RRPS - July 26, 2021 Board Meeting

001good evening and the board meeting the rio rancho board meeting for monday july 26 2021 is now in session and kim can you take oh sorry uh we will start tonight uh with our pledge of allegiance given by when coleman please all rise 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 and kim can you go ahead and take a roll call for us uh yes ma'am i can uh president galbraith president vice president morgan president secretary scott present board member coleman president and vordenberg present okay that's uh a quorum and everybody's here thank you so much kim we'd like to welcome everyone out to our meeting tonight everyone who's joining us

002through youtube all of our district staff and all those who who have come to join our meeting tonight we're happy to have you we're going to start off our meeting tonight with some introductory comments by the superintendent of schools dr visu cleveland you went that stuck there we go yeah good evening i'm waiting for my powerpoint to come up she's pulling up right now it's coming even as we speak it's coming okay the last few have been kind of short because we've been kind of a little bit of a lull tonight i do have i have quite a bit of information to share with the board okay do you see it dr cleveland i do thank you so much all right next slide please okay now this question is can i make it change um

003hang on dr cleveland we're going to switch presenters here okay that's fine okay you should have it now yes we're good here we're good okay i thought i'd give just a very brief update on summer school and i think we have some very very good information to share our summer school program was very successful this year and all the sessions are now complete our high school on summer school saw 1314 credits earned versus the normal around 350 to 400. that was an absolutely incredible task um a special thanks to principals lauren lockhart and all of the staff at a huge congratulations to our students for reaching that goal i want you to know that in the summer school we provided two classes for each session which allowed students to obtain more credits than in the

004past and so we this um 1314 credits actually represents 800 students who went to school this summer to recover credits we had 30 teachers who worked this summer uh and our teachers were really tired you know it was a real sacrifice for them uh to work this summer in many cases and so we had 30 teachers two of our counselors helped during the session to ensure that all of our students were taking the right classes in the right order and some of the folks from cte and rata played a role in helping get things organized it was really a community effort among departments and i just want to thank everybody because the the end result was better than we had hoped and we're just delighted with the with the numbers the several of our board

005members did participate in the summer school graduation last week and that's always a very nice event and normally students who finish up in july are not part of the 2021 class but an exception was made this year and so they will be part of the class of 2021. we also had 131 elementary students who attended summer school some of them were just parent requests they were not all candidates for retention but a few would have been and the really good news out of that is that all 131 students who did attend summer school were promoted to the next grade level and then at the middle school level we didn't have the traditional summer school there were some different things that they did throughout the year at the middle schools but um we did have nine

006students who were retained but all of those were at parent requests they were not retained by the school they were decisions that the parents made that they wanted out of the extra year and most of them were at the sixth grade so students who had not really had an opportunity to be in a traditional sixth grade but again that was at the parents request and not at the school districts so as we we look at um you know the summary was very short and so it was a real challenge to accomplish projects that would have generally where in the past we would have had three months for completion uh we certainly had plans to deal with this new situation what has really caused our um our projects to be behind schedule has been a huge

007um you know effort in terms of supply and demand and so there's just some things not available you just can't get them and in many cases the vendors can't even tell you when they might be available so that that's turning out to be a problem for some of our uh for some of our uh projects and certainly getting ready for the start of school was a challenge this year for every department but i would say that finance i.t and facilities probably have the greatest challenges in getting ready for the start of school we i i want the board to be aware that we have some major facility challenges at a few schools many items have been delayed and back ordered and they are not the certain projects are not running on schedule and as i

008said earlier um it's hard to get any kind of a date uh from some of the vendors uh melody archeback our executive director for facilities was out inspecting schools today uh she and i and and um some others will be meeting tomorrow excuse me and as soon as i get some information that will be communicated to the board staff parents and community and uh we will send that information out as soon as possible a melanie was out last week so she is certainly working very hard to get that information available to administration and we will give it to you as well staff return next week our convocation is august the 4th and we are doing a combined virtual convocation with the cuba and jemez valley school districts i do want to let you know that

009lucinda is helping to sponsor this event and we're always thankful for their support and allowing us to do some very special things for our staff and so they will be part of this event middle school students are scheduled to in high school are scheduled to return on august the 5th and our elementary students are scheduled to return on the night and we just we are so excited to have our staff and students back to in-person learning and virtual learning depending on the choices that were made by each family we finally got the toolkit we've been looking for the toolkit since the first of the summer and we finally got it um i've had a couple of people in the community call and say what is a toolkit and so i thought i would kind of

010share what that is it is a collection of authoritative and adaptable resources for frontline staff that enables them to learn about an issue and identify approaches for addressing them toolkits can help translate theory into practice and typically target one issue for one audience and the issue uh is back to school what are the rules for re-entry and reopening our schools in the fall and so they they give practical advice and guidance and um you know usually you get tool kits when the when things are not the norm when you don't have established processes and procedures in place and things are changing very very rapidly and of course that's what we've been dealing with for the last 15 months and so we we did get another toolkit and it provides the structure for us reopening it's

011a little bit frustrating that we're opening in a week and we got the toolkit at noon today but we do have it we're glad to have it and we're now in the process of going through reading reviewing trying to determine if we are in compliance with all of the requirements of the of the toolkit so toolkits are considered guidelines of support for the operation of our schools by the public ed department but these are also compliance documents and they have been enforced last year by both virtual visits and we had several in-person visits from the public ed department who determined that we in fact were in compliance and compliance with all of those regulations and as i said we've been waiting for it for a long time several of us attended a meeting last week

012with the secretary in hopes of getting the toolkit but it was still being reviewed by the medical staff and the governor's office and we were very very glad to get it today um the provisions one of the things that they told us so we got the toolkit and in the meeting is this is the the directives as of the situations that we're dealing with right now things could change again if the number of cases go up particularly if the delta variant uh begins to spread and we have to know this is these are the rules right now but they were very clear circumstances changes cases go up uh we could see um some some more restrictive uh requirements put into place so we all have a stake in trying to keep everybody safe and well

013and we had really good uh um support last year from our staff and our students and families and and we know that will continue but it certainly isn't all of our best interests to keep us as well as possible so our schools can continue to operate as we plan to operate them in the fall the one area that has been the most contentious out of all of them has to do with the wearing of mass and the rules and regulations around mass and so we'll talk to you a little bit about that a little later in best presentation but um and many of the requirements from the previous documents the previous toolkits such as processes for reporting confirmed cases and some other things will continue we were hoping to have pretty much a lift of

014all of those regulatory things off of off of our plate but that did not happen and so uh death will go into much greater detail in her presentation later this evening okay and and we're getting this we've already gotten this information out to staff so they have had an opportunity to start reading it we've already had communication from the union regarding the um the toolkit and so we have begun the process of getting everyone a copy that has a desire to see it there was some regulatory relief in the toolkit one of the areas i thought was was very useful is we have a lot more flexibility for chronic health conditions as opposed to acute ones so i'll give you an example of what that might look like every year you have seasonal allergies they're

015really bad you have a runny nose you have a sore throat you have all the signs but every year you get this and your doctor will will verify that and and uh send us a form that states that so if we have that foreign you don't have to be foreign you have those conditions however if you have an acute condition come on serious sore throat you've never had a runny nose you're running a fever those would be things that would be considered acute and you would still need to follow the guidelines for quarantining there are a lot of requirements that will demand a great deal of staff time which are going to remain in place things like contact tracing the four-hour uh requirement for notifying the the state if we have an active case there's

016still a lot of things that are in place that are going to be very time consuming for staff last year we had people that were working seven days a week and long hours every day until nine or ten at night so we'll be making some organizational changes to deal with those continuing expectations and hopefully we'll lift the load off of uh at least some of the load off of some of the people who had to work way beyond the workday for months as i said everything is subject to change um one of the things that they told us is if if we have a situation in our district or we start seeing cases rise then we have the responsibility of implementing more stringent rules and should the situation warrant in that in our in our

017district the percentage of our staff and students vaccinated will continue to influence the decisions that are made in in santa fe and if it when the vaccine becomes no longer experimental then they anticipate additional changes might be forthcoming and um you know we don't know what that would be when that would be or what that might look like but they just told us once it's a an experimental vaccine then things could possibly change our school nurses who were just critical last year will continue to play a key role in the assessment of student health issues at every school site any student who has complaining of having any kind of symptoms the nurses are responsible for assessing each child which is one of the reasons that we really do not want them to get into the

018regular testing for the for the virus we want them to be able to work with students at the school site rather than become the the mechanism for testing uh in our schools and community we really feel they already work in very large schools that already have a very heavy load isolation rooms will still um be required uh we were hoping that we might not need those this year because of the need for space in our schools but they are still required and we will continue to have an isolation room as well as the nurses office the one thing that i thought was really uh really important and i wanted to convey to you was the um the commitment i you know we really sense the commitment to do our very best to keep the schools

019open uh here's a quote that came out of of the the toolkit it said the new mexico public education department recognizes the importance of in-person learning for activating social and emotional growth of students as well as for the livelihood of families and the economic growth of the community and so um certainly the rules for quarantining individuals are shutting down schools is going to be much more lenient this year we still have some requirements such as closing classrooms for 24 hours to sanitize when there has been a confirmed case in classroom or in specific areas of a school building and then this is the one that's very interesting because we had a lot of discussion about that earlier parent choice related to in-person or remote learning should be honored and so a lot of the concern

020was when they made it somewhat optional many districts dropped it and now we're back to where it is it's expected that it has to be delivered so that has created a really interesting situation because the public ed department is now asking districts that have online learning at various levels to assist those districts who don't have it and we of course um that that could be problematic next slide please um one of the things that uh we're going to have to provide the state is to identify a process for ensuring compliance with mass requirements and that some of the things are not hard to do posting signage and school facilities we can certainly do that announcing the mass requirements of all events is certainly something we could do and other necessary means for enforcement um we're

021going to get into this in more detail and best presentation so i'm not going to say a lot about it probably the um the biggest concern that we do have is the enforcement of the and what that will look like and one of the things that is in the toolkit said evidence of vaccination must be visible at all times and so trying to figure what that will look like and and concerns over over privacy as well as trying to meet this mandate and uh those seem to be um you know polar opposites in some respects so that's something that we're going to have to to work on and also our hope that our our staff especially teachers will spend their time teaching rather than policing mass and so that's something we're going to have to

022work on uh we'll be needing to bring that back to the board because we're uh such a short time away now from the start of school i would anticipate that we're going to have to have a special meeting to address that issue and a couple of others that we're required to have in place uh let's see um one of the things we are worried about is these new requirements may in fact impact our student enrollment in a negative manner and that could have an impact on us financially and impact our schools so um we're hoping that doesn't that's not the case but we think that's a possibility and now certainly we are we are getting some mass guidance from the public ed department uh there's a one page one pager that they want us to

023distribute to all of our families and they are providing it in both english and spanish and you know this whole idea of ferpa and people's privacy rights is somewhat at odds with the idea of having everyone whether they're vaccinated or not that evidence in full display at all times and i just we aren't quite sure how we would go about making making that happen we've been assured that uh we would be in compliance with ferpa but we still have we're still somewhat worried about it in terms of our own past experiences and training that we i think i've covered that one of the things the board will have to decide and i will be i need to be done very soon students are to be given a chance uh they are to be warned if

024they if they are not wearing a mask but we need to set the number of times a warning would have to be issued before they would be assigned to remote learning so that's a local decision in terms of how many times to be you would have to be reminded um next slide last year um as you will recall we had a very large number of vacancies when we started the school year very worried about how we were going to to manage that and i i want you to know that we're in a much better place this school year we're really very optimistic about our staffing we think we have really good news in that area and so mike chavis our executive director for human resources is going to present an updated report for you this

025evening on hiring and vacancies but it is certainly a far better situation than we had last year he is going to present another beginning of the year report in september after we have better data regarding enrollment numbers right now really all we have are registration numbers and that's not always the most reliable of information so um he will tell you what it actually looks like after we get our divide and uh how many classrooms we um we are still looking for someone if you ever think all right i mentioned earlier um and if you recall we had this conversation with the board about uh the feel that we had a need to offer remote learning at all levels because we felt like that what happened that actually we thought it might happen so i'm really

026glad we're in good shape uh we are seeing right now uh a good number of families transfer over to remote uh because of the information that's coming out related to mass and so i'm glad we have places for them to go we had originally a pretty good number of parents who chose remote elementary middle school and high school and um and we've been asked to assist other districts the um the secretary of fairness has strongly recommended districts to be prepared to offer virtual learning uh but some districts did not do so and so we're reviewing the requests and you know as a district we always try to help we always try to assist but we're finding it very challenging to help with this late day if we had started in june uh and been thinking

027about how to partner with other districts would have been a much easier process i think right now we're in a situation where we've got to take care of our own students first and then if we do have some openings that we will try to assist and i do know when this strength is going to offer a virtual school starting in september after they see how many uh students are still wanting services and how many of our students um how many slots we have in the classes that we're offering our students so it's um you know we always try to help and and the state is offering financial support for our districts who are willing to take students from other school systems and it's it's it's it's reasonable amount of funding for example i think at

028the high school level it's 300 and 100 exactly 350 of course or something like that but again we've got to be sure that we have we have managed to take care of our students first and then we will look to see i think the the ability to offer assistance outside of our district will be minimal uh but there may be a few opportunities and certainly if we have some vacancies under the open enrollment act we would be required to take them regardless but it's just we wish we had gotten started on this a whole lot earlier they're also thinking of trying to help districts closest to us for example like a heinous valley a very small district that really could not offer both would struggle with that so we had some discussions with supercell about

029the possibility of that but anyway we will bring that back and once we know a little more the information from the state was very sketchy we're just not sure it's going to work very well for us okay next slide please uh in the um in the spring i'm sorry i've got allergies and i am kind of dealing with that um dr hackie miller our executive director for research assessment data analysis accountability will present this evening to the surveys that were visited during the spring semester of last year and the first was a it was the opportunity learn survey which has a pd it's a ped survey and it's administered via economy of platform and then the second was a comprehensive spring 2021 student satisfaction and safety survey i hope these surveys may answer some of

030the questions that the board had about where we are how families are feeling about the historical and so forth uh we think that there's some really good information to share with you this evening um i i would again um remind the board that we are now entering this year into our economy accreditation review uh district-wide accredit accreditation is underway uh there will be many different avenues for input this year regarding the district and its programs and services the rio rancho public schools accreditation task force which is comprised of lots of different people uh strongly recommends that we align all of our efforts with the cogni accreditation effort as opposed to other feedback mechanisms this year um they think that it would be an undis necessary duplication of effort and expenditures and so those are the

031questions i could the the the presentation i'll be glad to answer any questions you might have uh if they're specific to the tool kit i would recommend that you let beth do her presentation because i think she's going to answer many of the questions in her presentation but of course i'll answer any any questions you might have now go ahead noreen how much latitude do we have uh to deviate from the uh protocols that this that the state has given us we don't have any in most cases unless they specifically say we have latitude so it is uh the toolkit is considered a compliance document so if masks are mandated there's nothing we as a school board can do to change that or any other ruling is that i'm sorry go ahead no is that

032correct that's correct this is under the public health orders and the courts have deemed the public health orders to have the the enforcement of law and so uh we are uh we are required to adhere to those regulations with one exception and the one exception is that we can make it more stringent if we wish to do so i know that one other larger district uh for example i give you an example of that is talking about i don't think they have um they have made a final decision but they're talking about mass in all classrooms across their district for a variety of reasons so you can become more stringent but you can't do any less than what is required in the toolkit thank you dr cleveland okay anyone else if you want to just

033raise your hand if you have any questions any other board members okay okay thank you very much all right thank you dr cleveland appreciate it okay we'll move to item e and to approve the prioritized agenda and propose time allocations any questions on that this is secretary scott i move to approve the prioritized agenda okay i have a second member jeff morgan a second okay we have a motion by noreen scott and the second by jeffrey morgan um kim can you take a roll call vote for us yes i can vice president morgan yes secretary scott yes board member cullen yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes and that is five zero okay thank you motion carries okay um so for our public comment for tonight let me grab that and so for tonight

034our public comment and we have five six sorry six public comments that we have received and from our last board meeting um i'll summarize those comments with the names that of those who sent them in and so we received one from devon holloman which was a question about when we will know about the mask mandate for schools and the second one was from suzanne nicole gray and with two things she was asking that we allow parents to make the choice for theirs their children to wear masks at school or not and the second thing was um to allow our children to meet their teachers early before school goes in and the third one is from crystal zaragosa and that she would like us to have all students wear masks in school and fourth one denise

035weaver do not allow teachers to teach critical race theory in our schools at this time the fifth one lisa paz i'm asking that there be a mask mandate in place in schools and that we do that for those who are unable to be vaccinated at this time and the sixth one is from cheryl daniels which was on um one and that there's not a contract that has been signed yet for our um for our teachers and as they're going back into school and the second one is that there not be a mask mandate um requirement in our schools and that people are allowed to have a choice on on what they would like to do that is that summarizes all of our public comment and that we've received if you would like to address the

036board through public comment please go to the rrps board page there's a forum on that page where you can give your public comment we do read each and every one of those public comments and we welcome them and so we encourage our community to continue to give those public comments as you would like okay moving on to item g which is our commendations and we have one tonight and that will be given by noreen scott recognizing and the curriculum and instruction of federal bilingual and native american programs and our staff who who do those things so secretary scott i'll hand it over to you yes i apologize that i have not got that statement in front of me um i would like to commend their hard work and effort especially our team who has done

037a wonderful job through covid in working on that and i apologize that i would like to have the statement in front of me uh to do it at the next meeting okay um can we move that with norien would you like to move that commendation to our next meeting please okay okay kim can you take note of that that we can move that commendation to our next meeting yes i can thank you okay for those who are on for that we love you dearly and so please come on to our on to our next meeting and we'll make sure that we get that commendation um please accept my apology done at our next meeting okay okay um so we will move on to our um reports and so we'll start with our report tonight our

038first one is our personnel update that will be given by mike chavis who is our executive director of human resources good evening president galbraith dr cleveland members of the board everybody hear me okay thank you um so i just have a very brief presentation for you this evening um to give you a little bit of information about where we're at um with the hiring of personnel for the coming school year this information is as of 7 15 and as dr cleveland said i will have another presentation in september which will more than likely show you a different picture um of our hiring because as she said we have actually um seen quite an increase in an uptick in our the number of applications in most areas and in the amount of hiring that we've been

039able to do next slide please so as i said please take these as very preliminary numbers we are still in the process we're still processing many of our pars or personnel action requests um from the principals at the schools most of the principals returned to their sites on july 13th but i just want to point out that um the majority of them worked right through their time off um because they were very eager to make sure that they uh took advantage of the people that were applying um for teacher positions ea positions and other positions like that next slide please i've listed here the the typical very critical positions that we need to have in place in order to really get the school year started of course there's many other positions that have opened up

040over the summer that are in the process of being hired for but um i'd like to just very quickly um and before i even go through these numbers i want to point out we are having a job fair um tomorrow evening so anybody listening if you are interested um we will be available to speak with people about pretty much any position available in the district we are specifically holding the job fair for positions such as custodians bus drivers security officers substitute teachers eas educational assistants but if anybody else wants to come by if anyone in the community has a question even about how to become a teacher um how to you know uh acquire any other position um that they're interested in that's available in the district please don't hesitate stop by we'll be in

041the training center tomorrow evening from 4 to 6 30. and we will have lots and lots of personnel there waiting to answer your questions right now we have approximately four bus drivers uh four bus driver positions open um custodians um are probably uh fewer than that because we've actually had some good luck this year um with a number of people applying for custodial positions um 25 sounds high but when you remember we had 40 just a few weeks ago uh 40 openings that's pretty that's a pretty good number 25 is a much better number than what where we were at even just two or three weeks ago counselors we were at six but i know that um our new executive director of student services um sherry carver has been very busy um interviewing counselors so

042i i know that we have some of those in the works um social workers we are still looking for two people um general education teachers and again remember a lot of these positions such as teachers we have a number of personnel action requests in the works but um they're higher pending so we can't we can't include them in these numbers until they've they receive a clear background we have their i9 documents and so on and so forth so at this at that time last week we had 12 general ad openings and 18 special ed openings that's actually not bad um considering um the time of uh year that we were looking at that um again in september i think you're going to see a much a much much better picture we have a number of

043people that we're still we are continuing to hire health assistants at that time we were looking at three openings educational assistants are the area where we're honestly having the most difficulty finding folks um to fill those positions we had 43 openings as of last week so if anybody knows somebody who's looking for a really great position you get to be in the classroom get to be with kids get to work with kids it really is a terrific job um and you know if you have kids at home you get to get summers off um get get winter break you get spring break get lots of breaks and it really is a great job our schools are just such amazing places to work um and i will just you know i would just encourage people um

044we have we have opening so please apply and take a look at those positions so that is my brief report for this evening and i stand for questions okay thank you so much for that report i want to know i posted i posted on my facebook right as you said it i was like i better put this at the job fair so i just threw that up if anyone else wants to put that you can at the board on the school website or on the district website you can just post the link so anyway so thanks mike um for that i will go to the board now for questions and we'll start with um let's start with catherine catherine you have any questions no not at this time thank you okay okay thank you uh

045when no questions thank you thank you okay actually guys it's so weird in the boardroom because i hear everyone like an echo of everyone's voices it's so weird um noreen scott no questions thank you for the report thank you thank you and jeffrey morgan no questions thanks for the update appreciate it thank you okay all right and dr cleveland did you have anything you wanted to add no i think you covered it nicely we just hope if you know of anyone spread the word that we're looking and we're hiring and hope that they will come and join us yes yes yes all right thank you so much mike we really appreciate the update on all those things and hopefully we can get some people to come to that job fair tomorrow that would be fantastic

046thank you all have a good night you too [Music] okay our next report will be our spring opinion surveys happy miller executive director of research assessment data analysis and accountability and also known as rada is here to present thank you good evening president goldberg dr cleveland members of the board um as we move into this school year it's always good to look back and reflect on some of the feedback that we received about last year and see what we can learn from it for this coming year next slide please throughout the year we conducted a number of small scale feedback surveys through school messenger google form so you know some of the feedback i was hearing is there are too many surveys but there were three major surveys throughout the year one was in the

047fall the learning experience survey and then we had two in the spring and the two in the spring we conduct every year next slide please so the one in the fall was from tntp we came to you we contracted with them and this slide lists some of the major areas and you can see how many students parents teachers support staff school leaders and district offices uh staff members participated in that survey and we presented those results to you in november of 2020 so i don't want to go back over those but in the fall we did want to because everything was new really look in depth um and at the feedback and then we took that feedback the different teams reflected on it and made changes for the spring semester next slide please in the

048spring the public education department has a survey called the opportunity to learn survey we have had this for a number of years now it used to be associated with testing and then in recent years it has been separate from testing this year it was administered on the cognia platform for the first time and they changed their typical questions to be focused more on the in-person and remote learning context how the pandemic conditions affected perceptions of learning access to devices in the internet and access to instructional support um their test or their survey administration window was from may 3rd to 21st and you can see we had almost 6 000 students and almost 700 staff members participate in that survey next slide the district every year also administers a student satisfaction and safety survey this is

049run out of student services in conjunction with rada this year tana and i collaborated to modify the questions to take into account both the in-person and the remote learning context so they were similar questions as in the past but we wanted to find out whether there are differences in perceptions based on the instructional learning context and this had a slightly longer window but was also in the spring from the end of april until the last day of school and we had over four thousand students in grades five through 12 participate so as far as the instructional context goes what the state survey asked what percentage of time they spent in person and you can see it was about half and half 48 said they spent half the time or more in with in-person learning that

050would be primarily elementary school students and a little more than half so they spent less than half their time in in-person learning throughout the year when looking at in their remote instruction 78 said that their instruction took place virtually or online with another 15 saying that it was a combination of virtual instruction together with packets that were sent home so there was a combination of paper and also the online instruction the majority of students reported that they participated in live lessons with their teacher about as often as they watched recorded lessons so at times the teachers would front load they would record their lecture and post that and there are other times when they were face to face in a google meet with live instruction and so overall it seemed to be fairly well balanced

051between the two types of instructional delivery one of the questions that's been brought up throughout the year is whether students have an appropriate environment in which to focus about two-thirds of students reported that they had a private space to do their schoolwork and a little less than a third said that they needed to share their space another question has been whether students have access to devices and the internet we know that the district provided a chromebook to every student but we also know that three percent of students said that they um never had their own that they always had to share so you have the same question in questions 10 and 11 basically asking the same question a different way and it was consistent um saying that three percent of the students reported that they

052were sharing their devices it may be that they're sharing with other family members that it's not with other students but that there might be other people in their family who also would like access to the device but the district did provide a chromebook to every student 63 percent of the students reported that they always are almost always had good internet access and another 30 percent 34 said that they sometimes i would put myself under the sometimes categories i'm sure many of you would you know many of us have fairly reliable internet but sometimes you know our screen freezes um so overall um that's relatively good we also have people who have limited data plans so they may have good access for part of the month and then have very limited access for other parts of

053the month teachers also reported that for students participating in live lessons that 86 said most or all of their students were able to access the live lessons without significant issues and teachers reported that they themselves 92 reported that they um had good internet access when they were delivering the instruction so for some of them we broke it out by elementary middle or high this is also from the otl student survey one of the questions has been whether students had access to support instructional support in their household and you can see that only six percent of the students at the elementary level said that no adult was available in the household to help them with remote learning and that went up to 22 percent at the high school level when they participated virtually students um by

054and large especially at the elementary and middle school level reported that they were able to obtain help from their teacher most of the time or whenever they needed help 12 percent of elementary school students said they had a tough time getting individual help from their teacher about the same 14 for middle and that went up to 23 at the high school level teachers however high school teachers reported um only six percent that their students could only reach them some of the times and i think part of that may be the teachers have the high school level of such large rosters that they're interacting with a lot of students and so they feel like they're present but some students may feel like okay i wasn't able to get the help that i needed from all of

055my teachers in the timely manner that i wanted by and large this is on a scale from one to five with five being strongly agree so four would be agree three would be neither agree or disagree by and large you can see that our students do believe that they were able to receive academic help when needed from adults at school the average was for the most part a four or higher a group between agree and strongly agree it is higher at the elementary level than middle or high school and it's also higher in in-person instruction than in remote instruction and that's a trend that we're going to see frequently teachers are clear and specific about they want from me again higher at the elementary level than the secondary level and higher for in-person instruction than

056remote overall my classroom learning is meaningful you see similar trends and again the biggest dissatisfaction is with the remote instruction this was an interesting question how much have you learned this year compared to prior years and we would think that almost everyone would say less but 74 percent of elementary school students out there felt is learned as much or more as in prior years that went down the middle in the high school levels teachers were not quite as optimistic as elementary students but i think we have data that shows that some students did very well and learned a lot others it didn't work for everyone though and you know some students were able to find their way and others not so much this was an interesting one teachers treat students with respect it's high it's

057above between agree and strongly agree for all levels and both modes of instruction it was a little bit higher for remote instruction than for in-person instruction i feel supported and encouraged by my school again overall positive but lower at the secondary level than the elementary and higher for in-person than remote instruction i feel safe in classes and in my interaction with peers again between agree and strongly agree for all levels in both modes of instruction and the last one is i'm satisfied overall with my school and again on the positive but side but um stronger at the elementary level and stronger for in-person instruction and with that i stand for questions okay thank you so much dr miller um let me dr cleveland do you want to say anything before i go into questions no

058i think these these two are are good information to have but i'd like to hear the board's questions and i'll try to respond to those but i think dr miller's done a great job on presenting it okay thank you dr cleveland and thank you dr miller okay and we'll go ahead and start with questions for the board and we'll start with noreen scott i have no questions thank you thank you and gwen coleman hi dr miller thank you so much for presenting this um would you just explain and i know we've gone over this but just kind of an overview of what asking these questions how they're going to be used what role they play in in what we're going through we have had um different teams looking at re-entry into different areas and so

059this data will be looked at them to see what has gone well maybe where there's some dissatisfaction and how we can improve thank you and would you um i know you know you looking at the numbers here i would be curious to hear from yourself or dr cleveland kind of what takeaways you have from these kind of what you saw what surprises there might be what areas that you feel encouraged about and some of the challenges that we need to overcome and then i did want to ask before that question is answered um was this the complete survey that was provided to everybody were there any other questions or is this this everything uh these were the highlights of the survey questions um we can certainly get to you the results of each of the

060questions but um there are a number of questions and we know the board meeting has limited time and so we wanted to give you the highlights and not the answers to every question but we certainly can provide that to you now and thank you and i appreciate that thoughtfulness i'm just curious of the number of questions that were uh presented in the survey you know just just a little bit of kind of an overview of the the number of questions because it was i appreciate that it being condensed i'm just curious if it really was a if you felt like it was the thorough enough assessment and what with the information that you that you received the state opportunity to learn survey had 14 questions for students they had some additional questions for teachers um

061i'm trying to jump between documents and the student satisfaction survey is significantly lengthier and we because we have two different contexts um the ones that i didn't summarize all of them but we had 14 about 15 questions that we summarized and there are some additional ones that ask them more questions about safety than i presented but many of these questions were presented twice once with thinking about the time when you were at home learning remotely how did you feel about this and then also um think of the time when you were at school if you were at school so we had more people respond to the virtual than to the in person because not everyone was in person this year and we also don't want to overwhelm with the number of questions that we asked

062so it was not as long as the survey that we gave in the fall from tntp but students saw probably about 30 questions from the district survey and about 14 from the state so um who was it and this might have been addressed so i apologize if you explained this before who compiled the questions was it did we do it internally or was it the group that's doing the accreditation um the accreditation surveys will be a little different there are surveys from cognitive the same platform actually as the state opportunity to learn survey um the state opportunity to learn survey was administered on cognia we were able to download the raw data and from there my department compiled the responses into summary data and provided to the schools the responses for each school as well

063as district-wide data and the district student satisfaction and safety survey we administer on surveymonkey and so that's compiled automatically by the system and then we can share off the data from there okay thank you um and then if i could just go back to the one question that i was just curious about if if you and dr cleveland might share your takeaways from from the surveys um things that you were glad to see things that you saw as challenges or surprises and things that you feel we need to work on i'd like to defer to dr cleveland for that if she's okay you know i could i could share some of that though i haven't really pulled all of my thoughts together or just kind of quickly i think one of the things that um

064that we were gratified uh to uh to learn from the survey is that many students did very well that they learned a lot and they learned as much or more what was not so good was it was about evenly divided between those who did pretty well with it and felt pretty good about it and the other 50 that felt like it wasn't the best tool for them and i think we knew that all along uh but it certainly um defies the idea that it was a lost year for everyone uh not at all i mean some people did did very well with it i think most of the challenges that they raised in the survey we were already aware of and so curriculum instruction kept revising the way we were delivering instruction to try to

065to address some of those concerns so i think we had a much better approach the second semester for example at the high school than we did in the first it was a learning experience and as we learned we modified and we changed um i i think that the uh the feedback on the effort the the care and effort of our teachers was very strong they gave teachers a lot of credit for trying to do the very best they could um i think they were very honest about some of the things that they did and didn't do um but you know they didn't particularly like the tape lessons uh honestly most of us don't and so that was an area where we were kind of expecting them to say they didn't like that um the other

066thing i think was very interesting was um you know they felt like they always had access to someone who could help them and that was one of the things we were very worried about was there a sense of hopelessness helplessness that you know they were just out there drifting and didn't know how to get help the survey suggests that was not the case but what we have learned is that online platform is not for everyone not everyone does well with it not everyone likes it and certainly we need to be able to provide in-person learning to many of our students who just felt like that was not the best way for them to learn the other thing i think we learned out of it is that we really did improve a lot in terms of

067our technology aptitudes and our ability to utilize technology for the delivery of instruction it was very clear that was an ongoing process throughout the year and at the beginning of the year it was not as as strong as it was you know it's really kind of sad about the time we really got it all together um it was returned to hybrid learning which we wanted of course but we wish we had had the other for a little bit longer period of time um but but we did have many comments that came back on really complimenting our stuff on their concerning care from students families that was especially gratifying uh to hear from from the community so those are just a few general thoughts uh i certainly provide more more specific uh the other i was

068really pleased that we had as many people respond surveys people were pretty tired of surveys and they were getting to the point where they didn't want to return them and we were glad that we got an adequate response and a varied response for different groups of people in terms of providing feedback to the district abby what would you add to that from from are there any other highlights or things that you saw or were surprising to you or or uh concerning to you no i agree i think there is a dichotomy in the data um and i don't think that's surprising to anyone and i do think it supports some students felt well supported and felt like they learned a lot um and felt you know they're able to reach people and other people didn't

069feel you know it really was a struggle for them um and i think that's something we've known and i think you know it's supported and i also i'm actually pretty pleased with the uh digital equity type questions they access because i think some numbers might surprise a little for example the number of students who report that they have to share a device given that we provided advice to every student but there are contexts that we're not aware of and i think overall um the dis folks in the district have worked very hard with our partners to try to ensure that students had access to online learning and by and large we succeeded it's not perfect it's not you know it's a struggle but by and large i think we accomplished quite a bit last year

070i'd like to ask if there's any other uh you know carl or jana or any others that would like to respond as well [Music] if you have any comments you would like to make we'd sure like to hear them well i think he summed it up very well dr cleveland happy um it's carl upland chief academic officer i think we learned a lot and i think as we got in the second semester we made modifications and it shows i think in the data that students did get access and help they needed obviously higher at the elementary level in face to face than in remote but it does show if you look at the scale that most kids got the could access the help and get the help they they needed i think that's really really

071important um and i would like to really compliment it and the work they did in terms of wireless access um that took a lot of work and i think also the collaboration between c9 and it i think that shows um in all the departments and making sure that the students got what they needed does anybody else want to add anything you know i would just conclude by saying i think you know again it was not for everybody and and one of the things we learned with people who think that you could just deliver instructions always that way for every single person i think we've had a really wonderful case study that showed that just is not the case but we also have to recognize or some students that liked it and did very well with

072it would like to continue with that kind of learning delivery system and we will try our best to deliver it for for them so one size does not fit all i would also support what carl said but cooperation online departments was phenomenal and particularly i.t um you know stepping up and providing internet for over 800 families was really an incredible undertaking and one of the things we find is when families get the internet it opens the window to the world that they didn't have before and just like the beginning of televisions when people got their first television set very few ever went back afterwards it became an integral part of the american family and i think it's the same for the internet accesses for many families it was the opening of a whole new world

073for them and i really hope that most of them will stay with that and continue to provide that um for their their their family members down in the future so i i do think that cooperation um was necessary to deliver instruction i think it really means a whole lot more than that i think it meant just an opportunity to have access to the rest of the resources that are needed today just to survive and so it has become a utility i think more than an option are there any other questions let me go over to when did you have more that you wanted to go off of before i went to the rest of the board not at this time thank you for uh your responses okay thank you and those are great questions i

074appreciate you asking them um we'll go over to catherine cullen thank you and dr cleveland and maybe carl can help out with this as well um since the perceptions of learning in middle school and high school and we we know that some of them just really felt they didn't get the instruction level that they should have last year you know to be able to i guess compared to the other years prior are we going to be offering tutoring again some of those additional services to help out these students next year because i know that some of them are going to have to kind of catch up we did see a lot of summer school classes but i'm sure that some of them are going to be still feeling like they they need some help how

075do you want to respond to that oh yeah absolutely i think that yes dr cleveland um definitely will be offering that support additional support uh for extended learning uh programs for additional tutoring i think that's obviously gonna be a need um we continue to use look at saturday school like we've done before to recapture credits i think credit credit recovery will get you looked at differently also um we're looking at providing at every site versus at the centralized secondary learning center so i think that's going to be an advantage and um so i think those are some of the things we're looking at student support center the things we could do there so definitely additional supports for sel for certainly social emotional supports additional counseling and social work support i think it's going to be

076critical because some of the students also have they can't access the academics because they're having some some social emotional um trauma or whatever that may be occur in their life so i think those are important uh wrap around services that we provided also we utilized medicaid dollars to provide an additional nurse at each high school and i think that's really important so dr clean alternative view there's some things we can penny do renee is not here tonight but we're currently looking at how can we provide more um capacity i think is a good term for our students to who might have gaps but also how to accelerate we've learned a lot through technology that we can actually accelerate some of the learning through that process go ahead sue i'm sorry oh that's okay um i

077missed two quick comments regarding that um one of the not so good things that's occurred is a social emotional learning has become more important not only in schools but in other organizations we're seeing some of our counselors lured away uh to the private sector for considerably more money and so we're down we we're really down six counselors it's really rare in our district but that's something we're going to have to deal with and we're glad to see other organizations are putting importance on it we are going to continue with tutoring uh we feel like that helped a lot last year we had a lot of positive feedback one of the things that i've heard from several of our teachers is that they felt like through the google meeps they knew their students better than they

078ever had it was that one-on-one time where the teacher had you know your complete attention an opportunity to talk face-to-face and so that's one of the lessons learned is that google needs to be very helpful on a one-on-one basis teachers also said that students were more comfortable in a google me situation than they were face-to-face sometimes and uh but that's an area where we're going to continue to build to offer those opportunities for students to talk directly with their teachers when they are having challenges but definitely tutoring will continue and that's one of the things that we also think really made a difference last year and we're going to continue those services into the new year okay thank you okay uh noreen did you have another question i saw that you were you had a

079hand raised earlier no it's not a question i just wanted to make a comment that i don't think a lot of folks in rio rancho really understood the herculean effort it was to get children the internet and to get the chromebooks out and not every school district in the country was able to accomplish what we were and i i really think that kudos go to the entire team for working so hard to get education out and it really showed the value of our the values in our community for education and i just wanted to make that comment i know i've said it before but it it really stands out i've talked to uh family members in other districts around the country who are not as fortunate as we have been that's a good comment noreen

080i agree it's been it was very very i'm very grateful as a as a parent i was very grateful that all my kids were able to have chromebooks and all that access that they needed and um especially with my husband and i both working from home as well and and so our families needed that and so we it was a great effort i've talked to a few individuals who talked about trying to get those chromebooks out and and they've done some of the returns and and just how um you know it was a lot for for everyone to do that and so very much you i think you zord kudos and i agree with that i i would say we're very grateful that we're able to do that in the district so thank you to

081all who were able to do that um any other questions from the board on this so this was one of the ones that the board had requested that you know we have um we kind of got some information about lessons learned um that happened through the pandemic do you feel like this covered some of those things that you all wanted to to know about um is there is there additional things that i know when maybe would you like when to have that full report um of the questions would you like dr miller to send that out is that something you're interested in i mean i would be curious to see the extent of the different questions it's something that can just be put on shared drive just just to see so and i know it's

082a couple of different uh surveys that were all kind of put together here so so thank you okay all right um dr cleveland anything else from you on this before we move yeah i don't have anything else at the function this time just but thanks everybody who put this together um we did learn a lot and i think that's the most important thing to say we did learn a lot a lot of things will be better as a result of of the experience last year that being said we're very eager to keep our schools open and to be able to provide parents with a choice what works best for their child and their family so uh we're very optimistic hopefully that will be the best issue thank you thank you dr cleveland thank you uh

083dr miller too we appreciate when we i always appreciate when you bring all these numbers and we get to see all these things so so thank you for that um uh real quick just one note if kim could just reflect in the minutes and jeffrey morgan had to to step out and that was at 6 18. if you could just reflect that in the minutes i'd appreciate it we'll go to our next report which is and the school re-entry toolkit update for 2021-2022 school year and beth pendergrass our chief communications strategy engagement officer will be presenting this for us tonight and beth i just have to say before you get started the new website is looking spectacular and so i i just have loved looking at it so i just wanted to throw that out

084there because i haven't had a chance to to say that to you and to your group thank you a good evening president galbraith members of the board and dr cleveland i am here tonight to go over briefly the new mexico public ed department's covid 19 response toolkit for the new school year um and of course as you know this is subject to change um as things change with covid you know as we saw last year they update the toolkit regularly um and send us new versions of it but i apologize that you didn't get this sooner as you know the toolkit was released today at one o'clock to the public and so we put together some slides for you for this evening and while we've been waiting with baited breath for this we would love

085to be in a position where a tool kit was not necessary and it's been hard already to see the struggles that families are having there's so much frustration already even since one o'clock we're seeing just so many families frustrated on both sides of the coin you know with mass or not enough mass or um and so it's a challenge to be in the spot where we have to deliver something that is uh it's not our plan but it is the plan that we have and so i want to go through what that is next slide please so masks um all individuals in elementary schools regardless of vaccination status are required to wear a mask at all times for secondary schools they're saying that students staff and volunteers who are vaccinated do not need to wear

086a mask and those who are unvaccinated will need to wear a mask those who are vaccinated will have to provide proof that they've been vaccinated in order not to wear a mask next slide please schools must identify a process for ensuring compliance with mask requirements so dr cleveland mentioned this earlier the posting of signs that's not a problem announcing mass requirements at events and other but also we have to come up with a plan for how to track students who are vaccinated or not vaccinated and determine how we can allow some students to wear masks and others not to wear masks secondary schools so like dr cleveland said this really sets a baseline um it doesn't prevent school districts from uh going further with the requirements so we could become more restrictive and reasons for

087that might include if there's a increasing substantial covet 19 transmission we're seeing a community transmission if we don't have a great system to monitor the vaccine status if we're having a difficult time enforcing the mask wearing if we have low vaccination rates or if we hear from our community that's what they would like next slide please masks are not required outdoors for any individual and then unvaccinated spectators are required to wear masks at indoor events however they're not required to provide evidence of vaccination status so very similar to the health order for those events next slide mask enforcement so within the toolkit they tell us if a student removes a face mask and refuses to wear the mask then that student must be picked up from school and taken home we are required to update

088our discipline matrices to add an addendum that would describe the consequences for violating mask wearing requirements we need to update this by september 1st in addition it has to be sent to parents and we have to collect signatures that indicate they receive the matrices next slide please this is something that's good news for close contacts the the definition hasn't really changed someone who over 24 hour period has a cumulative exposure of 15 minutes or longer within three to six feet of confirmed coven 19 cases and i say three to six feet because they say three feet for students six feet for adults but there is an exception in a k-12 indoor classroom setting close contact definition excludes students who are within three to six feet of an infected individual where both students were engaged in

089consistent and correct use of well-fitting face masks and other k-12 school prevention strategies were in place so distancing proper ventilation so if we're doing things properly we're not going to be quarantining full classrooms again so long as students are wearing those masks and they're following our other covet safe practices next slide we're still required to have a covid19 point of contact we're still required to have our care rooms at each campus the rapid response tasks will still be required for each case and along those lines they are still determining whether or not schools will have to shut down after four rapid response cases they have not confirmed that yet or not contact tracing and notification to stakeholders will still need to take place the air filtration guidelines are still in place some changes with reporting

090that's good news we only need to report those who were infectious while on campus so last year you know we got some cases that the student might have gone home a week ago they were tested they became positive but they were never on campus during the infectious time which is usually two days before symptoms or two days before positive tests if they're asymptomatic so we will only need to report those who are infectious and the reporting will be able to happen by next business day so those who are completing those ped reports when we get cases in the evening well we'll still need to contact the close contacts we won't need to complete those reports until the next business day and same on the weekend if we have a case on the weekend they won't

091need to complete that ped report until monday we will however still need to notify the environmental department if it's a staff member within four hours that's regardless of time of day or day of week next slide the covid 19 surveillance testing is still going to be required for all schools providing in-person student services so for staff members and so this will be only for staff members who aren't vaccinated or those who have not tested positive of covet next slide so we'll need to ensure that 25 of our faculty and staff who have not provided evidence of a vaccine um were are tested each week um and or once a week or one sorry one time a month or 25 each week sorry and no staff member is going to be required to participate in weekly

092surveillance testing more than every four weeks staff members selected for testing should provide evidence to the school their results were received during the assigned week so that hasn't changed much except the percent and then we're also going to need to continue to provide student surveillance testing for our students and for our student athletes this is not uh it's voluntary for our families and the goal is 25 percent of unvaccinated students each week so the part i highlighted below has always been kind of problematic to us we're required to report the number of students tested for covet 19 each week through the portal we have no problem with staff because we assign them and they have to submit their results to us it's more it's challenging to ask families to volunteer and try and collect those

093results from them and so that's kind of been problematic and so we're working on ways with the state on how we can do that better next slide please covet safe practices teachers are to maintain seating charts water fountains this year are okay but they are considered high touch areas for cleaning lockers are okay unless they become a place where students congregate when you know high schools is probably going to be a place where students congregate unvaccinated adults must complete screening prior to entering a school district facility so if they're vaccinated so our teachers who are vaccinated or students do not have to do the screening only the unvaccinated adults would have to complete the screening out of state and overnight travel is okay board meetings and staff meetings may be in person or virtual and

094then cleaning and disinfecting schedules need to be maintained next slide please so food service to the greatest extent possible maximize physical distance as much as possible when moving through the food service lines and while eating i'm using outdoor spaces whenever we can they think that we should have unvaccinated students eat outside or sit on one side of the table and maintain greater than three feet of distance from others transportation all unvaccinated students and staff must wear face masks to the greatest extent possible they say two passengers per seat and then other recommendations they have they have a hand sanitizer dispensers driver shields passenger curtains they want to ensure buses have extra masks available if someone shows up and doesn't have a mask and then they want buses to implement loading and unloading procedures including assigned

095seating and that mainly is for the purpose of helping with contact tracing if you have a positive case and to limit exposure travel meetings field trips so out of state and overnight travel is okay for students and staff however unvaccinated students can only share rooms with individuals from the same household or they have to have their own room we in rio rancho we are requiring that a parent or legal guardian stay with an unvaccinated student so that they're not alone in a hotel room we kind of see that as a safety issue board meetings again may be in person or virtual in order to better protect community members and staff meetings may be in person or virtual field trips are allowed and should be limited to essential purposes and you see i put an asterisk

096next to these that's just the reminder that you still have to maintain all your coveted safe practices distancing mask squaring etc in any of those instances next slide please school related events are allowed but must be limited again to essential events schools should limit non-essential visitors um but we can have parents and we can have volunteers on campus adults who come on campus during school hours without evidence of a vaccination are required to complete the covet screening next slide singing and playing win instruments so unvaccinated students may not share instruments or supplies unvaccinated students must have their own instrument specific multi-layered cloth mask for singing or playing a wind instrument or instrument specific multi-layered cloth bell cover for playing wind instruments and unvaccinated students must be trained on protocols to ensure that students maintain social

097distancing while playing and singing and three feet at all other times especially when assembling and disassembling instruments and then also they're saying that they need to use disposable absorbent pads or other receptacles were possible to catch the condensation expelled from water keys and so that is your singing and playing with instruments next slide so i just this is kind of wrap up what's going to look different so we know that students aren't going to see the plastic barriers and cafeterias anymore um they're going to be able to share equipment pe you know balls and books and different things of that nature they're not going to see tape to line the hallways anymore um full classes aren't going to be asked to quarantine so long as the appropriate covet safe practices are used and i mean

098that just that's a huge change for this year you know we're not going to be sending an entire classroom home for 10 days to learn from home as long as we're following the right protocols masks are not required outdoors for any individual so recess outside athletics outside maths are not required our schools this year are going to be full that is new this year um and it's also you know it this is challenging there's a lot of challenges in this but it's pretty exciting to say that we are open for in-person learning and we haven't seen that for over a year and so i'm trying to find the positive in that and i stand for questions okay thank you beth i'm trying to like gather my thoughts here so thank you for that i'm gonna

099um go let's let's see if dr clinton do you have anything before i go to questions um just just a reinforcement of slide five those are the decisions that the board will need to make and make as soon as possible so that we can let parents know preferably before the start of school so those are the uh what goes into the addendum to the discipline matrix and also how many warnings a student would have before they are assigned to remote learning so hopefully we can have a special meeting and and discuss those fairly soon so that families are aware of what the uh uh what the processes will be for our history okay uh claudia can you go back to slide five really quick i have those written down but i just want to make

100sure i just want to take a look at it one more time okay okay i do think that for for the administration for the staff uh the greatest challenge will be the full evidence of vaccination and what that's going to look like and so we will also want to have a conversation with the board about what that looks like after we've had a chance to talk with our staff our principals and others about how we might do that and be as unintrusive as we could possibly be but still meet the requirements by the public ed department the the full evidence in in display uh is a little challenging for us right now to figure out okay all right thank you and let me go over to um when do you have any questions comments no

101i don't thank you beth okay and um thank you um yes i i did write that on this that um so it looks like we have to update the the matrix for the discipline and then it also says in on page 14 uh the response toolkit it says that um for unvaccinated staff members who refuse to wear a mass hr policy will dictate disciplinary actions and whether the individual may choose to take leave so i guess you guys are all going to have to update that as well for staff yeah that'd be right we'd have to bring that to you as policy correct and then um and then as well as visitors it looks like on page 15 as well when i was going to this um the other thing is obviously the concern and

102i wish i would have notated it is um identifying the students of who's been vaccinated who hasn't that's a major concern for me um and are we going to get a obviously ped has their opinion on it are we going to have a legal opinion on that as well are we going to go out to the attorneys for that so ped did give their legal opinion on it that um and we can't force it of students or staff to tell us but if they don't want to wear a mask then that's their prerogative to let us know um right but they're saying that we need to publicly identify them like a color code lanyard something like that and that's my concern there's a lot of struggles and concerns around that i don't think we've found

103the right answer for that okay and will we get some more information by the next time that we meet in reference to that if there is i mean i guess looking at it saying hey we're good to go but of course i have some concerns as a board member and um any type of a legal ramifications that can come back on us as well is identifying our students being vaccinated or not vaccinated so um i think that might be something that we might want to take a look at it's definitely something we're looking at and you're not alone in those concerns definitely dr cleveland i don't know if you want to add to that they have uh their their legal uh offices determined to stop violate grip and they have given us a lot of

104rationale about why we believe it is safe to make that requirement they've suggested things like different colored badges or things that are not terribly intrusive my concern is making the teachers become a policeman in in policing this and so that's why some districts are choosing all maths in the classroom so the teachers don't have to be in a situation of which they're calling students out in class they're telling they have to put their mask on um but again that's something that the board will need to discuss and what are the uh you know what are our options but um that is why some districts are going on after the possible inspiration uh they're not wanting to make people have to administer uh any kind of policing in the classroom and take time away from keeping

105and learning so there are a lot there are different there are different approaches to it but certainly that's one some districts are going to use uh that you can take your mass maybe step out of the classroom but in the classroom everybody wears one others are not going that direction at all i did want to back up just back to one up further questions the state has said that uh spraying a mass is a condition of employment and so that isn't a decision that the board will be able to make they have determined that it is a condition of employment and so um and and a brief conversation with the union i think they have prepared that um and uh that i've also had that discussion as well with the state but i certainly don't

106speak for them so that's uh but it is i want to be very clear the state's position is it is a condition for employment so if you did not produce a vaccine then you must wear a mask if you don't want to tell us one way or the other and that's your privacy right then you have to wear masks so that's that's the option is you don't have to tell us the absence of telling us the assets of affording us and the mass becomes mandatory for you i see this can be very problematic for the school year absolutely okay thank you okay let's uh we can go back over to win go ahead win um to catherine's point i know that i believe this was something that was discussed as a part of the toolkit

107but my concern is what might happen even between students when one is identified as having the vaccination one is not kind of i could just see this being a very intense issue even talking about addressing potentially bullying and if that actually gets back home discussions about what kids are vaccinated those privacy issues that i think really are kind of related to ferpa and kind of what that might mean so and um board member coleman what that is also one of the reasons that some districts are choosing to do all that uh is the issue of bullying and identification and then not wanting to uh to have students singled out so that's one of their that's part of their rationale for justifying mass quest okay and we can go over noreen i i really have no

108questions uh i i think that uh it's it's pretty clearly outlined uh and we have what maybe one or two little nuances that we have a say on and that's it i think you're you're right event i do want you to know there have been a lot of discussion between superintendents and the public head department and certainly the a large number of superintendents are very much in disagreement with with the uh with with the outline that you're right that's what we have been doing okay um yeah i have all the same concerns i i don't know i i i would like for our students not to have to wear masks but it is concerning all these other things so what are we looking at for a special meeting are we trying to hit something maybe

109friday or are we looking next week early on monday just out of curiosity have you kind of thought about what day we're looking at so far yeah we would like it to be a little later in the week so we have time to talk with our staff particularly our principals and how what suggestions they might have for this and their concerns so i think a friday or monday would be great either one of those but we definitely would like to have at least a couple of days being able to work on this with uh with our staff so i think a friday or monday would be great i think the board is often used to monday at meetings that is going to put us pretty tight but we can certainly get the information out after

110monday any later than that will be very very difficult to make sure everybody is informed about the board's decision okay so if yeah i was a board if we can just kind of keep that in mind that we're going to have to have the special meeting in the next few days and just kind of look at your calendars and see if we can do that and catherine go ahead sorry um one of the other things is um they had said that they will have the um the parents will always have the option to move their children into remote learning at any point during the school year so are we going to be able to handle that um with because that really could be kind of problematic as well um we saw that last year we

111had people going back and forth and back and forth and under their remote learning questions and answers they say that that's an option at any time so what are we looking for that no sorry go ahead you know i and and others want to jump in on that honestly this is one of the things i really don't see how we're going to manage very well because we have limited staffing and so you can't just keep giving teachers virtual to uh in person and restructuring classes when you restructure classes you affect all of the family all of the kids and parents in that class and so just at any time is going to be very problematic um but but we'll do like we did last year i love the term and the toolkit it applies um

112in some circumstances and not others to the greatest extent possible and we will do it the greatest extent possible but it is going to be very hard uh to do it you know back and forth back and forth and last year we gave people a chance to move once but not multiple times because we just couldn't keep jerking people around so that will that will also be a a very big challenge to make happen and i don't know that we are going to be able to do it completely anytime so our goal is going to be making as good as experience as we can and if we have concerns that are raised we try to work very hard with the parents and families to alleviate those concerns so they won't feel like they have to

113move but have to change so and i think most of the time last year that's exactly what happened uh particularly at north china shanah wants to comment on that i know we worked really hard to work with the families and most times we were able to sit down hear their concerns and fix whatever it was that was a problem for them so we will continue to try to do that but that is almost impossible it kinds to do and uh and that we will do the very best we can with it but i don't know that we'll be able to do it all the moments know this we put people on waiting lists and trying to accommodate them as quickly as we can okay thank you okay if you see me looking up it's because

114i have my brightness all the way down because my computer is about to die and have the wrong charge cord so i just want you all to to know why i'm looking up um any other questions from the board um on anything okay okay well thank you so much beth for um for giving us this presentation i think it's somewhat what we thought might be coming but there's a lot of things in there too that need a lot to have a lot that need to be worked out so i really appreciate putting this out with such late notice of you receiving it so thank you for the for the presentation today we appreciate it uh dr cleveland anything else as i move on welcome back we're moving now pretty quickly uh to get schools open

115and we have just a lot of really good things going on and so i really want to stress that we're we're dealing with a couple of these issues that are somewhat problematic but our schools um we have a couple of issues there and as soon as we know more about that we will let you know um you know what the timetable is and there's a possibility that a couple of schools might have to be delayed a few days in order to get everything uh ready but we'll let you know and probably that next meeting will be a good time to to talk about that if we need to talk about it however if we do have information uh earlier than that we will certainly send it to the board right away so it's uh we

116do have a couple of schools that are are not looking really good okay okay thank you okay so as we get ready to move on to our next part and there's something i i did incorrectly so really quick so because the agenda was approved with that commendation on it and we need to vote to remove it and add it to our next agenda um is there anyone willing to make a motion to to do that i move that we uh move the accommodation uh to the next meeting this is secretary noreen scott okay thank you do we have a second on that this is i'll second thank you remember catherine okay thank you so we have a motion by noreen scott a second by catherine cullen and um kim can you take a roll call

117vote for us on it oh i can um uh vice president morgan okay uh secretary scott yes um member member colin yes remember coleman yes uh and uh president galbraith yes okay that's approved for zero okay thank you so that motion carries okay thank you so much i appreciate that um so moving on to our to our consent and to approve the consent agenda and is there anything that needs to be moved off the consent or is there a motion to approve this is board member coleman i move to approve the consent agenda okay we have a second this is board member catherine cullen okay we have a motion by board member coleman a second by board member catherine cullen and kim can you take a roll call vote for us on this one yes

118i can vice president morgan secretary scott yes uh board member colin yes board member coleman yes president galbraith yes and that is 4-0 thank you that motion carries okay and moving into business i'm trying to make sure there's nothing i miss i have so many notes on my page i'm moving into business and it's to consider the approval of an approved 7 12 2021 rrps board of education meeting minutes and is there anything that needs to be changed on those minutes do we have a motion to approve this is board member catherine cullen that i make a motion to approve 7 12 20 21 board of education meetings this is board member coleman i second thank you we have a motion by catherine collin and a second by when coleman it is hard to say

119both of your names at the same time thank you kim can you take a roll call vote for us oh i'm glad it's not just me vice president morgan secretary scott yes yes board member coleman yes and president galbraith yes and that is 4-0 thank you that motion carries okay and moving into our advanced planning and so also once again keeping in mind that we're going to have to have a special board meeting either this friday or monday and then on july 26 2021 we have our next regular board meeting it will be in the board room and virtual july 27th through the 28th is a tech time virtual conference do i have a question in reference to that are we do we have information on that since that is on our board um i

120haven't seen anything kim have you seen anything come through um are we to be on that i don't know because it's on our advanced planning for the board symbol up there anybody still on yeah i don't know we'll have to we'll have to look at it and see if there's if we need to be on there sometimes we just have some of those things on there i'll try to get you some information i i think it's optional if you want to uh take some of the sessions okay thank you we are echoing i can't figure out where echo is coming from but okay thank you and make sure i don't miss anything now okay august 5th is our first day of classes for middle and high school august 9th will be the first day of

121classes for elementary schools um also on august 9th we will have a regular board meeting at 5 30 here in the boardroom and virtual august 19th there will be an audit committee open meeting and an executive session that will be at 4 30 virtual on that and august 23rd will be another regular board meeting 5 30 in the boardroom and virtual and with that tonight our meetings adjourned thank you everyone so much you