Twinsburg Board of Education Meeting - February 16, 2022

001is [Applause] um [Applause] [Music] regular meeting of the swensburg board of education uh to order on the date is february 16th uh time is 702. uh mr would you please call the roll mrs crawford here mr curtis here this is davis here mr gilbert here okay uh would you all stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for the singing wow mr curtis in honor of black history month i'd like to invite the black national anthem the words were provided on the back table so please sing along if you'd like to [Music] let our rejoicing [Music] sing a song full of the faith that [Music] is [Music] thank you so much nice pleasant surprise we don't have any um i will move on to my president's report good evening students and families of samuel

002bissell and army chandler schools i am mark curtis and i'm honored to serve as your board president as you will see we are all wearing our district team celebrating black history month the theme is honoring the past celebrating the present and inspiring the future we hope that all of your students have been engaged in all the various activities happening around tomorrow of understanding that although we celebrate black history month black history month is american history and should be taught and should be thought of as such as we continue our celebrations i will be mentioning uh not to mention the anticipated hiring of our new head coach mr charles salter if you've not read or seen the news he is the first african-american head coach in the history of the suburban league at quad news where

003he expressed optimism in other districts following suit some have asked why it's necessary to celebrate this achievement i submit to you that perhaps the wrong question is being asked why there aren't more head coaches of color representing the diverse populations serving our communities when mr salter was asked about this achievement his response was poignant but simple it says a lot about twinsberg to have a deep pool of candidates that included highly qualified minority candidates to consider it's important to understand that twinsburg city schools is committed to increasing the level of diversity amongst its reflective community that we serve we are intentional in this endeavor and as i mentioned in the previous board meeting we are actively working to better understand how we can embrace diversity equity and inclusion for all students and staff pollution in

004support of this goal and we hope to make better progress moving forward mr salter represents a step in that direction we are pleased to have him here this evening and we look forward to the future and that concludes my precipice report for this evening i will now turn the meeting over to our superintendent mrs powers thank you mr curtis good evening members of the board of education good meeting good evening all the community members that are here and by thanking mr welker and mr curtly for adjusting the sound uh this evening i appreciate that and i hope that those members of our community who are watching the meeting tonight live stream have a better quality of sound and work to make some corrections there the board of education this evening we're going to hear from

005some amazing students from san luis obi chamberlain middle school but before we get to recognitions and so and before i christine i just want to congratulate tyanna dotson she and mrs johnson have already left the meeting but what a talent and what a wonderful inspiration uh not only to those of us here tonight but often she seems like an angel i say and uh just so appreciative of the fact that she joined us this evening to share the black national anthem with our group so thank you to tyanna the twins varsity school district is pleased to open the 12-hour step up to quality rated preschool programs although applications are now closed for our integrated preschool program we are still accepting applications for our kindergarten preparatory program which is called kpp and is a please visit

006the twinsburg city school district website and then go to wilcox primary school's preschool website to complete the online application and additional information regarding the program applications are being accepted through march 15th which opportunities based on financial need are available to families who qualify for kpp additional questions may be directed to locots primary school's main office as i mentioned during our last board meeting each february month to honor african-american culture in the twinsburg city school district we are very proud to honor this rich heritage black history month should not be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective american history but a vital part of it tipsy month i'd like to ask our director of student wellness dr andre walker to please come to the podium i just briefly want to discuss what will

007be happening in our school districts during this month this year in celebration of black history month classrooms across the district are honoring the doors to the movements and contributions of african americans who have left a mark on the world and everybody if you are in any school building you need to look at these designs i mean the children and the staff have been so creative but teacher directed and we're supervised our students have had so much input and i just think it's amazing what has been done additionally twinsburg school district's alum keith harris who is the president of future gen comics and the book the boy with wayne's will be reading to select elementary classrooms mr harris is going to read to dodge and mr farrell will be videotaped reading his books and those that

008videotape will go out to our lower elementary schools we're noting the shirts that we have on today this was a district initiative for staff members to purchase the shirts especially at the high school for our students and we were all going to in an honor of unity wear this shirt on tomorrow and on disney [Applause] board of education at this time i am delighted to ask our athletic director coordinator of k-12 student activities to introduce our recommendation for our twinsburg high school varsity football coach mr charles salter thank you mrs powers to be here tonight to introduce our new head varsity football coach mr charles salter charles is a graduate of canton central catholic high school and the university of dayton where he played college football coach salter has a wide range of coaching between

009canton glen oak high school brush high school and revere high schools all as an assistant coach coach salter was also the wide receivers coach at case western reserve university during the 2018-2019 season coach salter then became the head of rc football the last three season two of which led the bearcats to the ohsa playoffs in 2021 coach salter was a nominee for the cleveland browns high school coach of the year coach salter is currently teaching world history throughout the interview process coach salter shared a clear vision for the program-wide success of twinsburg football starting with the youth program working up through rbc and ultimately here at twinsburg high school i have no doubt that coach salter will lead our football program ladies and gentlemen it is my pleasure and my honor to introduce the next

010varsity football coach at twinsburg high school coach charles salter wow what a what a pleasure and honor it is for me to be here tonight amongst all of you all and i just want to say thank you for everybody for everybody making this happen for us tonight um it's it's it's truly an honor for me to be here and be selected as an excellent football coach at twinsburg high school our purpose and i'm not going to speak long tonight but our purpose is to build a championship like culture both on and off the field for our student athlete first focusing on our grades because we are student athletes and then focusing on the football thank mr brian fanton our athletic director uh miss mrs kathy and powers our superintendent mr blind brian flynn our school

011principal here and i certainly like to thank our board of education uh with president mr mark curtis and for your voting on our football team lastly i certainly like to thank my family that's here with me tonight uh you guys see me while i'm in the light but after those tough losses they deal with me and i'm not the easiest one to deal with there i'm excited to meet the players i'm excited to meet our staff but just be a part of everything that's going on here so thank you again and go tigers [Applause] you guys have an exclusive look before our players even get to see him but i just want to thank you guys for just my vote of uh thank you so [Applause] mr curtis i just wanted to just say a

012few words about the interview process that brought coach salter for 40 this evening and we had well over six well coach position and over winter break we can't tell and then mr lane mr walker mrs mckinney and i sat through and sifted through the applications and we landed on eight or nine candidates to bring in for interviews the first set of interviews were conducted by parents of our current play with our completes here our community and they helped us to shorten the candidate pool to top three and then we had the next round of interviews and those included some of our current football players which we would have missed if they hadn't been here and then we also had alumni football players and we want to thank them all for taking time out of their

013busy schedules to come and help us discern all of the interview process and then make some coach salter is that he believes in students as students first and athletes second his track record will indicate that he really cares about the students he builds great relationships and all of the reference checks that we made that came up i myself received a wonderful reference not solicited from a former board member who works with charles as the voice of the bedford bear reached out to me and just say you know it's not just what happens on friday nights but it's every practice and the care commitment that coach salter has to the students as students first football players second so we're just so excited join us here as a member of our tiger coaching staff and we look

014forward to hearing lots and lots of great things moving forward so later on the agenda will be the formal recommendation for coach charles salter to serve as our name varsity we wanted to make sure the community understood the road to we were the road to getting here tonight and the fact that coach salter roasted the top for those characteristics that i just explained so thank you very much on board of education this evening our staff along with elementary school will provide the board with an update regarding our strategic plan in the six goal areas of 21st century teaching and learning communications culture and climate facilities finance and safety i think you'll be pleased with all that has been done to plan also later in the agenda i will discuss with you the results of our

015parent and staff surveys regarding our profit 19 protocols so now let's turn our attention to recognizing some wonderful students and i'd like to invite mrs misty johnson the principal at sandra bissell elementary school for our abyssal tigers [Applause] good evening parents thank you all for coming out today on stage and you're actually going to get up on stage because tonight is your night to shine so second graders and third graders when your name is called what you're going to do is you're going to walk down come see me to get your certificate and then your parents can take your pictures we can clap for you and the board will recognize you all right here we go so the students of the month program at samuel bissell elementary school recognizes outstanding students the focus of this

016recognition is on citizenship academics social volunteer or other accomplishments that set the students apart from their peers at this time i would like to recognize the following secondary students leila jackson harris from come on over jackson and adika kurt from miss consula's class benny contra from this place [Applause] from this kind of [Applause] so your parents can get a nice smile and look and parents feel free if you need to come closer take a nice picture congratulations and now for our third graders andrew buchen from mrs robetter's class class [Applause] madison greene from miss benzie's class mackenzie hardrate from mrs flappa's class declan leckler from mrs dorliss class priyanka sharma from mrs lakov's class introducing our third grade students of the month congratulations again to our third graders i'm going to call mrs cogan to

017the stage and as she walks up i read a little bit about it i would like to nominate throughout these past few weeks she has taken the initiative to act as a substitute teacher and create the lesson plans needed to keep the students fully engaged and hold them accountable for their learning mrs cogan has done all of this on top of her she does not miss a beat and she works non-stop all day long she has done this with such a positive attitude and is truly dedicated to the academic success of each student in this tokens mrs hogan thank you for all that you do for the bissell family and please know how much you are appreciated that was written by this detail so thank you mrs golden for your heart and our next two

018staff members if they would come to the stage that would be mrs cripley and mrs edward mrs privily and mrs edston are with my class every day for lunch and recess they go above and beyond to keep my students safe but also have the opportunities they come in each day with a smile on their faces even with every curveball i throw at them for example mrs cripley was shuttling the sidewalk to make sure the students had a safe path to walk outside and mrs exton was playing simon says with the class during an indoor recess period i am so lucky to have two wonderful people to spend time with my students each day thank you to mrs cripley and to mrs epstein here i am so grateful for you [Applause] they come in every day

019positive attitudes they come in and they work with our students and our staff they get the job done and it takes all of us to make this happen so thank you so much ladies congratulations [Applause] thank you mrs johnson and good evening members of the board and community it's my honor to be here to present the rbc students of the month as voted on by their teachers and these are students that represent the best in character citizenship and missile students will go up and line up across the stage after stopping by and getting a certificate from me so we'll start with our seventh graders first we have nathan nathan's teachers say nathan brings a positive attitude every day he is always polite cooperative and compassionate to classmate dylan amrit is always smiling laughing and overall

020optimistic with any task she's given daily for class and assertive throughout she's always wanting to share and participate which helps create the needed classroom environment gianna hayes bay gianna is a joy to have in class she's an outstanding role model she participates in class discussions and is kind and compassionate towards her teachers and peers dylan pantone [Applause] dylan is an ex adaptable to each learning situation and uses feedback to produce his best work and you can say there will bring up our 8th graders with you next we have 8th grader meredith meredith is an exemplary student who always greets her academics with enthusiasm she's courteous kind and always has a positive attitude christian is a hard worker and comes prepared to class on a daily basis he is a joy to have in class include

021christina hemingway christina is an outstanding student to have a class of kindness and amazing work ethic make her stand out as [Applause] jack is an exceptional student of the classroom who is always going above and beyond to help others he demonstrates a high level of work and always makes sure to keep up with daily tasks ladies and gentlemen our students of the month for the month of january parents you want to take some pictures all right thank you and i will turn the podium back over to mrs powers thank you mr reese to all of our students of the month and our three staff members a month from samuel bissell elementary school it's always great to celebrate great things happening here in our school district listen our school district mr curtis that concludes my report

022for this evening thank you thank you mrs powers okay before our parents who are here with their students who would not like to sit through the business portion of the meeting now do time for you to depart if you wish if not you're going to move forward with the committee reports do we have any reports not mr there's not as much for report but just an announcement from cbcc that there's a job fair on march 3rd from 3 to 5 30 pm you can go to cvc the information and if there's any employers out there i believe they still can register and if your student is looking for a job as well thank you calvary he said one thank you mr curtis board of education as you know um at the end of each quarter

023we present to you our update with regard to the work that's going on with our strategic document in a binder but in our school district it's actually a living breathing evolving part of who we are part of our culture and our fabric and so this evening we have students and staff members who are here to present the communications facilities finance and safety and each of those committees are led by extremely talented administrators and committees behind them in our schools as aligned with each of those six school areas so to begin i'd like to ask mrs missy johnson to come back to the podium she and mr reese are the co-facilitators of our safety team and they would like to present an update to you and this one involves some of our wonderfully talented students so

024mrs johnson and mr reece thank you mrs powers i'm super excited because um when students have the opportunity to speak about what they do and this time we're going to have some of our change agents come down we have four students representing us today come on down change agents and just so you know change agents at business we have 26 students embarkable advisory group and um basically they're here to talk a little bit about what it means to them to be a leader what it what it means to be safe in school some of the things that we do um in our building and it comes about from from to give us direction and they help to tell us what's on their mind to help us make good decisions so we're going to start actually

025we're going to start with the question and i'll probably have to take this off let's see i think it'd be here to do it like this this might be too tall for some of you right okay so we're going to start with xavier and xavier is going to explain to you from his point of view what it is a positive attitude a leader is also always willing to help someone a leader is patient and encouraging to others good leaders always set the right example and that is one of our third graders representing change agents our second question that we're going to share with you today is what is safety why is safety important for school and this is going to be sky helping us out with this because when they are sick or hurt they

026miss out on their entire education safety also means not being afraid to come to school because of bullying or teasing when i saw someone being bullied i told the teacher and she took care of it amazing place for learning i will always do my parts and make sure everyone feels safe and that's from scott great job our next question to share with you today is going to be why is it important to hear from students share their ideas to make the school a better place and it won't just make a change here but a change everywhere but maybe this could the world so so even with that [Music] it just changed the world but it will even change from you from bad to good into you as a person that could change you to a

027nice friend absolutely thank you bruce for that and then our last question is do you have to change samuel bissell elementary school all right and family's going to share that with us i think it is important to be kind to the school because we can bring people together absolutely and so these ideas that we get from our young people help to shape the culture and the climate of our building i am so thankful for them and for their ideas and they come with positive input they let us know what we need to do and that's what it's all about so these are change agents from bissell i'm speaking to you this evening [Applause] i met with my principal advisory group in december and we did some leadership activities and leadership last time make them interactive

028fun play games and then afterwards we had a discussion about school safety which they didn't really have anything with reports they said well i guess you'll go back to class and then one of the students said wait there is something i want to talk about something i want to talk about and i said go go ahead we want the we want the mini cities back and i said what is that so apparently they are uh the cinnamon rolls that the catholic criteria serves for breakfast and i presented this to mrs powers is that being very important she felt that it needed to be shared with the board to make sure that our students knew that their voice was being heard so i did get back to students and there's actually supply chain issues like there

029is with a lot of things and product inventory is down and they said they were so uh our nutritionist mark vindis gives me now weekly updates to pass along to them on the ordinary status he is first in line when city minis become available so just to let you know what is on our students mind that might not be what we think is on our student's mind and uh so we actually had some of my principal advisory group present to uh the center office staff on my city minis will really share a little little humor with the uh tonight's presentation thank you [Applause] i don't really know that like dr ebert always said all of those cute little packs kids thank you for having us here this evening tonight we would like to highlight two

030of the ways we are meeting the 21st century teaching and learning goals it is our goal to provide students with a well-rounded content or best ways for demonstrating knowledge acquisition ms villa is going to share about early literacy mrs walters is going to share about voice and choice at rbc and then mr papa will share abundance course at pittsburgh high school hi good evening um research has shown that strong reading comprehension requires both the letter sound relationships which we would have to say called decoding um with a rich understanding of language and vocabulary on the screen up there we have the simple view of reading equation it shows the equal importance of both of those components in the early grades the development of phonological awareness the ability to understand the spoken word and how words

031are made up of sounds called phonemes is one of the best point grade have been engaging students in hegarty phonemic awareness instruction each day these are short multi-sensory oral lessons that help students develop the undersounds and the components of words in a systematic sequential and explicit manner children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes they can clap out the number of syllables in word they recognize words with the same initial sound institute one sound for another to create a different word when you go to the next slide we have a short video here to give you an example of what a lesson like this might look like in kindergarten in this video you've got one minute of the lesson where mr cola is working on long vowel sounds with her

032kindergarten students these lessons support auditory visual and kinesthetic learning and i did want to point out that mr cola took her mask off just for this particular video so that it would be better um you tell me what we're going to say ready yay [Music] not for me [Music] these types of lessons are done a whole group for tier one and then in a smaller word um so that a smaller this small group was actually pulled together just for the video but the entire class about 10 or 15 minutes per day and then reading teachers follow up with more targeted lessons and small groups like you just saw i'm going to turn over to kristen walters good evening board of education members and twinsburg families i'm very pleased to be here with you this evening

033to talk to you about some exciting initiatives we have toward our middle school students and reading we know at rbc all of our students are readers but our ultimate goal is that our students see themselves yours and how do we do that with our seventh and eighth graders so i broken this out this evening into three main points number one we start by building engagement with our students we have a very strong partner the first way we build engagement with our students is through personal connection they're vital in the middle school and at all levels so rather than asking our students like to like to read and while we have many avid readers we also have many students who don't see themselves as readers so what would you like to read ultimately can lead to

034the answer nothing so we're flipping that script a little bit who are you what are your interests when you're not at school that can be things from extracurricular activities to spending time with their friends music they like to listen to the podcast and once we've made that personal connection we really have a jumping off point to start matching our students with high interest materials another way we build engagement is through classroom activities once mrs copen and mr peterson started in august with a reading initiative where their students would independently read from mr peter's books by the end of the year across a wide variety of genres and in mrs copen's class 30 books one of the ways that we keep our students engaged as they move throughout this process would be our book bistro created

035a google slide with a review of their book and then we got the two classes together for lightning rounds where they shared their reviews with one another based on those reviews by their peers this was a celebration of their creativity it showed collaboration and it gave them a chance to feel a sense of accomplishment another thing we do is we also have all of our students complete an interest survey so we always have that to fall back on we fall into a law we can look go back to these interests and pull them out and once again make that personal connection with our students as we find high interest reading materials for them so our students are using their voices and they're telling us what they would like to read so the next question those

036materials in our students hands and i'm really pleased to say the answer to that is yes first and foremost through media center visits our students are more excited than ever to be back in our library getting their hands on print books but as we look towards 21st century learning and the importance of that we are also very pleased to say in february of 2021 we launched our soraa digital library access now this is a very small snapshot of the sora platform and as you can see it is a very visually appealing interface for our students they have accesses of digital ebooks and audio books audio books are important because we have visual learners and auditory learners and our students we encourage them try an audiobook into my book when i'm on the bus or i

037listen when i'm doing my art so we are having them explore not only our print materials they can read ebooks they listen so the soraa app is very user friendly they can download the app on any on their phone on a tablet and they can take it with them anywhere logging in always as we look at 21st century learning we also have the responsibility of e-safety so sora for our 7-12 students does have age-appropriate filters they have access to the nile collection and the young adult collection we have access to two digital databases in sora one being one that is supported through neonet but then here's something that i think is really amazing for our school login credentials to cross over to the twinsburg public library and access their young adult collection without needing a

038library card about e-safety those filters that we have put in place here at school follow them over to the public library's digital content every student is trained in sora they spend 40 foreign they get a refresher as eighth graders and they can always stop down and get support in the media center so our students have access to high interest materials both in print and digi so that takes us to number three and that is keeping our momentum how do we keep our students reading throughout the year number one they have dedicated time daily in their language arts class for reading their materials and for how's it going what's working what's not we can work one-on-one and find materials for our students high-interest materials can be found in sauron the librarians in overdrive who curate that

039collection are updating it weekly and then we have the good fortune of being able to provide high interest print materials for our students we want to make sure when our students walk into that's very important so we are very fortunate to be able to continue to add high interest materials to the libraries okay and the final i would like to share with you this evening is a little bit of data our rbc students are reading this data we ran these reports on january 31st and as you can see rbc ranks number seven so we're very proud of that that is a partner to our print material and our students are using it our media center has checked out right which is a little over 100 books per week that's important data to us because library

040is not a scheduled time they don't get that library class so they're coming to the media center for materials on a very regular basis but thank you libraries are so important to our communities and to our students and thank you to our language arts department for their daily encouragement and support of our our building administration principal reece for always encouraging our efforts and to our central office administration who has taken the time to look over sora and all of these initiatives support through funding and we are so very fortunate to have budgets that allow us to offer our students these very high interest materials um one thing to add about sora it's 365 days a year 24 hours a day seven days a week for one dollar per student so thank you very much [Applause]

041[Music] evening everyone um i'm here this evening to speak about a course that um spent the uh good part of the past four or five months designing and what what this stemmed out of was our work with the academy that mr potter had set foundations with and then our business advisory council which is a subcommittee of the board of education and certain partners offered that from all the connections that mr potter had established with those in the community and surrounding organizations for our students to access through the academy to now put this into something that is a physical tangible course that will take place starting next school year being offered to the class of 2023 and then hopefully beyond uh with connections and that's what we're we're trying to establish so we're going to keep

042that as the course title and so pun is heavily intended every time i say that and so by doing so um our development of this course is to expose students to workforce development their expectations and provide them opportunities but also what i think has been kind of other aspects of the past when we've had things like senior seminar where we had volunteer opportunities for students to get out that maybe didn't quite develop with the actual organizations in the community or even when we try to do our senior experience which is a shorter impact shadow excuse me shadowing experience that would happen at the end of each school year connections course is supposed to be more long-term it's for the entire year and it's also giving the partners a lot more say um into trying to

043work to develop with next year's workforce um i will say that it's evolving each day when i speak to a different partner whether it be in the manufacturing field whether it be in the health care industry or even in the stem fields that you know they have more opportunities to be you know mold and shape with high school seniors than maybe some of the some of the more recent graduates or people that have left the community and aren't quite as established so they're trying to get quite as established so they're trying to get into the schools as best they can but be there so it can be a win-win for all if it's done correctly where this course kind of came out of in in my head when we were kind of conceptualizing it i

044took a look at last year the graduating class of 2021. um 67 percent couple that more with eight percent that went on to take a two-year you know associate's degree opportunity and then one percent enrolled or excuse me enlisted in the form of a branch of the military about almost 25 which is out of 320 students about 80 students that entered the workforce directly right after high school and what what they went into we are not exactly able to track that but there could probably be a lot of them that may have not even known what their next step was keep stressing that it's any student because i've already had discussions with seniors or excuse me juniors there will be seniors next year that know what they want to get into i've had discussions with

045juniors that are going to be seniors next year that don't know what they want to get and so i've encouraged them to sign up for this class if they're in a situation where they're going to have a lot of flexibility in their schedule i used to be an assistant principal at the high school the last nine years i can't tell you the amount of conversations i had with a senior that was saying you know i'm here i i need my four social studies after that i'm taking a couple electives just to fill out my schedule so i can you know keep full-time status and stay eligible for extracurriculars and so when we developed this course and the idea though to take up two full credits in their schedule you know essentially what we're hoping to

046create for them is with that blue white rotating schedule where they are on campus for potentially three days a week but then off campus for two days a week to lock some of the hours that are going to be accessible for them a minimum of 160 hours of on-site experiential learning during their senior year and we're carving out opportunities for students right now for even students that are of you know our highest academic potential but also for students maybe not really sure of their next steps we have plenty of opportunities being presented to us that our students even in our tap program or our students that are of multiple disabilities that can take advantage of and i think that that's probably the unique opportunity for this class we are going to high level what we're

047trying to place them into however there are some students that just honestly need connections and exposure and so if they can take place in a variety of different rotations and different partnerships and different experiences throughout the school year that's an opportunity for them to learn what they might want to do and what they might not want to do and i'd rather them learn what they might not want to do during their senior year during an opportunity that might be a five-week shadowing experience as opposed to them going off to college or trying to enter in the workforce and to feel that they would experience so in the beginning of the school year the students will report from august to september the first five or six weeks during that scheduled time under class for what we're

048going to be calling our soft skill development phase of the partners and with their calendar for the school year for their shadowing experiences again this can operate in two different ways there could be those students that enter this course with no sort of direction but they just want the exposure and they're interested in seeing different fields we will place them in a variety of experiences with me trying to line up something on their own and then as long as i'm engaged with the partner and we are we are ironing out all the details ahead of time we can work out that because the schedule will allow for any student to really spend more than 160 hours with the given i've even had some places approached me about employing our students and i'm not trying to

049guarantee anybody that right off the bat but intentionally we're talking with some already about some summer internships that might get in some skills training that we could then place them next year during the school year again we can engage with our students they can come out to the classroom or if they want to they can do some virtual meetings they kind of get that little bit of a preview with our students that you know in august and september and then from october to april they're only coming on campus for that class uh once every two weeks and then if they have their obviously their required classes whether it be the ones that are on campus or some are taking ccp classes they can take those on the off days and spend the other two days

050a week minimally being able to if they're in band or orchestra they could still be in that fourth block every day or in choir second block every day and work around that okay so the idea was to create the flexibility in their schedule that would allow them to still log the hours i'm not even going to say no if they work it out with the partner that saturday's work but a lot of that's going to be dependent upon the student and the partner that they're working with this also allows students that if they do have jobs in the evening they can log all their hours during the daytime you know during the week and i think that's kind of an advantage to some that would say in the past i already have a job a

051potential for you to take it to the next level and then may while they will be working on their capstone project and portfolio throughout the school year that'll be a time when they kind of present they'll kind of wrap up everything and we'll have a nice you know invitation to the family members and partners come out and hear that for more information about that stays on our website and i'm trying to talk to partners daily but where we are with the next steps right now we've forecasted numbers this week students are signing up for the course i've already heard initial numbers we're over 20 already signed up for recruit in i'd love to start with about 30 to 40 next year that'd be a nice start to kind of work out the kinks um and

052get this thing rolling but once i have those names i will be surveying them um we'll be finding out what their true interests are and we'll be working for march to line up all these partnerships uh with the people that are excited for it so i'm excited to see how this develops and i thank you for your time i'll hand the presentation over to dr walker [Music] i'd like to introduce a few people regarding surrounding the culture and climate committee this committee looks at the emotional and social well-being of our students and how that impacts academics this committee looks at what's offered in our schools and how this affects how our students think feel and act so we can better equip them to handle stress relate to others and make good choices this evening we

053will highlight two areas under the umbrella of the areas under the umbrella of culture and climate restorative practice had a train the trainer session with dr stephanie martinez from the university of south florida she trained members of our staff from every building including our transportation department and these relate in these restorative practices simply put restorative practices is all about relationships and for the parents in the audience there's a 30 minute video that is available on the student wellness website should you desire more information at this time i would like to introduce the staff from bissell to explain more about restorative practices well i won't introduce but i would also like to recognize jake marl and cheryl london they're both school counselors from dodge and they're going to discuss more about the wellness center at dodge

054vessel staff hello everyone so mr hoffman and i am going to start with uh just kind of what we've been doing in our training for restorative practices so as you kind of heard the theme trying to move into a place where the kids have a real voice in the culture of the school of their social emotional learning um their safety so we want them to feel as comfortable as they can being the voiceline at all so all two times that we've gone to the training is learning kind of how we do that so i'll leave it up to these guys to show some slides of some of the things we've learned but again i think the key theme for this and for this evening is that we're really trying to move in that direction so

055just so you know we train our we begin training with our staff and part of this as you i've heard it's not a new initiative it's actually building within initiatives that we already have so our positive behavior interventions and supports is what we're doing district ys and so this restorative practices fits right into that it's all about building positive positive and continuing to build that culture and so you won't hear some new things there'll be some um added information but it really fits into what we we do on a regular basis so when you talk to your level of support you talk about adding restorative practices in that rebuilding those relationships having conferences on how to figure out um best solutions those things that we continue to do as as just as everyday practice and

056so you'll hear a little bit more a particular staff and you'll get a little bit more specifics from some of our teachers so restarting practices is a proactive bis the goal is to prevent behaviors from occurring in the first place and to build meaningful relationships with the students so we are focusing on two areas at bissell this year effective statements and circles effective statements are those i statements so yeah and then for circles um that is actually getting the students in a physical circle and focusing on four areas where we have a greeting a feelings check in some connectivity and the closing and again all of this is to build relationships in a classroom community okay so effective statements are personal expressions of feeling in response to specific statements are the building blocks for teaching

057empathy to students i statements show students how a behavior made them feel and it changes the dynamic between the individuals a few examples of events are i feel frustrated when you don't address my questions during training i feel angry when you disrupt the class because it makes it harder for other students to learn and i feel happy when you complete your homework because it shows me how well [Music] okay um so one of the big parts of our start in purple's um circles kind of fit in with how we started doing morning meetings last year as a district um the big four parts are the reading and it kind of goes with the focus moment or movement and then a feeling shut in some kind of activity and then a closing so we came up

058with some examples you know they wanted to try one this is exactly you know one that they could do i'm just hanging on blueprint for them so the greeting you can do any there are so many different ways that you could um one of the ways that i've done with my kids name on a piece of paper and then we passed it out to everyone in class and then they had to grieve that child that was on their card during the training the trainer had told us about how it's been shown that some kids will go an entire school day without anyone saying their name someone you know saying their name and acknowledging you know their presence but you know those kids who don't participate a lot you know but who do what they're supposed

059to be doing who follow the rules you know they could slip through the crafts so that's just kind of something that we've really taken away from this is that they need to hear even if it's february even if it's may we still need to say good morning or good afternoon you know to each child um and then the focus moment or movement this can be something as simple as just like a stretching we've done the noodle videos so there's lots of like yoga videos that you can do to work still a feeling to check in is just what it sounds like just trying to understand i know how they're doing at that point in their day so there are lots of different ways you can do this too doing a simple thumbs up thumbs down

060the ways that we've done is using an emoji emoji feelings poster so you know it's something just that's fun and that kids like um so then they just kind of pick the one or two that you know relates to how they're feeling for the day and this helps teachers you know just kind of understand you know something's wrong and then they can start that conversation they'll need to explain during the circle on why they're feeling that way students can also choose to pass so if they you know are interned to talk that day that's okay they still have to be part of the circle um because they're still part of the classroom community um but you know they don't have to if that's just you know not what they're in the mood for that day

061the activity this can be a time to teach something to the class this can be a time to review something um so when i did one after we came back from our five long weeks of winter break and then we had after that um we reviewed our clash of rolls it's just a big thing you know it's been five weeks that's half of the summer um and then the next day we review just kind of like daily expectations of what we do in our classroom um this activity that i have on the uh is a step and step out so it's just kind of something that's fun that helps them find relationships and connections between others that are in our class so one person steps in the circle and they say you know i think

062pizza is delicious and anyone who agrees they also step forward so at the beginning of this the year that's what they do so then that way they can build friendships more quickly um and then the closing is just something to wrap it up uh so you know i know that miss kang does a quote at the end of hers i do just like a funny sound like highlight noise buttons so we do a funny sound and then we do some kind of quick like fashion dance to just kind of signal that we're done with our circle um but again the nice thing is that circles can just kind of take the place of morning meetings um or wherever you have time for it in your day and you can do them as often so restorative

063practices is basically making relationship building intentional so you focus on that and we really enjoy it it's a positive thing and the training we look forward to continuing to train our staff at this time i'll turn it over to dodge guidance counselors good evening everybody um my name is jacob maro thank you all for the opportunity to share our excitement over the creation of our dodge wellness center as part of our efforts to become a trauma-informed school and address the impact of covid19 on our students we wanted to create a designated safe area where students can go to learn coping skills and also self-regulation skills it is our hope that students that use the wellness center will learn to create healthy habits reduce stress and anxiety and improve their self-regulation strategies investable it possibly can

064be we collected valuable feedback from our staff as well as our students we were also fortunate enough to discover an established wellness center that is showing effectiveness and meeting the needs of the students all actually and um we actually had a google meet with one of the founding leaders of the wellness center in oregon and getting very valuable insight on how to properly run a wellness center and what to do and what not to do we haven't dodged we also created a virtual wellness center dodge as you know is located on two campuses and we wanted to make sure that we did not just support the students that are in our building but we also reached out to our sixth grade students who are at the rba school it is really important to us that

065we support all of our students we want our students to have access to all of the learning opportunities and skills that they will develop in the wellness center at all times the virtual wellness center will be available to our families and community members as a resource for their teachers will also be able to utilize these resources in the classroom with all of their students not just a select few the virtual wellness center will provide valuable resources like breathing and movement exercises guiding meditation visual relaxation and inherent resources we are very excited about the impact that this is going to have on both our staff and students we thank you for your support and now i believe ms mckinney the evening board of education and community i would like to present our communication plan as part

066of our strategic planning our strategic plan we have three goals go one and implement district comprehensive communications plan goal two develop a district crisis communication university school district would enhance the district's brand for goal one which is implement the district comprehensive communications plan we have um included their social media platform so we now have twitter we're utilizing twitter facebook and instagram our twitter account or followers i should say have grown from 232 followers in december of 2021 to 337 current december of 2021 to 770 currently our instagram followers has grown from 284 followers in december of 2021 to 346 followers so we've definitely expanded our social media presence for goal two is to develop our district crisis communication plan january 19 2022 four new staff members participated in the district crisis communications been updated to

067reflect current staff members with responsibilities defined in the plan for goal three in terms of the twinsburg city school district in the district's basement brand one aspect of this and there are some but one aspect that we're focusing on is the um the signage throughout the district and so we met on february 11 21 neon fine company and we wanted to review the proposal for signs and what we're going to do with the signage in the district is there are certain signs that are going to be consistent throughout the district this will have directional signs that are blue and those blue for the entrance and red for the exit all sides and buildings will have new welcome center signs because it's sometimes very difficult for people to locate certainly for ramsey and also all buildings

068will have new signs over their delivery entrances so that when deliveries are being made those persons go to the proper place as well and then we will be replacing all the faded traffic signs so forth throughout the district additionally specific sign will be on certain buildings for example georgie dodge intermediate school will have the cafeteria sign on the back door by the greenhouse to let people know that's what the front of the building needs to be updated and changed and so that'll be done as part of this initiative as well twinsburg high school we have a lot of meetings in the lgi always walking around trying to find it so we're going to put a large group instruction or lgi sign on the front of the building right outside of the door to the uh

069the exit door to the lgi and last night at least thinking what what is being planned the transportation bus garage bay it's in the back of our retained green middle school but it really not identified as such hopefully the buses out front may do that yeah it doesn't we want to put proper signage there as well so again this is not a comprehensive list but this is the start of the um initiative to as part of enhancing our district's brand okay so that's the communications committee all right so on to the facilities i thought about having a theme song and cut and play and we built the city by starship but uh we couldn't get enough sound equipment up here so uh we'll have to schedule that at a later game but uh we're we've

070made some good progress here on facilities and our two goals this master plan to ensure proper strategic annual expenditures and then making sure that we have a facility's master plan guiding our tiger legacy project in regards to the first goal uh we updated our 2019 facilities assessment with our 22 pricing we used lesco associates for those updates and they presented data to us based off of the ohio's findings were presented to our buildings and grounds committee in november our facilities action team in january and then our board of education at the work session in february our second uh strategy uh on that same slide uh is to is to update our 2019 facilities assessment with lesko we are definitely making progress in regards to that we received our traffic study from murphy epson here at

071the end of january of 22 which looked at our arrival into special procedures in all five buildings we are still installing a number of the controls for our energy conservation project and with that we're getting very valuable data before the energy conservation project in regards to some of the artificial intelligence or applied intelligence that the control system is applying for us that project here at an upcoming board game the second goal is to update our facilities master plan and updates for the tiger legacy project so we've started re-launching our legacy project of feedback here in january of 2022 starting with our facilities action team when we were talking with them they thought that we needed to change the name from a conceptual legacy project so they thought that we should rename that so we solicited

072feedback on that and we've now called it the tiger legacy project building our future now we've presented to the location of course at our work session and have met with uh all five buildings the staff of all five buildings our transportation department our buildings and grounds department twinsburg athletic boosters mitzberg youth recreation programs the rotary of other groups we have some scheduled meetings with the twinsburg public library with the city of reminderville st twinsburg twinsburg township senior citizens twinsburg schools foundation the business advisory council pts booster clubs and hope to schedule many more grassroots efforts here with the community to provide further information and gain feedback because we really want this tighter legacy project to meet the needs of the community byproducts of our facility's strategic plan is building a roadmap of where we've been

073here over since the 2015-16 school year so this roadmap shows in 2016 i created the facilities assessment with lesco associates and karkhenski engineering updated that in 2018-19 school year and then have gathered additional feedback through the found research study here in february and we've relaunched the project here in january so just to give an indication of where we've been and where we're trying to go moving forward here is the finance [Music] you know passing levy we had that renewal levy we passed in november of 2020. um again we have another little levy coming up the near future that's on the horizon um which you always touches on you know monitoring the renewal living cycle um research strategies for financing the tiger legacy projects and provide guidance to the board of education several of that we

074have a finance committee meeting coming back soon we can build into that a little further we've discussed some of the the aspects of financing um at some prior meetings but then we can look for the upcoming finances with the ada monetary expenses related to clovis 19. we keep a high on those the fds for funds those are the federal dollars that have come in um so those you know this that the second round was nice and then the third products were basically kind of uh in the process of accessing um you know inject the utilizer so we're still working on that goal two is getting operating physically responsible manner utilizing the benchmarks of the strategic plan inflictor just updated the flowchart didn't decide presentations we'll present to the board at the finance committee meeting so

075we have the financial points already updated um and ready to go um enhanced finance communication um working with the the district website putting more information out there especially as we move forward with some of the yes or funds for those dollars of the track all that like a five-year forecast some of those other bits of information and keeping that on the website board of education as you can see since our last update in december a lot has gone on here and district considering the fact that we had a winter break in there as well i'm really proud of the work of all of our staff members and our opportunities that we have here thanks to your support and just wonder if you have any questions for any of our committees this evening yeah i don't

076i don't have any questions per se i'd just like to recognize all of the work that they've put into um to basically continue breathing life into this plan um this is you know over two years probably three years uh in the work of the committees kind of putting together the framework and then i'm implementing it to where now the board has been receiving quarterly updates uh as to the progress of each of each area um it's a lot of work uh it is fluid uh it changes as as the environment child but the extent to which now we're engaged in the community you know with the legacy project um you know where we had to pause on that and now we're back doing that while at the same time kind of keeping everything else moving

077i think it's very encouraging the work and wellness especially around restoring practices i'm very familiar with this work we're doing it actually in the district in which uh i work and it's um it's hard work but i think it's very rewarding uh when you're being proactive instead of reactive and especially if you're integrating it with the ppis framework that we've had in place for quite some time now i think i think the work that's been done around that you know years ago we would talk about silos we would talk about there being a curriculum silo and a special education silo a gifted silo and what we've learned over time is we needed to break down those silos i want to commend our directors for their work mrs farving and mrs honeycutt dr walker worked so

078well together um pushing the initiatives forward for curriculum for students with disabilities for students with five of course for our gifted population eel population learning and understanding that before kids can do well academically we have to take care of them as people first and so the three directors have really bonded together and much of what you've seen is is the product of their work their collaborative efforts and the fact that they continue to keep our students as their primary focus so very proud of what you've seen here tonight it really just touches the tip of the iceberg um but it is uh really those silos the directors are working together and then they're after that the principals have that same philosophy working with members of their staff and so on as we go so we

079just wanted to uh give a special shout out to the directors of stephen and mr dab and all of his work i also like to um you know say thanks and i agree with everything that mark said and i really like hearing about the change agents at thistle and the rvc principal advisory i think is really important it was really nice to have that touch of the presentation i also um i'm really excited about the wellness center and having that outlet for the students i think is very important i wanted to also you know commend all the volunteers that continue to help on the strategic plan action committees it's been a number of years i think we've made great strides on the communication side maybe they can help on the wellness center because i was

080not aware that there's a virtual component and so we can we're all keying in on wellness but all the teams did a great job just lots of new things here and i echo some of the things that they are also i'm pretty excited about the connections course because um having two kids who've gone through the high school one who's there now um you don't want to wait until your last you know quarter of your senior year to start asking questions some of those having maybe 30 to 40 students and for even for those students who maybe really aren't they think this isn't their thing um you know give it a shot but besides that too i really encourage the students to just keep in communication with their guidance counselors throughout high school you know and

081ask those questions and and um you know just seek some guidance from them and because that senior year is a lot of pressure and the gut you're going to be but gives you some guidance on how to get to where you might want to go so i i'm just really excited about this course and here we're seeing more of this in progress and the issue with our library um having the privilege of working in and with several schools in northeast ohio many of our districts have used the library as a cut and they become basically an empty room with some computers by keeping librarians in the buildings keeping books online in hand this is a commitment that as a community we really need to be proud of what the district's doing in that facility because

082it's not happening everywhere and to have books in hands is just so important um and and i just i just commend the district the initiative through the curriculum committee through the department heads to keep those departments open and staffed i just think that's awesome thank you so very much for your support of our strategic plan effort and we look forward to coming back at the end of the next quarter to provide another update and i'm quite sure there'll be more exciting things to report and as aligned to the district strategic plan so thank you for your attention this evening discussion [Music] mr curtis on board as as promised we're back again at this meeting to provide an update to you regarding the reopening of the parent and staff surveys about the cobit 19 protocols being

083a safe environment thanks to your support of what has happened over the last two years thanks for the staff who presented this evening we're excited that our kids are on campus and and enjoying school i start by just a few slides taking a look back and um you saw this next slide uh at the last board meeting this was just our co-deposited rates from the first semester of the year or through january 14th i should say and we had 604 last week which is the next slide you know we shifted and how we're presenting our data and so if anybody is interested in where this is it's on the district website under the fort parents tab is all the cobin 19 information but we work to update this whenever we have a copic positive case

084and and this is a chart that i updated on monday of this week and as you can see board we've only had one positive case this week that we're aware of a basically eight of positive student cases and four staff numbers but we're very pleased about the fact that the last two weeks we've seen a significant decrease in the positive rates here for both staffing students um mirroring what's going on in the county and in the state in general hopefully on-prem has taken its course and has it somewhere else and we're very happy to see um our statistics from this week actually that i would have to update this for tonight we are for the week another bit of new information that we just learned today in our weekly call with the summit county superintendent

085group and representatives from summit county public health what they learned from the department of health today is that it is expected that the cdc will be revising their guidance about masking things about masking and it's expected that once the cbdc does that and that's supposed to happen next week then state and county health departments will make some adjustments going to be based on these two two next items first of all an adjustment to mass optional will occur when the positivity rate is below five percent and then the seven day case from at between 10 and 49 for 100 000 cases currently in our county we're at a 7.7 positivity rate and our case rate is 122 per 100 000 cases so as of today if the um cbc were now for guidance on masking commissioner

086skoda would still be in the holding pattern because the county is not um has not met the standard of five percent positivity in the case rate as indicated uh what she also did say today though is she's very optimistic as of today um in summit county there are only 35 cases of hospitalized individuals with copin which is a significant decrease as we see in the month of december and january which is so the board asked that we would reopen the surveys which we did and i just wanted to provide some statistics about that so when we close the survey on sunday at midnight um we have 1895 parent submissions and when it was open before the last board meeting it was at 1040. so we had an increase of about 855 additional submissions into the

087survey and with regard to the staff responses 100 into so by reopening the surveys the board has much more feedback to consider this evening so on to the survey questions the first question uh talk um the recent release from the odh which now staffed universal content racing in k-12 schools and um the question was since children ages 5 to 18 are now eligible for cobra 19 vaccination um what should we see on this first pie chart we have a red section 47.9 where it should be masks optional we had 907 parents support that effort and where it says 52 points should be mandated in our school district or 988 parents so again pretty close we're still pretty uh 50 almost 50 50 here at 988 with a preference taking a look at our staff response

088for the same question interestingly enough what we have is 378 responses with 221 members of our staff suggesting that match should be optional and 157 members of the staff suggesting that the mandate should stand in our school district next question i talked about physical distance measures and should the district continue to require fiscal distance and so at what measure so our parents um let's talk about the orange section at 45.4 which suggests that fiscal distance requirements should be eliminated 860 of our parents suggested that fiscal distance from parents suggested that fiscal distance measures should be three feet and the blue section at 23 are suggesting that we should maintain our current standard as noted here on the screen so 860 would suggest fiscal distance measures should be eliminated 582 are assessing they should be as

089they currently are our staff responses suggest that 56.6 percent our 214 members of our staff are suggesting that distance requirements should be eliminated 27.2 percent or 103 members of our staff suggest the three feet measure and suggesting that measurements should continue as they currently are the next question is in regards to doing lunch in our lunchrooms actually this is a question that's primarily focused on what's happening at dodge bissell and wilcox the high school students have been in the commons and the rpc students have been eating both in commons and in the classrooms with regard to returning to the lunchrooms eight point seven percent or one thousand one hundred thirteen parents turn two lunchrooms for our students and forty one point three percent or 782 uh parents prefer that our students remain in our classrooms

090for lunch time the same question suggests that 71.2 percent or 269 staff responses would prefer students having lunch and lunchrooms and 28.8 percent or one would prefer that students remain in the classrooms for lunch with regard to chaperoning our field trips our parent response parents would like to see chaperones back on trips that would be 1790 responses to 105 responses suggesting a negative to that staff responses are quite similar or 325 respondents support chaperones on trips and 14 or 53 of the respondents do not the next question had to do with chaperones on field trips and whether or not there should be some proof that the adult volunteer would show a proof of cobia 19 vaccination or a recent practice so our parent results 68.1 or 1291 parents support having the chaperones present some proof

091against 604 parents or 31.9 percent of our parents are saying that that would not be necessary so 1291-604 and interestingly enough the staff responses are quite similar when asked the same question about chaperones needing to present proof of a clovid 19 vaccination or a recent proctored copa 19 test result back to 39.9 or 151 staff members do not think that's necessary so 227 to 151 and then the last question and set up questions talks about volunteering in our classrooms the first pie chart here talks about our parent responses so the parent response of 0.6 or 1773 respondents agree that volunteers should be in our classrooms with 122 respondents thinking not six percent or 301 staff members would appreciate volunteers back in their classrooms with 20.4 uh not believing that that should be the case and

092then asking the same thing to be required to present proof of coping 19 vaccination or a recent proctor copa 19 test result our parents at 68.8 percent agree with that statement for 1 303 to 31.2 or 592 respondents say that it's not necessary so 1303 to 592. and then the staff responses quite similar 60.3 percent 150 staff members or 39.7 percent i think that that would not be necessary so before we go any further in the powerpoint presentation board coming in the survey again provided additional opportunity for parents to submit their their feedback as well as the staff members so that's a pause at this time to just talk through the survey results and offer an opportunity just to give her thanks for allowing us to open up the survey one of the reasons why

093i brought it up at the last court meeting was because i just wanted parents to be able to voice their hands and have a longer period to be able um us having that opportunity for them um as far as the policy um i see with the service we're at a 50-50 in my opinion um i think we need to go mass optional and i'm just looking at some of the data like with summit county and portage and cuyahoga some of the schools that are around us i would say at least in summit over 30 switched to mass optional and our neighbors like aurora nordonia hudson they're they're all going that way and when you look at the cases with like aurora and hudson their cases have tend um to be a little lower than what

094ours are not um you know keeping the kids safe but at this point i i feel like um with things changing and policies keep changing i think you know we now have to give the parents to continue to wear the mask let them do that and if they don't let them have that choice i'll weigh in here mr crawford uh especially with respect to um the likelihood that the cdc is probably heading this direction already i've been keeping track as well as i work in the district also so it looks like the race are falling and the extent to which i think the board has really really been super kind and given to us to guide our decision making you know i think it's been hard you know the last couple of years and i

095do feel that you know it's uh so that we can do mass optional uh and for their parents that you know still want to send their kids and they don't feel comfortable and they want to wear a mask then they should be given that that opportunity um i agree in you know extending the allowances but i want to make sure that people understand that when we opened the survey when when it was opened originally it was in response to data that we got at that moment so we didn't have a lot of time to conserve insisted that we do a survey because we needed some parent feedback and once we got that feedback we just didn't feel it was enough uh so we wanted to make sure that there are other parents that have an

096opportunity to weigh in and if you look at the numbers they're basically doing since the beginning and that's that's not a that's not a trend that i'd like to discontinue uh uh because you know because there's precedent there so that being said uh three uh with going mass optional some of the other responses in here though i'm not comfortable with uh and parents to show proof of vaccination i've been very clear from the beginning when all this started i think that that's kind of a line that i don't want to cross i think it's a slippery slope um you know more than welcome i mean i have and sort of establishment that asked for it however as a board to be put in that position i don't think it's appropriate i do think it's but

097to require them to do that is a step too far for me personally i'm not going to speak on behalf of the board it's a step too far for me i think that there are other approaches that we can take recognize our staff here as well and so there may be some apprehension on behalf of the staff and clearly there's apprehension on behalf of still apprehensions on some on behalf of some of our parents uh so i i just think we need to uh requiring something like that i think is is is territory about you know i don't want to doubt it can i agree with you just for um i know i've been in the schools to volunteer for like holiday shopping book fair and currently we don't show um vaccination proof or club

098at 19 tests because it's not required but i think that you know it's been made a point before that we don't know the status of our staff as well so i think that um you know if we like i say before if we want to do a survey if they want to provide that information but it's been a long stream trip of two years 2020 we had an emergency board meeting at 6 00 pm on a friday night no one knew what covered was going to be things kept evolving we didn't have vaccines we didn't have treatments and we certainly have come quite first and that i've said all along that if we're not requiring staff to prove vaccinations i don't think the parents should either [Applause] no matter what this board does and the

099previous boards and the decisions we made we're never making a decision would be different than i've heard from my colleagues um but i do believe that there are a lot more mitigation strategies in place level plan on social distancing and look at using mass optional knowing that at any given time like we've had to in the past two years we've had to pivot in and out i think we're trending in the right way so i'm cautiously optimistic to support mass optional no planning oh god for everybody else but all sides of this uh situation time to prepare and think about the decisions they want to make i don't think it's ripping off you know tonight um i'd be curious to hear my colleagues you know this is something we can ease into and dramatically like

100we saw um i saw a chart tonight on the national news you know the halloween spiked and it's going down there are many other states that have still are in crisis but i think we're headed in the right way and i don't think it's i think it's just it's trending down we know that there's been a lot of stress on teachers and staff and especially our students and hopefully this can ease some of that stress but i think we need to be thoughtful tonight do we you know if this is the decision that the board makes um you know let's have some planning with how this would be rolled out and knowing that i hope we never have to pivot back but you know things have been okay um i i had a and i'm

101still not gonna bore you with this but i had a um two-page thing that i was going not gonna bore you um turned out to be four pages because i'm just gonna pick a few bullet points and kind of highlight i'm at the last meeting we had this horrible storm and it was it's awful very you know anybody who is here pretty much got to be here but we did have two parents this is the famous samantha shaw and um speaking that's very difficult um they may not have agreed with us we may not agree with everything they said um you know everybody has a different opinion but it's good to see more parents here today too to come to this meeting um we didn't want to make that um isn't going to please everybody

102um and even among the lord i mean over the past couple years um we've all had different opinions we've had board members who okay you know um let's let's go virtual we've had more some of us have somewhere in between we don't we haven't always agreed it's been it's been tough it's been difficult but we've tried to do just the best for the students um and i know [Music] some schools that we've been doing many have not but um it's um you're not gonna it was hard to escape you know what's been going on over the past two years um and it's sad to hear that some parents have one of their views that don't align with what's been going on in schools and then it's also you know concerning here that some parents may

103want to pull their kids depending on what may happen tonight so the things you just can't make everybody happy and i mean we didn't ask for this the kids didn't ask for this but the kids have handled this like chance i mean it's not to say that this pandemic hasn't had any kind of effect what's been going on with the kid these poor little kids and the bigger kids um minds and how this has affected but um you know we we don't always know what's going on um and when your kids need help and we certainly want them to get it um but they've done um for the most part they've been doing such a good job with impossible situations um i mean this isn't going away anytime soon but yeah and it's it's it's

104just uh it's been difficult for everybody but i think it's about time to loosen this and just like just move on and i am in favor of the nesting option someone get the last little mask place with the last name i guess here well i i want to make a couple points before i tell you what i think and that is i want everyone here we have 907 parents who still want masks have 988 you don't we are tired it is a 50-50 and you've heard it said i want you to remember that we are still facing the fact that we have neighbors friends and colleagues that are still concerned as i agree with mr curtis i i don't think it's appropriate to be asking people whether they're vaccinated or not however again i'm looking

105at numbers and i'm trying to keep the emotion when i look at the numbers we have both parents and staff and i'll tell you my swing on this is the staff i'm glad we opened it longer and i'd like to see what the staff gave us parents didn't change dance numbers went 60 40. that'll swing me but when i look at these quotes the other circles here when i see the parent responses about the need to show some proof safe to be with the kids i i want something else there i don't know what i want i think we have to have some discussion about that but i'm not necessarily in favor of asking people their personal medical business so i am in favor of going at this point massive options in our friends um

106when you're talking about being respectful of the friends and neighbors and colleagues um a few days ago i said so if we were to go mass optional um you know would you still continue working mass do you want to you know throw it away in the garbage and he's like oh i i don't know he was kind of like wasn't sure where i want to go there i've heard comments that some people are concerned their kids might get bullied if they are wearing a mask or have negative comments coming at them or even the other way that people might come at some of these kids who didn't being naive but i'm not as concerned about that because for it's been i mean we've been doing this for a while and if that's their comfort level

107so if somebody wants to wear a mask in a classroom or you know among their friends um it's not unusual to see somebody walking around just that's just my two cents so i hope that wouldn't i mean i hope everybody would encourage their kids to just you know be supportive of their friends each other as adults just be supportive of their friends too if they have a different viewpoint or a different thing and then not to be ridiculed or put down away from it because that and that's you know we need the kids need to um come together too and support each other how my son in my house my own house i asked my kids about this as well and my sixth grader said he still wants to wear his mask he still wants

108the social distance and then my fourth grader was like two separate kids like same thing 50 50 like with how how it is with our district you're gonna have people who are comfortable and some who are not and so you just have to respect others and um move forward i'm also not going to work this out tonight but i think we need to think about some procedures if the teacher is not comfortable with the chaperone or such i think it's the teacher's right to to keep that you know out of their classroom for that same time being about you know having additional people in the classroom we need to have you know additional notification to advise them you know what's happening um it's never gonna be perfect you know like i said before not everybody's

109gonna be happy there's risk no matter what we do lost community members um thank goodness we haven't lost anybody in our district in terms of students other districts can't say the same thing so let's not take our eye off the ball we're not done yet you know we don't just throw caution boycott but that was rough glad it's over it's not over and if it had been mitigated earlier maybe we wouldn't be dealing with uh additional variants but it's you know it's here and let's hope that the next variant isn't what we saw with delta because if all kinds won't even be talking about this yeah the only other thing that i would you know echo with the teacher piece i completely agree i want to make sure i mean coming in their classrooms so

110i want to be respectful if they have anything at all then i want to make sure that there are measures in place that allow them to be comfortable in their own classrooms you know the only other piece that i would want to mention um is pivoting when necessary we've had to go we have to have to pivot remote recently we're now back if the circumstances change you know and they dictate the pivot um i want to be very clear that you know we've been consistent in doing that i mean obviously it has to be compelling enough for us to to have that conversation and do it but i don't want to give the impression uh that this is something you know that's how to be the first to tell you i would love for us

111not to be in the position of having to have this discussion at all but the reality is that as as as the conditions change you know we have to make decisions based on that so the the the reality that we could pivot is still there but i think this board and this district has come a long way especially being one of the districts that's been the most recognized that people had a lot of patience with us and i also want to acknowledge that there have been many many parents who have thanked us for being as conservative as as we have been uh it hasn't it's been pretty clear where the board would like to go from this point forward i would also to add mr curtis that um we receive all your emails we do

112read your emails and we see them on both sides if we're able to move past me and i would encourage you and maybe challenge you to now as we move past this keep that positive energy and keep putting it back in these goals keep coming the meetings keep looking at the issues that maybe we're meeting or see what was on the agenda but now that you had a taste of just one issue that we deal with you know maybe put that into you're looking at volunteering on a committee or getting involved um beyond and you know maybe coven brought you to the table but court investigation we appreciate your thoughtful consideration of what has been presented here this evening i just ask for your patience that buy things to ask your direction on um and

113to mr belver's point you know it took us an entire summer to pivot out and to transition to where we were in 21 and um there's a base in place uh in this pandemic and it's still a pandemic it's not even been lowered to an enzyme again so there are some additional things i'd like to talk with you tonight so that you can provide some direction um the communication with lots of communication and so if the board is desiring a different direction we owe that to our families to explain why the direction has pivoted and then to give them an opportunity to come to some terms with what the new expectations are i do want to thank the members of our parent group who are our medical doctors their opinions are important to me they

114helped us when we were first trying to figure this out back in march of 20. i don't necessarily agree with you board of education as i gave you their notes i've been hearing from them this week so i just wanted to acknowledge our parent doctors who have been true partners in helping us for two years now we've reached out even as leaders today i just wanted to publicly acknowledge them and thank them because they understand the science better than anybody in this room might and their opinions in this regard steer through this copenhagen pandemic so we're going to just breeze through the next through a few slides before you have their notes their comments and their reasonings behind their stance on europe but i do want to remind board mrs bartlett that with your decision

115tonight to be a mass optional it does not change masking on our school buses that is a federal will abide by president biden's mandate for masks on our school buses that includes our students and our staff members mechanics anybody who is being transported on the buses that's not our rule it's not governor dewine president biden extends that role but as of right now the mandate for our school buses is set to expire on march 18th and we will comply with that and that's part of the messaging that has to go out to our families here as a federal mandate would apply also the other thing to remember board of education is that we still have positive cases although this week we're celebrating just one case but if there are direct contacts a situation a classroom

116where you have a plus or three or in a large group ten percent of a large group the summit county public health officials will help us to direct our procedures and protocols regarding that is there to be a direct contact regardless if you're in this mass optional status that child or that student would be required to remaster school for 10 days from the point in which they had their last contact with that positive person most of these cases will be families the household might have hope and positivity and then when those children come to school it would be our request for the parents to understand that even though they may not be a masking family if they have a copic positive case in their home they're not the positive student but a sibling perhaps that

117the student has to wear a mask for 10 days from the point in which they last saw their brother or sister or mom or dad or however it is in their home again some accounting public health will help us with that um we are not departed by the department of health and for we just have to make sure that that is part of their communication against mr velver's point there are so this messaging that we have to get out to our families even in the mass optional status any questions about that and it isn't something that you you would be able to answer today but perhaps when you get on another call with this anticipated new guidance um yeah i don't know i mean if there's anything in any discussion very recent uh two weeks

118ago yeah two weeks ago i mean it's possible that this could change um i don't know uh but i'm assuming that you know based on the new guidance it's gonna be you know to the you know ten day piece mr mr curtis the one thing we've learned for this pandemic is not the stays everything changes it's changing by the minute so i can only tell you what i know as of today and it can change by tomorrow morning as you know there's several things that we have to talk through this evening so that i have guidance to communicate with our families with regard to the board's decision to become a mass optional school district effective date to communicate with our families immediately tomorrow probably is not the answer because not everyone is watching this i

119would suggest either the tuesday after president's day or the following week but it services the tuesday after president's day prepared right we're off this friday and next monday okay i think there's i mean my gut says that sufficient timeline and so i mean i think if we can communicate it we now have additional channels we can use today is what wednesday that would give us a day to maybe get something in the bulletin you know so i'm comfortable with that time if it's all based on you know what's going to be efficient for for you and the staff i know our communications are much more streamlined now the people that are hearing this message tonight you know can please help us you know in this transition period so that people know you know hey this

120didn't just happen this isn't a ruling give the district time to get the communications out please try not to cause additional you know stress on our staff that hey i thought this ruling was done it's a done deal you know why you're still requiring it let us get through the transition period for again people that are on both sides of the issue okay so the communications will change to optional in that communication board is noted on the screen we'll be specific about buses which is the federal mandate and then the information that we know it is of today with regard to direct contacts again that is a county health directive it's not a board of education directive so we'll have to make sure parents understand that you know i i've worked on this this day

121the superintendent from orange schools engaged in the board of education in a similar conversation just last night of the night before and um on in the conversation at orange was sort they about preschool because preschool students our three and four-year-olds are not eligible for vaccinations and so they spent a lot of time at the orange school board meeting talking about should we be looking at preschool differently this morning and you have the results of the poll with the exception of three members of the staff all the rest of the preschool staff are feeling confident enough to be able to move forward with mass capture the smallest students that we have in the district without the ability to be vaccinated and remember board one half of our ipp kiddos or kiddos with disabilities so for me

122seeing what the staff responded with i was i agree with their decision i have a preschooler my son's teacher was one of the she's had sick kids in the in the classroom and through that they still have been able to um pivot through this and be able to get through it and um she would like it to be optional and it was a lot through the mass and so i think you know that's really important for them to be able to hear the children so i'm i agree with this stuff so um so on one hand i definitely am concerned about the little ones because they um they're not of the age to get vaccinated some of them are some that we've been doing whatever we can and following guidelines and just um and just

123trying to ensure just the safety of our kids and our staff and just it's been it's been that route we've been going down and we've been following all the guidance all the health guidance and counting guidance but that being said um i mean these years are really crucial to their learning it's developmentally lost and i know the teachers have been doing a really awesome job and their incredible job and they're the experts what they weighed in and their opinions they know these kids and they know where they how this has been affecting them and so um for for some parents it's going to be maybe a little bit i don't want to use the word anxiety may be um a concern for them and if if for if um little ones who are mass media

124they can they can have some kind of compromise with the teacher um but i i guess what i'm trying to say is i would be um in favor of them not once optional for the little ones because these years are really crucial for their development of their learning and just language development so that's [Music] here or in you but maybe a separate communication people are preschool families with the light with with exactly what our concern is at the table here they're not vaccinated um they are some of them very susceptible to other health impairment because of their handicap that maybe that be a problem you know we will circle back around to those preschool children for protection i think the parents would appreciate to know that we're going to watch them a little more closely

125i mean people going to watch everybody but i do think with the health impairments that this could be not a good situation we need to have some special communication to those families to say we're going to watch it a little more carefully would that be a possibility that we could do absolutely but i think the if your child does not feel well then you stay home true i mean that makes common sense right but so often um folks um think it's just a sniffle or something and so that's that's going to be part of the messaging too that's you know we're matched optional now but if your child isn't giving any active symptom coughing sneezing whatever and it's not an allergy or another pre pre-existing condition that those students are asked to please take them

126from school because there's just a risk associated with that and you know what now more than ever that's very good i've been broken or whatever and say okay he was gone send them off school i mean they really need to be fever-free for 24 hours at least before you sign up [Music] a question i had i'm sorry for the longevity of this sport with regard to fiscal distance when you saw the fine charts if you would have added the three feet in the current situation together on both of the staff and parent training that there would be some measure in place and our central office staff and i have talked about this repeatedly you know moving to mass optional is one thing but there's good thinking to some layers that are still um may not

127be the four and a half and four feet but in situations where um kids are congregating together i think that there should be still some strategies in place be it three feet and so um i'm wondering what your recommendation is and get our kids back in the lunchrooms i think that's the biggest consideration here mr welker has met with each of our principals and their head custodians and we're able to make those settings but they're all d-masked even the students of the parents who would prefer mandated masks are all in the lunchroom event so your opinion with regard to physical distance and the measure attached to it i'd be interested to know your opinion i wanted to be 12 inches 18 inches all that i think let's just keep some distancing in place it makes

128sense um i was not a fan of asking people to differentiate between three feet and four feet we still don't know you know we really don't know if we're going this direction let's keep some social distancing for now let's get through the year to see if we're trending in the right direction and hope that we're not back here in the winter dealing with this again but in place in the short term yeah i would agree i mean i don't like putting staff in the position of determining what's three feet and four feet i i think maybe language that because i don't want to disrupt the learning environment um you know there's always been concerns raised about you know we've allowed them to kind of have circles now and i think that's why it allows teachers

129to differentiate and really work with kids on an individualized basis but when you throw these other considerations in place i think it makes things more difficult for them it's just another thing for a teacher to think about i want to make sure that they have the ability and flexibility to watch that run around police and you know you know yeah i just think that we just need to understand and recognize that you know kids still need to be safe uh and i think as we monitor that i think that i'm comfortable with i don't know what i was saying i think we're practical but i think mr just to be clear i think the superintendent needs a pretty clear-cut direction and i think that direction should be stayed with the distancing that we've been using

130for now so we were probably a month ago the board allowed us to reduce the fiscal distance in our elementary classrooms to three feet so that's where they've been it allows us to bring those readings allows us to bring the mass back on the floor kindergarten classrooms all the things that teachers need to be successful really this conversation isn't so much about that anymore we've got that but my question has to do with other things like lunchroom we're just coming out of a pandemic and i think with the kids d masked in the lunchrooms everybody's demands even the parents the students and parents who do not wish for us to walk away so i think the board should consider doing something that is a smaller step here instead of just everything back to normal because

131back to normal there is a normal at this point so my my my ask here is in regard to lunchrooms and i as i said you get the kids back in the lunchrooms with three feet social distance i just would request that that would be something that you would approve us doing when we get the kids back in the long rooms that's reason okay so you are saying if we get them back in the cafeteria lunch room with griefy discipline and you know what i'd be very comfortable with that honestly when i used to volunteer and kept you know in schools and going in out and visit my um my kid at lunch or my kids at lunch i was never a fan of them being right i just never found them being right on

132top each other to begin with um let's get them back in the cafeteria being with our friends having some down time but if you can i mean if you can do it and have friends or someone appears or not like across a table like from one end to another so i can definitely pay for that yeah i'm part of that i have a question but not so not necessarily about this but like orchestra choir concerts stuff like that and like the games having a limit right now with visitors like what what changes with that um that's part of my conversations what i would suggest is that um when we're talking about school day we're talking about staff members who are still nervous about operating in the pandemic we're talking about our responsibility to keep the

133kids safe when they're under our care when your teams the parents are here it's the parents responsibility to determine whether kids should sit or their family should sit so we're not talking about fiscal distance anymore applying to after school activities family activities we're talking about possibility during the school day and so lunchrooms media centers classrooms those things i still think that we should have a measure of three feet at least as the next step and then eventually maybe not so much so fiscal distance down the line but as of right now i think it's a smart occasion i can tell you that what is happening now is that we're trying to reconfigure our schools to get the special area classes back in the art and music classrooms and some people movement as well is that

134i'm going to be able to get all that done for lunchrooms for missile dodge rbc and ths will be february 28th wilcox has its own set of challenges because of the number of students that we have in that building and which are this year it's a very packed school and so miss villa has to be a little bit more creative and reassigning some classrooms to make that happen so that the lunchroom can be reopened so in the case of wilcox the lunchroom back open for kids is march 7th so that's two weeks from now the other schools will be open on february 28th and i just think that if you think about our youngest tigers they've never had lunch in the lunchroom how do you sit with your friends and so our primary school has

135just unique challenges that the other four buildings don't because you're talking about younger children so we're trying to give miss villa some additional processes and routines that she has to teach children and her staff teach children how to do some of these things that we haven't done before so allowing that extra time for wilcox to make that transition will be very much appreciated by the principal and her staff it's not just the children to follow so that's the recommendation that we're making to this evening the lunchrooms would be available for children to have lunch in february 28th for all the buildings but the exception of wilcox and the point that if they haven't experienced it before and maybe just for thought you know consideration like we do the phase in days at the beginning of

136the year maybe sections can phase in 28th you know and march first and so forth so that they should just throw it out there yeah i think ms miller will be able to figure that out with her staff they're pretty good at this stuff right um but but it does because of the number of children at that school there is just another care that's needed to get this back up and running that makes sense okay thank you for that um with regards to the protocols for volunteers and champerones i appreciate your comment mr feldmer about teachers needing to be able to determine who's in their classroom and that uh a very unusual time we wouldn't be here today it wasn't for their care and support of our kids and each other um one of the

137things that the board might consider and i understand your hesitancy with regard to proof of vaccine just require adults who are not staff members to wear masks in the school simple solution easily to monitor wonder what your opinion is about that i think that's a good medium the trepidation i want to make sure that we acknowledge that uh so i don't think that's unreasonable um so i'm i'm i'm in support of that mrs powers the only other concern i have in that is families who have multiple children and if one child's parent one child's teacher says yes i'll take you as a volunteer thank you god i love you gum come on but another teacher is abraham we're not out on social media with you know this teacher is allowing parents in and that teacher

138isn't because there's always a reason that we may not know the story so i would that communication that goes out that we are going to welcome chef rowan's first back but there may be situations where a teacher is apprehensive completely and still going to say no for a little while longer and just be cautious of that to respect that teacher i think the majority of folks in our community are respectful of each other i want to say that and so the teacher says i'm just not comfortable i'm hoping parents will support that me too i mean folks just have to have some grace with each other and be kind and you know even pre-pandemic they're i mean most teachers it's kind of their place they they um for one reason or another even like i

139said before all this um may not have um you know use the parents as much and and so that's like you said that is something where they just you know you have 20 percent you have 20 based on dependent taking emotion out of it looking at numbers you have 20 that were saying not now and so taking care of those those that 20 percent thank you um the last thing here i believe board of education talks about your board meetings um tonight we had so many students it was a great great it seems like i know the board prefers to be across the street um with my comments about you know after hours it's up to the parents to determine if they're comfortable or to see is that the perspective you have for your board

140meeting is moving forward restrictions from the government center um there's some signs posted over there i could check with marinades i don't believe that there's enforcement of that they have the seats set up sort of in groups i know i know we've had students in the past maybe that's something that we can face i know it would be out of the typical agenda but maybe if it's you know some younger students so that you know they can get that you know it is a small room you know i don't know if everybody here right now would fit in that room you know so we want to you know make sure that everybody that wants to be seen and hard can be but we might have to phase in and if you want to hunt that

141for board meetings um [Music] and and here it's also nice because you can have as many people as you need um sometimes those four meetings sometimes they got very crowded and it was it was more a matter of the fire marshall too having sometimes too many people there at once so um just kind of uh maybe if like you know first part of me is bissell hallway until until distal or bissell children are dismissed and dodge can come in um so that we don't have issues with overcrowding regardless could you bring up a good point we had to make that announcement several times but we unfortunately it's a violation so if we can phase in if we know we're going to have you know a group presenting something or such if we could space it

142out through the agenda so at least if we're going to be next door you know i've always preferred to be over i think we need to make some adjustments but that's not a preference that would be over 11 center it might be warmer this is right you're hearing that yeah federation is just we've heard a couple times tonight from our board members we don't know what tara's going to bring and just the understanding that we appreciate the community having a little grace with us these are not easy decisions to make we've come a long way members and the patients that they've given us we continue to evolve with the pandemic don't have all the answers but we are better if we can work together to solve situations and keep the kids in the center so

143i appreciate you board of education i appreciate mrs gordon and mrs defavio and their time on the board during the pandemic um tough decisions were made early on as we pivoted out changed schools and it's a just around the corner too so on behalf of the members of the staff here i want to thank you for your dedication you kept us safe decisions were not easy to make i will continue to keep you updated with the day and such but i thank you for your attention tonight i will work on the messaging probably not have that out until friday and parents are used to getting emails from me so i know they'll be looking for it that's all i have i really again want to thank those who took the time to answer the surveys

144and give them input and then getting more staff um more staff and what was also very helpful the last one was kind of rushed because we had you know information that came to us at the last minute but i encourage everybody anytime you get the surveys um just for anything um just please try to give your input because it is very helpful okay next on the agenda we have the monitoring so i do have blue cars that have been submitted eight nine cars um eight of which are for mass mandates um so i'm making a point of mentioning that uh you know we'll go ahead and i'll read you know go ahead with the reminders uh if there are individuals that still wish to come up and speak with respect to mass mandates uh you're

145more than welcome to be given the number of cards that i tend to adhere to so i just wanted to make that mention ahead of time that i'll go ahead and read the reminder and statements that i do have cards persons wishing to address the board of education should submit a blue card founded by the board president and welcome to make comment no formal action will be taken on subjects that are not included on this agenda until the board has had an opportunity to study them comments regarding personnel must be submitted in writing through the office of the superintendent and themselves at a board meeting if several people wish to speak each person will be allowed five minutes until the total time of 30 minutes is used each person addressing the board is asked to

146give his or her name and address um please state your name and your address my name is michaela richardson i live on clipper cove um just to start i'm going to talk about bullying the fighting that's been going on through the whole school district um i'm not a public speaker i'm actually pretty shy i'm the kind of person that avoids conflict i'm terrified i'm here because i'm a mom a sister an aunt who is terrified to send my children to our schools i made a post on the twinsburg roundtable facebook page because my art video of altercation and the way that the school handled it i was shocked i wanted to know if other parents have had similar experiences with bullying and fighting in our schools the response i got on that post was disturbing

147and bullying are happening daily most of the staff aren't even aware of it it's going on hidden in bathrooms hallways staircases people tell stories of their children being cornered in the bathroom by their bullies that the school was made aware of weeks prior children are being jumped but being pumped with concussions and parents needing depressed charges kids being punched in the back of the head while other students stand around recording it and then that's that's recording being sent around for ammunition for more bullying staff retired and current have contacted me thanking me for speaking out because they've witnessed how out of control this has gotten recently children are scared to attend school because when they tell staff about bullying or fighting nothing is done yes i understand that i've gone on um for many years

148but um with our school district i fear that the parents are being kept in the dark and i don't i honestly don't believe that the staff is handling it correctly the principal at rbc about my child's safety about the bullying um and about him being suspended for five days because he got attacked you know what he told me let's agree to disagree it's his response i disagree when it comes to our child's safety to them feeling safe to them being bullied to unfair punishments on the victims but light punishments on the aggressors we're putting our children's safety and hands on somebody who's wanting us to agree to disagree with him this agreement to disagree should end now twin burst city schools needs to start agreeing to agree let's agree to agree that there's a serious

149safety issue in this and it's escalating let's agree that the level of fights and bullying in our district is getting out of control let's agree to agree that when a student or a parent comes to an administration staff with bowling or safety issues they should be taken out pushed to the side kicked out of the office or have the whole situation covered up let's stop agreeing to disagree and agree to agree so that we can find a better solution because the measures that our schools are taking are seriously flawed i attended like i said fights have happened not on a daily basis all day i'm terrified because every parent's nightmare could potentially come true if we don't get a handle on this please kathy powers you need to hear us you need to start protecting

150our children at your establishments our tax money is being poured into the schools for our children to have a safe and healthy learning and some discuss tonight um plenty of different counseling things that we can we can be doing but i just feel like a lot of these situations are being swept under the rug and parents being thrown out of the office when they they come to con you guys haven't heard the last of me because every terrified terrified parent will pursue every avenue they need to for their child's safety so i plan on making noise until this situation is taken seriously thank you hey mrs richardson um thank you for your comments i would encourage you to take this up with the office as a superintendent if you have not already done so thank

151you okay thank you [Applause] um good evening so i had a different speech planned but i'll keep it super short because we've obviously had a pretty great night and i'm personally excited and i want to thank the board for your courage and your bravery and i know that it's been hard for all of you i want to thank the teachers who have given their grit and their resilience these are amazing people that have tried to make education and policy work in the face of them first so i just want to say you know as we move forward with this next phase of covet and going mask optional um that you know as we give each other grace we're concerned um you know that we also keep in mind that um you know what is the

152actual risks so we want to try to mitigate the fear and try to kind of kind of control the fear as um the cdc data still show that the annual pediatric mortality for code that is similar to that of the flu even in unvaccinated children and that long covet is not a major risk to children so i thank you for going on i just say let's just continue to you know educate and just try to mitigate the fear that we've been in over the last two years as we kind of go forward um and i just want to say that i think that reclaiming normal life for our children is the best way taking those steps tonight thank you [Applause] i'll make it quick as well um as far as mastering is concerned we saw

153on the slide there of uh was not listed but i can give you mine i am a certified hazmat technician specializing in weapons of mass destruction detection and mitigation there's three principles when it comes to dealing with toxic or chemical incident attack or some type of variant time distance and shielding the shielding is considered to be the last line of defense but in this public debate of our first line of defense where that is fallacy is that the master wearing or have been wearing for the last two years does not prevent from transmission this simply does not work you would need a filtering system or a respiratory uh respiratory system to protect you in the mucous membranes in your eyes to keep you from catching a virus it's just that's the way what i'm trying

154to do is if you have anxiety about going mass optional or that you have to go to mass again in the future i want you to understand that the mask really is a soothing psychological tool but it is not a device which keeps you from getting sick it just does not work that way thank you for that quick little thing my last uh issue is i'm seeking or the errors no missions and or the duty of care policy that you are required by the state will have to obtain before swearing an oath of office public officials sardi bond requests fall under the freedom the sunshine act and the public records act i'd like to submit a written request to the board i'm not sure which board member to give it actually that's not the proper

155program uh what is the protocol yeah you need to submit that to the uh superintendent secretary she's our official representation that you're asking all right i'll be happy to do so is that regular business hours at the board of education yes all right sir thank you thank you for your comments mr t-shirt aiden teacher hello i'm aiden diedrick my peers are for my parent manual students um what metric have taught us is our own mental health is less important than an adult's feeling of safety regardless of data even the smallest chris is not worth taking and is better when you are safe not free student and parent input with the school district is limited to virtual signaling only the students that are struggling can hide behind a match and select the old expression but it

156applies to school if you compare sporting events to other um which and lastly mouse could have done zero to control cover 19 and twinsberg as evidence and the year's attendance record and um i would like like you guys said um optional that's cool and i'm glad that um the mandate is over because the match did nothing for me are you done yeah [Applause] i'll make my comments very brief uh thank the board for your decision tonight and i'd especially like to thank mrs travis and mrs crawford for your responses to my wife and my families and who and thank you for your time thank you i just wanted to let you all know i do appreciate you um going forward with what you're doing tonight um i know you all received my email i got

157a couple um mr curtis you were saying that i really am happy that some of you have come out in support of not requiring proof of vaccination and testing because as a nurse i've been a nurse for 20 years a pediatric it's not okay to ask for people's personal information and i find that like mr critter said you're going down a slippery slope so i do appreciate that thank you very much and then basically the fact of mass and the social distancing there is the cdc all these departments have come out saying keep the mask in school and really being a pediatric nurse there is minimal risk social distancing so i just want to point that out and it's been proven so um that's really all i want to say and i thank you for

158your time and i thank you for making the decisions that you did tonight [Applause] okay um hello everyone my name is and i am in third grade i live at 8c optional for the entire school district the children's parents or guardians should be able to choose if their child or children should wear masks or not many children do not like wearing masks and i think they should afraid we could go to the cafeteria and not have groups for lunch and insist i think it was better when we didn't have to wear masks because we didn't have to pull our masks down when we talked because it's hard to hear people while we are talking those are my reasons why thank you so much and i have grace master little tiger i also came in here

159with a whole different thing to say um all of your feedback your opinions the work you guys put in day in and day out to do what is best for our students and our families um sorry uh wearing masks have been has been very painful our school years as um as the pandemic has taken over and it's it's been hard you know we want to protect everybody we want to do what's right but when it comes to our personal families we have to be able to stand up for them we speak up if something's not right come forward we can't expect our kids to do that if we don't do that and show them how it's done it was mentioned earlier about the masks and a mask in class um if we do go since

160if we are going to optional but one of my biggest my son's biggest concern he's um he's in sixth grade at dodge if he needed to take his mask off to breathe you know just for just for a minute he's distance he's by himself he was afraid of getting in trouble by the schools so um i would you know as a parent you don't want to wear a mess you're not going to get in trouble we've mentioned the kids are resilient they've gone along with this because they felt fearful of not following the protocols that you guys have sent for good reason you know it's you know we're not saying that this wasn't their own for a good reason yeah but now that they've kind of been instilled to go every day with the mask

161to do this to do that they're afraid to speak some of them are afraid to speak up we have pain against um we're not anti-mask we're not the anti-vaccine but we are pro-choice and that is what we have been trying to fight for this entire time um i do want to stand for all of your hard work congratulations i haven't seen you in person in a very long time i was really glad to see a former pta mom that i worked really hard with and you've done an amazing job and i want to say congratulations and put in the teachers we've been with twinsburg it's a long time um we've come through wilcox with miss bella we've come through this one and now we're at dodge and i've got to say that it has been

162amazing working with all these teachers my kids are not perfect they mess up they have they um they're both on ieps now my my probably drive this on all night and i'm ready for bed the mental aspect on it and the the academic aspect on everything i know personally my kids have fallen behind with when they go when they only have to go to quarantine and we have to do virtual schooling um my and it doesn't have to be answered tonight but what are there any is there anything in place to kind of help with that to move those kids to get those kids not have them fall further behind my my son has he started his iep in november or december and that he's had behavioral issues with the mass mandates but not you

163know not being able to be close to his friends and and you know the social distancing and stuff and it's taken a toll on now among other things but i just want to make sure that you know we've got that stuff in place i'm working with the team is great right now he's got this great support group but i know he's not the only one and i just want to make sure that everybody is getting the help that they need and the support is there and if they don't know it's there can feel better and more confident knowing they can reach out for help because it is there and the schools has supported my kids amazingly these last seven years six years so christmas and i'll make sure that these concerns are forwarded so that

164the proper people can follow up with you thank you [Applause] personnel without objection from my colleagues i will reach out to i one through three together i won resolved at the 23rd board of education except certificated micro debates terms and other ethical conditions specified pending satisfactory or some background checks two that the twinford board of education accepts classified personnel and your contract recommendations detailed in the actual conditions specified affinity satisfactory or background check and three results that the 23rd board of education accepts a supplemental contract recommendations detailed in the attached exhibit as per the dates terms and other alcohol conditions so so we'll move on mr belmer do i have a second uh mrs davis is first second mrs uh in the davis would you please call the room mr gelber yes this is davis

165yes this is crocker yes this is travis yes mr curtis yes my colleagues i will read i'm j one through ten uh together j one uh result at the clemsburg board of education approves the attached listing of the media center items to be deleted from inventory security board of education accepts a donation of 132 from our rep sports plus incorporated 92-61 urbana road sweet v8 23rd ohio 44087 three that means some third quarterback chasing acceptance donation of twelve thousand nine hundred and eighty one dollars and forty six cents to wilcox primary pta 9198 barrel road used to purchase playground equipment for the attached exhibit or that the 21st board of education accepts the donation of a trumpet valued at 200. [Music] foreign acknowledged the 23rd vocal music boosters as the different board of education approves

166a second reading of revised board of education policies 3220 and 32-23 7 that the 21st board of education approves the lease agreement the city of vermonterville to utilize yellow school bus uh twinsburg city school district board of education for the use of the buses including mileage gas and bus drivers private terms and conditions set forth in the agreement that's sent to the board on the summer cover eight that then twenty approves the lease agreement with the city of twinford to utilize yellow buses for the summer of 2022 the city of twinsburg will compensate the twenty-first city school district board of education for the use of the buses including miles gas and bus drivers further terms and conditions set forth in the agreement their education approved the proposal of dw a recreation incorporated po box 208

167harrison ohio 45030 in the amount not to see 12 900 sensory dome climber at the wilcox primary school the proposal utilizes the omnia partners cooperative purchasing contract and the sent to the board intercept recovery the expenses paid through a wilcox pta donation and plan 2021 2022 school year as per past presented discussed and returned in item g uh that promotion for j one through ten uh so this is travis we have a second second crawford discussion just thanks to um further donations from rdp we appreciate those donations awesome any other comments and hearing none mr angle could you please call the role mrs travis yes mrs crocker yes yes this is davis yes mr curtis yes [Music] education policies as noted in eye five above the second second and last travis discussion and hearing none

168mr edgal would you please call the role mrs davis yes yes mr feldman yes mr curtis yes passes five zero uh j 12 13 and 14 uh 12 result of the 23rd board of education approves the pre-owned at a total cost of 50 326 pursuant to the terms and conditions set forth in the proposal sent to the board under separate cover the vamp will be purchased through the fall 2021 highway street proud 309 lionel ohio 45801 this is a permanent improvement expenditure and is partially funded through the american rescue plan pbs incorporated 3800 east 91st street cleveland ohio 44105 and the amount not to exceed 19 637 for preventative maintenance on roofing systems at twinsburg high school rv chamberlain middle school george d dodge intermediate samuel bissell elementary school wilcox primary school and the administration

169building the proposal was sent to the board under secret cover and this expense will be paid for by with the school bus purchase program award acceptance and statement of assurances document essentially board number separate cover this document allows petition to accept for a bus grant in the amount 135 000 the funds will be applied to the permanent improvement fund motion forward 12 13 13 and 14 so move by mr felberg second second on mrs crawford discussion mrs crawford yes this is travis yes mrs davis yes mr purse yes is five zero next is miscellaneous do you have any comments i'm looking at the um at the retirements and uh we have joy slung who is retiring says after 26 years of service as an instructional assistant um so i hope she enjoys retirement as well

170in his 26 years and her position and just i thank her for her service to our district any other comments um i just wanted to congratulate and welcome um for him to join the football program and work with our high school students and our youth it's a win for our district and i can't wait and also i just wanted to note that when pta did joining those efforts so if you didn't purchase a shirt we're asking that you wear black to celebrate on blacklisted month as well thank you any other comments miss elaine okay we will move to idaho executive session we do have a need to enter into executive session so the board of education will enter into executive session at 10 to discuss the employment and compensation of public employees to discuss the

171investigation of complaints against a student as per board of education policy166b and consider the purchased property for public purposes as per board of education policy zero i will make a motion to go into executive session do i have a second second second by mr felder mr a home uh would you please call the role mr curtis yes mr culver yes mrs crawford yes