001hello hey guys it's rory andrew can you see and hear me we can hear you but not see you same thing with rory and same thing with liz oh okay let me see how to turn my camera on hold on it's weird that shouldn't be happening i'm gonna leave and come back it might be something weird with the yeah i'll be back i'm still not there i think i figured it out yep yeah there we go we have everyone i think i just moved julia over okay great and i don't know if sawyer is joining maybe we ought to go ahead and call the meeting to order and then we can keep a lookout for sawyer okay terrific well good evening everybody it's so nice to see everyone i'm glad that we could be together
002in this manner and i will make a motion to return to public session if i could please ask for a second thank you second goodbye julia all in favor please say aye hi terrific thank you so much and um if everybody would please join us for the pledge of allegiance thank you pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america and to the republic for which underground indivisible with liberty thank you um so great it's thursday august 20th and um in between our last board meeting on july 30th and tonight of course governor cuomo announced on august 7th that so long as coronavirus transmission rates remain low enough and so long as our reopening plans are sufficient we will be allowed to open for in-person learning we just wanted to take a
003moment to thank our community for attending last week's community information sessions and record numbers we thank you for participating asking questions offering suggestions to strengthen our plans as we strive to do the very best that we can for our students this fall we're very grateful to know that our communications are being received throughout the summer and we thank our community and all of you who are with us tonight for your support your patience and for responding multiple times to requests for information we also really want to thank our entire administrative team here with us tonight and our administrators faculty and staff for your tireless efforts all summer thank you for ensuring that our plans are in accordance with the latest guidance for exploring every option and resource available to improve the experience of distance learning
004for your efforts to bring students and staff back to our schools and classrooms and thank you for communicating these plans last week during marathon information sessions i think that connects the dots between where we left off at the end of july and tonight i hope so and we're very much looking forward to hearing from you again this evening i don't know whether there are other board announcements for tonight i'll just pause briefly in case there are and if not we turn it over to you andrew for a continued discussion thank you so much thank you marjorie and um i would just quickly echo some of those very same thank yous we really appreciate everybody who joined us last week we had a really great turnout for all the meetings last week and a lot of
005good questions came in and the questions are really helpful to us they do help us think about things we like to think we've anticipated everything but there's so much that's new obviously we can't anticipate everything so the questions that come in do help us and um i know we didn't get to all of them in the q a in the uh meetings last week but we will uh you know we continue to do i do our best to keep up with emails and we'll update the faq on the website as time goes forward um i do you know i would imagine that people are aware through the news uh the districts plans are evolving as the days go by um none of us were exactly sure what the governor was going to say when he
006made his announcements last week we weren't sure whether he was going to indicate that a certain type of plan would be the one that schools should use to open once we had been asked to provide three plans he did not do that in the end he essentially said use the plan that makes the most sense for your district uh so he gave districts options and what you're seeing now happened in the last week and even as recently as today uh districts are making different decisions and those those decisions are changing we've seen some more districts decide to go with fully remote models for a variety of reasons it is a very very complicated situation so i i do empathize with districts that are finding need to change and in some cases the changes are in
007reaction to the community meetings and the feedback and the questions the districts are getting and that are causing them to think differently about their plans so i i expect that you'll continue to see some of that evolution continue in the days to come but we wanted to just speak a little bit tonight about where we are how plans have not changed substantially from the meetings last week but we do want to offer some fine-tuning a little bit tonight and talk in a little bit more detail about the first few days of school but i want to start with this statement and just a little bit of an approach to the year all of us who work in the district are doing something we've never done before and i i can't emphasize that enough and it
008really is the spirit in which we want to enter into this we are we are we are at the moment still looking forward to bringing our students back um starting on september whatever that thursday is it's on one of the upcoming slides so we'll get to it in a moment but you know we haven't changed that but we do want to point out our teachers have never taught in the environment that they're going to be teaching in in the coming weeks our administrators have never administered all of our staff and all of the jobs they do our students have never come to learn in an environment like the one we're about to experience our goal as we've said all along is to do the very best we can we know how important it is for
009our students to be in a welcoming and warm environment and that's what we look forward to providing them will it be exactly the same as school used to be it absolutely will not be the same it'll be different in many many ways it'll be new we look forward to making it as good as it can be but it's just important i think that we all go into this as much as we can in the same spirit that we are uh we are looking forward to doing this as well as we can there are going to be challenges there's going to be learning there are going to be adjustments along the way there have to be but we want to get started where we can so again as marjorie mentioned thank you to everyone who's participated
010in the surveys including the most recent one we uh we contacted you a couple nights ago to say that we would be sending you some verification that's proving to be very complicated it's taking us a little bit longer to get it to you but we're still working on it and we expect very soon to get you verification of what we believe you told us in the survey that concluded the very beginning of this week we do know or at least we think we know from the rough data that we have so far that more than 300 students will be staying home uh when the year begins and that and that creates some options and some opportunities and some challenges uh which we're going to be thinking through in the next week or so but we
011think for example at the elementary school this this may create the possibility that in those cases where we know about students now who are going to be home full-time i mean that we can we may be able to dedicate a teacher to those students who are home so there'll be some shuffling of classes that were otherwise assigned what it what it does mean in terms of complications and we could be pulling some students from each of the three elementary schools who are staying home to create a full class and create a class for a single teacher who will be devoted to those students we think there are educational benefits in doing it that way rather than have those students continue to stay in the class that will be meeting some of the time in person
012and some of the time at home we think this can create a more consistent experience for those students that's we think that'll be the case again we still that's what this is why it's so important to verify the data because the numbers matter and where they're coming from and which grades they're in matter so so that's why we want to verify what we think we know it's less likely at the secondary schools that we can have the kind of model where a teacher can be devoted to those students at home just because of the nature of all the different classes that students take and all the electives that they take we still think it's most likely that students who are choosing to stay home will be remoting into what's happening in the classroom where it
013makes sense to do that and then doing some work offline also so it'll be a little bit different between the two schools and as we'll keep emphasizing it it may well evolve as time goes on and as we learn more about how to do it and how to do it best but so we'll keep sharing more as we learn more about that but that's where things stand at the moment and families can expect in the next day or two i think to receive that verification and as we said uh in the initial communication on that you only need to get back to us if there's if there's something wrong in the information that we've provided to you if it's not what you think your child is doing otherwise you do not need to contact us
014we're going to move forward and we're going to build those two cohorts the a and b we know that it's important for families to get that information soon that's why we're doing this survey so that we can get you accurate information and we will get it to you just as soon as we possibly can you want to talk a little bit interrupt for one minute go ahead the only thing i would just add to that is some parents are going to think that they submitted information for a student and what's what it looks like at least on our end is that in some cases families submitted for the same student twice and for one not at all so we're really going to ask you to check for each student so we're going to do it
015through the campus backpack that parent portal but we will ask you don't just look at one child and say oh yep that's what i said please look at each of your children if you have multiple children all right thank you thank you alice talk a little bit about those first two days of school now thursday and friday september 10th and 11th we've decided uh that we think this is a good way to start the year uh for the youngest students in each of the schools as actually as well as for our graduating uh senior class this year we want to bring in a smaller cohort on those very first two days so on thursday and friday we're planning to bring in kindergarten and first grade half of each grade on thursday half on friday same
016thing for sixth grade same thing for ninth and twelfth grade so the grades would be divided half the students would come in on the first day thursday the other half would come in on friday and other students will be home on those two days and this is important for a number of reasons obviously it creates a smaller group of students coming in person on these first two days for the very first time that we'll be going through a whole lot of protocols that we've never done before as i've said earlier we'll be doing health screenings we'll be teaching about health and safety in ways we've never had to do before we'll be talking to students about wearing masks and social distancing and a variety of other things we want to do it in the in
017the best ways possible we want our students to be happy to be coming to school we want to make sure that things work as well as they possibly can and we think doing that with a small group on those couple of days makes a lot of sense before we then bring all of the other grades in on the following monday on monday the 14th when we'll be bringing in that a group cohort for the first time in its entirety along with the entire kindergarten at first grade so we think that we think this is a good model we think we'll learn some things from it just as over the summer when we ran our esy program for 30 or 40 students we learned a lot from that but it's a big jump to go from
01830 or 40 students to even the several hundred that are represented on the screen here on that thursday or friday so we think this is sensible and so this is what we'll be sharing with our families and the individual schools will do some more reaching out in the coming week to share more details about this but we wanted to give the entire community a heads up about this tonight and we'll put more up about this on our website in the days ahead so that means that these grades just on those two days will be we i called it orienting remotely it'll be they will be connecting with their teachers with each other they'll learn they'll have a chance to acclimate to this with the software tools and some of the new protocols that they will
019hear about remotely but it does mean on that thursday and friday they will stay home so that we can benefit from this slightly more gradual beginning to the year again we think it we think it makes sense given all that's new so then monday the 14th the hybrid model begins in earnest we hope and everything moves forward from there i knock on wood as i say all of these things if you're reading the newspaper about what's happening in colleges and in other places around the country you know the challenges that we face but we are still feeling good about the way we've developed our plans and all the pieces that we have in place and i can't say this often enough as you again as you watch the reports of the number of cases in
020our communities they continue to be so positive into positive it's not the right word to use there they continue to be so good in terms of how low the numbers are and i can't say enough how important it is to all of our families to please be mindful of that and know that it's not just the behavior in school that matters it's behavior out of school it's our choices to travel and where we travel to and how paying attention to the state quarantine if you're returning from one of those places around the country or the world all of those things are so important for this to be successful and that's what we want it to be we want to bring our students in and we want to keep them in school for as long as
021possible and it's absolutely going to take a cooperative and collaborative community effort to make that work so uh we're still excited about moving that forward we're hoping to make this work this is this is tentative i i really do want to say that but in order for those first two days to work in the way we're describing them we know that all of our students need to have their devices at home remember we're distributing a single device to every single student in the district we're hoping to do that during the week of 9 31 the week before labor day i know that's coming as news to people and there might immediately be families who are away that week and well again again hopefully not too far away uh but maybe away and saying well i
022can't get it that week so we will understand that and we'll make accommodations and we're not entirely sure that we can make this happen but this is going to be our effort in the next few days to see if we can make this happen so that come that first week all students will have their devices they'll have them at home and they'll be ready to work remotely is that a question sorry yeah is that a typo is it 831 yes it is thank you it absolutely is it should be the week of august 31st not september 31st thank you very much for pointing that out and we'll correct that in the slide for when it goes uh on the website but yes the the week prior to labor day so that's august 31st moving forward
023and again we will confirm this in the next few days and we would do it in a staggered way through the week so that you know as smaller groups as possible we're coming to campus at any given time to collect the devices and we would do it in ways as safely as possible for the community and for our staff another plan that we want to talk a little bit about tonight this is something we've been thinking about for some time now how the students will arrive in the morning we had a lot of questions about this last week understandably so at the elementary school you can see there on the slide that we will be asking parents who are driving to school to arrive just after the buses have dropped children and then to pick
024up their children just before the buses arrive in the afternoon and more details about the exact times on that will follow from the individual schools but this is we think a very good way to be sure that we don't have all of the students arriving at the very same time and trying to come through the doors most of our elementary schools tend to be a single point of entry we've got a couple points in some places that we can use but we don't want to be funneling too many students through a single entrance at the same time and this is a way to space them out at the secondary schools we won't be making that request but we will have our buses for the secondary schools will pick up in the morning at the bus
025stops just a little bit earlier not dramatically this is not going back to the start times that we had a few years ago this is just a slightly earlier pickup time again so the buses have a little bit more time when they arrive and we might be able to space out the entrance into the schools and we will be using some different drop-off points for the buses than our students might be used to at the high school we're going to use a couple different places for buses to drop off students so that students can enter the building in a couple of different spots and that way be more spread out and again you'll hear more detail about that from the individual building in the coming week or so and that's that's really all the addition
026that i had for tonight but it is we thought it was important enough that we wanted to share that thinking certainly possible things will continue to evolve next week and we'll share that as that develops if there are developments and we'll put all these things on our website so that our families can read about them and see them but if board members have any questions please let me know if it's about this or anything else from all the conversations of the past week thank you so much andrew we really appreciate the update and the thinking on the first days of school and distribution of technology devices while my colleagues are just gathering their own thoughts i wanted to mention that after this conversation we'll immediately go to public forum so for any members of the
027community who are with us tonight who might be waiting to ask a question or share a comment we invite you to please use the q a functionality at the bottom of the zoom screen and welcome sawyer it's nice to see you thanks for joining us and um with that i open the floor to my board colleagues if people have clarifying questions or feedback andrew just on on the first um the first two days where we have a few grades coming in and the rest of the grades are remote you mentioned that there were half days on that thursday and friday i think the 10th and 11th of september will it all be half days for those who are remote i don't i if i did say half day i didn't mean to oh i don't
028i don't think we're anticipating half days on those days i like all the slides show to have i think it was half the population ah my apologies that's okay that's okay so let's be clear it's half the students but they're coming in for a full day uh at least that's the plan for now they'll go through their schedules on that day just as they would on any other day and they'll meet all their teachers but we just want to focus on half of the grade on one day and the other the other day it'll be the other half of the grade thank you for the clarification sorry my brother no no problem other thoughts or questions not sure what to make of that we're getting some resounding silence from our community too but we um
029we're with you i appreciate the update thank you um and we will have an opportunity to come back and board dialogue if anybody thinks of something in a moment or two that's fine thank you so much sure so i think that does bring us to 9.01 now we're at public forum i think we had a couple of remarks submitted to us in advance of the meeting so kim maybe i can ask you to begin just by sharing those comments with us then we can go from there thank you so much thank you so the first comment was from nitu venkatman i am appreciative of all the efforts that the board have put forward by this i sorry i'm appreciative of all the efforts that the that have been put forward by this board regarding the
030opening of schools i am sure was not a small feat and i can only hope that we have a good school year i'm a parent of two children in this school district and we are one of the few families of color that live in this school district i urge the school board again to assess their diversity within the teaching staff and bring a change make a commitment to hire a more diverse staff my children are among others need to see teachers that look like them and by bipolar teachers need to feel like they are not alone i also urge this board to look into allowing the teachers to have an opportunity for learning more about diversity and opportunities to enhance their own learning of this topic so that they can teach with confidence and make
031sure that they are addressing needs for all the children in their class including children of color the next comment is from jane crimmons i'm unable to attend the board meeting tonight but wish to submit the following statement for review and to read a lab i wish to thank you all for your hard work you are putting toward the reopening of kls day in just a few weeks i know that will likely be the focus of most discussions this evening but i also wish to thank the board of education superintendent seleznick and assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction mary ford further encouragement of an equally accessible curriculum designed to place our public education in the context of our american history and culture in order to implement these values and curriculum it is my strong belief that
032we will need to intentionally diversify our teaching and administrative staff our students of color deserve to see themselves reflected in our pedagogy and the humans who are teaching it they also they also deserve their white identifying peers to see adults of color and leadership positions and roles also i truly believe that we will all benefit as community by intentionally diversifying our staff and approaches thank you for your time in reading the statement and the consideration i know you will give it the next statement is from brittany banks my name is brittany banks and i am a graduate of the john jay high school class of 2012. i first want to applaud the board on the steps you have taken to pursue equity and diversity in education but would like to take this time to highlight
033areas that i believe still need attention primarily the importance of supporting educators engagement in diversifying their own knowledge and skills as to be able to create a more inclusive learning environment for students this kind of diversity training and professional development is becoming more and more accessible given the current climate but many of these workshops and educational tools are at the personal expense of the teachers who put in the effort to engage with them it would be beneficial for staff and students alike if the board of education prioritizes access to these learning tools and workshops as they design future budgets these workshops not only help to educate teachers and bring diversity and inclusion into the learning environment but also provide proper monetary support and compensation to the bypoc education educators that are sharing their skills and
034teachings with the country at large in this moment klsd has reported to be in support of diversity in education and this is a great way to continue that support while ensuring the professional development of kl state educators and a well-rounded education for all students the next comment is from alexandra ramsey i'm writing this letter to the board of education because my express interest in being on the equity audit team as an alumni stakeholder i can bring my wide range of knowledge on elementary school content and my knowledge about culturally meditated responsive pedagogies i am happy to see that the board of education has created such a team which i know will benefit students in the katona-lewisboro school district i want to thank the board for listening to the idea presented to them this summer and
035taking action those were the comments submitted to the public forum email and that is all that i have thank you thank you to our members of the community for submitting those comments in advance and we can revisit import dialogue when we have an opportunity in just a minute uh i think otherwise we're ready to move forward with the consent agenda so i'm at 10.01 would somebody like to move the consent agenda please thank you thank you julia moved by julie it looks like bill is ready to second it thank you so much were there any questions or is there any discussion about any agenda items okay if not then we can vote if you're in favor of the consent agenda please say aye raise your hand thank you bye great 7-0 terrific and now we're
036at board dialogue i'm not sure whether board members have other items or topics that they wanted to discuss tonight or if there's any discussion in response to some of what we heard during public forum marjorie yes someone may have been uh jeremy zitmer might have been typing while we were waiting because his there's a post now a public forum that was popped up like a minute ago i see that okay thank you okay so kim can i open the public forum back up for just a minute thank you so much do i need a resolution to do that or can we just do it no we can just do it thank you yes this comment is from charity jeremy zitimer good evening thank you to the board for your continued commitment to enacting anti-racism and
037klsd beginning this coming school year and prior to and prioritizing that in the middle of a pandemic that already poses many challenges for all of us i'm writing tonight to ask the board to commit to providing a meaningful budget for faculty and staff to purchase anti-racist books and other classroom materials and attend professional development conferences on anti-racism during the school year our district leadership has already undertaken a commitment to look beyond our district for guidance in becoming more equitable which means that we cannot expect to source this growth from the people and materials we already have in the spirit of equity i'd also like to ask the board how do you plan to support enl and special education students this coming year to ensure that those students are not required to attend school in person
038more frequently than any other student since that puts them and their families at greater risk based on a protected class identity last i'd like to ask how the board what like to ask the board what policies you plan to put in place in the district to ensure that diverse faculty and staff are hired and retained over the next year things such as resume bias training thank you so much for your continued hard work thank you thanks for pointing that out julia are we all caught up now with public forum i'll just pause for a minute okay great thank you so that brings us back to board dialogue go ahead um can i just ask a clarifying question and i just it wasn't something that um i know it's something that we talked about and i
039apologize for asking it again but um we have the ability to support students who are home who may not have high speed internet we have some way to provide them with a hot spot or something like that is that is that a certainty that we're able to do that um we're working on that and it's really um you know it's so individual to the family and the household so chris nelson our director of technology has been reaching out to families in cases where we can provide a hot spot we will hot spots present a challenge where cell service is very poor so we're thinking about other options he's also working with some of the internet providers um with our local town board to make sure that we have more access as much access as we
040possibly can but we're looking at multiple solutions thank you mary phil go ahead yeah i was just i wanted to reiterate some of what andrew was speaking about um the the fact that we're all rookies that's a good way to put it i mean i think there's going to be a lot of learning as we go we've learned a lot from the spring to help us this fall but i think you know the sort of pleading for community understanding that there you know things you know the drop-off might take longer than usual the pickup might take longer than usual um there's going to be mistakes in the forms or something and that just has to be dealt with and then on the another thing that was said was um from a science medical math point
041of view this whole operation is only going to work as strong as the weakest link is so behaviors outside of school um conforming with the rules for attending school um staying home when you're sick or have a fever um complying with isolation and quarantine all of this is new it's strange it's it's difficult but we've seen so often now almost this fall um how this can all fall down very quickly um and just the nature of the way things spread is it it doesn't take a lot so it's really everybody has to sort of make a commitment that we're going to really try to make this go otherwise it's not going to fly thank you so if if no one else had a comment i just wanted to say quickly you know i want to
042give andrew and the whole administration a lot of credit for i mean i don't think anyone who is not andrew selesnik and the team doing the work understands how much work this is it is uh herculean is not even close so uh kudos to you andrew i think uh it's you know nothing's going to be perfect but really you guys have done a remarkable job so thank you for that and i trust that you're going to be uh you and the teachers and the administration will be as nimble as possible and adjusting to the things that happen and i also want to say too that i hope folks in our community realize how really fortunate we are as a district to have one device per student um that's a big deal that's a really big
043deal and if we're able to provide hot spots or whatever it might be so um i just wanted to publicly say that there's a level of attention to detail going on here and planning that's you know literally 24 7 these days uh that's taking place that will will still not be perfect for everyone and not make everyone happy but i know for a fact that you all are doing everything humanly possible to to make it happen so you know just really thanks so much and and and please please take care of yourselves in the process as much as you can thank you terence well said we we share your your sentiment wholeheartedly if there aren't yes sawyer please uh hi so um once again just to kind of reiterate what everyone else has already said
044um thank you so much for putting all the work into this um to reopen schools and make everything as close to possible as it was last year um and in prior years so that we can kind of have like a return to normalcy but um i just have a few questions um about all this because i know a lot of students who i've been kind of talking to have really they've been asking many questions such as like um what resources will be put out to um kind of tend to students social and emotional well-beings um like beyond teacher contact more regular teacher contact will there be kind of more contact with guidance counselors or school mental health um personnel and people who work in that field and then like could we expect kind of um
045some form of timeline for um like when people will be receiving schedules for the beginning of the year i mean i don't know if you're the right person to ask because that sounds like something like the counseling center and staff would kind of have to tell you but um and then also just um i think a big question that i've also gotten a lot is food and how will students and staff eat safely um because everyone needs to eat like it's a long day but i mean like will there be a safe way for students to eat and um be socially distanced without masks on i'll try to take the first two sawyer but i'm not even sure i remember on both of them i should have been writing it down so i anticipate schedules
046will come out around the same time they usually do in terms of proximity to when the school year starts so that should be a pretty typical process and the counselors do come back the week before students come back and so usually we give them a little bit of time in the office to make sure that the schedules are correct but then by the middle of the week we send out a connected uh letting families know that they can log in and see students schedules so we do expect that that timeline will be similar tell me what the other one was it was the social emotional oh the social emotional so you'll be happy to know that um i can't remember what day this week it may have been tuesday the committee of staff members who've
047been working had a virtual meeting and they were on for several hours as they have been all summer from all kinds of places where they are people at the beach people away with their families people at home with their families there are a lot of counselors social workers psychologists administrators teachers on and um there has been some additional training that's taken place mr mccarthy has done some training also with health and pe teachers because they are staff members who see every student in the school and sort of on that every other day basis so that's a lot of access so at each level the answer is not the same sawyer but there has been a lot of attention this summer i know that mrs ford has supported some curriculum work in the social emotional area
048and so at some level staff members have gotten together and worked on some things that might be delivered through classroom programs but with some of the other professionals that you're talking about and even though i know it's hard to get appointments sometimes with your counselors maybe to some degree with only half of the students here each day there might be more opportunity to to get those appointments and certainly counselors are interested as are the other social workers and psychologists in meeting with students both virtually and in person so there's a lot of things happening and being planned although as andrew said you know as school starts sometimes getting all the schedules in place can take a little time so those first couple days will give us some opportunity to see how it's all going to
049work also sawyer we are trying to slow curriculum down at the beginning of the year to make time for this work so it's not that we're being lacks in our approach or lazy about it's a conscious effort to build those relationships and to give students time to talk about the experience that they've had and what they're hoping for this year and to make those connections so we don't want people to misread that it's not the teachers aren't ready to start the curriculum they're going to make a conscious choice to slow things down and do some of this other work in the social emotional areas and then sawyer i think i can answer your question about food so at the elementary level we're looking at delivering food to the classrooms and those students will be eating
050eating in their rooms um there'll be a pre-order system that we're working on creating um we're doing some upgrade in our technology so at uh the high school level they'll be touchless um payment and also pre-ordering um of your school lunches um there will be a slightly limited menu in the first two weeks and then we'll roll out a more creative menu as the as the year progresses but we are working with our food service management company to make sure that you will be fed and have a healthy lunch available and then we will also be able to provide lunches to those students who are have on their off days and we're working out the details for that whether it's a grab-and-go lunch um if you're an aaa student on tuesday you would grab some
051lunch for the following days or there might be a pickup schedule and those details are being finalized all right thanks so much i have a comment if i could i just wanted to take a minute to um address the people who had submitted comments and i just wanted to say i know that for the last few weeks and with the information sessions and everything we have been talking so much about school reopening but i don't want um that to anyway indicate that our commitment on um you know equity in our schools is has you know fallen to the wayside um the commitment in our district has been there for the past several years there is money for staff development and classroom libraries and things like that um we've just seemed to have a really kind
052of enormous task ahead of us trying to get the kids back into the schools but it is not in any way forgotten and i thank you for taking the time to make sure that your voices are heard as if i can just underscore your remark to mention that not only is it not forgotten but it actually should be front and center on the minds of every john jay high school student staff member administrator and our entire community as everybody is reading just mercy this summer and engaging in at least one complex enormous um heartbreaking conversation a clarion call for social justice if ever there was one so it truly is not forgotten it's underway even as we speak and to your point absolutely of course there is money in our budget and there will continue
053to be money in our budget and we will rely on the best judgment of the administrators at this table and beyond to help us to know how best to invest those resources so thank you for saying that i think partly the conversation we were just having as a result of sawyer's questions and then also looking ahead to future meetings caused me to wonder whether in addition to all that we are already communicating about all the time um would we anticipate a dedicated communication one week from today where community members would be reminded specifically that that's the last day to be out of state in a state that's on that list of 31 or 32 states in order to not have to risk not being able to come to school which is to say some students
054and staff would be expected in person two thursdays from today next thursday rather so a week from today would be that last day and i don't know whether it would be helpful to remind people of that as that day is approaching but i am realizing that we won't meet again between now and that anticipated first day of school and i wouldn't want people to find themselves someplace where inadvertently it meant that they risked or were in jeopardy of not being able to come back in person so um just wanted to mention that uh and then i should very suggest you marjorie but as the list is in flux the only thing i would say to families is not to stress if they end up having to stay home for two weeks we will help them
055to access their teachers remotely and so i don't want them to be upset because people have traveled to states not on the list then they go on the list so i don't want the family to be upset or students to be worried their teachers will welcome them in person when they can and they will support them remotely before then but thank you for the reminder about the date coming up in that window for the reassurance i think and i just want to layer one thing that i was thinking of as you were talking that um i think there's also some concern in the community that we're still meeting remotely and i think that it's important for people to understand that we have no idea how many people will come for public forum and so you
056know because that number isn't unknown it doesn't allow us to hold a meeting publicly even if we could socially distance our group um and meet in person we can't do that because we'd have to figure out how to support public forum in person and i just i i know it's something that is sort of out of sync with the kids coming back to school um so i just i think it's important to to note that thank you margie can i may i just underscore liz's point i was just about to say almost verbatim what she said um again i want to thank the community members for coming out and and keeping the diversity and equity issue front and center it has not fallen off the table by any stretch it's near and dear to my
057heart and i think it is to all of us um so i get i don't know whether this is a question or not but we did a couple of weeks ago talk about establishing a team a committee made up of community members teachers uh students and others have we made any progress at all on that and to me it feels like the sooner we stand that up the better because then all of these issues such as hiring a diverse slate of teachers making sure the appropriate books and materials are available develop development courses for teachers on on equity and so forth that they could all roll into that committee and those topics could be addressed there with the public uh very much engaged and are we making progress in terms of establishing that committee and
058i'm not sure whether we can even answer that tonight oh we can rory thank you for asking the question and uh you're all correct that these things haven't fallen off the table um we've we have staff who've continued meeting through the summer to talk about issues of equity and we've also been talking to the consultant who we took on earlier in the summer who worked with our administrators and um we were actually getting ready to send out a notice to the entire community about the equity team we wanted to work through a few questions internally with staff who've been doing some of the work themselves and think through how best to do it and how to bring in new people to join existing work so that that slowed us down a little bit because we
059always want to be as thoughtful as possible but we're absolutely moving towards a communication that will go out to everybody and we'll invite interested people to come join us on that team that has been referenced tonight wonderful andrew thank you for that and thank you for all that the team is doing i haven't had an opportunity um it may be a little redundant at this point but uh well done for all the wonderful work over the past many months thank you can i add something well oh i'm sorry god i'm sorry just um to let you know that you know some of that work has been taking place um it was taking place at the end of the school year lots of virtual professional development sessions that just kind of got started at the end
060of the year but also throughout the summer um some conversations and last week in fact we ran a new course the two of our staff developers ran um to help teachers do a gap analysis of their curriculum so to start to look at their curriculum and look for places where there's not a complete story of history for example or looking for the stories that are not told looking at their book collections things like that so that was one thing that's already started and and some energy we've had book clubs that are equity and diversity focused throughout the summer and they've been very well attended lots of energy and certainly our book orders do reflect that but we anticipate even more as everyone looks at their curriculum we're also planning retreat days for our instructional leaders
061and for our innovation cohort and this topic will be a part of those trainings as well so lots of work underway but certainly lots lots more to do as well thank you yes catherine i just wanted to go back to what alice said about the beginning of school and how teachers really are going to take the time to connect with their students and it's not to be mistaken that they're not ready to start curriculum but i think there's a lot of concern that with remote there's not going to be as many connections so i really love that you are mindful and that everybody's going to be taking that time school year to get to know their students whether that's virtually or in person or both i think that's really really important for alter our children's
062mental health so sorry thank you for bringing that up as well yeah can i pick up on that real quick because this relates to what catherine just said i think also relates to what the comment that uh jeremy zitimer made in the public forum about uh specific mental health you know kind of monitoring or discussion support so forth you know i think what we're hearing as colleges are coming back to to campus or trying to um you know is that students young people have been been hurting right i mean we've all suffered a trauma as a society but i think folks within a certain age group have experienced that more acutely and very particular ways so i don't know if there's anything we can speak to or if there's plans still going on i wouldn't
063expect the administration to let the cat out of the bag so to speak unless something was kind of ready to be presented uh but i would certainly encourage if possible uh i know our folks you know in the buildings are are there they're aware they know they're working they're trying um and then the same thing uh again just what uh jeremy zitman noted those populations that are going that traditionally need some additional attention the special needs students enl students um you know we know that kovit has has struck communities of color in a devastating fashion and just because we are not technically a community of color does not mean that we don't have people of color that may have and probably have experienced the pandemic again in a more kind of intense and and damaging
064way so i would just say that anything we could do to give that extra focus and attention particularly in those groups as we're looking at that you're looking at the entire uh playing field would be really encouraged and the portion of jeremy's question that was around the attendance of some of those groups was really about that they would not be forced to attend more and so i just want to assure everyone that no one will be compelled to attend more days and their families will get to make the same decisions as every other family in the district thank you for the clarification any other comments okay thank you everybody and thank you to members of our community for joining us this evening and for sharing your thoughts during public forum i think that brings us
065to future meetings and the board is scheduled to meet twice in september on september 10th at 7 30 and then again september 24th and if there isn't any further discussion then i think we are ready for a motion to adjourn would somebody like to make a motion moved by bill thank you seconded by rory and again with gratitude for everything that all of you are doing be well and we look forward to hearing from you uh probably in between now and the start of school and then certainly on that first day so thank you take good care of everybody have a good night we have to vote we have to vote to adjourn all in favor 7-0 okay thanks mark thank you thank you thank you good night good night good night