Board of Education Meeting - October 12, 2021 - Chatham Central School District (NY)

001so um i'm gonna call this meeting to order and we're gonna start with the pledge of allegiance is um b1 um can i have a motion to approve the present agenda as amended um item n was amended to change one of the statements motion second uh all in favor and um up next is superintendent's report but before we do that um just a note to all parents um there's a sign up sheet uh is it is it on the table right there okay if you'd like to speak or you plan to speak um please put your name on the list we will have a public comment in a few minutes after the superintendent's report i mean we have at least one remote parent who hopefully will be available when we get around public comment um

002and we will uh probably make time for her at the beginning of the list because she made prior arrangements um so uh with that sell your uh your updates thank you very much welcome everyone situated here so tonight i'm gonna go over a few moves during my super chance report again as i articulated last time one of our goals this year is to keep our students um safely in school um homecoming was this past weekend i think it was an extremely overwhelming success but you're gonna hear uh more about that during the principles update coming up shortly after public comment also um after last meeting we had questions in terms of the curriculum page that is highly anticipated um that page has now been added to the website uh i just got added uh within

003last few days i'll send the board but if if you go to our parents and students page you'll see curriculum and instruction i think dr rood and those that assisted her did a really nice job in our first blush attack um please note that that's a work in progress and we continue now that it's been established expect to keep adding additional items to that page but that base for the benefit of parents and staff was created to be able to um easily navigate from that page to the new york state standards that we use for the curriculum in our schools and there's a tremendous amount of other resources that we try to put in one location so it'd be easier for you to find when you try to navigate some of the other sites that

004are out there so that we're happy to release to report the best now up there a little bit later than we expected but it's there um so today i'm going to talk a little bit about a refresh uh do a reminder about masks talk again about the community transition rate talk about the vaccination requirement for participation in high risk winter sports a little bit about contact tracing and then of course an update on testing oh i'm sorry i had a slide to show you that real quick so um what i just mentioned in terms of the curriculum uh and instruction page this is just a quick uh screenshot and again parents and students you go to uh the parents of student section and then curriculum and next gen standards that's what that looks like a

005reminder nothing has changed since our last meeting it was still a state mandate for um everyone in pk through 12 schools who were in mass regardless of vaccination status really not allowing me to spend a lot of time on that other to reiterate that that's still in play and no changes have occurred at the state level department of health and next year department health level to update you on uh as i did last time uh i've showed you this cdc copic data tracker i've got two two shots two slides on this particular subject uh the first is showing the entire state uh as of today and uh showing that all counties in the state except one county in the lower part of the state is still considered high on the one county the southernmost part

006of the state there is considered substantial but to kind of zoom in a little bit on columbia county in particular this is an updated slide since the last time we were together um this if you recall the data tracker runs a period of a week at a time so this is saturday the second through friday the eighth and uh reported as of today and the positivity rate uh in the county although it's dropping is still four percent and based on cdc standards that's still considered a community in high community transmission so i just wanted to update you on the status of that as we also uh shared with you last time and the basis for some of the decisions that have been made is that the cdc recommendations meant for communities in climate transmission to

007hold high-risk sports um and to protect the in-person learning um that we should cancel hydrostatics unless all participants are fully vaccinated that would be under areas of high transmission i thought for the purposes of tonight's presentation i would also just um eliminate that the substantial designation does allow for a testing program to be in place similar to what we did in the fall that would be if the county had been in orange that would be a consideration but right now we're still in red we've been still still considered high transmission another repeat from last time this was just a statement that the um columbia county department of health had put out and i apologize i'm kind of a little difficult with the pdf um centering it but um this was the statement that the columbia

008county department of health had put out in september um indicating that high-risk sports and extracurricular activities really repeating what the cdc had said it should be virtual or cancelled in areas of high community transmission unless participants are vaccinated and then as a result um in september to give parents a sufficient amount of notice we put out this communication that was going to require that all participants um would be for higher sports in the winter which for us is volleyball volleyball basketball and cheer um those athletes would have to be fully vaccinated and to complete the sequence that's required for the available fines or vaccine they would have to have their last vaccination by november 1st to um for the start of the season which is on on november 15th some new data that the state

009has made available since last meeting um the the url is here they came out with um some interesting data and again this is not to this is just to present information that's been presented to us by the new york state health department uh in terms of vaccination versus unvaccinated individuals this is a summary of findings for a person's uh 18 years of age or over but there's been a general comment made that this data plays through for those that are 12 and up as well and as you can see here fully vaccinated new yorkers back in may have a 91 lower chance of becoming a coca case compared to unvaccinated new yorkers and that even as late as this past september just a month ago that new yorkers who are fully vaccinated have a 77

010percent chance lower chance of becoming coping of the cova case compared to understated europeans this is not a value judgment i'm just presenting data the other part of the data that was presented related to hospitalizations and i'm going to show you a couple graphs that support this as well but again and you can read fully vaccinated new yorkers have between 89 and a 95 lower chance of being hostilized with kobe compared to unboxing counterparts and the underlying graphical representation of those here's a graph of daily coping cases over time by vaccination status and you can't see that from probably where you are but the red line are those that are fully vaccinated the blue line are unvaccinated and the um vaccination effectiveness is the black line and you can see there's quite a discrepancy between

011those that are unvaccinated and those that are vaccinated in terms of the daily cases that are reported in new york state subsequently the same with hospitalizations red line indicating vaccinated blue line unvaccinated and the black line being the vaccine effectiveness and again according to the disparity uh amongst those that have been vaccinated and who were hospitalized and those that are underestimated just like uh we have pointed we've had several cases um in the last couple weeks um contact tracing for the most part we're um following these um these guides that the local department of health put out um and uh they've been helpful this year uh the three foot distance in the classroom has certainly spared um some of our quarantining the place where we're really getting um hammered is in on the bus that's

012a difficult um situation in terms of uh close proximity to a positive case um we you know at the high school for example we might have a positive case here we follow that individual through the day they're three foot apart in the classroom they're six foot apart in the lunchroom and they generally don't have any contact those contacts in the high school however if they came in on the bus or they're involved in other activities that's where we're finding the need um to work with columbia county for those students to be quarantined um again one change to what i reported last time rather than send out communications every time that we have a covered case we've gone to this webpage uh i will let you know that on the weekend it's a little bit challenging

013for us to accurately update this page um you know we don't typically work on weekends so we've got nurses and principals and uh other staff members who are doing the contact racing with the county and um what we've done is this little disclaimer that um the positive case reporting will take place on the business day following the weekend or the holiday that way there isn't an expectation that um this is updated on the weekends which is difficult for us to do i've also over the last couple weeks since the last board meeting heard um some different comments in terms of um there's several different grants that are out there related to coping and i think there appears to be just a little bit of confusion between so many different brands there's i think we said

014there's three brands associated with um there's three brands associated with our response to covet in terms of instruction and um and other uh resources that will allow us to um try to better support our students coming out of copen but the one that i think is confused is when i talked about this elc grant this is the grant that the cdc and the hhs or the federal government have arrived through to states and then in turn the new york state health department has allocated that money to counties within the state the school district did not receive this money and despite some of the comments i've seen um on social media um this is not any incentive for us to encourage people to be vaccinated or um or create issues in that regard this was simply

015i think an effort on part of the cdc to provide resources to states and in turn to counties and intern to schools to put together a testing program and so the 1.5 million dollars that came to columbia county is the money that columbia county um has earmarked and you're gonna hear a little bit about more of it later to produ to purchase the point-of-care testing machines that um you'll hear more about in a minute and also the large supply of the antigen tests that we need to move forward in any surveillance testing that we may want to do but you'll see here that the screening testing program is provided for weekly testing of unvaccinated staff and students however because those tests are currently not available we're kind of in a little bit of a holding

016pattern in terms of screening unvaccinated staff and students and as i mentioned last time we will not test any students under any circumstances without parental permission and that means that whether it's um to uh to do surveillance testing under this grant or when we come to the next portion of my presentation when we talk about point of care testing it will only be done uh if the parent chooses to sign a consent form if that takes place um one other question that i had uh over the last couple weeks i want to bring some 32 it's kind of related is that on september 2nd uh the new york state department health commissioner at the time uh howard dr zucker who's since resigned and been replaced put out a two-page document on testing requirements and under

017section three diagnostic testing it states that schools must have the capacity either directly on site or via referral to provide diagnostic testing for any students teachers or staff who regardless of vaccination status and community level of transmission as per the cdc are either symptomatic or asymptomatic um we again because there are no other than a few test kits we have left to finish off the fall season we have not received any allotment from either the columbia county department of health the new york state department of health or request our health and safety services so we we have no um and the counties are aware of the state department health is aware we have no way of meeting this mandate um in terms of testing on site however if that there is an or there and

018uh it says either directly on site or via referral uh one of the things that um we corrected after this came to our attention is we weren't necessarily doing a good job in terms of making sure that parents realized that there are other options out there for testing and we've created a document that's available on the columbia county department of health website that shows all the areas all the locations in the um greater columbia county region that someone can build for testing so it's not that we don't have any we don't have the capacity to instead and we can't do it directly on site but we can refer to those places that do happen so that meets that criteria for now a little bit updating on testing um again the slide i used last time

019the antigen tests which are the card tests those are the ones that we're waiting on and then we also talked about the rapid pcr test that would be used as a point of care test you see the machine on the left hand side the id now i'll talk a little bit about that on the next slide um this is for testing both vaccinated um or testing of unvaccinated students and staff as well um but it's for testing of symptomatic uh individuals so if a student regardless of vaccination status or staff regardless of vaccination status develop symptoms and that's the key word develop symptoms while at school we're not into a program where if you're home with symptoms you're going to come in and be tested that you'd have to go to an external testing site

020but if you present symptoms while you're here at school we are going to have the capacity to perform a rapid pcr test you could be mentioned possibly before that that's the uh the more accurate the efficacy of that pcr test is much greater than the antigen test which is more screening tests those tests would be given based on either a staff person's permission or parent permission to test the student the thought there is there are a lot of things going on right now in schools that relate to allergies and other conditions that present similar symptoms to coping and if we are able to with some degree of accuracy provide parents some relief in terms of on doing a pcr test here and differentiating whether the symptoms that the student is presenting are code related or

021not you think would be helpful if the student is presenting symptoms and they're ill we're still going to follow pre-programmed protocols they like most likely need to go home if they're not feeling well especially if they may have a fever or other symptoms however we might be able to send them home with the confidence that it's not coded and the that would then um allow the parents not to have to seek a coping test uh to eliminate that it also will allow us not to have to send siblings home as we do now as a precaution so we still hold high hope that that's going to help us do that and to that end an update in terms of that again those machines were all provided by the elc grant private county those machines have

022arrived in in chatham uh columbia county is the first county that i'm aware of uh anywhere regionally that receive these machines but the downside is the machine does require you'll see this little um cartridge on the um on the left here they do require those testing cartridges to perform a test and those testing cartridges a small supply has been received by the county but nowhere is near the number that we would need to actually institute institute the program it is our understanding that there uh by according to habit those test kits also are shortly um expected shortly but they're not here yet so i'm not one that wants to give unrealistic expectations in terms of starting date but i've heard that um by the end of october or possibly early november we should have sufficient

023number of the pc or rapid pcr testing kits and we can begin that testing program this is an image of the nurses receiving the testing on training last week and um we still have a number of protocols and procedures to work through but that's an update since we were last together a couple weeks ago and that um concludes my report an update to the board um just one point of perhaps further clarification sure um you know you went by really quickly at the beginning where it points out that columbia county is in red on the map and i'm not sure if it was on your slide and right there um that the red is an indication not just of the positivity rate but also the the percent plus the number of cases per hundred thousand

024people and even if that positivity rate dropped lower if our cases per 100 000 people are too high for stuffed red basically um and i yeah it looks like it's it's that's that's not there but it's definitely on that that website at the with the url on top i believe it's 17 at the moment yeah i'm not sure what the current count is it's much higher than the yeah it's much higher than the cut off uh one question for yourself when we get the testing purchases are we good to go with the acceptance program like is there any other stuff cake are we just waiting on that slide so the only process that we'll put in place is to proactively um let parents know that that will be available and to begin the process of

025putting uh consent forms on file um so that when if that situation occurs uh and the student is called down to the nurse's office um we would be good to go i i should say that we've also talked through the scenario that if a parent has not given consent that doesn't mean that we're not going to have a conversation with them the child should develop symptoms um it would be my expectation that a nurse may give the parent a call and if the parent still chooses to opt into testing then we can um ask them to stop in and fill out a form so we're not going to um you know prohibit anybody from having access really so choose to do that thank you just to follow up on destiny's question do we have a

026estimated date as to when we think this will be implemented yeah that's where i say that right now indications are end of october okay again i'm really literally when it comes to estimates and dates from abbott um we also thought that at least i started also thought that the huge order of testing kits that we had placed some four weeks ago would have been on their way here and we have no estimated delivery um can i i see you have item two here do we have it says md to present yes so um probably a lot more exciting than coving um i'd like to invite um christine our elementary principal up um to just provide the board with a little token of the school district's appreciation um october is board school board appreciation month and

027as we have done in the past except i think last year may have been an exception because we've um provided the board with something that is um made with love by our students i i remember enjoying hand sanitizer last year okay this is not hand sanitizer so in no way um acknowledges the countless hours of volunteer time that the school board puts in uh to their community but it certainly is symbolic and on behalf of all the students and staff in the district i would like to thank the board for their generous donation of time and considerations i just want to let you know that um we have a brand new art teacher this year cynthia gray it's amazing um and i gave her a really short amount of time and she did a fabulous

028job if you want to open them up they're all um each she picked some of the our best artists in fifth grade um they did a clay tile which can be used like a trivic they um use some leaves outside painted them they look amazing um we have some bespoke custom uh from our elementary school children here in these bags so i'm looking forward to taking that home um so we're in public comment section um i trevor do we have give account so just as a reminder to everyone um if you haven't been here previously and we do have public comment twice per meeting um when we can um so tonight we can uh we have 20 minutes in total for this public comment um and uh each speaker can speak up to three minutes

029um so these are and we'll hear comments of course from any uh community stakeholders that's parents students employees um and district residents and property owners um as well as anyone else with uh with prior approval um and we did have a prior communication from a parent i i believe it was a parent and uh they're on our well we have a hand up grace so we'll start there okay to hear them i just need you to um turn the volume up on those local speakers that's the beginning of our of our slot here i'm not sure if you can hear me yet you'll have to unmute um your camera and microphone and then of course just state your name um for the record before you begin speaking can you hear me now well we should

030we might have fun you're good can you hear me [Music] okay all right so you can hear me now oh we can almost hear you um [Music] can you hear me now so i can start to talk okay go okay all right my name is michelle radley i'm a parent of a current junior myself my husband and my daughter are also alumni can you hear me yes we can okay um my son declined to receive the shot he made this decision on his own after his own research he is a healthy athletic 16 year old who believes strongly that recommendations are wrong he can't fathom being told that he cannot play due to his decision to have people say to him while you're letting your team down is bullying at his best chatham central school

031districts is always put stood strong against bullying but now our school board is doing the bullying putting a shot in his arm to play basketball is just plain wrong i'm in disbelief that as a district you feel you have the right to dictate his medical care that is my job not yours we have a daughter who has received the vaccine as an adult is now suffering from symptoms that she's never had before coincidence or not it certainly makes you think my biggest issue is mental health it's a serious issue for our children watching your child suffer is the worst being able to see my son play football this year i watched him become energetic positive about school and his grades actually friday night at homecoming i walked out to my car in tears thankfully he

032was finally the child i remember pre-coveted happy proud and representing the school that he loves now he'll have to retreat backwards by not being allowed to play basketball because of the choice you made him make i urge the board to revert back to testing like last year and allow my son to play i certainly don't mind watching from home as long as he can still play as a panther thank you for your time and just for for the audience and the record that was michelle radley um go ahead and if we move past public comments there is of course another public comment at the end of the meeting okay so hi my name is heidi hayner one of the things i'm going to talk about is myocarditis information of the heart one of the possible

033adverse reactions from the coming vaccine after reading the last meeting i said to my husband i bet the cases of myocarditis will increase as more kids are getting vaccinated what do you know i was right i called the center for disease control last week representative there said there has been an increase of cases in myocarditis and males aged 16-29 after the second dose of the vaccine on october 6 the new york times put out an article researchers found a higher than expected risk of myocarditis in young men after full vaccination cnbc just put out an article that nordic countries are restricting the use of the modernity covered vaccine because of the possible risk of myocarditis fox news just reported today that several countries including england norway and hong kong recommend one dose of the vaccine

034for children over 12 because of the increased increased risk of myocarditis after the second vaccine dose maybe there's a reason that the fda has not fully approved the vaccine and it'll only improve for emergency use i spoke with our pediatrician i asked the question that if the mrna has been used for so many years and is safe then why are these why are these these things happening like myocarditis and young kids and adults her response was yes it is true that the mrna has been used for many years but not with this vaccine they don't know why these things are happening there's a lot of unknown the rules might change with a vaccine as we learn more down the road so what are we doing using our kids as a road map um i reached

035out to matt morrell the chairman of the columbia county board of supervisors i spoke with him today he said that jack madd the department of health director made the recommendation not a mandate that that the six superintendents collectively made the decision to put the vaccine mandate into place he also said that the superintendents meet weekly and that they could collectively re-look at things hopefully this is something that you would consider considering the research is showing that these shots in the second films are actually hurting these young kids um there have been numerous studies that have been shown that natural immunity is just as good if not better than someone who is vaccinated because of exposure to the whole virus not just part of it natural immunity is not just in antibodies but t cells and

036b cells and as shown to be long-lasting unlike the vaccine i could talk about this for three minutes on this topic alone but that being said it's unclear to me why we need to push the vaccine in our children especially in those who have recovered from coping when research has shown natural immunity these kids need sports no offense now but i almost fell off my chair when you said that sports were privileged not a right these kids need as much normalcy as we can give them suicide is uh suicidal thoughts are up self-inflicted harm is up depression anxiety obesity is up child abuse is up i watched a woman speak at a morbid education meeting in upstate new york and in her 20 years of working with girls she has never seen things so bad

037with self-harm one girl has been cutting herself another scratching her belly so hard she has made her skin raw a friend of mine knows someone who got the coded vaccine got tremors that would not stop and committed suicide i spoke with a lawyer in lake in the latham area her daughter is a pediatric nurse in a hospital a child just died that was in the copic vaccine child age 5-11 yes death is a possible side effect of this vaccine these are real people in our area that have been affected and they are all concerning to say the least my middle son has been exposed twice at school not by an unvaccinated student both times from a student that is vaccinated he has to be quarantined this whole thing is affecting our kids psychologically and we

038we will see repercussions for this um for this for years not to mention only one assignment was posted for him today i'm sure the school is providing him the education that he deserves it's about time that we all work together and do what we can to make things better for our kids i'm hoping you will reconsider the mass mandate or at least look at something that would be some sort of an alternative um i'm not sure what my oldest son bryson will do as he is a senior but what i do know is that if he gets the sex if he does get this vaccine because of your mandate if he has any adverse reaction at all i will hold each and every one of you accountable why can't we just continue to do the

039weekly testing let these kids have some sort of normalcy uh just as a reminder to the audience that unfortunately the timer on the screen disappears when it runs out of time i just want to make sure that everyone gets they should be able to speak oh no we're not going to cut anyone off i just you know i just want to make sure that everyone has time available good evening i'm shannon seltz here we are again trying to make some sense as to what is going on here in our childhood school district can i ask how many board members in administration or parents that have children in kindergarten through 12th grade have you ever felt so strongly about a decision for your child that you will do anything to fight for that not one of

040you sitting in front of me can tell me what this shot will do to my kids in 3 5 10 or even 20 years from now not one of you can tell me what these masks are doing to them not only health-wise but psychologically you say you're protecting our students but your actions say the exact opposite i'm sure your response will be you are protecting them from covet but coercing and forcing an unproven vaccine that seems to not be working and is statistically more of a danger to them than any of the effects that they could get from copus is dangerous mental health anxiety depression and suicide are higher than it's ever been children look to school sports drama social dances football games etc and your nonsensical protocols have and will continue to take this

041away have you all looked at how many of the positive cases in the middle and high school are from vaccinated students have you looked into how many out of all the cases in all schools have actually been severely sick also i did want to go back on what i said in the last board meeting about the hospitalization from the vaccine i was wrong we didn't have a hospitalization from the vaccine we actually had two students in our district hospitalized from the vaccine let me just say that one more time two hospitalizations from the coven vaccine but yet not one from the virus itself and now you are requiring it for winter sports and you say you are protecting our children you took money to force our kids to wear masks and socially distance and you

042took money to encourage our kids to get the vaccine and now you are forcing them to take the shot if they want to be a part of sports and after school activities all under your definition of protecting our kids you claim to teach equality anti-bullying and inclusion all while your actions and roles are doing the exact opposite to our students it's a disgrace and it's such a shame that a school we once loved and i was proud to say i went to and even more proud to send my kids to is going against everything it once was and it's heartbreaking we have made a serious decision for our family to not receive this shot i say shout because that is exactly what it is it's not a vaccine you say you're protecting our children but

043what about our families that have genetic health issues when my husband was three years old his mother passed away from a serious heart condition that took her life you claim to follow the science so you all know about genetics right my kids are perfectly healthy kids who i am not willing to risk heart issues for something that is 99.997 survivable in children my husband who is a teacher here at chatham a few years back suffered from gillian barr syndrome i never heard of that before until he had it and we had no idea what it was and it was pretty dang scary now we know and we also know that it's the possible severe side effects of this vaccine but i'm sure since you are all protecting our children you have done your research on

044what that is and also no myocarditis you know an inflammation of the heart two serious side effects both in our family and you think your requirement is protecting my children and all of our children shame on you our bodies our choice anyone who wanted the shot has made that choice and received it who do you claim you are protecting you have a choice to be better for these children make the right choice and give them their childhood their privilege to be included in their freedoms because they deserve that heroes molly i'm sorry can you repeat that sierra simali thank you my name is sierra smalley and i have two children at chatham school district i'm also a child alumni myself i've always been proud to say that i've always trusted chatham i have never felt

045compelled to come here and talk at one of these meetings i'm not really a public speaker it's not my thing there are several things that i would like to discuss but i know i only have three minutes so i will be back um tonight i want to discuss the mandated masks and now mandated vaccines we know a lot more about people than we did when this started kovit has a 99 survival rate if you are under the age of 50. children newborn to 19 is 99.997 there is a 2 chance that my kids could get myocarditis from this vaccine this doesn't make sense we also now know that the people who are dying with covet have two or more underlying conditions and or are overweight or obese the already unhealthy are the ones who are

046dying from coping the vaccinated can get coping and the vaccinated can spread coping the unvaccinated can get covered beyond vaccinated can spread profit the only thing the vaccine has proven to be capable of is lessening the severities of symptoms for the people who get coveted so the only person the vaccine is protecting to any degree is the person who got it so why would i choose to inject a vaccine in a child that is perfectly healthy and don't say it is to protect everyone else because that is not what is happening here if somebody is afraid of cloven get vaccinated but don't tell me that you're mandating this to keep everyone safe because it doesn't make sense i have two boys that have played sports for chatham since they were old enough to i'll try

047not to cry the last time i watched my son play basketball he suffered a compound fracture on your cord and now you are telling me that that could be the last time i ever watched my kid play basketball again because of a mandate from chatham a mandate not even from the governor this is a choice you guys made i want you to help me understand something the unhealthier the ones that are dying from why in the world are we keeping children from playing sports sports that help to keep them healthy sports that boost their immune systems naturally because yes immune systems actually do exist i am the one choosing not to experiment with my kids bodies and you are punishing them there's zero evidence that this vaccine won't have negative long-term side effects it would

048be a possible determinant at this time you just can't you're discriminating against a group of healthy young children because of a decision decision that their parents made i don't want to hear about the cbc recommendations the cdc hasn't flipped off this entire time they've contradicted themselves over and over again over and over again this is what i'm asking i'm asking you guys to put your heads together i'm going to look at the data and i want you to present us proof that this vaccine mandate and masking are safe effective and necessary we deserve that much you guys took it upon yourself to make this decision without any of us and that's why we're all here today this is a decision a decision that affects our children at the end of the day my kids will

049be fine they will be fine not playing basketball but that's not what i want i want more than fine and that is what trauma used to be more than fine so please help us help us understand because we don't thank you megan sharon sharon i am back again my stance remains the same this mandate was issued with no transparency to the district stakeholders with no regards to the well-being of our children and goes against our district's current equality policies and values tonight you are speaking of approving the diversity equality inclusion policy for the district while slashing those core principles to threads diversity equality inclusion was beyond color ethnicity gender sexual orientation it speaks to everyone as a whole and everyone being extended the same consideration regardless of their thoughts it speaks to community and overall

050kindness and well-being you're drawing a line directly between two different groups of children and pointing them very judgmentally against each other you've officially created an environment where judgment and bias rule and groups of children are either left out or bullied and the other groups weigh fully into the other group's way of thinking you're proving to violate your own basic principles the statistics remain the same as well most children who acquire hope and 19 do not suffer symptomology and they recover fine children who are vaccinated continue to spread the virus to others who are both vaccinated and not these are facts another fact the fact that should be most concerning to a group of folks who are in a position of authority when it comes to making decisions regarding our children is that there are no

051facts that will show no negative outcomes to our children who are forced to receive a vaccine in the future pfizer is launching a year-long live study to monitor the safety and effectiveness affects the effectiveness of the vaccine in brazil that means in a year's time we may see negative outcomes that we're unable to predict today cardiac dysfunction continues to be a concern in young people who receive the vaccine so much so that some local schools and some local medical professionals are requiring to follow bkg after proven and after vaccination i've never had to have an ekg after a flu or a tetanus shot this is concerning to me that makes me worry did you know that roughly 2.4 million americans for the cdc have a heart condition did you know that not all of those

052people have access to cardiac or primary care and their heart they don't even know that their heart's at risk did you know that if this vaccine causes cardiac side effects that those unsuspecting people could affect could potentially have a serious cardiac event and die that's not a risk that i'm willing to take with my loved ones especially my children in closing my thoughts or this your role is to provide support to our children in our community regardless of your personal beliefs your role is to be fair transparent and speak for the community of which you represent the people behind me and those who are also voicing concerns are proof that you are not doing that you're promoting a policy that violates our children's basic rights and based off fear and political rhetoric rather than facts

053of truth sometimes we must speak our minds and make our decisions and go against the crowd that is part of being an adult and that is part of your role here it's a privilege to serve here and a privilege to be a voice for our children it is not a right and you do not get to bypass parents rights while sitting there telling us what we need to do with our children i tell my kids every day make good choices maybe we need to be sure the adults in this room know that rule too yes zayna sanchez um hi um i just wanted to start out with thanking mrs hover um for speaking up at the end of the last meeting um i was like made me so happy to hear that you had heard

054us and um [Music] considering where we're coming from that's nice um so i'm just going to get this book soon there's a lot of people who want to speak um you you know what has to do with how you're quarantining people and the whole bus flow chart you have going on because you're saying that that's like the main problem and the only stipulation is that there needs to be um more than six feet but if you look at the flow chart you're trying to tell me that like four or three seats back in diagonal is 60 or under like that doesn't make any sense so it feels kind of careless for something that's so important um so i think that would be a good idea to take another look at that and see how hearing

055it is um because that'll be terrible to be having children miss out on their education um because someone was careless with the chart you know so um i don't know if anyone's gotten on with t measure but i think they definitely should um that's it i just thought that was important to know and mention and you take that seriously and check it out because it doesn't matter okay thank you marianne pirro so again i'm going to go off screens because after the supervisor's address i just there's a couple things i'm seeing being disconnected and i think that's that's where we're at here um all those charts that you showed to us they're all based off the cdc and you guys believe what the cdc is telling you all these one you know vaulted institutions that

056are out there the problem is as us parents we're seeing ways that they are manipulating the data to show what they want to show it is i have documentation here stacks of it of how it's being manipulated like when we see that we're in the high risk category all right how many of those are kids i know there's some kids out here but we you know we get all frightened by these big numbers and it's it's not it's so disingenuous they're driving a narrative and we have to close this gap for our students we have to it's a big disconnect and we need we need to fix this because chatham is a great community and we're losing it we're in the process of losing it i was so shocked when i lived here i saw

057how many generations of people came to this school loved this school stayed here raising their families that is not common that is very unique we're losing the flavor of our community the the kids can't socialize that that's crazy i mean they're teenagers they're their children they need to socialize it is part of their psychological mental well-being we have to fix this we have to stop over dramatizing this virus the virus does not hurt these children we have gotten so out of control we're listening to the new york state department of health they have vested interests i have documentation about how they are inconsistent and the cdc we can't keep relying on them our community is falling apart you know we have this mission here the mission of the chattahoom central school district is to provide

058students an education that nurtures intellectual curiosity focuses on academic and cultural foundations our students will graduate with the knowledge problem-solving abilities and character needed to participate ethically adapt succeed and contribute to the future educational career community endeavors well intellectual curiosity is not happening here it's just following what with the cdc and what all these mandates being handed down that is not intellectual curiosity we're bringing that to the table tonight um the culture the culture is getting toxic it really is there's there's bullying going on there's there's people that just the depression that's happening our culture is dying here not acceptable this is a great community we have to fight for this we need to get serious about fixing this we need to stand up for our kids it can't be about politics we have to

059realize that you know all of this is a big thing i know it going up against the man going up against you know the cdc and new york state and the governor but we have to start somewhere we can start with removing the vaccine mandate for the winter sports we have wiggle room there we can remove that mandate that is not something that they told us we had to do and then we need to work from there to get our school back it's very important thank you taylor then we i am not anti-backs and i'm accountable for my own health i love being an athlete and staying physically fit during the fall season i play on the golf team and would walk nine holes five days a week after school i also try to get

060in as many volleyball practices and games that i can after golf in volleyball my parents drive me to irish dance for a two-hour intense workout i love sports and they are great for your mind and body also staying physically fit can be the best defense against the virus i have nothing but the utmost respect the staff at our school the child community members coping with the fears of code 19. i thank god and i am grateful that i live in a society where vaccines are possible it is my belief that the copenhagen vaccine status of every person should be their own choice completely up to them without bullying without being pressured without being forced into doing so without being excluded from sports or shamed by other students i'm not ashamed to say that i'm i'm

061uncomfortable taking the vaccine at this time we are all different we have all had different experiences during 2020. i should not be bullied into a vaccine that allows you to still transmit and carry coping what you do with your body should be decision made between a student their parent and their family physician when it comes to receiving the coca-19 injection that should be your choice free of the ridicule and the opinion of others also should we really be requiring the vaccine if we are playing schools that do not do not treat the unvaccinated bias alienating me and back to the athletes is a form of bullying and bullying is something that is very much not tolerated that shadow do not bully against handed i love basketball and it is my favorite sport i have jumped

062about playing the hype in the high school after losing last year's season due to code 19. please not crush my dream welcome all athletes it may be the last bit of normalcy we have left okay is that the end of our next list um we will have another public comment um do we have any hands we do okay how many do you have there so i just want this one this one [Music] that's impressive can you hear me yes okay so obviously you have heard all of this plenty of times but i'm just going to say it again this is getting a bit out of control is this about the money or the children we asked our boys their feelings going back to school before we made the decision to homeschool yet another year the

063first thing they asked was is it going to be masked and distanced again well i'm honest and so was mr fortran so here we are homeschooling yet another year happy we made this decision once again i can't imagine sending our children to this every day for example my five-year-old friend a kinder a kindergartner just starting missing this year mentioned at the beginning of the school year how she had to sit alone for lunch this is a crucial time for her to meet new friends and to be social not to mention to feel comfortable this is sad this is truly heartbreaking exactly why we pulled our children from chatham central school we are doing a much better job than this sadly i report to you at this point someone should report to us oh right yes

064the health department and the cdc do that on their website positive vaccinated positive unvaccinated cases i'm honestly fed up we parents are fed up this is our future the divide you are creating as educators is disgusting vaccine should be a choice it clearly doesn't matter somebody on this board needs to stand up for these kids in school not everyone can homeschool and they shouldn't have to your job is to educate not quarantine off of a cough runny nose or stomachache not to mention menstrual cramps welcome to allergy common cold and puberty season unfortunately it's in your hands we have what's in our hands our children but i'm still here advocating for each and every child that's affected by these ridiculous rules including our own this is not okay for your information something required or obligate

065obligatory is one thing while mandate is an official or authoritative command mr matt himself asks why now why is chatham on board now in the fall yet summer sports were okay i agree what about 10 the tens of thousands of people attending nfl mlb and college sports none wearing masks but the 13 kids in a classroom have to these vaccines are not proven and to subject these kids to them is abuse think about that myocarditis usually caused by viral infection or a side effect from the covid19 vaccine which in fact is an implanted infection can weaken the heart which can lead to heart failure abnormal heartbeat and sudden death federal health officials have verified 226 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in people ages 30 and younger who have received a mederna covid 19 vaccine and

066are investigating about 250 more reports do better stand up for these kids i know at the end of the day you just comply to what the rules that are thrown your way but something must be done this is not okay trust me i'm not alone you guys see that i'm done yeah i don't know um i think that was cass but do we have her name okay okay thank you okay so uh we're gonna go through the normal school business agenda here but we will have another public comment if anyone would like to speak further about our topic or anything that comes up during the meeting there will be another window um we are up to board member comments questions okay yeah all the parents and other community members that spoke today um we don't

067always hear from you when you do come out to speak that means a lot to us um and we get a lot of a lot of silence during the year um and uh it's it's really really um good to see how much you all care about uh about the school community so does anyone else have board comments i have to join in i do appreciate it i don't receive them surprised for anyone i feel strongly about that i wouldn't be here on the board if i didn't that's one of the reasons um um thank you okay and i i don't see mia in person but do we have a student we do have [Music] um what me i was going to speak about was just that hold on let's get you a mic what mia

068was going to speak about really was just this past weekend and i give the students a lot of credit for uh pushing um and doing some research to find out how many of their classmates wanted to indeed move over the pep rally and a homecoming dance and all the homecoming activities because we haven't done it in a few years so um they were really instrumental um in in demonstrating that that students really wanted to have these activities that was very important to them um i thought they were fantastic uh i'm appreciative of all the faculty members that helped us out with uh with pepperdine during the day the fifth ed teachers really put together uh the whole playing field outside and we were able to have some some uh some competitive activities recognize all of

069our athletes and all of our um our club members who are for the clubs that are up and running um and then we had a great football game and we had a dance although it was short um it was the longest football game i could remember in some time but we were outside uh it was just great to see the kids smiling it was great to see them interacting was great to see them smiling it was great to see them have something to look forward to and uh what i told them was uh i would pledge to to continue to try to see what more we can do as the year unfolds i know that it'll get more challenging with the with the weather um but we you know we certainly took advantage of the

070uh the outside and uh you know i told them that we will communicate on a regular basis i think student government is up and running and um and have someone to have an agenda and i think it's important for them to uh to get back to some uh i hate to say that back to some normalcy we haven't had normal skill a long time um i i was pleased that we were able to do that for them was it perfect was not perfect uh it was a great step in the right direction and uh i hope that we can continue to do that as we go along thank you john i'm really excited to hear about that so um congratulations really to the whole team for making that happen exciting because you know last year

071this time um it would have been way too cold to do that i think and so we were locked down we lucked out yeah blessed with the perfect weather tomorrow uh okay so we're going to go into building room parts and uh start with uh elementary school unless you guys have another order in mind so we are excited to be back we are um doing some things that we weren't able to do last year that were really important to us um we're using the cafeteria that's huge for our kids to be able to go to the cafeteria sit be social um all the encores are in their classrooms so they we are not splitting kids between two classrooms so kids are able to go to our music library etc um which is fantastic um our

072ais teachers have started their literacy and math groups which is super important last year if you remember if you don't um we had to use our aif teachers to teach actual grade levels um this year we were able to work it out so that they do not have to do that and they are able to provide ais instruction um i want to give and i know that john and mike agree with me you need to give us like super special shout out to our nurses i've never seen three ladies work so hard as the three of them have this year they are phenomenal um just keeping the building healthy um in just a general sense um and just the continued kindness and care that they provide to not only the students but everyone in the

073building so they really have done a tremendous job um working on weekends long nights i just want to make sure they get a special shout out um we've had to do some remote learning this year and it's been we're pleased with how it has gone um we are implementing three different models in the elementary school and depending on what is being fought and how many kids are out the teacher and i will choose with which model they are going to use um we had the the three buildings had a virtual open house parents had responded to me and to the teachers that it seemed successful we had the opportunity for flying deer who we have a great relationship with they came to the elementary school and provided a whole day for our students of outdoor

074learning it was fantastic our students are reading my side of the mountain and because of that they got to explore all the trails behind the high school and do all these really cool activities it's on our facebook page if you want to check that out we have started dare which will run now through thanksgiving um for the fifth grade intramurals have started which is always a huge um something that the kids look forward to our pta had a back-to-school picnic last friday was highly successful um we are doing fire prevention day the fire trucks are gonna come the firemen from all around are gonna come um typically it's in october but because of the firemen's schedule they wanted to push it back to november so that works for us so those were some of our

075some of the highlights of the elementary school i will tell you one of the things as the year moves forward one of the things that i am concerned about and it is not just my concern but it is i think every principal's concern in new york state and across the country and that is the lack of substitutes that we have um it becomes a real problem um when we are scrambling to try to find um people to cover classes um so that is something that we really need to keep an eye on um anybody have any questions i actually have a question about the substitutes but maybe we could do that after i'm curious if we're getting the same um submission rates through our uh postings that we were previously how is that how is

076that constraint actually manifesting i don't have a sense of that i'm not so sure as far as interest level yeah yeah that was one measure but also even though they're in the system whether they accept a job or make their availability known that is significantly diminished especially around um when we start to announce positive cases um many of them have situations for which they are concerned about coming into school and we see we see them declining jobs on a regular basis so not only are they is the pool of candidates much lower um those that are in the pool are very um selected in terms of the timing as to which they'll make themselves available understandable but the the general feeling is that the um i guess the the covet environment is a large contributor

077to that most definitely okay um thank you i guess that was uh both of you but um we've been advertising for two tas and a 0.5 aide since the beginning of school new interest since august and the same is true in the elementary school i believe we have these three positions that we've been advertising since the middle of um august including i think all three buildings have a building substitute position um at least i hope i do um available that used to be that was the job that i would interview and i have had no one applied for that i don't think that's solely but i think that's a large factor the workforce is just in general yeah this is this is something that happens in every administrative in every administrative meeting that ran across

078the this isn't a challenge okay and i think the board knows this from comments that i've sent them we've tried to be as flexible as possible or someone approaches us and says that i'm interested but i can't work you know an entire day we've modified hourly schedules start times uh exit times when we have somebody who's interested we try our best to accommodate their requirements yeah we last spoke about this in the summer and i think we were all crossing our fingers hoping um we were headed a different direction there but okay middle school update yeah so um at the middle school i think we had a pretty good opening um opening day mr stead and i tried to lighten it up a little bit by a little family feud um i don't know if

079that's dating ourselves if you know overall just nice to really to have the kids back um you know one thing this year a little different is that you know me and john are doing a poor principle model so we're still um we're still figuring it out as we go but it's been you know really great for me getting into the classrooms um in the high school you know especially seeing you know my summer students that were in middle school so it's really cool to see how they've grown um to hear like really great discussions on literature students recreating history in their social studies classes so it's been it's it's been a lot of fun um you know some things when we're talking about um you know getting back to normal um we've had a lot

080of field trips um the high school social studies department just took the high school kids to the copay iron works last week um our high school science department and our seventh grade team is taking our kids to the 19th annual hudson river snapshot day which is chatham's i think 15th year participating and that's just thursday i got to uh mrs fisher's project based class pitched a field trip to mr forrest and myself about on the via aquarium um this is a part of a project they're doing on saltwater aquariums they're extremely passionate did an amazing job presenting um got our approval for the trip um because we want to go to so we they really did an excellent job um you know things we started intramurals this week fluffs are going to be starting soon

081um that's all based on you know our students interests so we um we surveyed the kids and asked some clubs that they wanted to see at the middle school when we reach out to teachers to see who would like to be advisors for those clubs so there's gonna be starting soon um we have uh our eighth graders ask for some team building activities so um miss o'keefe mr thorson myself and mr stead are going to look at um if it's this friday we're going to be looking at project adventure activities for for the 8th graders so um you know and and you know our concerns i guess are all the same you know something shorts can be taxing us at times we've all spent periods or even more subbing in classrooms which is my you

082know i've been in the classroom teaching in a while and i don't really want to go down but it's it's fun in that sense but we do it it can be very can be very intense so that's my middle school slash high school report yeah maybe we should we should update the agenda but yeah well i guess you stole all my stuff i thought it was a great start it was it was just it was fantastic to see all the expects um to have opening school you know to have opening meetings with all of the you know each class as a whole was awesome um and i think that that that enthusiasm and that excitement definitely was started off it it made for a great start to the year um in terms of cons concerns

083um i think everybody emotionally is is that a is that a spot starting this year off at about a minute i'm talking about it talking about parents teachers everybody in every stakeholder in the system is at a level that is it's concerning for solar leaders i was going to say next year but it's everywhere and it's every conversation and um you know lots of social emotional things um lots of issues that may seem really small on the surface but kids are having a hard time working some of those issues out some of the kids that have been really had a tough time uh during colgate now are trying to relearn learning in person and it's a major challenge uh me personally what i've seen one of the things that's most concerning to me is that

084i see kids um willing to give up on it before they even really give it another step and that's something that i think we really need to coach them through and really need to spend a lot of time working on because um clearly that's not a good habit to you know to enforce so um you know i think it's gonna take time i think that having um having the pep rally and doing things like that i think are really important and they'll be instrumental uh and hopefully getting them getting us over the pump um but those things are really concerning um and again i think it's been great to be back uh in the fold um but i think it's going to take a lot of hard work together all of us together at all

085different levels of the system um in order to support our kids and get back to where we when we feel like we should be great start but um it's gonna take some it's gonna take some work so hopefully i didn't end on the downer because the bottom line is that you still have the kids in school but it's going to take some good how they're doing you know the issues of struggling with subject matter giving up before they really start that sort of thing you know obviously it's very very concerning to hear that um i absolutely address it so just wondering if you know if there's any thing worth highlighting from the elementary side so this is a this is a difficult question because a lot of the students that are super young this is

086their first experience of course this is not the first experience that we want them to have coming to school we wanted to have a traditional experience i will say that i go in every class every single morning um and it has been a welcoming experience the kids are excited i actually taught fifth grade for a very large chunk of the day and i was outside of recess in the middle of the soccer game um and it was i think when they have those opportunities to really socialize um they really thrive and we've given them a lot more opportunities to do that this year by being in the cafeteria by having extended recess time um as far as academically goes i think the the elementary staff is um they're amazing at understanding who can who they

087can push right now and who they just need to kind of sit back and let them take their own time because it is they are young um and they're still trying to figure out who they are and what they're doing um we have had a lot of students who have visited the den um which which is our panthers then um who have just needed a little boost um we did have a lot of first graders this year who were remote last year as kindergartners um really needed a lot of tlc and usually by coming to first grade we don't need to provide that much plc but we've had a lot of students kindergartners that were remote that we've been providing a lot of tlc so there's a lot of supports in place our two school

088psychologists um and renee morgan have been wonderful um they're just going in and out of classes they're making me aware of any issues they're making each other aware and then we make parents aware follow up there because i'm not familiar with the panthers then yeah is that the bright room yes a couple questions um are teachers incorporating like the mental health conversations in the classroom because i'm really happy to see that we have our school psychiatrists and we're doing that but are we talking about it more like in academics and but because we have uh essence books have brought up just that increased emotional need right now we have a social emotional curriculum that we have to provide as for new york state um we use the second step curriculum and so the teachers are

089instrumental in delivering that so typically what happens is and we're only in october right now but come the next few months mrs morgan usually goes in or when we have two new school psychologists one of the three of them going to present a topic so let's say they may want to talk about empathy and that's kind of they kind of introduce a lesson and then the rest of the lessons throughout the month will be about and will be directed by the teacher um sometimes mrs morgan or or r2 we call mrs t and mrs f because they have really challenging last names um come back into the classroom um to provide support or um additional lessons if needed um we we're we're currently working at a schedule where they can kind of support each other

090with the teachers um but we have to provide social all three buildings have to provide those who will expect socio-emotional um great job it's part of new york state awesome and then um have we started the senior project in the high school yet um how is that kind of are we going to do what we did last year or i wasn't really thinking about like seniors giving up early is that are we seeing that now or are we i i wouldn't say that we aren't we had that all figured out yet would you no we um have incorporated it into the um english 12 curriculum um so there's a little bit of an overlap there um it's a mixed bag with what i'm hearing but i think doing that offers a lot more supports for

091the students um and more of like a seminar kind of style situation with it so um we normally roll it out much earlier than this um but for various reasons including socio emotional uh it's a little bit of a slower rollout so um the seniors i've talked to it's a mixed bag that i think most are are feeling comfortable um and like the idea of the supports in english all right thank you guys i just wanted to have one um shout out and that is as we were talking about the substitutes um just a shout out to the teachers who one of the strategies to be used and used for several years but it's been so much more important this year is that um teachers can cover a period uh in in a classroom if

092they're available and i know that that's adding additional stress and anxiety to the fact that you have a course load and then there's a lot of obligation in terms of trying to help the building stay afloat and volunteer um they're trying to volunteer under contract for filling in the holes in the day and so that's that's a very important part of the overall strategy as well and i appreciate the teachers who i know would love to just have that time during the day to collect themselves and to um work on planning and just rejuvenate however they've most of them have stepped up and helped us out through this situation so i'm appreciating that every day every day you know thank you where it may have been occasional in past years because we have plenty of

093it has now substances we become so dependent on that that's one of the strategies we used to get throughout the day so that cannot go on unacknowledged okay thanks for that um i had one question about gloves but does anyone else the building update have any questions okay so it's club season it's exciting um i was excited to look at some of the sports numbers because i saw that our teams basically came back together again this year um and i know that our clubs um were uh a lot of them didn't happen last year right and the participation was low where they did um we don't have like sign up slips all in yet right but any feeling on how things are trending there in terms of interest both on the teacher side and the

094student side right yeah i mean i speak for the middle school um there's a lot of interests they wanna um there's a lot of interest you know from both um the teachers um and then the students um they wanna they wanna you know this year some of the club offerings there was um gaming club um that was a tough one to find someone to to film as an advisor but um just you know the kids could probably actually be the advisor for it but um there was a lot of interest in the surveys for for the clubs um so you know we're excited to get up and running and i just want to say that at the elementary school i've had some of my new teachers have brought some really exciting ideas that they're kind

095of um figuring out how they're going to do these clubs but some of them are super exciting um and then there are some of our old favorite standbys that we hope we're going to do like the knitting club that's a huge very popular club for our fifth graders um one of my new teachers wanted is trying to figure out how to offer a chess club even though she has no idea how to play she sees the value in it so she needs to learn how to play and then she's gonna do the club um but there are some really great ideas our teacher had mentioned to me potentially doing an art club after school so i'm excited about the clubs that they have and of course john roles and does a fantastic job with our

096engineering yeah we've had tons of interest i think we've got three or four up and running now um with more ideas coming in weekly that's that's really great see um next is the um on the board committee reports today we have policy um there's no notes um in here but just as a i guess it heads up for the board here we do have a third reading of a policy and a few minutes after this um and you know i think um a great format that i like to hear things is what did you work on you know the last few days since you've presented um but also where are you going next um and uh is there anything outside the policy group that's blocking you right or do you need resources so okay um

097so we had our first um policy meeting on monday and um essentially for the most part we had a very lengthy discussion on revisiting the draft policy the diversity equity influence it had gone through two readings last spring and um we actually also invited lisa rooney to step in and sit in on that discussion because she's been touching upon and her work on the goal setting and all on a lot of aspects of the the uh issues of diversity equity and inclusion and um so we [Music] went over some of the concerns that were raised that you know last year conversation beams we also um looked at the relationship of this uh policy with existing policies like one wellness the dignity of all students policy to see if there is any correlation if there's any

098way we can maybe reduce or maybe build this policy under those and uh ultimately we concluded that really needed to maintain a separate policy and uh we did tweet some wording based on the discussion and after you know obviously having a summer to think through uh what it was all all about and um so that's what is on the agenda for the third reading um we also um quickly revisited policy funny and we had to do with the organizational meeting and um requirements on the election on board officers because they since we reduced the um floor from 97 whether that was going to be proposed a challenge uh uh the requirement that the uh board office there have to be in in um essentially one place a year i have an experience and um there

099were heavens and concerns raised since in the spring about them and um we looked at it we talked about it and we concluded that because there really is a mandate uh requirement that uh any new program has to go through training in the first year that really that requirement still we have a couple more policies that we're in the process of reviewing and updating based on requirement changes um very good ones um sexual harassment uh and uh nondiscrimination also thing for all students um and uh where that lands our agendas and our next meeting next month look at this hopefully get this right um there are others some others in the works that we haven't we just don't require changes that we have not gone to yet uh as far as as far as working

100committee um chris is on it whitney chad's our community representative um stalin started now lisa as some of the topics really touch upon her area it's always good to have that input from the administration as to how our policies and impact devices how you know what are they doing yeah what are the practices networks with the policies so uh that is very important um i really don't have anything else to add at this point in time john chris if you want to yeah i just wanted to highlight um or reinforce one of your comments about the extensive discussion uh about uh i believe it was a comment in the spring uh about a concern you know of overloading the administration you know with new policies or changes policies it might you know appear to add

101additional load and you know we have discussion with the administration about that and i think we came to a good consensus about you know how to move forward make sure that we're not doing that but also addressing you know components of the district that are necessary to focus on i just want to mention that okay uh any policy questions other than the dei reading in a couple items okay [Music] so we've got a few items here in new business discussion um rr24 the result of the board of education hereby creates a two-year temporary grant funded full-time one fte nursing position can i have a motion question questions or comments all in favor [Music] r25 be it of the board of education hereby create a two-year temporary grant-funded full-time uh one fte math steam and project-based

102instruction position motion second questions or comments all in favor 26 the result that the board of education hereby creates a two-year temporary grant funded full-time one fte position as an i would just like to add here as a comment um so that that is these three positions as well as one additional we're going to go over in a moment these are all rank funded um to help really close the gap um that was created um through coved so um you know there is some um grant funding available to help us and we're using it to um to plug these instructional gaps um of course also to um assist with our nursing overload um so that was my comment on our 26 which was the uh the ais instructor um anyone else questions on those in

103general all in favor and the last one here um r27 the result of the board of education hereby creates um three temporary grant-funded full-time one fte permanent daily substitute positions notion questions or comments all in favor okay um and now we have the um the third uh the third reading of uh 3460 diversity equity and inclusion um and this draft has really um undergone um a few a few iterations here um so i hope everyone at this point on the board is familiar with it um okay does anyone uh have any questions or concerns about where it stands right now okay i don't think we have a um a gendered motion to adopt right okay so look forward to that at future meeting and uh probably the most exciting um uh resolution here on the

104agenda um r28 be it resolved that the board of education approves the agreement with the shadow central school district teachers association agreement uh questions or comments here um [Music] for sitting down with us and working through this agreement and the members for um it allows us to move forward uh and it's a fair agreement and i'm personally thankful for that second that for sure anyone else yeah i'd like to thank everybody that was involved interesting fun sometimes not but okay and actually i was missing um okay all in favor aye aye aye motion passes um we you know our 29 uh i'm i'm gonna state the um the agenda item here but that's how i would ask that you speak up that comment here um our 29 be a result of the board of education

105approve an agreement with columbia memorial hospital for school physician services for the remainder of the fiscal year at the rate of fifteen thousand dollars and uh can i have a motion second okay um okay so before anyone else questions or comments i would like to comment that um there's a little bit of a change here in in strategy for the end of the year um and um any comments you'd like to share i think we haven't had a chance as a group to to be made aware of this so i'm going to actually make some i'll make a brief comment because i don't want to turn to you without throwing you uh getting on the fire here but um this was necessitated because our previous medical director uh dr curry had passed away she had

106been built for some time and her passing was um at least this time frame was was a little unexpected dr curry had provided these services for several years [Music] yeah so you know fortunate for dr curry's passing um actually this year she was sick and you know she was going through some things we weren't sure when something would happen but just to be prepared to speak with columbia memorial they actually took over her practice but we have a separate site agreement placed with curry and um in anticipation of anything i talked to memorial hospital if something did happen they assist us for the rest of the year it's a big concern i had is when we went out with an rfp a few years ago we had one person flying that was dr curry what

107else wanted our business it's very difficult to get a school position um for districts and columbia martial does uh work with some other neighboring districts so i talked to the vice president operations and she said you know god forbid something good happened they would help us out so i made the call after that happened and they did come together with the contract so very appreciate that we'll go through the rest and we'll see how this works and work with our nurses they have a deep kind just to note that of course dr curry um led some of our efforts with our health staff but also um she was available um at uh football sporting events right and um so that's that's she's no longer available for that that's right she sent the physician uh assistant

108but we have our trainer in place we're going to we ask the trainer to get each football game on the floor we'll have our trainer can i check with the lawyer that's most districts don't have a position they get athletic trainers okay so i had questions about that when we went through agenda so i wanted to make sure everyone else is available aware of that any other questions there i have a question i just could you run through i'm i'm not clear as to what the hospital's role what what would they actually be doing you know i mean so they know the physicals for the kids um you know there's certain major physicals for each certain grades so that's uh they do that they um provide they have a medical director so if sale needs

109any questions or any sign-offs on things from medical director they provide that service um and you know if we have to evaluate any employees check provide the physician services for that but a lot of this is the sports physicals and such that's the majority of the services and then the nurses also any questions they have they have something to call you know medical director and any questions with special education please you know you can utilize so do we have like a direct line to a particular person at columbia yes that's correct we have direct line to the uh the administrator that will set up you know whatever doctors we need and then um the nurses have been assigned to the diversity manager to facilitate that we just need to use a couple quick examples um

110our the ability to test do kobe testing in schools almost result as you know our limited service um laboratory license through questar but our medical director had to write a non-specific script for that so that was something that would be a function that this past year and also when we evaluated earlier this year when we provided the option for parents to indicate whether they had a student that needed to be based on a medically compromised health situation needed to have remote construction we had a very limited number of parents indicate that that was need um the medical director would be available to evaluate the um and interpret the documentation that's provided by account and give us uh advice or translate whether it's successful so that that's kind of just two examples of how i would

111use that directory situation i mean it sounds ideal to be able to work with colombia in this capacity hopefully this works out it sounds yeah and as like i said um two other neighboring districts and the county probably use that as we check the conference is still very highly responsiveness so we're comfortable with this um okay uh so that was um r29 that i already read all in favor and next uh consensus agenda um i do have one comment but we'll start off with reading r 30 be it resolve the board of education except consensus agenda issue uh i i just want to of course take a note a moment to uh note that we accepted a kind donation um thanks to dede barrett for the library system okay all in favor all right um

112items for future agenda um does anyone on the board want to suggest an item for future consideration okay you know we have uh his parents and folks coming in okay here we go i just uh i didn't know if the board was interested in following up on uh some of this discussion that you know uh we're getting there from the parents and family members and if it should be scheduled or type of conversation maybe there's a way of you know some alternatives but i think we should have this talk uh we could do a quick round of speech okay i took an awful lot of notes um last session which i shared with the group here um i took a lot more notes tonight um one of the things that i tried was to really

113understand um the categories of concerns and i think that one discussion for all of those concerns is to my mind too too big and i would like to break those down because i think they they require individual consideration um certainly we could we could lump them all together um i don't have any other thoughts other than i'm still working on um trying to consolidate youtube and categorize circulation um i really appreciated the list that you put together and sent to us last time and i would and then i see you taking notes again and i think you're right that we we have to talk about this yeah you do winter sports are actually coming up and it probably has to be an executive session i you know i i'm not sure it all falls into

114the same bucket but some of this definitely yeah sometimes it certainly would be and i appreciated that and i hope you do another one yeah um chris [Music] uh i mean i i see this topic as something that's multi-faceted uh there's many different components to it um and there's a lot of things that need to be considered and to break it up and i think in the different categories some relating to things that might be more pressing in terms of time and others that become more global um i'm always happy to have a booking discussion i think it's necessary these are topics that we can never not discuss and never not think about because it's the reality of where we are and um these are things i think that are not going to go away

115whether we want to or not so i'm happy to always um learn more and discuss more and be sure that we um you know we're coming from a point of view of making sure that we're doing the best and right generally thing and doing the best for everyone involved you know as i said last time when i say it again i really think we need to have a forum somehow that all people can express can you hear me yeah we can um they can express you know because i know those people who feel this way and it's very glad to see you're here but i know that they're probably on the other side of the table just as many people who feel the other way and somehow i think we need to be able to

116have a spot that we can pull all this information together and then you know respectfully come to i would like more information you know on a lot of the topics that have been brought up i'd love to see some hard data i noticed how you said you would try and provide us some information coming out of it you know these decisions i i still would like to see it on both sides and that's i i haven't come up with the final strong but i want to hear everybody's opinion and be able to reflect it in all your searches can i just take it can i just make a comment on what you suggest i'm sorry they go to sleep if you don't talk yeah um so yeah i think when you're it sounds like when

117you're suggesting some sort of forum or open discussion with parents community members that's an interest everyone who was ever interested um i catch the school board i went to some open forum meetings that we had many years ago and that raised my interest to run for the school board and i think it's important that we hear all the voices out there my personal opinion on that is i don't see a problem with it i think we as a board we have to decide if that's something we wouldn't want to entertain right i think um craig was speaking specifically to the he's asking us as a board um whether we want to have that conversation here in this room um focused on some of the feedback um so i mean yeah we're it's my personal mission

118to open up all those avenues but but specifically um in terms of having that discussion here you know in this room um on the agenda does that sound like something you're in favor of yeah i do think so okay um i think any discussion with all viewpoints so we can get all the information you know and really don't understand where everyone is coming from on this right um i know i've been doing an awful lot of reading and i've imagined everybody here on the board has done a lot of reading and uh looking at news reports people cross country reading articles and all that there's a lot of information out there a lot of it's conflicting we're not medical people that's right we're not educated essentially so you know honestly i'm not comfortable making and

119no matter i just don't have enough information to really feel comfortable on any of this right now uh all i know is that we're our position is to educate we're trying to keep as many kids in school rather than you know learning remotely and uh and so how can we just do that um so yes any discussion you know with all points of view with all all sides of the information so we can come to a educated decision as to what we're doing can i just i'm sorry to introduce i'm confused are we talking about are we going around discussing we're in support we're saying that we can have consensus that we can meet and talk about this the fall of sports we as people we as lord okay i just want to be clear

120the winter sports deadline approach i wanted to understand what exactly we were talking about so i didn't think of having discussions before but i also think it would be worth it i don't know i don't know what the legality of it as the school board is but to possibly after that conversation maybe hey some type of a public hearing itself if that is what we can do as a board um so we can kind of hear both sides of the issue because i think at the heart of it it's like people just want to be listened to and heard and i want to make sure that we are doing that in the best way possible um i want to have the discussion as a board i'm in favor of that but i also think it

121would be worth exploring that option as well so so uh we can of course discuss other types of um feedback or other uh communications channels if we're we're gonna talk about this as a group i think some of some of the feedback over the last two meetings clearly falls within constraints that would require an executive session most of it does not but considering the pressing timetable i think we would probably have to carry some of that discussion into executive session and then we could make space on the agenda craig you and i could put our heads together and figure out how do we bite off um something that would be appropriate for public discussion yeah um so we'll do that this week but um in any case uh any other items for future agenda i

122i would only say if we are as a board entertaining a public forum but i think the board should be involved in that decision and i don't have an opinion on three of you have brought that up but i think um there would need to be a specific proposal right okay to put something on the agenda anything on the agenda someone has to propose it um okay so we are coming up on our second public comment um can you tell me how many of these are yeah and um i'm actually happy to have anyone speak again with the understanding that the second public comment is a slightly different format than the first one so the um the first public comment was um intended to get everyone um give them space to really um communicate everything

123we've got some other business we need to do tonight as well as any other night um this public comment is um intended to give people space to respond to what happened during the meeting so um it's um not to exceed 10 minutes total and one minute per speaker um and if anyone wants to sign up we still have a style signup sheet here but we do have one one hand and we'll start with um start there so before we begin speaking we just need to make this audio muted so please bear with me for a second you can begin can you hear me i think i see thumbs up okay so this was in regards to the substitute situation that you guys have going on um actually i was a substitute at chatham central school

124for quite some time and honestly i loved it every night i went home with a smile it was great i mean kids also came up to me with problems and whatnot but it was wonderful and the reason i stopped was because of the masks coved and the mandates that you guys are pushing i would love to come back i would love to send my kids back so i think that's kind of where a lot of parents and substitutes are coming from is they don't want this so if you would you know consider a different route you may actually get some more substitutes i was one of the good ones and i'm not there and it's sad and that's really all i have to say so i'm done [Music] teachers association and representing my members i

125just wanted to thank the board for approving our contract this evening i also wanted to thank sal and mike for their work to help us get to that agreement our members are appreciative of the agreement and feeling more valued we are also encouraged by our relationship and communication with the whole administrative team and both of you that really helped our members starting off the year in our rank but so thank you very much thank you hold to a particular person where there might be private information involved um that's an example there's some other examples in some cases we're not allowed to disclose things um because of laws that happens in executive session we try to have every other conversation in public okay um and i work really hard on that but um so that i

126took a meeting wouldn't be for like for the vaccine mandate for the sports um i i would like to have that type of discussion in public except where there may be a particular individual involved so like i said there's parts of the conversation generally need to happen in that venue there's other parts that as as proposed because i'd be happy to get um any research articles because i've been doing a ton of like natural immunity the myocarditis um you know those types of things i'd be happy to get information you know if you wanted some um you know because the market is it's increasing and it is an issue i mean it's been all along but now that um i think more people are getting vaccinated it's really gone up so and it's not just

127here i i know i read my thing there's other countries that are pulling it for that reason um but um and i just would like hopefully at some point for everyone to look at natural immunity because that that is huge so that's it and if i can get anybody anything as far as any of those topics i'd be happy to get some copies you know um one of the things we look for in terms of contribution to a meeting of course is public um comment um but we also have district staff our board um uh and sometimes we bring in outside experts um uh if we're going to bring in an outside expert i think while we're more happy to have information sent to us so we before we have email addresses um there's also

128the contact superintendent link um and celebrates those every day um i think for us to create a platform for someone disbursing information we need to make sure that [Music] um something we will have to consider and craig and i are gonna put our heads together on that um okay so yeah thank you thanks alrighty thank you holly tanner good evening everybody i'm holly terre so just briefly i want to thank the board members again for listening and for those of you that spoke out obviously you can tell that actions are very high and i would hope um i was going to recommend before several of you did recommend that this forum perhaps isn't the best for this particular issue and that some public comment with you know i think we'd like to hear some response

129back from the board about how or why you feel this way or you know sal on why this decision was made without parental input so if the board could all consider doing some sort of um town hall style meeting and maybe not in this room when she's so cramped but we could spread out in the auditorium um and that way maybe we could social distance and not have to dance um i think it might be productive for everybody it might make the parents feel more comfortable that the school board is actually listening i mentioned this the last time you know i'm an elected official as well i'm a public servant and that's one thing that i found that the public really responds to is that when you're engaged with them and you're listening to what

130they're saying um and that you're making eye contact and that you have a response back to have the discussion about what happens in this meeting and executive session when we all leave you know might be cool for you because you can then speak your mind without having any repercussions or worried that you know we're not going to like what you have to say but we want to hear what you have to say just like we need you to hear what we're saying so i would hope that you would please um matthew take the consideration that we maybe do some sort of um temple style meeting where public parents can speak their mind about their children's health and what they want as opposed to forced mandates so thank you very much so i just kind of

131wanted to go on to the middle school in med when mrs reno answered about the med and last year um i have a child in the med and i also have two in the middle school twins and last year my daughter got to go to school every day and there was a big difference in my daughter and my two boys who had to sit home every other day and do an hour of schooling and we're really taught remote learning and i want to say that you guys did an absolutely amazing job last year with our students in putting together everything that you put together so i don't want you to think that anything that i'm coming here is against because i appreciate everything that our teachers have done but right now i have a really

132hard time with what is happening and you guys are talking about an executive order these parents have to make a decision in a few days a decision that can affect their child's health so you're talking about putting this thing together but when is that going to happen because that decision has to be made and you're putting a decision and you're taking away these children's lives and i picked up my son from football today because we've had i've had three kids that were one of them quarantined because she got to socialize in lunch otherwise she sits three feet apart with a mask on and doesn't get socialized so she was quarantined my son almost got quarantined but then we pulled out the protocols and figured out the chart and realized he didn't have to quarantine and

133then my son almost said quarantine we've been in school for three weeks and three of my kids were almost quarantined how's this rest of the year gonna look i picked up my son from football today and i said oh how was football one of his buddies who's sitting at home and has now been quarantined for the fourth time is sitting in his bedroom because his parents are super scared about this virus because of the news and what they're saying just like somebody said over here about the misinformation we don't know what to believe there is so much misinformation out there that we don't know what's true and what's not so for you to put this are required not mandated which i believe is the same sort of thing into our children without really knowing what

134can happen to them in the future he this little boy is sitting in eighth grade he's not little sitting in his bedroom only has video games to play for the next 10 days in his chromebook which another month said his son did an hour of work today and was just handed one assignment that's due on october 14th but he sent my son two little emojis with a crying face and an anger and said this is an effing death wish how about that an eighth grade student and he didn't really say effing he actually said the word and i let my son repeat it to me because that's heartbreaking my father took his life four months before this pandemic happened so mental health is a huge problem and depression is a huge problem and it's really

135hard for me to speak about this but i am very passionate because depression is also a very genetic thing and what you're doing to these children is causing severe depression anxiety i can't even tell you the anxiety that i have dealing with this with my own children and my all of these children because they are a lot of them are like my own you have to think about what you are doing these kids need normalcy i read a little chart that said the last normal year my sons in eighth grade their last normal year was fifth grade my daughter's in fifth grade her last normal year was second grade this is not normal these children this is the best years of their lives and you're taking it away from them we need to do something

136and we need to be better okay um we have some sort of hand i can't see who it's attached to yeah that's it i should just put it down okay all right so that was cast that already spoke right okay can i change my mind yeah come on well we must record um so a few things i'd like to say thank you to everybody in the board members that have a very thankless underpaid position i do listen and not unders your eyes so i would really appreciate that i would like to also say thank you to the teachers in all of the schools hands-on with the students because they are really going above and beyond doing the best they can with the crap that's been proposed to them so they deserve a lot of recognition

137for that and that's from all the schools going forward at this point i'd also just like to take one point and say and they have destiny i believe it was you that said that you are not medical and that you can't have make those decisions but that's exactly what you've done and i don't know if the board voted on those or if it was a sell-induced proposition based on the department of health and those directors please don't give you evil looks yeah very pretty like i have broad shoulders and i am a public person and i'm allowed to stay with my feelings i'm i'm sorry i am your apology is not accepted at this moment but i would like to say thank you for the people that actually do listen but again you are not

138medical and the decisions that you are making will have long-term effects on the children these kids need to make a decision in two days three days i don't really know i don't play full winter sports so thankfully my kids are scared at this point but be an executive decision or you know public comment there needs to be a decision with a tangible tournament and i think that you guys need to take that into consideration we were ready for signups right okay thank you sharon uh okay so uh we do have a uh executive session on today's agenda um so we're going to go in into executive session to talk about negotiations as well as a matter that pertains to a particular individual so at this time motion uh be it resolve the board of education

139enter uh executive session uh motion motion second questions or comments all in favor all right so can we have a motion uh to appoint salvador diantelo as district clerk pro temp for the executive session second all in favor all right and uh we do not anticipate um returning to open session today um we won't be voting on anything um so that's the that's the end of the uh public acceptance tonight um so thank you everyone for attending