover 19 response toolkit including mass i i just want to do we not need to include the elementary kids or is that just automatic uh we don't need to vote on that yeah so our elementary one it's totally automatic there's nothing that we can do to do that and so we just have to vote on one of the options that that we received from um um from dr cleveland and the district staff okay all right good enough all right madam president yes please go ahead lauren can i suggest also that you address the proposed addendum of the matrix thank you okay do you want to add that into your motion cap sure and my motion to include the it to approve the addendum for the matrix this is

106board member jeff morgan a second okay so we have a motion from katherine collin um to approve the option one and the addendum and then we also have a second by jeffrey morgan and kim if you could take a roll call vote for that don't forget is it this time that we can have a discussion yes we can sorry yes we can go to discussion go ahead yes and so this is board member coleman and so what i wanted to say is is my concern is we had one month of being back at the end of the year um starting things out and while i understand about being more lenient i have a concern especially with the variant that has been introduced and just getting back into the regular routine of dealing with teachers getting

107familiar regular teachers familiar with their students let alone dealing with issues with subs coming in and all of those challenges so i just have to say from from my perspective i am not in favor of having everybody wear a mask and then because as much as we can be lenient and then get more restrictive we can also be restrictive and get more lenient so i think that it's important that that everybody know that that we could go either way on that so i just wanted to be able to have that time to say that board member secretary scott yes board member coleman i agree with you i i think we should have masks for everyone um we have children that are immune compromised and and i fear that we're gonna have uh discrimination whether we

108whether no matter how hard we try and i i just think that a uniformity would make it better and easier for the teachers and for the administration in the long term so i too believe we need to have masks for all and secretary scott in support of what you're saying again this is board member coleman that that already is happening when it comes to um students challenging other students that have not received the vaccination and so i just would like to see the start of the year go as smoothly as possible considering everything that happened last year um and i believe that we can at some point then start to be more lenient i am in favor of everybody wearing masks for now okay i you know i honestly think ours and i'm not trying

109to attack anyone but i think our student body's better than that then you know i mean yes are there going to be some issues i think there is and i think that we could change if we're seeing issues but but you know we've been living since july where some people are mass and some people aren't masked and i you know and i and i think that that our kids are used to seeing that and i'm hoping and i and i do think that they're better than that to to single someone out on being whether or not they um that they've been vaccinated or not i'm grateful that we don't have to do those cafeteria things or have any sort of segregation and i think that the district came up with a great you know great

110thing to have these masks with these mask pass a little concerned that you know they'll be losing them all the time because they're students um but you know i i truly feel like we need to let our our students have choice they need to have a choice i you know parents are vaccinating their their children they did it based off of that they didn't think that they would have to wear a mask and i wish we could do it for for everyone as a teacher to teach in a mask sometimes i just have to like step away from everyone just to breathe for a second it's hard and it's really really hard to to teach in your masks um but i completely see where you're coming from and i'll go ahead and let katherine go

111ahead and talk just one thing and even if students are vaccinated they they can certainly come to school with mass it does not eliminate them having to come with mass so certainly if they have concerns if somebody might have some an issue at home or they have an issue that they need to address and want to wear a mask they certainly can it's not taking that that away that option away from them thank you and i like to call this question okay well one last thought too you know we have such a great district who came up with a wonderful option for those who are just not comfortable in this sort of scenario so um we can we can go to vote jeffrey morgan do you have do you have another i i just want

112to give him a moment because he didn't get to talk if he has anything that he'd like to add well i mean you know like you said i mean if things get out of hand the things start to go south we got the ability to come back and change i mean let's put a little trust and faith in the kids and the faculty you see how this thing works and if it don't we got the power to come back and make a difference yeah okay thank you everyone and we'll go with what katherine's asking we'll go ahead and go to um kim can you take a a roll call vote for us unless there is anyone else that has to throw in a comment we're good okay yes i can i'd like to read the

113motion back to make sure that i've got it correct motion to approve the mask paths option one for secondary students and to approve the addendum to the discipline matrix as presented is that correct that's okay correct okay all right uh vice president morgan yes secretary scott no board member colin yes board member coleman no president galbraith yes uh motion carries three to two okay thank you okay dr cleveland is there anything else you want to address before we move on from this because the comments the vote looks just like the community yeah and uh and so uh but but a vote has been done and everyone took all of the information gave it careful consideration made a decision and so we're gonna move forward on that and i echo uh what all of you have

114said if it doesn't turn out well then we will be back very soon uh to ask for a change and then the other altering it is of course should the state change that we will we will be required to change and again just to re-emphasize the issue that vice president morgan brought up elementary there was no flexibility given and the rationale for that was that those children have not been vaccinated and therefore mass needed to continue until the time they could be vaccinated and have that additional protection as well and i i do want to thank everybody who has let us know how they feel uh this is a tough decision so we do appreciate you taking your time and sending us how you do i wish we could make everybody happy i do too

115um the rest of the board if there's anything else you'd like to add i know noreen is unmuted i don't know if noreen if you had something else you wanted to add okay okay just wanted to double check okay well thank you everyone and it is it's it's a really it's difficult so thank you everyone for giving your time and consideration on that okay get back into my notes so for our um last business um item is the creation of a task force um for community input and assistance on capital projects um in accordance with uh rio rancho public schools board policy 207 um so thank you claudia for for pulling up those slides so i would like let me get i just need to pull up my notes since i have things everywhere but

116i'd like to create a a task force and as it says right for our community input right now as you can see on the slides here we have federal and state funds that exist at the state level and and as a goal we want to know if uh if and how the community consists in obtaining um funding um and leveraging these funds um we would like it to be with the community and with different business partners within our community and because you know it's important when we go into these things we we have all this money we want to make sure that that when it is available that we have all of the different minds that we could possibly have um to help us to come up with this and when we have more people

117in the community working on it that gives us more backing in the community and we're more ready um for when things come up that we can have um so let me see what else do i want to hit on this one okay can you go down claudia for me i want to make sure i'm hitting him so right now we have some current needs our high schools are above capacity all four which is based on the the state standards um also our middle schools are above capacity um we also have our new wonderful beautiful shining stars school which is a great facility but we still have a really long waiting list for that and we would love to have another building for our shining stars as a parent who had three of my four kids

118who went through shining stars it's such a wonderful program and so many people would like to be served in our community with that and we also have elementary schools who that are in good terms of building capacity but there as we all know as we've walked many of us have walked through schools that there's need of major repairs and not just in our elementary schools and many of our schools all over the district will you go ahead and go down for me there we go thank you she's just good um so we'd like this creation of a task force and its focus would be these three areas and here so career technical education early childhood and special schools and programs so such as our independence high school which has served our public school community here

119in rio rancho so well desert pathways and also rio rancho cyber academy and so looking at this um at this task force i would like for it to have two board members um to be on it and also um dr cleveland to serve on that board and then i'd like for us to be able to then discuss and discuss how to proceed and then bring back more to the board um possibly at our next regularly scheduled um meeting if we if we can kind of pull together exactly how we want to proceed from that um i'd also liked i would like to serve on that board and i and i would propose that noreen scott serves on that board on this sorry it's a task force but on this task force and just with her

120background that she has had in economic development throughout our state i think that she would be a really important asset to um to this task force so with that claudia do i have another one on there so i think we went through all these okay thank you um so with that i want to just kind of go to questions if you guys have questions and like to invite dr cleveland to be on um and actually maybe before we go into questions i'd like to dr khloe and just maybe have a an opportunity to talk a little bit about the task force and if she feels that it's an important um for our schools at this time well i i what i would share is just a little tiny bit of history um many years ago

121when the district first started we saw absolutely no way to get high school it was at least 10 years out maybe even longer and we had a community committee come together and kind of do this same sort of thing they were talking about the needs and everybody in the community was understanding what the needs were and when that situation presented itself with the expansion of intel commissioner joe lane stepped forward and said maybe this is a way you know that we can make that high school a reality if if your community doesn't know the needs and you're not talking about it and people aren't advocating for it then then when an opportunity comes you may miss it all together and so looking back at that task force it certainly helped us get what was then

122an impossible dream and get that accomplished so i think it would be great idea the other thing that makes it unique but rio rancho high school it was the irb the eight billion dollar investment but what we have right now is something completely different and that is all of the federal funds that the state is sitting on and one of the concerns that that i have and i think other other districts have is if we're not ready to move when the opportunity presents itself that money could go back to washington and what a shame that would be in a state that how many meetings if mexico does well we want it you know to be there there's no guarantee there was no guarantee last time but i do think it's a great idea and i

123think it would get the community uh talking about our needs and i had a group that i presented to a few weeks ago and they were shocked when i told them given our current um tax projections it would probably be 20 years before we could build another high school unless we find a unique way to do it as we did for rio rancho high and how we did for our second high school so uh that's just a little bit history but i think that the community can leverage then my last comment is you go and ask for things in in santa fe the more partners you have at the table the greater the likelihood that you're going to get listened to and i think if you have a lot of people in your community especially

124those um that may have some contacts that we don't have uh could be a a positive thing for us and you know i've shared that with chris malzano and he says it's a it's a good thing to have your whole community talking about what your school district needs are sometimes what i feel is that today we've done a good job overall and we're certainly not perfect and we've got a long way to grow but sometimes people don't know the needs we have today they don't realize how serious the needs are that our district is facing right now so that's just a little bit of his i can't help but be history and uh and that but i think that history has real lessons for us to be learned today learn from today thank you thank

125you dr cleveland for adding all of that you know and i look at our cte program and i i just there is such a need right now in our community in rio rancho specifically you know i have a brother-in-law who works in construction and he was talking about the needs that they have um for construction workers and we just don't have those you know and i just i look at some of those some cte as something that's really important if we can get a community really um involved in that and one thing that i neglected to do is to ask noreen scott if she was interested in serving on this i haven't actually talked to her and so let me give you a second to talk noreen and then we'll go ahead and go over

126to win who has her hand raised go ahead noreen i'd be honored to serve i i've worked in the business community in this community for over 20 years and i know them to be generous and thoughtful and always in support of the school district and i think it's a very wise move to uh draw upon that talent now and and get that feedback from folks and anything i can do to support that i'm thrilled to do thank you secretary scott and let me go over to wynn coleman who has her hand raised what is the time frame for this um so i think it's gonna i you know i may actually ask dr cleveland because i you know i i haven't been on the board long enough when we're looking dr cleveland at a task

127force like this and and your thoughts on it and how much time do you think it'll it'll take to to kind of pull everyone together and to go through the needs that that we need to hit well i think a lot of that will be determined by the task force itself you know we kind of look at it but if you want to influence the next legislative session you've got to you've got to have information before the session in january uh and so it you know everything kind of focuses around legislation um or some funding the other is the cares money this is something everybody really needs to think about is that in three years it's going to be gone and if you haven't spent it and invoiced it and gotten it off then you

128lose that opportunity so yesterday it is really when you know we need we've got to get moving quickly in order to have any kind of influence on the process the other thing uh and spoke today with mike baker and i spoke with melanie about that is also this is good information as our facility master plan committee continues to work as well i give you know additional community insight into that so i would think it needs to begin very quickly and um and certainly under the board policy uh these have to have a beginning and an end of a time framework based on uh you know what uh win is saying so i would think that it would it would certainly be early uh 2022 when you would have to have some recommendations that would come

129back from from that group um and then you know the board can either decide to extend that or or not some communities have a permanent committee that works on that uh catherine cullen has said that at some point but i think it would be very wise to start with what the word policy allows and then the board could reconsider that if at some point he wanted it and and lauren would have to answer whether you can add a standing committee i don't know if you can even do that in new mexico because you have two that are standing by statute only and so i think the the you know having a start date and end date is uh is really important so as you said president galbraith would bring back more specific information to the

130new board we have sector committees formed and uh and kind of get an idea of the time frame i do think we could have a continuing relationship with some of these and we have had for years we've had continuing relationship with some of these entities for many years but this is a task force and that's something a little different thank you dr cleveland um let me let catherine go to her to address i think catherine was i saw you nodding your head and such so go ahead katherine yeah i there i don't think there's anything that doesn't allow you to have a standing committee permanently a lot of school districts have that um particularly with capital outlay i think a senate santa fe has it aps they have a number of committees that are continuous

131so but we do have two that we have to have per state statute any of the other ones can be formed by the board but this particular one is we would want to probably have the begin and the end date and then i wanted to ask how many members were you looking at are you looking at some parents on there as well as some of the businesses and also some administrators from the schools because you're touching on crt i mean that's crt see you you got me doing that today no i told you we're not gonna go yeah yeah career technical and then um and then with desert pathways and independence um i want to make sure that that they're uh represented on this um committee on this task force um so with that i

132wanted to see how what your thought process was on how many are going to be on this committee and how we're going to be representing these different schools okay i'm going to let lauren talk in just a second but just uh you want to mute yourself catherine cause there we go i can hear myself um but just as we're looking right now um like i said we have the two board members a superintendent we'd also have the business and community members which definitely probably should include some of our parents um and different district staff but we are going to probably need just some time to just sit down and discuss the how big it should be dr coleman do you have a thought on how what we're looking at you think for um how many

133i i haven't given any thought to that we haven't you know you and i didn't discuss that so i don't know but i do think that the the child challenge of this task force may not may not be the same as the facility master plan commit but i i do notice that and i i um i believe uh board member cullen you raised the issue some time ago about the facility's master plan not having building level administrators and parents on it and uh we took note of that i think we maybe need to be able to discuss that but i i think this committee may be a little bit different you know the goal is to in the short term go after and get money as opposed to the side priorities and i think those

134are two very different things so i do think that in terms of setting the priorities that larger committee may be very important to have i absolutely support that because in terms of actually in the short term looking to see how we can leverage funds and perhaps get money it's a different committee and it's a shorter term committee and and their goal is to go get funds and i i you know forgive me for the this kind of personal thing but um i serve on the foundation board for pros and it's really clear our our challenge for that board is to go get money for presbyterian um and and to raise revenue for the highest needs of the hospital and the health care system so i think we could come back i think you raised some

135really good issues maybe they're not the same group and maybe the facilities master plan the group maybe the larger group i don't know but i'd love to have an opportunity to just kind of think about that this is kind of new and then we would come back and have that discussion but my my first thought is this first task force isn't isn't uh as large because we've got a short-term pass and we've got a limited time to see if we can leverage and get that money before it disappears so i but i'm just thinking out loud and truly i have not really thought of it through just thinking it's well my initial thought is they're not the same and it does need to be clearly defined as you're saying dr cleveland and very this is

136something that is it has to do with the funds that are out there and that it does need to act quickly it's not something that's a long-term type of committee for i think what you're what i'm figuring is what you want with this task force is something that for the immediate needs that we kind of need yeah okay before i go to the raised hands i'm going to let lauren go and talk about the legal things that we just talked about and then i'll go back and then i'll go over to to win and noreen go ahead lauren thanks madam president i'm lauren hatch general counsel for the district i just want to confirm um kind of what has already been said and war can definitely set up a committee like this um the way

137our policy reads it kind of implies that it's going to be less than a quorum of the board however it does contemplate that there's a possibility that there could be one that's more than two people or three or more people and that's possible as well if it's going to be something that's a standing committee for a long period of time it might be helpful to actually define it in the policy itself so that's that's another option as well policy 207 does say that an ad committee needs to have a statement of purpose and there needs to be some timelines associated with it uh an ad hoc committee it implies lasts no longer than a year um but i think it could just be re-upped if you wanted to to approach it that way or there

138could just be a new a new section added that establishes the guidelines of this committee i hope that's helpful that was helpful to me thank you is that helpful catherine with what you were saying okay all right yeah yeah thank you thank you lauren i appreciate it uh when coleman and then we'll go to new york noreen after yes thank you um so i was going to and thank you lauren i was going to point out that we have that policy in place uh 207 um and what i also wanted to let you know is that that's something that the behavioral health advisory committee created just based on statute i'm more than happy to make sure that you have a copy of that as you put this together so you kind of know kind of

139what we did because it's not that often that the district creates these um kind of ad hoc task force or committees um but i do want to say that at some point um when it's appropriate i think it's really really important that we have students involved in this and that since they are there every single day that we're also hearing from that that demographic of our community yeah thank you ann for putting that on there and i think that we could bring students in i don't know if they i i don't know we should talk more about it whether they sit on the committee or they come in and just discuss you know their schools as we kind of go through it so but thank you and i would love to see um your notes

140that you have on that uh noreen scott that's all part of my process just saying that and excuse me for interrupting no you're good that's all part of the process and that's where you that's where that statement comes in and and writing that about what what the task force or the ad hoc committee really uh the purpose the intention and things like that including things so i'll share that but i do uh regardless of how you all decide i think it's really important um since we always talk about how you know students are our priority that they that they are make sure that they're heard yeah thank you i agree all right go ahead noreen you know i i see the purpose of this committee just listening to what everybody is saying as uh looking

141for creative ideas for funding our facility needs i mean we've got a variety of needs as many of us went around and looked at the facilities uh over the last couple of weeks uh i think we had our eyes opened to some of the really clear needs and uh a board member cullen uh has pointed out about independence and cte i i think she has been a passionate uh driver for cte and uh so i i guess if i sit here and hear what's being said maybe what we ought to be doing is looking at a task force that starts today and runs through may of 2022 that would be nine months so may 2nd 2022 with the goal of finding some creative ideas for funding our facility needs and during that time i i

142think we would also be looking to create or to have created a long-term facilities committee that could could be looking at all of our facilities and perhaps be head by headed by melanie who uh who certainly uh is very knowledgeable about that um i was thinking since we're going to be looking for creative ideas that perhaps our uh our district uh school attorney ought to be on the committee so that we're sure that every creative idea we have is legal and uh is is doable uh and and i guess uh you know i would i would be asking other staff people who had an interest and and the time to participate i think that those are kind of just my thoughts from listening to everybody and i i'd be open to hearing more yeah thank

143you noreen i think that's i i actually really like that timeline i don't know if that works for everyone um with what we're thinking dr cleveland what do you think of that timeline i think that's fine i think that will work very well i i do think that by the end of next year of this year this school year there will be only two years left if we are able to access any federal money again it's an if if we are able to access it there will be two years left to to use it and then and and that doesn't mean encumber it it means encumbrance spend it and get an invoice the best i understand so you know pushing as hard as we can but i think it would be very wise to leave

144it open until the end of may and as i said if there's anything that tried to do to influence legislation that has to be done before the session in january so um i think there's some other timelines that might be built in that um but the dates are good and do what we can in the order that we can i just can't stress the urgency of this is once in a lifetime opportunity the money that the state has right now we will probably never again see this and so uh i you know we can't promise the public or the community anyone that will get any of that but what i would want to promise them is we did everything within our power to see if we were able to secure some of that funding to

145the students of rio rancho and so i i do think that that's the motivator we have such needs you all are aware of all the needs we have and i think it's just important we give it our very best shot and i do believe that everything i've seen in santa fe over many years that i think uh our lobbyists will share that shares that sentiment as you get further with partnerships you get further when you have more people at the table they're supporting and that's the goal is get more people behind us that either have some way to influence the process or to be able to speak to the governor or able to uh you know have our voice heard and i think that's what we're trying to speak with the louder voice about the

146needs that we have in this community so those are just we don't normally we have a a normal case for which we can get things done none of that applies right now right now it's move faster loose and and i think that's what we're trying to do this is their way to move quickly to at least some shot at it again there's no guarantees that i want everyone to know that there are no guarantees but now we pulled off the impossible a couple of other times historically the things that we thought people could not do and uh and so i'm hoping maybe we could we can we could have a third one which would help us get some of those needs that we have fulfilled thank you dr cleveland i think that was really well

147said uh noreen scott you raised your hand and then it went away i don't know if you if you were just hitting buttons okay just bump the button that's right but catherine cullen has my handwriting go ahead katherine so dr cleveland my understanding is with that money there's some that do we need to make does that task force need to come back with recommendations sooner rather than later truly i think everything is sooner than later we're never calling it i mean we've got to get moving quickly that's what i'm thinking i mean i think that yeah you can't delay some of these things need to be moved really quickly and that that will have to be established with the task force of some not just like you said at the end of may of next

148year that says how long it could run the task force probably needs to make some recommendations pretty quickly rather sooner than later okay thank you so i go ahead and make a motion to go ahead um allow the board to create and i don't have my i put my papers at my task force for thank you task force community input and assistance on capital projects in accordance with the rearranged forward policy 207 okay we have a motion do we have a second this is board member jeff morgan a second okay we have a motion by catherine cullen in a second by uh jeffrey morgan and kim you know what um lauren i would think that since we probably also have to make a motion to um approve the two board members that want to be

149on that would that be correct lauren yeah it wasn't stated in the the agenda for appointees on it but i think i can do that here shouldn't i well madam president i'm not i'm not clear at this point um is the intention right now to create the committee uh and also give a guidance or were you gonna come back at a future time and and do that part of it um let's sorry i can hear kathryn you wanna there you go um so for now and maybe dr cleveland can help me out with this i think we can go ahead and create it we i do think we i'd like to appoint the two members um but we'd come out with the the different parameters of the of the committee and we'd have to go

150through that like for who's going to sit on it throughout the community and stuff i don't have that information right now so that would be something we'd have to sit down um okay the what the policy says um if you're looking at 207 and 206 together um putting people on a committee can happen one of two ways the default rule as i read it is that the board president appoints members of a committee unless the board directs otherwise so um i guess it depends on what the board's pleasure is at this point you could appoint the two members or just if that's what the president's gonna do and you're comfortable with that um she could just make the appointment as well okay that's good then i can just leave my motion as it is and

151then that way that the president can go ahead and appoint so we don't need to go to add another vote on that so my motion stands okay thank you and we'll go ahead and go to if kim can take a roll call vote for us on it oh i got a second right from jeffrey morgan or did i make that yeah yeah you do have a second okay you do have a second but as with the last one i want to make sure i got the motion straight um motion that the board created task force for community input and assistance on capital projects that's the motion right there's not more to it than that it would be in accordance with the policy correct oh in accordance to paul oh yes thank you okay yes accordance

152with policy 207 okay all right uh vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member colin yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes and the motion carries 5-0 thank you dr cleveland do you want to add anything to it um before we move into advanced planning i i'm a little confused as to what we still need to bring back because of the action that was taken we get together and kind of figure out what we do but thank you i think this um to your point and to the point of several of the board members we need to get moving on this quickly if we're going to have any impact at all so thank you for taking this idea and uh sounds like a good opportunity for us i also want to really stress

153that we also have a facilities master plan committee uh and and that committee does not cease to exist it's still a very important committee will still continue to do its work as well but some of their work might be informed by uh it should be informed by some of the things we may learn through this process so um but i'm a little confused i'll get with with you we'll figure it out okay sounds good i think probably at this point more than anything we can just report back kind of just so you all have an idea of what's going on um with the committee and as we move through it so thank you dr cleveland and thank you board um anything else on that okay okay thank you i appreciate everyone being willing to to

154create that task force so moving into our advanced planning so august 5th uh we have the first day of classes for middle and high schools and it gives me anxiety just to say that august 9th is our first day of classes for elementary school also on august 9th we will have our regular scheduled board meeting at 5 30 it will be in the board room and also virtual august 19th we'll have an audit committee open meeting and an executive session at 4 30 and that will be virtual and then august 23rd we'll have a regular board meeting at 5 30 in the boardroom and virtual so with that our meeting is adjourned for tonight thank you all so much for for being with us thank you thank you thanks john and thanks [Music]