Board of Education Meeting - October 26, 2021 - Chatham Central School District (NY)

001uh we're gonna call this meeting to order and start with the pledge of allegiance to the united states to the republic which stands one nation [Music] uh questions or comments today's agenda all in favor all right um in just a moment we're gonna start with our first of two public comment periods um this is an opportunity for the public to speak about issues regarding the school the district or other educational topics the total duration is intended to be 20 minutes um and we'll give three minutes per speaker um so i'd just like to ask that everyone um please just be aware of leaving time for everyone else to speak um and uh try to keep things as civil as possible um we will is there a sign-up sheet there's a sign-up sheet at the front

002anyone who's interested in speaking should place their name on the list um as well anyone online if you'd like to participate in be good yeah yeah anyone online who would like to participate in public comment there's a hand button down at the bottom of your screen depending on your device it might be in a different location and if you raise your hand that's not good for anyone online who's wondering we're having some power disruptions but we appear to be gonna be online here right here in any case um if you raise your hand um we will give you an opportunity to speak during public comment now if this is um an open-ended public comment there will be an additional public comment um at the [Music] should we should we give it like five minutes or

003something that's our generator i mean is the storm really though yeah it's not raining more power disruptions um is that muted or is that live in any case there will be a second public comment um which is intended to um give people an opportunity to speak specifically to anything um that occurs or any new um topics that come up or new information um on today's agenda um during the meeting so that'll be at the end um so we have some names so far okay mary ann pirro yeah everybody um while i was doing my research today i noticed a couple of things i just wanted to point out um i saw a fun fact that the number of homeschool kids in the united states has doubled in 2018 we've had 2.5 million multiple students we're

004up to 5 million so this is a trend should all be aware of i get a lot of comments from parents saying that you know what tapping out done so um you guys should know this they're not happy with the training of their schools okay at the same time florida has the lowest rate of coverage infections in the country they ranked 50 out of 50 states this is important because they don't have any vaccine mandates no passports and no school mass mandates just saying but mostly my comments today are about regarding the policy of diversity equity and inclusion when we are having fourth reading today the opening statement to this policy states the board recognizes the injustices inequalities and institutional barriers that have historically marginalized various populations within our society due to inequities associated with

005their identities here in chatham that doesn't make sense how is this manifested itself in our community what documented instances in our school can support such a statement educational this is another quote educational equity is based on the principles of fairness and ensuring that each student has access to the resources and educational rigor that they need at the right moment of their education so this means that right now our students are not getting resources and educational rigor what does that mean these injustices and qualities and institutional barriers cannot be recognized because they're not documented facts this is a political opinion and ideology in order for this policy to make sense you have to make the case that here in chatham students have been denied opportunities because of differences up until now every child student has been

006given the same access to their education and program offerings the newly created vaccinated class of citizens very first break from the tradition of equal treatment here in chatham all this dei policy does is further break down the student body into classifications the very act of looking at a student and deciding what classification they belong to is demeaning here's the group for the kids pick one skin color gender sexual orientation language cultural background financial background or intelligence level who's going to sign up for that one the students of chatham do not look at each other this way only people sitting around in faculty lounges and universities look at people this way some students may like a little extra attention but the majority of these groups will resent it it's a backwards way of singling kids out

007saying they are not good enough on their own right and they will forever need extra help that's insulting reject this policy completely it's ludicrous to apply this lens to our little school focus on students as individuals not the same but equal help students as they need help and get out of their way and nothing good can come from a task force by its very nature it must produce problems that justify itself this topic is being debated across the country by and large parents waking up to the politically charged curriculums being taught to their children and as parents we reject these ideas here in the chatham we see the person not their identity if the policy and no policy should change that thank you thank you marianne gabby how many names do we have there so

008far three others okay cena sanchez hello everyone um so i'm pretty sure that all the board members here are well aware with how i feel about the dei on policy that you are going to be voting on today um and you know all of that came from this right this is the framework um and the call to action which is what we have responded to with a policy right so you have created a policy in response to this um which i would have to say that you're validating it um i'm sorry what what what is that this is the the framework um the new york city board of regents framework on diversity equity and inclusion in new york state schools a call to action okay thank you um okay and then you know in here

009we have all this wonderful stuff so i just want to um give everyone a taste of you know what i am using and why i am so turned off by it um these are just quotes pulled from it just simple quotes right the approach must be holistic the way we educate new generations of students will shape our nation's course for years to come putting in the work to educate oneself and listen with a humble heart it is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it is it is our responsibility to go deeper than the numbers might initially reveal adopting framework that specifically embeds the ideals of diversity equity and inclusion by creating student-centered learning environments empower students as agents of social

010change actively participate in experiences that prepare them for a lifetime of civic engagement and social justice activism exposing students to a diverse range of teachers and school leaders reduces stereotypes we are morally obligated to seize this moment and redefine what is possible so this just sounds like a lot of ideologies to me um and i am not sure why we are putting so much focus and attention on this when we should be focusing on our academics um chatham is not really doing that hot with academics so i'm just really wondering why we're not putting this towards academics like what what's going on um and the thing is i know matt you sent me um the school's policy statement but it's like four paragraphs so so how do i know that that's not going to turn

011into this framework right it's like you're giving us this statement and then just expecting us to trust what is gonna happen with them and i don't trust it because when i'm reading this this is garbage and i feel like you're validating it by responding with the policy um so you know in in closing i would just like to remind everybody that the ultimate minority is the individual so um i would think that everyone would want to facilitate a community where people individuals are allowed to rise to the their levels of their capabilities i don't know why we're trying to do this so thank you very much columbia county schools are mandating vaccines for high-risk sports when school's twice our size or not i'm pleading with you again to allow options such as testing to play

012these sports are you not aware of the impact it can have on a student not to participate in their favorite sport they might through their only motivation to come to school or only social aspect if you're playing other athletes that are unvaccinated we are allowing unvaccinated students to play on our campus and there is no reason we shouldn't allow chatham athletes to test as an alternative our schools have received new testing equipment please let me test weekly to play these sports the pandemic has been hard on america's youth already with the university of north carolina having four students suicides please reconsider your mandate thank you one more person right yes thank you sharon um i just wanted to say thank you for the email yesterday matt that was helpful i appreciate the acknowledgement um i

013do have a few questions and concerns regarding the statement the mission statement of the board states that the board acts as a collective body to establish the policies under which the chatham central school district operates to me that means that the board of education is well versed in and aware of all policies and mandates put in place so i have some accountability questions the board states that they maintain no position on specific public health policies multiple health policies have been implemented within the district that fall into that realm the masculine vaccine mandates for example the recommendation for the department of health was not to forcibly mandate any child that wishes to play a winter sport it was a recommendation a reasonable alternative was available even if that would have been to cancel high-risk sports if

014the fear is that the risk of infection is too steep to allow safe play then all students should be impacted uniformly that would be a hard decision for one to make but that would have been a good one to make regarding the fact that the administration prides itself on equality and inclusion by attempting to force students into making uninformed medical decisions you easily segregate the population based on their beliefs and medical freedoms all students are not placed on an even starting ground just the ones who comply i'd like to know what the district's policy for winter sport coaches is were they required to be vaccinated as well do they have the option to test out like other columbia accounting coaches i have reached out to other district schools and they have excuse me to other

015schools in the county and their coaches are not required to be vaccinated our school plays multiple other differing districts for sports their players and schools are not requiring vaccinations what is the impact on that to our players if you state that you're in full support of the district continuing to follow the guidelines you are indeed taking a stance on health policy and supporting an agenda so really i would like to just know who if not the board of education accepts accountability for the decisions that have been made in our district during this pandemic who provides the facts that the board of education so wholeheartedly supports with no questions asked it appears that decisions have been consistently made without adequate transparency to parents students and stakeholders it appears that the board is idle in decision-making and

016improves what is put in front of them without much discussion on the long-term devastation it may cause to students and parents mental health i would like to know how long we intend on blindly following the masses and rules that change so frequently it is nearly impossible to keep up how long will we be forced to be kept in the dark regarding what's determined best for our children while they're in these buildings i'd just like to know who's going to ensure that the diversity equity and inclusion of all students is truly taken into account in a general and authentic manner so my question for you is who is accountable thank you do we have any online hands i don't believe so i okay um if anyone decides that they want to speak up about um the

017content of the meeting um feel free to jump on that list over there or raise your hand and leave it up and uh when we circle back around on second public comment we'll make a moment available uh we're gonna move on in the agenda and the next item up is um an item that we added in new business at last meeting um it's a general discussion on uh clogan 19 response in the district response and management but also a little bit of discussion and dialogue here um at the board level in response to uh some of the feedback we've received over the last month or so um so um we've received a lot of feedback on a lot of topics and um i put this letter together that went out to parents and of course

018our community stakeholders and it's really was intended to be a statement um regard specifically regarding um the public comment feedback that you got over the last six weeks or a month but i i wanted to look at that and really just put down on paper the truth of what is right now in the district um so it's a lot of um high level statements of fact um but what i would like to do just in this board conversation is spend a little bit of open-ended conversation time on each of these areas because i think um they all deserve a little bit of discussion so i'll frame each section of the letter and then i'd like um i don't know that we need to do a round on every topic but maybe you guys if you

019have something material to say um you can run through it that way and i you know ideally we'd get through this in 15 minutes but if it takes longer than that then that's also okay what do you oh the microphone yes so um the the first thing to note here of course is that we have transitioned um really over the last um half year away from leadership at the governor's office level um down to um state agencies that have have frankly a lot more experience dealing in their areas um but but less executive authority um and in recognition of that we've really um you know our response protocols are now derived strictly from these these other authorities um so before i move on into the specifics if you guys have any any notes about that

020transition um that's certainly uh you know the context of one of the things that's been happening here okay so um you know in terms of a board position um currently on the board we don't have any uh uh licensed healthcare providers um it's an interesting perhaps recruiting criteria for the future um but we do uh look towards um people who are experts on these things so um in addition to being of course compliant with legal regulations and being aware of standards and the guidelines that are coming down you know we're looking at lots of public health and other authorities so um of course the cdc is one of the first places we look because they provide national high level information and really research disrespected all over the planet but but they're not in new york

021and in new york we have our own educational system and so we also um really rely on the new york department of health in conjunction with uh the new york education department um and in cases where we need a little bit more clarity um new york's health um new york department of health has um a division of their office in columbia county of course that reports to columbia county and then their their job is to um to take new york policy down to the county level and we meet with them regularly um and you know as a result of this um you know we've really been uh learning a lot about coping 19 and how the virus has evolved and um what is working and what is not and what is relevant and what is

022not and that's changed continuously throughout open um this is all sort of at an oversight level understanding who are the experts who we should be listening to understanding what the research is understanding how things are changing um the district has a slightly different job their job is to actually put those standards into practice in our school and so up up here at the board of education level we um at least as of yet have not been involved in making a medical decision or some kind of health care decision about um any student um uh or staff you know in terms of kogan 19 that that hasn't been here during my tenure i can't imagine that that's happened previously i hope that we're never in that position um of course um we do have to interface

023with people that are making public health policy um and the district has to do that um so you know i think this this um the nature of how we see ourselves in the district is one that's been questioned and so i think even if you don't have something unique to share i really like um maybe opinions from the board on how they feel about this arrangement because this is this is the root question is is this the appropriate way we should be looking at things is um looking towards experts do we want to go around the room or what's your you know just a little bit of feedback um because i i think that that's it's framing um there's a lot of things most things we don't have any choice on and want yeah please

024um some of you are gonna love this but i am i fought against uh i have to wear a helmet on a motorcycle in new york state i didn't like the seatbelt law i don't like this mask law and i don't think that vaccinations should be forced on anybody that's where i stand you have one right here get a little emotional here so i'll just go since i'm next um craig i thank your thank you for your comments i i share in your uh respective self and of of independence and self thought and self awareness and self governance i think that's important for anyone and i think that you know we everyone should i really live by those standards um i also think that we you know live in a society that you know there

025are certain things that uh impact us uh from outside influences and we impact others by our actions and i feel that um when it comes to to health policy uh you know i don't feel medically qualified to make informed decisions and i look to people that do do this real living that actually you know understand the nuances and understand the risks involved much more than i do so i feel that um as much as i do not like the idea of you know having to wear a mask and i think the impact of that is real and it's tangible i think that our ourselves and our children are going to feel it for a very long time and it has bothered me since the start but i feel that it's uh the responsible way forward

026for our district to to make sure that we follow the science and that's a science that's understood by you know the professionals in the science field that you know that can verify results and such uh we follow that science we follow those agencies these governing bodies that follow that science and um that is for us the best way for us to make sure that we protect everyone in the district that is including um some people that uh on their own choosing may not wish to follow those guidelines but i think in the interest of health priorities that even those people benefit from from what what the district is deciding to do okay um i'm going to kind of combine it into two sections my kids played sports all the way around and i know the

027importance of what the world would have said that kids come to school because of the sports more than anything else and i and i can't deny it and that's something you know maybe one enough i spend many nights thinking about this very late into the evening and leading up on it um i don't you know i've gone back and forth with your idea of just canceling sports altogether for the winter months to what we've done and teamed up with um you know i'm coming 20 years still to this day but the thing that if we're going to do it i want the kids here in school for education they miss too much love here and my decision-making is going to be based upon keeping the kids here in front of their teachers all year and

028if it means cancelling sports across divorce then sophie i i have to make a choice in where my decision-making is coming from and it's coming from the academic side only you know i'm talking about 39 years i don't know um so that's what my decision making is coming to me the thing that makes my decision is the transmission rate of people who have been vaccinated to others versus the transmission rate of people who have not been vaccinated and there seems to be a large difference i know this is an incorrect science but like if i have to make a decision that's where my decision is coming from is the transmission to others i agree kids there's um mia if i can ask you to speak on your own behalf but also on behalf of your

029student body in particular in your student government i know that policy of law is probably not a topic of discussion that takes up a lot of your time in your student government body but i am very interested in the student point of view here so okay yeah so um that's remaining as a unbiased representation of all my fellow peers um i would say we all obviously have varying opinions on it um some choose to wear their ass correctly some don't um my personal opinion um listen to the experts um i i prefer not to give away too much on my personal opinion because i still want people to feel comfortable giving me their opinion to give to you guys um because i'll represent you no matter what even if i disagree with you um yeah

030listen to the experts my opinion um as as a student body um we do talk about it we do talk about it um but we at the end of the day we're high schoolers we still want to you know be friends or go with some of our political accommodations or opinions um so yeah like uh as student government um we don't really talk about that but yeah thank you man um i guess i'll kind of bring it to my thinking in two ways um it's been a long 19 months since march uh 2020 and i kind of go back to like that beginning of covid when we were all helping each other and we did the community drives and we raised money and we raised the food donations and i think that kind of atmosphere

031is one what is what is going to keep us and to be able to get through this because there isn't an insight to this but i think um we have to realize that right now in order to kind of get over this pandemic we need to make sure transition is low i think the best bet is to listen first on what they're saying in order to do that um also my main concern being on this board is education students um it is our number one priority as a school board as a recent alumni i benefited from the academics but i know there are areas where we need to uh improve and that's one of the reasons that i wanted to be on this board so i think if it keeps kids in school we should

032do it and we should listen to the experts about it because um it is what ultimately is going to let us get out of this pandemic thank you dustin welcome okay great [Music] thank i'm living with this night after night after night i can't sleep and this is muriel's opinion i cannot make a health care decision i am not medical medically qualified i have to follow the science and if i voted to do away with the masks give away with the regulations we have now for our athletes something happened to one of shannon greece's twins or shelly radley's boy for the venue girl or any of your children i could not live with myself so all i can do is pray that this gets goes away soon and that's just me talking and i really

033feel for all of you and i hear everything you're saying i hope you can hear what i'm saying too i could not live with myself if i voted against what the county is doing what the rest of our school districts are doing thank you um just again this is high level i do when i drill down into some of these other topics uh my my personal feeling if i take my my board member hat off um is that i think firstly i'd like to say i'm a big states rights supporter i believe very strongly in federated democracy um in this in this case um we have a really clear chain of guidance standards and law that starts at the white house passes through the nih the cdc some other government health offices down into the

034into the state level we have guidance coming from the governor's office we have guidance coming from the state department of health we have guidance coming from the state department of education we have guidance coming from the county department of and they're all in complete agreement and that almost never happens in government so i i can't imagine a situation um it's hard for me to understand what what i would think if that was not the case but in light of that um it's clear to me that um there must be something about what these people are saying um there must be some universal truth there and that's that's the way i feel about that currently so i'm gonna i want to move on into some of these other topics that i just want to touch on

035for a few minutes um masking quarantine did some digging into the specifics of what is possible what is not possible and um the fact the fact remains um of course there's federal federal laws that affect quarantines and tracing disease and outbreaks but what's more important really is that we have new york state public health laws um that everyone in the state has to follow um and they delegate enforcement authority to the local board of house and their health officers and in our case that's the columbia county department of health and so in terms of quarantine everything we do um is non-discretionary we have um we've been following their leadership and it is the only um the only thing we can do so there's no ability for us at the board to make a choice there

036with that said um if anyone here on the board has anything to say about that um this is something that affects me personally i have five children in a school district they move back and forth between three different total households when one child is sick they can knock four of them out of school i perhaps have felt the um this more acutely than maybe i'm not sure maybe anyone else in the district when a kid's out sick for um a week because we're waiting on tests and um but it's really a cumulative five weeks of school that's lost um and then the next kid gets sick a week and a half later um and it it it hurts um the i will say that um this year whether it's luck or something else um there's

037been less of that happening tests of course are more available two of my children now are vaccinated and believe it or not that is more than um it eliminates more than half of the quarantine time because um you know it's two of them are taken out of the running so to speak on when their siblings have to stay home um in any case that's that's my thought on that does anyone have anything to add on quarantines okay uh we looked into um the uh the masking um policies here in new york state that um are in all k through 12 schools um and again there's a um there's what's called a commissioner's determination um it could change um i anxiously await all sorts of changes on policy here at the state level um but as

038it stands right now we really don't have any flexibility on the mask policies as well um they're very prescribed um is there any comments on that um so the vaccine requirement for high-risk activities in schools um this doesn't specifically address athletic athletics but of course athletics are the the high-risk activity um that we we are having to um we are encountering in our district um when i when i looked into this of course we already knew that um the cdc was very specifically recommending cancel or hold high-risk sports and extracurricular activities virtually unless all participants are vaccinated i found that the new york state education department made a statement that was functionally equivalent although in different words i'm saying the same thing um i think there's been some conversation or maybe unsaid conversation some fear

039that this is the typical wave that's going to be crashing on public education um in general general at a requirement for vaccines um i um i don't have any secret knowledge about what's going to be happening in this country i will say that we look really hard at what's happening what policies are enacted the direction things are moving when things might change no one on the board that i'm aware of has um anticipates that we are even thinking about requiring um vaccinations for um for school um attendance i know that we're all very passionate about getting as many butts and seats in school as we can that said of course the state has the ability to dictate terms there does anyone want to chime in on that category uh yeah i'll just talk about it

040um i agree with what i agree with your sentiment although i just will remind the board that new york state does have uh very strict measures in place regarding vaccines in school i'm not i'm not speaking to cope it but i'm speaking to you know all the other vaccines that are required so um that's not to say that there are no vaccines required for students uh to attend school because there are yeah um sorry that wasn't clear um but we i i was very um i was able and i'm um happy that i was able to put this into um a simple set of words to really draw a box around what's um a medical right that everyone everyone should know about which is that um if a doctor says that this vaccine is not

041right for you um that takes precedent over almost any other possible dictate that could happen whether it's um here in the district at the state level or at the federal level there's very few situations that a doctor doctors orders don't take precedence um with that said um uh this the way the school looks at that is um if there's a what's called a medical exemption request that's written by a doctor the school can take that to our doctors at the columbia memorial hospital and they would um they would validate the nature of that that exemption and um that's how that process uh could work um so um uh you know that was that this is similar to other vaccine requirements but it it is important to make sure that everyone knows that this is um

042also um an option in this case um to go to your doctor specific medical concerns and if um if there's a diagnostic that they're worried about and you're worried about they can document that um does anyone have anything to add there um a couple of people um chimed in about um our grant funding um i don't have a lot to add there but we did do some um research um in particular to really double and even triple check that um you know the grant funding that we got in response to copenhagen and other places in the economy congress targeted um funding in response to copenhagen ours was targeted at closing educational debts and that's where that's where most of the funding was first of all earmarked by um by the government but also where we

043directed it um there were some other things we spent money on and are spending money on over the next couple years um so um they're in the letter here um but the one thing i'd like to really highlight is that we're as a board not aware of any funding obligations related to vaccine policy vaccine policies entirely separate from the the monies that were appropriated and distributed to schools to really close these educational gaps that were introduced by all the remote schooling and the school closures um do you guys want to chime in about these school grants i know like i have been so excited to see that we have the tools to close and solve some of these problems they've been created the last couple years i'm personally very thankful so of course we've always

044got the latest um coca-19 response information on the website um there's a special copic 19 page that's updated uh maybe several times a week really um and we're always um looking out for for new updates from our public health authorities and other other uh government authorities um and i'm i'm really looking forward to some type of normalization where we got masks off no one the rulers on on on physical distancing can go away i don't know when that is going to be uh but uh i'm sure looking forward to it um does anyone else you know this is what i put together in the letter because i took notes on um the categories of of recurring topics but there's a lot of feedback given over the last few weeks um do you guys have anything

045you want to circle back on i think you covered everything pretty good man um you know okay i'm not going to come up with any answers tonight so all right so we're going to move on into our building sure if possible i don't know if if we can um have our superintendent just uh add to this discussion if that's something possible yeah i i would ask that you uh you give him a prompt yes um in the interest of one of the public comments you know um asking about you know i've heard a question regarding process you know for uh decision making um relating to you know for example the you know the requirement we have relating to winter sports um i thought it might be helpful uh if you could expand on perhaps a

046scenario in which you know meeting with the department of health the other superintendents um once that meeting happened you know what's discussed you know what is the process of that how are things uh liberated and what is it when there's new guidance or and there's no guidance yes sure um we need every week with the columbia county department of health we've been doing so almost the onset of continent of um with kobe that's one of many reviews each week that i participated in since the start of this we also i also meet with the um questar 3 superintendents twice a week that is varied everything everything that has varied from once a week to three times a week depending on the height of the pandemic i'm also on stakeholder meetings uh i served on the

047covid um work group for the capital region uh which included three different boces that's quest star capital region boces and vishy boces which services the hamilton saratoga area uh and numerous other meetings related to the columbia county's elc grant um and uh and i don't think if there's any other groups like but so in those meetings we um we are briefed by those who are closest to the information so we have a quest r3 has a health and safety specialist which is his sole position this last 20 months is here to keep up to date on the changes that occur sometimes daily um he then briefs the group of both groups we have meetings amongst the superintendents and columbia county partners the epidemiologist who services the columbia county uh chuck pfizer who is the same

048he's also on the club and and then of course what we do is we do exactly what we discussed today we take a look at the federal guidance the cdc guidance recommendations from the columbia county department of federal public health director as well as the other public health directors who meet as a group within the state and within the region and they they make um we interpret the regulations they make recommendations and then as a collective group of superintendents we discuss the impact on our constituents and um we make a determination to the you know the to the best thinking uh combining it with the current science that we feel is self that supports our decision and we basically move from there although i understand that sometimes that may not look like a transparent process

049there are times that we have to make decisions that aren't informed by public opinion or political choice and so they're difficult decisions just as you have wrestled with some of the um uh negative uh ramifications of any decision or consequences um a decision still has to be made and that's what we do and of course i serve you as a board and i'd like to thank them on a weekly basis through my friday report i try to bring you up to speed on in terms of my activities during the week and what i'm involved with and some insight into that decision all right building department reports and we're going to start with food service which i think we're all really excited about it do you want any of the slides up at the beginning of

050your yes please give me just a second sure hello everyone hello all right so we're going to start tonight talking about our meals and and um you know what we've been serving number wise and um what i'm doing is comparing october of 2019 versus october 2021. if you look at the chart you'll notice that our brexit participation at med is almost doubled we're serving an average of 167 kids a day all in about 15 minutes on top of that we also do head start which is just uh nine kids right now middle school staying about the same high school is down from 2019 almost in half um part of that is the lack of some of the products that they love their bagels aren't very popular they don't see the ones they want they'll move

051on the other part is that we don't we didn't open this year for study calls to avoid the constant moving around from you know the kids coming and going so that kind of brings your numbers down a little bit as well um for lunch one which is next one um for lunch you will see um that uh compared to 2019 mhd has gone from 46 to 60 which is pretty good especially since our enrollment enrollment numbers have dropped um the middle school again is from 43 to 54 which is great um high school has come down a little bit and i'm still trying to figure that out why it might have come down a bit i am meeting with the student representatives on friday to kind of get some insight from them as to you

052know some ideas that they're looking for and maybe some changes maybe to bring them in so hopefully you know with that we can make some changes um one of the things too that's changed is our free reduced percentage from 2019 was at 47. or 40.7 percent this year we're only at 35.2 with lunches being free for all students this year a lot of families just chose not to apply you know i did reach out to a lot of them sent them applications and they still chose not to even i explained that we don't use those numbers for just a cafeteria it's used for a district but we can't force them to fill those forms out so so hopefully you know um you know as time goes on um they'll fill them out if changes are

053made where they're not trained anymore we'll get them on um you know filled out and each on the end so okay um so the next thing i want to talk about was al carte um we are still serving a la carte items this year um that's chips cookies um ice cream second lunches those sort of things um compared to 2019 um again i took the first two weeks we're about 100 more than 2019 we did as of the middle of this month we're at 598 when i checked it today we were almost 160 more than last year so a la carte sales are up which is a good thing um hopefully you know stay that way they love their ice cream chips and cookies um the next thing i want to talk about was supply

054issues as you keep hearing all over the news everybody's affected and now we are too um and it's in all areas some of their favorite items i'm having trouble getting like they're kind of evangelion crustables chicken nuggets those are favorites um i even had trouble ordering ground beef the other day so we're starting to see some changes there and i'm working with my suppliers to do the best we can to find replacements something just as good as maybe what we had um the next item was styrofoam use i know that's been a topic for the last couple years as of november 1st in new york state styrofoam is now banned so we've had to make some changes in the kitchen um so we won't be using styrofoam bubble beasts excuse me we'll be switching over

055to biodegradable paper with just a small amount of plastic products um if we can get it that's something i'm facing too is all these companies put them out there now suddenly they're all gone so we're still struggling for that um but by doing this as wonderful as it is for the earth it's going to increase our cost by at least a few thousand dollars each year if not more um that's still going to be depending on who i can get it from and what the actual cost of the product is that'll vary and then the last item was our commodities and the department of defense fresh fruit and vegetable program because of supply issues some of our commodities has been cancelled so what they allowed us to do was take that money and put it

056into this dod program that allows us to order from mostly new york vendors fresh fruit and vegetables which ranges from like this just last week i ordered peaches and pears um watermelon honeydew then all the fresh veggies lettuce you know cucumbers peppers and etc so that's kind of been a nice little treat to have and if they continue to cancel our government commodities i i'm able to just keep moving that money into the fresh fruit and vegetable program so now that i did that very fast are there any questions um so the styrofoam thing has come up over and over it's been perennial um off the top here this is recycled paper um yes do we has the unit price come down significantly as people have adopted that or it's still that stuff's scarce right

057um when i when i first started ordering it it was um about 13 cents a piece versus our three cents so that you know that's a big difference now we're paying almost 30 cents a piece so if there's a if the supply constraint gets that gets worse um what do we do well my biggest issue will be the middle school because we don't have um the ability to wash the dishes and have reusable trays over there so i'm working on that right now it may come down to just paper plates if we have to i know that sounds silly but if i can't get anything else we'll have to do that with you know putting things in bowls and things along that line what is the issue with the middle school with watching the dishwasher

058doesn't accommodate the um the ability to wash all the trays but we also have no place to return the tray safely where the kids won't when the kids pile up their trays it's not these nice little piles they just kind of throw it in the windows at the other buildings um so we don't have that set up at the middle school i've got a question more for mike probably um the and reduced uh where's that going to show up how's that gonna affect us in future the numbers so the issue with that is you know obviously when that drops grants and trust and we don't qualify much anyway at forty but as we were creeping up in the 40s we started to finally qualify and now 35.7 you know we won't qualify as much these

059are competitive brands usually are they competitive or they're like lines in the sand what do you mean in terms of when those when those numbers are impactful is that because there's a competitive grant process yes usually you know you know sometimes we're like for the cafeteria equipment eighty percent free and reduced and 70 that's you know yeah so we were never at that but in 40 years finally hitting a call it's finally getting a chance um so that would be one of the things obviously when that goes away assuming that will go away then you know that number should go back i think we probably are around forty percent it's just we encourage people to fill those forms out or encourage these encouragements but when they don't have to you know i don't remember how

060many fields are on those forums i know that they're deaths is that something that can go into a mobile phone or it's a it's a form that's prescribed trauma or we have no it's a national it's unfortunate are you talking about the um reduced application form actually new york state is working on a program where the they can just go to the site fill it out and they get sent to the school working on that like that they are in eight years we'll have our yes okay so i have a question going back to stefan can you just walk me through uh how it's being used at the moment um whenever a student comes in to purchase a meal we just put their food on the tray and so at like the middle school for

061example it's a just a styrofoam or different biodegradable trays and they'll just throw in the garbage after they're done eating and the the you mentioned the middle school not having forgiven the washing does that mean the high school and the elementary school does they do yes they have a window to return the trays safely um and a dishwasher that can accommodate washing all the trays so it's only the middle school we're talking about relating just that much well do you use some um at the other buildings if for example let's say at the elementary school we've said so many kids that we went through all of our trees and then we have to grab some of the you know the disposable ones but it's very little at those two buildings so we just supported mike

062disordered us some new trades so we pretty much can accommodate all those students it's really the middle school that we use majority of it and that number forgive me i don't recall it so you know number of styrofoam that's being used currently on an average um i will say if we're doing an average of 110 meals for lunch and about 30 for breakfast so you're looking at 140 trays a day roughly yeah talked about this previously the one thing about those washable trays is they go on commercial washers that are the exact opposite of water efficient and um if there's a significant increase in water usage um related directly to that um that when you look at all the impact chain there um there's no easy win there by going to uh detroit but it

063sounds like you are doing that in high school meeting electricity yes yes it's certainly something that facilities canadians can take a look at um i think my recommendation collection the middle school kitchen is quite constrained in space so that may be another um issue to have to navigate uh just another comment regarding the pre-reduced launch this is not something that's uh foreign to some districts those districts that have been to what we call a community eligibility plan so prior to cove and there being legislation that allows us to feed all students for free other districts once they cross a certain threshold of three readers percentage then they could apply for what was called the community eligibility plan where all students eat for free and they experienced a very similar concern where there was no incentive

064for parents to complete the application and um so we need to find some way to incentivize that because there are other areas like the way we compare ourselves that is one of the key metrics that's used for social economic measures into districts and comparing and so we don't want to be unfairly compared to others when it comes to grant funding so i know it's no small thing but like i said i get five kids i get those packets every year um i feel like i'm drowning in paperwork if some percentage of that was digitized um or i could fill it out for multiple kids at a time and not fill out like write my address down like 40 times um you might might see increased effectiveness there that's no i understand that's no small thing

065that would probably take if not a decade more to convert all those processes but i would i would imagine there's a significant relationship there between the fact that it's paper and um and uh not you know mobile accessible uh in a return rate so what percentage of the 35 or direct certification 50 uh about probably about 25 so um direct certification yeah if you're already eligible for benefits that information is passed electronically to us so there's really about 10 percent of our eligible population essentially paperwork and i don't disagree with that but it could also be like maybe 20 we have no idea it could be like right because they're not filling up you yeah they may be never never work um well thanks barb i love seeing those meal numbers go up so why

066we're trying so i i never see them you know i really honestly didn't consider that i was going to make snacks but then i said in the world of coke i guess i should barb i was also wondering you usually give us a little side report uh how many what those numbers uh how does that represent uh mr tony i think he's doing pretty good he's doing pretty good i know he usually gives his own report on what's what's hot and what's not yeah thank you thank you everyone have a good night okay we're into the special education update hello everyone okay thank you so i put a few things together some of the data and just some information i have for you as always you know there's certain things you want me to bring

067to you let me know and i can always present on it sometimes i'm not really sure what you would like to hear around special ed so i have a few little details for you okay so i wish i can pass on the cove with topic but i really need to address it because of the impact on special education it's wonderful having all the students back last year the principals worked really hard so k-12 special education students were available to come five days a week however 39 families which they were not comfortable sending their children in opted for remote instruction some of those came back about the school year but now everyone's back uh it's a lot easier to follow the ieps this year it's a little harder for remote so it's always a struggle who's

068in special education teachers are always trying to manage and promote who is in person and trying to balance that was certainly a challenge last year i'm gonna have to deal with that the impact that was hard for me last year to say was the mainstreaming of students our students are 121 special classes because we kept everyone's in pods we pulled back on that mainstream so we always want to have our students with disabilities as typical a day as they can while addressing their special needs but last year we kind of go back on some of that but we have all of our mainstream up and going again so all that's going pretty sweet last year you approved another school psychologist i wanted to touch base on that with staff so we have two school psychologists

069in med right now one in the middle school and one at the high school that's going very smooth so right now they're working with ais teachers they're doing a lot of assessments to look at academic loss and who needs ais services so that's all up and going so that's going pretty soon too and i just want your space on transportation uh josh has been fantastic uh it's certainly a loss to have a speech retirement's been a loss but josh has jumped right in we currently have 36 students with special education transportation needs so through that josh has been excellent we have a couple kids having a hard time to see her on the bus transitioning back to school and josh has done wonderful so so kudos to josh he's done a fantastic job so this

070is a lot of what you approve you kind of go through this at our meetings when you're approving the special education reports last this past year 39 students were referred to the committee on special education we had 39 initial eligibility meetings uh 28 for school age and 11 for preschool students 32 of those students were kind of eligible for special education services we had 34 requests review meetings 32 school age 2 preschool and those are what we want to be modifying ieps which something on it would bring the committee back together to make adjustments we had 128 annual reunions uh 50 triennial evaluations six cps cpspsc into cse meetings and eight transfer meetings so eight transfer meetings eight students came back from the district from other districts the manifestation determination meetings we don't like to

071have those but those i've touched base with you in the past that's when a student with a disability had been suspended from school and we have to determine whether or not their suspension is related to their disability or not so a student with a disability can't be out of school more than 10 days if it's related to their disability and then for certain times teachers parents want to do a little tweak to the iep and those are those amendments without a meeting so the little tweak is a student might need a little change of their testing accommodations they're minor changes where we don't necessarily need to bring the whole committee back together so we contact the parents they can consent that we'll do a modification without a full cse committee meeting have any questions on

072the meeting process and how we go through those i have one question i know a couple of years ago this might be pre-coded we discussed bringing in an information system to track all this stuff um if you could just touch on how that's impacted your operations i'm curious i think for my like questions uh i thought we were tracking longitudinally um interventions across special education also maybe across the classroom as well there was some kind of information system involved there i don't i'm completely sure we use front line uh with iep direct and we track through that i think he's talking about intervention congress or mr alvin no that's not special education it's really um ais and uh rti um but in all transparency um we have not gotten that package off the ground we

073were sidetracked with called it and you know it is on the many bulleted lists or at least something that won't come out wrong okay when tracking this we primarily using iep direct which is uh front line so everything gets put into that uh beth king uh my assistant does a wonderful job of putting everything into there managing that piece great um okay keep moving here all right so so right now these are the numbers kind of opportunity of our students with disabilities within the district uh based on our last school or card if you got into the student report card through your state education this represents 17 percent of our research students currently are students with disabilities uh it's pretty consistent with state averages right now the new york state average is 18 we're at

07417 columbia counties at 16 as a whole so we're kind of right in that mix for our total students with disabilities we had a slight decrease but maintained a little bit some of that is the number of students coming in from free school uh preschool just fyi times is a struggle we have a lot of preschool students needs but the struggle with preschool now is the lack of providers in columbia county so it used to be that we had a certain number of providers of what preschool works once we write up the iep there's a list of a premiere they're not are staffed by the interventions they are approved county staff so wheat well back makes the calls see who's available and then once she finds an available provider the provider contacts the parents the

075parents what are they typically by spring it gets hard to find a provider because their schedules are filled we're already experiencing that this time of year so we can go through a process and identify that a three-year-old might need speech language therapy but there is no guarantee we can provide you know have a provider to do that so that's a tough piece right now so and that's countywide so brian you're talking about these were private organizations before or no the preschool programs like the starting place and the story place they're fully up and functioning uh like we are having staffing issues too you know the assistant principals are still trying to hire teachers assistants uh we're not getting many so they're having those kind of staffing issues but there are students who don't necessarily need

076to go to a preschool they had a speech and language therapist come to the home provide speech and language theory or occupational therapy a couple times a week it's those that we don't have as many of so you know we had a meeting with the preschool uh all the csc chairs you know preschool did i had a meeting with the county just last week discussing different things around that that was it's a piece that's impacting all the districts are those services um are the provider constraints um the same if those students are here in the building i know we have the same so say we have someone in the head start that's housed in mda or we have a student that's in the chatham preschool and the parents opt to have those services pushed in

077to those couple of classrooms here and i mean we still need to go to that same process of finding a provider and it's really really talking uh just a few there's something called see it a special education identity teacher with a student get special education teacher but then there's speech ot and pt services the students are receiving are there options to find um these resources and you know joining counties or joining areas like you know it's it's a it has been an issue in the past like dutchess county has paid a little bit more so sometimes providers want to go down in there sometimes some of the localities within chatham school district aren't convenient for certain providers to go to and there's newer providers maybe you want to go to the house right now related

078so we have that in packing also i'm sorry those are providers that paid for through columbia county yep and uh bluetooth county's one that sets the rate for just just a high level in terms of um the demography there of services you know two years old three years old four years old right i presume once they're in kindergarten there and it's our staff and we we've been getting all this all of it and actually all of our preschool could be left by one number i think we have 13 or 14 uh preschool students currently with the ieps or cf services all of them are getting the services that are under ideas in terms of those age groups um is there is it equally distributed to services or is it weighted towards the it is so

079we're responsible ages 3 to 21. so uh before they turn age 3 they are service to early intervention which is a separate system so we have no involvement in that until they turn three kids who are getting ei services have to go through a process of referring for preschool services parents usually put those in when the children are maybe two years nine months two years ten months old and then we need to have that meeting prior to the third birthday to transfer over to preschool services and parents have some choices until the end of that year whether they want to switch over completely to preschool or they want to maintain any eye for the remainder of that year so there are there's a lot of parent choice in that process so my understanding this is

080a potential like a budget issue with columbia county you know it sounds like not necessarily i i would think labor just like every other job right now that's what it is you know we were having a hard time finding some service providers in september that's that was scary that's right you know it's like i expect that in april or maybe the providers are all built it's hard to find someone you need someone uh no longer requiring the services or someone moving you know kids once they start them uh go to something they permanently need those services so a child may be receiving it for their speech and language skills but some of them at that age make very rapid gains and don't need it permanently and others continue when they get to kindergarten are there

081any colleges that might have kids who are ready to use [Music] you might be able to fill in some of these gaps excellent question i could bring that up with anna at the county uh it would need to be certified already and on the county approved list one of the things that i've had started tommy for the very initial phases of it with is speaking to our speech and language therapists here in district if they want to get on their list they wouldn't be able to provide those services during the school day because they're working with school-age students and being paid for that at a time but possibly after school before school if they wanted to meet some additional needs especially for those who are being serviced in one of the two three schools that

082are going to be so just to give you a little bit of other context there so the only program in the area of the st rose has a specifications disorder program and the other one of the other challenges in terms of a speech pathologist um doing extra network for the county they need to be asha certified as well as maintain their own professional liability and go through a pretty rigorous contractual procedure so the barriers are not um minor um the other thing the reason i wanted to mention something though is um this education department um is painfully aware of the teacher shortage and the lack of certified individuals statewide and just as recently as the board of regents meeting i believe a week or so ago um the new commissioner and the deputy commissioner have

083um spoken of some innovative conversations around being creative to give temporary certification to allow students to view some of their um work within a school um and really starting to understand that this is the shortage of many different areas teacher certification is real and unless we create some very innovative solutions around it we're not gonna uh we're not gonna be out of it anytime soon so for the first time in a long time institution that typically is fraught with bureaucracy is having really innovative conversations around alternatives that involve pre-service teachers or teachers who are closely receiving patients so you know it doesn't happen overnight but at least the conversations i was just thinking of like let's say there was somebody who's already finished their undergrad working on their master team but they might just be

084a certification test away where they could help and they weren't doing classes they would not be yes able there's no there's not like a transitional certification for this type of service provider right so hopefully it settles down and gets some more people hired but uh if if if those children are in our pre-care um our targeted pre-k program are they serviced by the county providers or us county providers as well school students so you know idea recognizes 13 classifications of students with disabilities even though there's you know the essence recognizes many more disabilities in that there's 13 under iea there's these are what we currently have in the districts with a certain uh educational classifications we don't have any students with at the moment for example we don't have any uh students who are blind

085or deaf or traumatic brain injury at the moment uh it's unfortunate change day to day uh the majority of our students are students with learning disabilities uh dyslexia scrappy at his capital that's what our special education teachers are focusing mostly on uh other health impairments it's our second highest classification at the moment other healthcare variety of different things it could be anything from uh deficit hyperactivity disorder anxiety disorder childhood arthritis cystic fibrosis could be any significant health issue uh mental health physical health that's impacting students learning uh you have students with multiple disabilities they're showing more than one of these uh speech and language with slovenia only 13 many more students receive speech than those 13 within the district it might be a student with a learning disability who also has a speech or language

086acting they're skilled so many more see speech than that uh emotional disability intellectual disability and at the time i wrote this out like you took 13 peaceful children so these are where our students with disabilities are located uh it's always you know pretty consistent china high school china middle school and med middle school is the lowest the smallest building but we also have students who are outplays we have students uh three students at quest star programs right now uh six have private programs we have two residentially placed and uh crp events so the crp presidential is a children's residential project where the new york state pays for the residential component and we are on the educational component of those students education and we have no uh friendly place in private school right now that we're

087providing those services for uh so there has been a decrease the next slide actually shows some of the decrease in output students uh these are our goal very much is to keep our students with disabilities within the district as long as we can provide faith for them without appropriate education for them there are certain students who we do not have the capacity to provide for education for them here those students that's our responsibility to find location where they can be uh appropriately educated and fully meet their needs so we've had a little bit of a decrease over the years in this this is always i'm moving target we meet every year and every child and some students maybe go out so i can never say this is going to continue to go down it can

088change pretty drastically but over the four years we've had a pretty steady decrease some of this is uh mrs rossi's room in high school we're keeping some of our high school students here uh ken house evolves the other major component of this is some of our students who have spent the majority of their educational lives out of chatham have graduated we've had a one or two students every single year the last two years uh turning 21 and aging out or having graduated so that kind of contributes largely to this decrease and just again next year so we have 11 students graduating this year uh anticipated graduating at the end of the year and in terms of those current private school places we just saw none of them are we're anticipating them graduating or reaching out

089however you never know like uh you know there's a student like i think you know the students we bring back because efc every year for these you know it's something they stress to the parents very much even a student might be at one of the west star private school programs in our region they're still chatham children very much so he's still responsible for the iep we're still responsible for meeting the iep uh one of the covet hits that has impacted me somewhat with it it's not visiting the kids it's a patient at school so i typically go observe these kids in the classrooms too to make sure their ips are being met that's been a little bit harder to do uh in terms of visiting the programs but we have meetings and sometimes the students

090make the game that's the goal children go to the program open the goal is eventually the income back so you never know about a student that's required to have um when you have these children on iep you're required to have a meeting with the parents also yes they're members the parents are a member of the committee on special education so the committee on special education is made up of myself the parents a special education teacher a gen ed teacher and either related service providers a psychologist social worker you know otp et cetera so there you go we need minimum one time here okay uh but some children we need money much more than that okay depending on their needs and how much problem solving you have to do all right does anyone have any other

091questions anything else you would want to know when i come back to you in terms of interest in the world special education i mean so we we've got two jobs here in the board one is you know oversight role the second role is the first strings um i guess um this from an oversight perspective this is great um and not that i'm looking to make changes but there's information that you think we should be getting where there might need to be resource changes that we might want to know two three five years down hike because of demographic changes need changes um updates on those things and that's always going to look at you know one of the things that's always in the back of my mind are the special education teachers at the elementary school

092that's something that may roll around at some point you know right now we have a special education teacher every grade uh second through fifth at nbc we do not have a kindergarten or first grade special education teacher assigned to those two grade levels so the other special education teachers kind of uh divide who has a slightly lower caseload who come over so it becomes as a challenge i mean we meet all those kids needs in uh kindergarten first grade but uh it sometimes it stretches the special education teachers trying to keep those leads pretty thin they step up i'm incredibly uh proud and incredibly thankful about how much of a team players they are to make that happen every one of them will do anything else to me the student needs they're such an incredible

093group but it's a it's a stretch sometimes that's something i think you know at a certain point maybe in say we'll the spring opportunity brian will be back um during budget season um we can reevaluate program needs and we can see if it's something that we can now resource in terms of the press screen piece you mentioned you see those uh more and more kids staying in house that is certainly a large financial savings you know special ed budget is not down but uh the truth was the first priority is meeting students needs and sometimes that's going to go up you know it's uh we've got a few years to stay on in a row but it's no guarantee that stays depends who our students don't know what their needs are i know i'm going

094to keep some of these projects in advance um so we made some changes to the structure especially back in july the director of um people personal services um just a little a few thoughts of reflection on how that's going now that the special education teachers report directly to you and some of the changes that we day in alignment with the recommendations that we have one of the part that i'm really enjoying the most whether it's the extra time in classrooms i was in a special education resource room and then we today it was so much fun the teacher was having such a great time with the kids and it was it was wonderful being there so that extra time i'm spending the class with observing the teachers uh writing up feedback on my observations again

095with them having those follow-up meetings with them it's uh you know it's because sometimes with my previous role it was a little more uh at the computer working on the ieps but now it's i'm getting a little more opportunity to see the kids in action like it was great today that when those kids were really developing a lot of learning and you know you're dealing sometimes i'm a student with about 73 kids with learning because we're asking those kids to come to school for six and a half hours a day it's absolutely you know a student with dyslexia school's a struggle it is hard and those kids were having fun learning so so i'm that in terms of the structure of the part i'm enjoying most it's that time with the kids and in the

096classrooms and be able to give some more feedback on teaching i learned you have to ask the teachers what they think of it but especially but i'm certainly enjoying it i just wanted to say uh thank you uh brian uh keep up the good work um i always love hearing your story and what's going on and anything you need let us know absolutely so someday we'll have these meetings at 6 00 and you'll get a better mate it's a little tiring but this time of night but thank you all right thanks brian uh we have our student representative report from the airport up next hello everyone all right so first thing on the list is i want to congratulate my fellow peers that are being inducted tomorrow night in the triumph um music holiday society

097awesome accomplishment um second thing is we got frugal for powderpuff which is a flag football event that we have which is super exciting it's outside and it's covered safe and it's like it's awesome and we're all really excited for that um regarding sports um i want to congratulate our volleyball team for being undefeated and they're going out to sectionals so that's awesome um and we also have two girls anna miles and bella spencer who became a true conference doubles champions so that's awesome okay and then we also i'm not sure if sir sorry i wasn't here last week i had a song for game um but we also had our election um and happy foxtel is president i will have to send vice president john miles treasurer gracie okay we'll be meeting them in short

098time they'll be coming um so yeah does anyone have any questions for me yeah i think that's the next is getting your homework and then your advisor will be by zoom yeah um actually i do have one question uh you know we previously um since i've been here we've um introduced um student government um i guess um and this is something you could take to your group um do you have any topics you'd like to speak to because um this is your opportunity to introduce something yeah we do have a couple of topics one being an open campus for seniors um and then we also wanted to talk about a possibility of field trips regarding feminine wage because of coping okay we'll leave space for that i don't know oh like field trips have been

099covered yeah yeah i'm just looking up for lost ones just give us a heads up on how much like time you need sound good okay yeah sounds good yeah uh it's a super intense report from dr d'angelo next thank you um on the coattails of me i just also want to congratulate for both our boys and girls soccer teams this year um they had a tremendous season um one of their number one cheerleaders sitting next to me gives me daily reports on all accounts i was able to make it to a few games and um the students played their hearts out and so it goes to them as well and our football teams still got a couple weeks in one minute and i think we're playing again saturday and depending on where we are with

100that i think we're playing the first time with sectionals and thursday and then thursday so so we're liking us for fall sports um i just wanted to again thank mark and brian um they always did a wonderful job not only in the records but they do a wonderful job um we're very fortunate to have them um our district so thank you uh just a couple things uh we've reported in previous meetings um unfortunately columbia county as of today is still considered in the community transmission reporting at a 4.85 transmission rate so that's just um that seems to be kind of old and steady uh just as a checkpoint there we um sent a note to uh our staff last week that um the mandate that came down from the state uh dated september 2nd to

101have all unvaccinated employees tested once a week is still in play however we couldn't meet that mandate because there were no test kits available again we expect very large shipments to counties expects a very large shipment um in the next in the coming days so in preparation for that we have begun to put our logistics in place uh to have employees um tested or unvaccinated and choose not to provide a test from an outside agency um once a week here in school um that's being facilitated through not mentioned earlier in france this is the elc grant that you've heard me mentioned in the past that's a grant that was reported to directly to the clinton to columbia county academy has in turn contracted with the question boces health and safety service to actually um administered

102the test and um we have a site visit today and uh we are looking at tuesday mornings for them to visit the district at multiple locations and give employees an opportunity to meet that requirement as you've heard me report in the previous meetings mainly also includes offering parents of unvaccinated students the opportunity to be tested as well um the thought is that that is going to require some additional uh intricate logistical coordination and quest are in the county want to see how the employee testing goes as a kind of a prerequisite to that this later this week parents are going to receive a um electronic survey and consent if you recall last year we used a product by which every day you did your daily health screening and then also last year when we anticipated

103the possibility of surveillance testing if we were in a red or orange zone we we emptively sent out a consent form we're going to be um just put the final touches on that we're going to be sending that out later this week so just let me know kind of back up and just be very clear about what that is so parents will receive an email um just like they did with the daily health screening just like they did last year inspiration although this year's consent is has two proportions to it um because the grant allows us to test both unvaccinated uh students in a surveillance test and also allows us with the equipment that we've recently received do a point of court point of care test for symptomatic individuals regardless of vaccination status so what

104the parents will receive in the link is a commission form for which they'll be asked two separate questions the first will be if their child is unvaccinated and they choose to opt in to the weekly testing program they will be able to consent to that and then if they choose to and these are mutually exclusive from each other choose to allow our school nurses giving circumstances to test their child regardless of vaccination status of their symptomatic violent school then that consent can be given on the same form and we're asking parents um we're gonna give about about a week it's a rolling uh permission so as soon as they receive the survey they can answer it but um we're hoping to have that data by um somewhere in the vicinity of november 5th so that

105we can inform the county as to how many parents of unvaccinated students are interested in on receiving that on weekly testing also you've heard on the news that um the pediatric advisor vaccine um i believe much of your community today is likely to have final approval in the coming days um the note i want to make there is that the counties have reached out to all the school districts in terms of how they would disseminate that vaccine and uh we've chosen to um assist them in securing an off-site location likely the child and fire department so that they could hold a county pod for those parents who are interested in vaccine um that is likely to be uh in the coming for the coming weeks and certainly as a as a um community service we

106will pass along any information to the parents that the county would like us to in terms of time and location and how to register for that vaccine the um that's uh and then also just a quick thank you on the agenda tonight yeah you see a memorandum of agreement from the bus drivers association i want to thank the leadership of the bus drivers association and that they're nice at rep and all involved mr trevi as well in bringing that contract to its conclusion it's a four-year being it's fair and it's nice to put um the fourth of five contracts to better this year so we can move forward and serve our kids um like we expect to hear a child something thank you for it we have to answer any questions do you have questions

107i have a question for sarah um just a real quick question um a real quick answer probably no the universal pre-k that the president is now trump you know that the federal government is trying to get through universal pre-k is not something that every child has to go to or is it as um or does every three or four year old have to attend that they do not no no you have to if you do opt for a universal pre-k model yeah you have to make it available to everyone who would love you it's not mandatory it's not mandatory but unlike my targeting yes um you can't you can't make any selections so if you if you're going to offer universal pre-k it's just that it's available there okay all right i was thinking about

108that when brian was giving his if we had um remember the board has commissioned us to i mean that's not the right word but yeah that's requested us to do a pretty extensive presentation that we're resetting um her associates will be putting together for you kind of in the february time frame but that is not that that was my real question thank you you know since i'm thinking about in terms of field trips just to give you just a higher level philosophical approach um i've had conversations with mr sourcing and mr burns and the entire administrative team that wherever possible we want to provide as many opportunities for students this year to participate in a variety of activities and clubs with the caveat two caveats one that you can do so safely and that there's

109always disclaimer that if something changes in terms of um copic conditions we may have to modify um the strategy but in terms of field trips and other activities moving forward we certainly want students to be as involved as possible okay i'm going to move on to old business here um so um originally um we were planning to adopt um policy which is a the diversity equity and inclusion uh policy that's been in development for maybe a year something like that sponsored numerous revisions of the current policy looks nothing like our first draft i know that um we were made aware that uh it was not available for you in the last reading um so we are not going to be moving to adopt this policy today we're going to do a fourth reading which is

110really just a reading into the record um the policies available in our uh or agenda online and do we have properties in the room we have a copy we have copies available in the room as well um just uh and i'm gonna have um someone from our policy committee speak in just a moment but um actually um said why don't you introduce this policy maybe that would be or appropriately so ted's our community representative on our policy community just a high level um maybe intent and and i think he had an additional request for uh amendment as well begging your permission for a quick personal comment i did not come prepared to respond to what i heard tonight from a comment what i wish i i think number one i was thrilled to hear of

111a comment to it because it validated the committee's earlier desire to preempt any state demands that we saw on the horizon over a year ago and with the board's previous board's blessing and this president ward's continued blessing he worked on his policy with the target to reduce it the minimum that we felt was necessary to be able to say to the state been there done that here's the t-shirt we had concentrated on identifying and defining the subject matter which i think you did not necessarily exclusive or inclusive exclusive to chatham but inclusive to the world around us and then we wanted to provide a means for action and oversight which we then did once again and then finally we want to provide the foundation the policy was built on within our present policies which is

112the identification of the war policies below the other day there was a fourth thing and i'll launch into what the committee recommends the fourth thing was the recognition that chatham is a unique community and a unique school heard that tonight was really happy to hear that we wanted to include the fact that with all the reams of information paper processes lettered people that line up to tell you what to do and how to do it here chatham we work principally on the golden rule and here here in china we identify that as everyone every day so we've made sure we included that within our policy suggestion and we'd like to we came to together earlier today well before the meeting identified republic because we did recognize we'd like to recommend that the words everybody every

113day within this policy don't necessarily end the paragraph one by the ending of paragraph one we'd like to recommend that it is indeed paragraph two stand alone and if possible we'd be thrilled if it was a bold print because we feel so strongly about being able to point back at that to identify our efforts regards this subject so that's our committee's recommendation and i hope i provide a little information for republican how we got there so the um the the verb that you're suggesting would be moved correct from the end of paragraph one to the end of paragraph two no no it would become exclusive paragraph and in fact okay uh that's our committee's recommendation does anyone else have anything to add here at first reading of course um there'll be a it'll be four

114degrees i'm sorry fourth reading um our next meeting i don't have the calendar in front of me it's two weeks november 9th november 9th um we we could we could put this back on the agenda at that time um just send us a send us a new copy thank you for your time thank you um so of course um anyone's welcome to put um comments on 3416 writing and send them to us um we will um we'll consider um all to be back um does anyone on the board have anything to add on today if we're moving yeah um if we're thinking about moving that um why don't we just put it at the top start it out i don't think you might i yeah okay why don't we just put at the top and

115bold everyone every day if you want to like that's another question if that was it it would just be the intent of policy it would that change it if that would change it to go to first reading again maybe not but if we would make that kind of right after diversity equity inclusion everyone every day that's what that's challenge tape on diversity yeah whenever we um whenever we put on the agenda again we'll be uh actually actually if we make a change we need to do another reading is that how that works we could do a reading and then an adoption right so um you guys can talk about that offline i guess um where you could circle cat in as well um but if uh if we're making changes to i think i don't

116think bold matters because that's just formatting but we're moving text around what we'll do is um we'll add a fifth reading which may be a record count um and uh we would add the agenda after that an adoption and if everyone's happy with it um after the fifth reading we would just emotion we would adopt them um it's about me two weeks and i appreciate it being pointed out because we were not aware of it oh there's a so i appreciate it we didn't intentionally leave it on we were never aware that it wasn't on the public comment and i appreciate that it was pointed out to us so we do exactly going forward okay um we're gonna move into new business um and um uh i might be more excited about this than the

117lunch service presentation i think i definitely am um so i'm gonna read this one out r32 be it resolved the board of education of the chatham central school district hereby approves commemoration memorandum of agreement flying between the districts and shadow central school districts bus drivers association dated october 22nd 2021. um can i have a motion motion question questions or comments here on the uh the vda uh agreement adoption i'm just not specifically about the contract but what i was thinking you're seeing is national storages and bus drivers um i just want to again thank our drivers they've stepped up they're encoded breakfasts and lunches um they've stepped up during rental instruction to help supervise and md uh and at any term um they're willing to help out the district be successful i don't think that

118can go without um extreme gratitude um the other piece is that um josh is doing an amazing job and although most people are extremely short on drivers we're holding our own we have a couple of substitutes in the training pipeline and that could certainly change at a moment's notice uh you know the entire department from the bus aides to the um supervisor to the dispatchers or the lead trainer to our mechanics that that organization is extremely um efficient and they care deeply about our students and we think about it we're very fortunate not every district has their own transportation fleet we have contractors who are insensitive to those particular students our drivers see our students and i believe they are our first um first lines of our safety plan for the district and that is

119to receive our students and you know parents at the bus stop and i can't be more thankful for what they do for us i certainly agree um degrees okay that motion passes great um so uh i'm gonna read the motion but um sal why don't you give us an introduction here before i do that i think the um i'm talking about labor today and at the last meeting edit every meeting so another recommendation that i recently made was we took a closer look at the um substitute rates and uh we did a couple different analysis one we um compared all the districts in the quest our region came through some of our districts we compared the districts in our county and we took a look at our rates which have not been updated since 2016.

120as we're all employed aware the labor market is quite constrained in fact our previous uncertified teacher rate of 85 over seven hours um did not just barely met we didn't meet minimum wage so we took a look at that and uh we've adjusted them accordingly this is my recommendation but my commitment is to see if this changes our recruitment efforts and our ability to secure qualified substitutes which are putting a lot of strain on our administrators who are filling classes i'm looking over and seeing mr fortran i'm not sure mr stanley are teaching fifth grade classes they're supervising recent and lunch you've never seen mr fortune run so fast on the playground and although he does so willing that takes them away from some other meaningful things in the district we will um these are

121the rates that i'm suggesting go into effect um in the next cycle on november 6th and certainly we'll monitor the year as it goes and see if we need to adjust these rates for the following school year we didn't certainly go to the top but we were clearly at the bottom so and we'll see how that goes thank you appreciate this question uh hold on questions i'm going to read it and um go back to questions um uh our 33 viewers board of education of the chatham central school district approved the following substitute rates per diem for substitute teachers effective november 6th so this would be uncertified teachers at 100 a day certified teachers at 115 a day and new york state retired teachers at 120 stay uh can i have a motion second okay

122questions or comments on this one yes so the rates you're saying are not at the top certainly not the bottom now um what is the difference in what is the top i'll send you a spreadsheet um in comparison of course it varies greatly by district so you might see um some new york state retired teachers making 140 150 per day in some anomalies in some districts um we're probably within five ten dollars of the highest in each category so impact-wise over the course of say the remainder of the year it could be as much as about forty thousand dollars between the top and where we know between where we were and what we are now okay so between where we are going as proposed in the time for the remaining year or that would be

123the entire year for the whole year yeah that would have been for the whole year so it's probably less than that in terms of from this point forward but to your point that was the other reason why we didn't go all the way um because that would be something that the financial should take a look at and see what kind of budget impact it might have in the final year we felt comfortable in speaking with mr telly that we could absorb um this increase because we are so constrained with human resources but this in a full year we have about 40 000 differentials so it can take a couple months out there 30 000 payments the impetus for this change is directly in response to the lack of available substitutes right which is contributing to

124the fact that you know we're paying twelve dollars an hour for a substitute to support um in many different other facets of the community in terms of asf which is the system we use unfilled they can slow so there's a couple problems too right we're not fully staffed at the teacher existing level as well so marry that deficit with the failure to be able to put substitutes in all of those positions on the worst day and on the best day we're we're not feeling how many positions that i need uh we have right now we have one aid and two part-time k positions that are always unfilled because we haven't been able to find candidates that are applying for them we also don't have a current substitute teacher at med i don't know if you

125have one at the middle school or this one night but i'm already standing one um so i can't speak to the other two buildings i get the report every morning along with the other administrators um you know i'm just going to be honest it's been fair to say that we have uh you know talking about the overall budget the 30 or 40 000 impact i can't tell you how many positions have gone unfilled this year that i don't know that's calculated it's been a cost savings i guess for the district because we haven't built a position um and we haven't had anyone stop for them but we have at least um those standing positions that are undone and then i'd say we're averaging at least seven or eight on field positions in my building every

126day that we beg borrow and steal um to cover and i don't think i see the high school in middle school there's at least two or three there for each of them as well one added [Music] observation if you will is that really the biggest impact is on med because those teachers have the least amount of flexibility to fill in for each other the other strategy that we've implemented um and this isn't new this has been in the teacher's contract for some time now is that teachers are allowed to substitute period by period so if i'm a teacher and i have a planning period or a lunch period and so i choose to voluntarily give that up i can be compensated for filling in someone else's position and so uh that's that's also um there's

127an advantage because the personnel are available but i will tell you when speaking to our teachers that's also extremely um stressful to do long term right so there's a lot of pressure amongst the staff to be able to help us out and fill in which leads to working sometimes the entire day without really not really a break um that does have a little bit of calculation um that has a little bit of a cost associated with it based on what we pay as a permian stipend over the course of a five period day versus the substitutes right now we're trying um multiple strategies in place to solve the issue but i would i would even hesitate to report that it's put immense um strain and anxiety on all the stakeholders um across the board because

128we're just understaffed you've seen it also i'll leave you with this we've seen it in the news where schools are going full virtual because they can either not run buses or they don't have to have staff within their buildings and we've been fortunate that we haven't had to do that because i know that's immensely disruptive to parents and again um brad what time are you looking at the report 5 30 6 5 6 58 right more so when you think about the logistics around this um it's really like a snow day call right um we really have no choice it's either to send out an emergency closure at 6 30 that we don't have enough people in the building to safely run the building or have everyone step up and they're doing that but i

129don't know how sustainable it is i'm not sure this will solve the problem but it's one step in the right direction to try to um recruit people to the substitute i i was i was i lost track of this i was very surprised when you said it hadn't been updated since 2016. that's um and we we're way past junior jd salaries so just to go back to the uh questions regarding that that you know the dollar amounts we're talking about we know that we're raising from where we are we're not at the top but what i was trying to get at is the difference in cost roughly between where we're proposing to go to and the top you're saying is about five to ten dollars per hour i mean per enough for hours what was

130this like 15 or something like that right like you better with the number so we went from 85 to 100 or 100 to 115 and overall from now to the remainder of the year we're talking that is would be if we did let's say we went to the top that would be an additional what i don't know what the top is in the goal we looked over the region right you gotta remember people aren't coming down here from everywhere either you gotta look also geographically yeah the reason i'm asking is because i feel like we're trying to address the problem and i would love to see us you know really try to address the problem like let's put our best foot forward and spend the money if necessary to really make sure that we're addressing

131these are these are day-rate teachers right that's not the same thing as the full-time substitute right so basically yeah we only have as brett was trying to go into we typically try to hire a full-time building sub we've traditionally had one at med we've had one that we shared between the middle high school and we have two unfilled bills and sub-positions for the grant um that the notion there is that we had additional substitutes these existing teachers to do um some other activities related to academic uh gap improvement but so at med we have not successfully filled the full-time building so which we have traditionally over the last few years we do have an individual who is full-time building some between high school effectively he spends most of his time in middle school that full-time

132building zone is not part of the teacher's project and is paid at the diameter they're paid at the we looked this up the other day yeah i did i'm trying to think i don't think that they're either paid at the certified teacher rate or the retired teacher rate uh but in addition um to guaranteeing that on full school year they do get the equivalent of um health benefits based on an individual plan so um we know that you know the economy and we do the cost benefit analysis having a full-time building sub is not a liability because we're going to use at least one one a day we have not been able to attract i should say that we did attract somebody at nad but due to a staffing shortage in a green level uh

133that certified teacher ended up taking one of our grade level positions and obviously that took priority over we'll get you a number yeah in terms of uh i don't i don't want to speak for mike but we also felt that you know we do have a budget and um that the forty thousand dollars are roughly um prorated to thirty thousand was not um you know a insignificant impact on an already existing budget so we didn't want to feel too much i would love to see that now absolutely but in addition i think that there's some cost savings right that we haven't actually spent my basic understanding would be that if we have two part-time tas building sub and a full-time age that we've been unable to build so far we've saved that already for the

134first month whatever you have to projects as a salary it's not great to see that holistically and then and analyze you know if we actually bumped up to the top tier you know what is that i'm not saying i don't want to approve this i know the immediate need you need to do it but i would love to if it makes sense because we're trying to you know we're trying to kill some you know like a serious need how quickly do we usually see applicants roll into a position if if this is going to make a difference it would be in a few weeks that's fair um you remember we've done a quick bit of advertising through social media and uh on olas for some of these positions and pulls on that fire yeah teachers

135check olaf when they're looking for a job they're on all so they're waiting for that new position to pop up so they're going to see they're going to see it they're going to well just be clear that would be for the full-time building or the team positions the substitute positions it's more social media but you said that the full-time building is locked to one of these i think we've done at least two rounds on a loss um for those positions so the next time the salary will be higher if we approve this no no this is the daily um so for the one individual who is a full-time building which is based on these rates there was a little bit of a bump for that individual right as well and so with the listing be

136on all us and wherever else we advertise because are we advertising the word um our daily subs like with college students like thinking about any like i know you don't have to you just have to be someone able to work engaging like is there any qualifications are we like reaching out to colleges if like they're not in their master's program yet to be teachers but they're thinking about it hopefully is there any outreach there yes um please keep in mind that that usually generates candidates in may after their home is available because we do need them for the entire school day so we have had past graduates intent um come back and uh last year was a perfect example at least one if not two of where former graduates from the college are now um

137qualifying for the uncertainty some districts do i'm sorry some districts do ask that they have a bachelor's degree to be um but at this point we need supervision so just curious and this might be an industry standard but the the um the difference between the certified teacher and the retired that that uptick in five dollars per day is is that uh what is that you know i'm not usually um at a loss for answering the question um i don't know the answer to that i don't know if that's just always been um every district for most districts that we surveyed under 22. kill three rates how they ever came up with the idea that a certified teacher a retired teacher um was different um i can only speculate what i think i was going to

138say which is just my answer was honorary when i asked 10 years ago you're going to be looking at someone who's extremely experienced and remember the difference here too right so uh the difference between um death um calling out sick and knowing that a retired teacher that she's familiar with is when i take her class and implement her lessons as she plans certainly minimizes the destruction for those students as opposed to someone who um may be able to just come in and share the work with the students so yeah i mean to me it suggests that we're actually trying to find those retired teachers you know like with this rate you know we're actually i mean ideally you know there's a beth brought up a counterweight problem here around the retirement benefit right yes if

139they don't only make so much money 35 000 a year so that rate was increased from 30 to 35 and if you you quickly do the math if you didn't work last year you could make 35 from september to december you'd make another 35 from january to march you could actually make seventy thousand dollars so i'm not so and most of the retired teachers don't want to come in every day either all right but i think someone said it earlier has hesitation over coding is big um there have been many many people who've you know have been our traditional substitutes who even at the beginning of the year said yeah i'm going to come back and then as things kind of heated up a little bit they said well you know i have an elderly

140parent i'm taking care of with their circumstances i'm just not quite sure i want to come back yet so it does have some sort of impact a little over exaggerated so you kind of hit exactly what i was going to say being that i speak with a lot of the subjects on a regular basis not walking through their daily assignment many of our traditional stuff and there was a good bullpen of a good 10 to 15 predominantly females a mix of retired teachers or mothers that would fill mbd's ranks before coping and many of them flat out said they can't take a risk exactly like salsa because they have a their own health concerns for their retired teacher and they're concerned or they have a family member they're taken care of or some of them

141are homeschooling um their kids at home right now so those are the main causes so while we're going to offer an extra 10 15 i ultimately don't think it's going to have the impact that we're hoping um it may get us to pull one problem that was registered to go to ichabod and they may come to us if we pay five ten bucks more yeah but that's actually a very good point yeah i mean that that alone makes me say well gee you know we really want to capture you i think and i'll mention the spreadsheet i think we're now on that part with our counterparts um but we may be off by a few dollars okay it's one so if you you know you're thinking chris if we can move forward with this that

142puts it in place for november 6th right we can get the board some more detail and there's nothing including you from on november 9th november you know performing whatever um jacking up another nine dollars but mike and i were trying to be just good stewards of their money which everyone appreciated um so all in favor r33 hi hi okay so uh we're going to quickly through um r34 it resolved the board of education accept consensus agenda j through k as written can i have a motion second questions or comments on any of these items yeah [Music] thanks okay all in favor all right okay we are up to um section l here items for future agenda um does anyone have anything you want a table or agenda can i bring just something relating to [Music]

143uh our new co-principles um i would love if we can either you know do a one-time thing or maybe make a regular thing but i would love to either you know get a report from them or whether it's written to us or whatever it is but just to follow up to see how you know progress and how it's going we did the building report recently do you mean um specifically the co-principal model yes i think it's um that's a great idea we're you know roughly two months in um just um like we had stated back in um end of august it was a theoretical model but now that it's operationalized we've learned some things and um you know ongoing discussions on things that are working things cannot so um in the coming weeks sometimes yeah

144um are you thinking if we filter that through style superintendent report that's sufficient sure yeah just just to get the information let me put together a few of all the items on that okay um okay we're rolling back around to our our last item on the agenda here so this is our second uh public comment period um the focus here is public comment on today's agenda and discussion um so it's specifically anything that's new since the last public comment at the beginning of the meeting um the intent here is one minute for speaker um i saw some chat bubble numbers there yep um you had you had someone earlier put their hand down now you have a new person uh give me a second i think we patched this um and um if if anyone

145in the room wants to to speak again just jump on the paper but i want to give the remote people the first shot here is she still on no well you guys can't see that hanging on not currently um the chat just said um from shannon earlier thank you miss jackson that means so much and then a bonnie cone started to type my concern about t but that's that's all that's in the chat okay so we have jen here we have jen jen hang on a second um i'm gonna promote you and then i just need to switch over to your audio and if you can hear me can you um unmute your microphone and video all right can you see me and hear me okay i see you nodding perfect because i can't hear

146you guys anymore okay um thank you so i am you uh in the consensus agenda you appointed myself and emily as co-advisers to shakespeare i had been doing it on my own for a while and i'm very pleased to report that emily does marist a new english teacher at the high school is joining me in that endeavor but mostly i'm just super pleased to report that shakespeare is back at the high school at all we once again partnered with shakespeare and company and we're thrilled to return to this year's fall festival of shakespeare um i hope to be at the meeting tonight to hand you some special vip passes to our production of 12th night which will be performed at the high school on friday and saturday nights the 12th and 13th of november show

147time is at 7 so please make a note to save that date i hope that we will see you there this year's production has come with some additional challenges as have everything else but we're making it work and compromising as needed so the show can go on i'm especially excited to announce that we are integrating with some class curriculums christina scott's graphic design class is responsible for the design of our posters two of which were so good that we couldn't decide and selected them both evan groom has designed the official fall festival poster which will be featured in lenox at the official fall fest and rebecca george's poster um will be the official cast poster this year both will be displayed throughout the school and around town very shortly uh also uh credit to kate

148gerard and mike loomis's theater production class who are involved in the design and production of the playbill and are also helping us with with publicity we're continuing to look for ways to bring aspects of this amazing program into our classrooms and also our classrooms in uh into the production of our show so i just want to say a personal thank you for your support of this program and i hope i get to see some of you at the show and that's all i have for you tonight thank you and uh i for one i'm really excited um i've got a bunch of little kids that came to the high school production of shakespeare i don't remember which show it was a couple years ago i couldn't believe how happy they were to watch it they

149were thoroughly engaged and i can't i don't remember being that excited about shakespeare at that age but it appealed to my entire family so well we are we are once again planning on bringing the uh the eighth grade over um i think it's on friday the 12th for like a 12 45 production it's usually the seventh and eighth grade but we're trying to be um careful about social distancing in the auditorium and so we thought it was probably wiser um to just invite the eighth grade this year um but we're we're we're just the i i'm super excited um and and kids are really excited too we have uh we originally had almost 50 kids sign up for the program um and for various you know reasons um we're down to a little over 40

150now but in a high school of our size to have 40 kids sign up for a production shakespeare uh production is i it just i think that's that's really cool i just wanted to have my my daughters in the production um that's all she talks about she's so so so it's excited stuff thank you everybody i figure 40 kids feel wonderful thank you um so that was it for the online hand right yes okay look one more time there's no one with hands up okay so let's move over to our list here addison andrews good evening i have been thinking about this for a while now how is it that the girls volleyball can play in the same gym vaccinated or not but because boys volleyball is a winter sport they have to be vaccinated

151i don't understand how that makes any sense i also don't understand how unvaccinated fall athletes can test weekly to be able to play their sport and there isn't a vaccine mandate but because winter sports occur not even three weeks later now there's a vaccine mandate for winter sports i hope that you will consider the answer to these questions and give the option to test weekly thank you okay yeah uh hello i'm the parent of taylor family logan and morgan i just want to say please don't sleep family girls get involved with 19. i'm sorry i love you my name is lynn van wye the parent of morgan taylor and logan gamway i heard you saying that you were losing sleep within kids getting cold at 19. please don't lose sleep for them they're not your

152vulnerable population i hope you do lose sleep over them not being play sports or at least give them the option to test for sports that's where you're going to lose sleep i think everybody should then mentally it's breaking these athletes you know it's going to lead to depression they're going to sit on their phones not a lot worse than what coke 19 is going to do to them i work in healthcare and i do see coca-19 and i do see people die of vaccinations and that most recently up until last week i had a patient that came in that lost somebody after three days from the vaccine the majority vaccine i've had a patient in a wheelchair from the finest vaccine after the first dose so there are two sides to every story but your

153athletes are not your vulnerable population give the option for testing like just have a heart give them the option to test it's crazy other schools are able to do it we should use them as resources and find a way that chatham can also give the kids the opportunity to play sports thank you for being sharon hi um so i just wanted to say thank you thank you for being put on the spot and having a really good grasp on what you needed to say and still understand that there's a lot on your shoulders to answer that question very proud that was how you answered thank everybody for the feedback um it's honestly really good to have a personal connection or to hear something tangible come back to us as parents i understand my daughter's been

154in the care of you or your family for years right there's not a question in my mind that would make me think that you wouldn't sleep over such a decision that's not that all of you none of that ever crossed my mind but it's a vindictive mean demeaning question but the facts are still the facts and hard answers and hard questions have to be asked and if i have to be the nat that is that question then so be it i have two kids with two totally different ideas of what is acceptable in school what isn't acceptable in school and what they can do one of them that has a year and a half left here and she's enjoyed every minute one of them is fifth grade and care less where she goes as long

155as she's learning something but she can learn reading this pamphlet here everybody is different but forcing or you know taking away someone's choice is not something that i'm comfortable as a parent it's not something i'm comfortable with as a healthcare provider i do have medical history i'm a nurse i i follow the science i'm not anti-vaxx i'm vaccinated myself but it's not a decision that i've made for my children there's a lot of questions and a lot of concerns children are being bullied i see it i hear it my daughter's friends come with these concerns and they are all gladly turned around to report it in the proper channels but as a parent it's my choice and it's my purpose to make sure that everybody is aware and that everybody has some voice so again

156i appreciate your time i appreciate you all sharing a personal feedback piece of information with us because it truly makes it makes you seem human it makes you seem like you're actually listening and to have a response and have an answer is a big deal so i mean that for myself um from my heart and from you know i imagine other parents that don't receive a one-on-one feedback so thank you um my questions that i asked earlier are still out there i would still like some sort of follow-up hopefully covet stays on the agenda as a standing topic but again thank you and i appreciate it thank you very much i swear megan and i did not read each other's notes but i was thinking the exact same thing i wanted to just say thank

157you very much for your heartfelt responses it really does mean something to us but i want to go back to this this idea that i've mentioned other times we have a serious disconnect i think the way you guys are getting your information from the cdc from the department of new york state department of health all these news sources that you're getting it from like mr bishop said it's all in line it's all like it's just a miracle all of a sudden they all have the exact same theme well it's not here see the new sources that i get are in completely different contrast to what you're seeing so such as everybody's so worried about these unvaccinated students passing this and i'm saying the unvaccinated students need to be a little concerned about the vaccinated students

158based on the signs that i am seeing so here's our disconnect you guys think that what i'm seeing is probably ridiculous but i'm also thinking that the stuff that you guys are believing is a complete lie and i believe that that's why we're going to have to keep having this conversation because as time goes on we're going to see who's actually right but we are at loggerheads and we can't if we're operating off of different premises how on earth are we ever going to have a policy that makes sense to everybody if somebody if you're working off of this that the unvaccinated are danger to the student population and i'm saying no they're not how is that ever this is why we're going to have to keep talking about this we're going to have to

159keep looking at the science because a lot's coming out a lot is being suppressed and there are narratives being driven there's a whole lot going on here that a couple years ago we would have thought was ridiculous but it's happening and so i just want you to open your eyes start looking at other things don't dismiss it out of hand and i'm going to do the same thing but i really think that as time goes on we're going to see that these vaccines are going to cause problems and i am seriously concerned in the next five years what's going to happen in these students i really am concerned and for that reason i can't justify doing this to my own kids but i don't want any of the kids and now that the fda is

160going to go after the private rooms i mean that's that's terrifying to me because they don't know what the long-term effects are they're guessing they don't know and who's going to pay the price for that the children so this is not just trying to be difficult this is really about i think that we're all looking at a different set of facts and we have to make policies is to find the truth somehow we all have to come find the truth make policies for these children here in chatham that's all i want to say thank you very much dei conversation because it sounds like it's going to be brought back up at the next meeting and voted on um i'm just from what i'm hearing it sounds like we're just trying to like placate new york

161state you know you're like we're just doing this so that we can be like yep been there done that and like i don't i think that's ridiculous um and like matt you had said that the this here is a it's a one-page policy which kicks off a process to evaluate and update diversity and inclusion processes in the district so why can't we start with the board like reviewing the policies that we currently have and seeing if they need to be updated why are we going straight away to making a policy which requires making a task force like that seems like a whole lot of a lot a lot of resources a lot of energy um you know and but i'm just so confused why we're not putting this towards real academics and we're trying to

162please new york state i guess is what's happening because i think we all know that that this is not a problem china is a wonderful community and this does not apply to our community and so i just i want i would also like to know this when do we get more information on it like how is this going to be implemented how are we implementing this in the classrooms does anyone know are they going to be like because you know in this thing here they talk about like grouping i'm like what is that we're grouping who's getting grouped what groups are we getting put in you know so it's just like and i know that you you're doing your own thing this is not exactly what you're doing but i can't help but wonder if

163this is where we're going to end up eventually so i just want to so i want to have those reassurances because reading this right here doesn't assure me but very much so what else can you give us so that we know better exactly like what to expect with this because this isn't enough for me personally you know so that's it i would like to know more before everybody votes on it i feel like i'm in the dark and the rest of the parents are in the dark so that's a problem so be great to get some more information before you all vote on it that's it thank you uh we have we have david leveaux online uh we're going to promote dude once we bring you in we're going to view the room microphone so

164you can talk about feedback well i think my hand got up by mistake i'm sorry you don't have anything to say why don't you see anything to add while you're here okay um so that's the end of the agenda we um there was no unexpected uh need for an executive session right okay so um and i have a motion for adjournment motion second all in favor aye