001good evening i called to order the march 10 2021 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to please silence your cell phones and electronic devices miss fates please lead us in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you miss wagner please call the roll mrs bates present miss bolton present mrs bowers here mr lindy here mr messer president mr morrowski here president jones here thank you okay um members of the public who wish to speak may do so by clicking the chat button now the chat feature will be open for your request for five minutes please submit your
002name your affiliation to the district your school community your topic and your contact information if you want a direct response to any questions that you might have okay i need a motion to approve the minutes from the special meeting march 1st 2021 in the business meeting march first 2021. don't move second thank you all in favor signify by saying hi any opposed minutes are approved as presented okay so we're gonna go right into committee reports and i am gonna ask um mr moroski to present the policy and equity committee i'm also asking our um board uh committee chairs if they would please do their best to summarize within five minutes and yes i'm putting you on the timer five minutes all right let's do three so the reported policy equity committee um a note that
003passage of these minutes similar to last week's um i believe it was finance committee minutes will also be accepting our work plan for the year as it is attached to these minutes um we had a great presentation about therapy dogs and learned the difference between a service and a facility dog where a service dog is a one-on-one and a facility dog is just what it sounds like it's for a facility um we learned about the great benefits of having uh facility dogs in the district if we ever chose to do that we did not take any decisive action just that we wanted to learn more specifically the end of the presentation from circletale um and woman leslie crines who presented the end of the presentation i inquired if there was any data that spoke to
004you know the benefits comparative data that shows disappointing mental health outcomes for schools with and without these dogs so we got some links uh the policy committee has um looked at those and we'll discuss them in our next meeting we found out circletail has dogs in lakota mason northeastern school districts as well through hamilton county education service center um we discussed our work plan which again you all received in your packets and so without insulting your intelligence i will not go through all of that i will just note that the changes in addition to the standard sort of auditing for lack of a better term of our existing policies that really began with fervor under ms bates leadership when i got on this board in 2018 we've continued the audit of our policies to make
005sure they're updated um so that that's kind of a self-explanatory piece of our work plan but what we added um that i believe all the committees are doing at the behest of miss bolton where it was language from our bylaws language from the strategic plan about why the policy and equity committee exists and then one of the most significant things we want to do this year mr lindy miss bolton and myself with the general counsel's office is to look at and i've talked about this in these meetings before but you have in front of you an actual list now of of policies that we believe uh speak more to us and the board's work than the administrative work a lot of our policies of course uh speak to what the administrative uh wing of the
006district will do as far as running the district but there's a number of policies that really kind of talk to us and tell us what to do um and how we should behave and so we want to really kind of dig deep in those there's two segments there's a segment of like more about the work of the board um and those are you know like family medical leave evaluation of the treasure et cetera those kind of policies and then there's more about like the philosophy of the board and so we're gonna go through those um and look at them take a deep dive and see how we can use these as we reimagine the district to sort of bolster our work and help us be even better in uh cps 2.0 we then discussed auditing
007policies for compliance which will be part and parcel of our work plan as per usual um tonight you will see a number of policies in front of you uh 7100 is a facilities policy you will not see in front of you tonight mr lindy uh brought up responsible bitter language again which we talked about in our last committee meeting and were presented here um robin brandon will be coming to our committee meeting on march 25th at 9 a.m um to discuss uh the responsible bidder proposal um to add to the policy so stay tuned for those minutes or tune in to the meeting 7230.01 we will present to you tonight and it's exciting uh when the committee was mr messer and ms bowers and myself it had come up that we would only accept donations
008from organizations or businesses that sort of were in line with our policies i.e we're not going to take an acceptability from an overtly racist that in the organizat we presented tonight for passage tonight we'll present you 7410 maintenance um where we added information on air quality to the hest of ms bolton and some language of technology and then uh we sort of closed out with uh there's been a lot of talk about a committee uh community oversight board for policy 2256 anti-racism and um without uh belaboring the conversation uh it sort of came out that you know there's language in the policy about the local school decision making committee or lsdmc providing that oversight um and we felt comfortable with that that the responsibility lie there for more information on that you can look at
009the minutes and then that is it we had one member for hearing of the public miss kendra phelps oh and then lastly other business sorry this is this is worth calling out mr lindy had brought up the evaluation of the superintendent and having the date perhaps be moved to a time when we have student learning information which at present is not the case and it was discussed that that really is a student achievement committee or sac committee work item and as mr lindy is also in that committee he felt good about taking a conversation over there so i present the minutes as written uh hope for passage uh to quote miss bolton i like that line and i just remind everybody that if we accept these that our work plan will also be accepted thank
010you okay do board members have questions about or comments about the report okay thank you um miss bowers your five minutes oh thank you president jones um and i just need to say he went over by a few but anyway it's okay uh march 5th was our last um student achievement and district instructional performance committee meeting um as well as with um board member morowsky we did review our work plan um in hopes that it will be approved tonight i do have a copy for you president jones to hand you if this is approved um we also we began our discussion with the superintendent evaluation timeline that mr morowski left off on in policy um we talked about the high how and when the superintendent should be evaluated uh committee member lindy informed the group
011that he would like the superintendent to be evaluated when results are available for the school year uh miss bolton uh chimed in and expressed that the ohio provides code states that the superintendent's evaluation must be completed by march 1st though she identified that there was some flexibility that can be conducted identifying that months between march and august were also existing district policies for evaluation for superintendents um we talked about a timeline and that's all in the minutes and one action item that we did have from from this discussion was being able to identify the testing dates and um if you guys uh would realize that you got an email already from um mr justin leach about testing and assessment updates um to see where that lands so that we can use that in determining how
012that would affect our superintendents changing the timeline for evaluation we had a presentation by mr trobert he updated the committee on the anti-racism curriculum and um there was lots of discussion about um where that where we started in the in the summer of 2020 and how this has come to fruition until this point uh mr rush who was president mr craig brush updated the committee that the following books have been purchased through the school district for us history and african american history students in grades eight and ten and those books are racism anti-racism and you by jason reynolds and ivan x kindy and so um we went on to have more discussion about the curriculum and possible piloting lessons in spring additional lessons was discussed to be taught for the 21 22 school year um
013committee member bolton and myself expressed concern about these courses being put into place after students have graduated um advise advising that making the courses available for this coming year would be ideal um and then mr traubert advised that he is working on making the courses available for this coming school year and also looking for additional resources we had just a lot of in-depth discussion about that um board member bolton explained that or inquired about are suggesting that a letter be made to the college board um joining with pittsburg city schools and adding black history as an advanced placement and and i took it a step further saying that this and mr trump talked about making this an actual requirement for graduation which i like that also being a part of the regular curriculum um in
014addition to ap um next steps for this uh program is respond and collaborate with speak up and speak out provide a pd for teachers on anti-racism teaching determine progress monitoring plan how we would know the students district-wide are gaining knowledge and skills to ensure equitable and anti-racist education um i inquired about how high school students um are being identified who are turning during this school year how they identify with and getting information about voting um and just about the whole civics kind of conversation that we're beginning to talk about for our students so mr rush explained his curriculum council and he noted um that there is a process with teachers right now um to identify and kind of circumvent the possibility of students of becoming registered voters if they're 18 for the upcoming elections he
015offered to be a contact person of information about nonpartisan processes to provide information to students we also had a presentation by dr blaise who for the international baccalaureate course expansion she talked about the what and the why of ib she also talked about the long-term plan offered for pre-k through 12th grade um inclusive of roberts academy and dater high school she also identified leap as a possible connector to the ib program committee member bowden stated that she supports the program and thank the community learning centers for bringing those two schools roberts and dater to attention years ago about this possibility she also advised to offer this program not just on the west side but also the east side in the name of equity to include matriculation in order to make sure no one gets squeezed
016out um i inquired about how lead teachers are being trained in preparation in grades i guess four five and six to matriculate to dater and and um dr blaise explained that the language part of leap helps them to be prepared for iv programming so that was helpful for me dr margaret hall and uh miss christine reeves presented to the committee about students with disabilities and that data there are plenty of charts in your package that you can review there was also presentations about gifted and limited english proficient learners um one of the things i want to highlight from this section is that during the 20 20 21 school year ohio education profile indicators were identified and right now cps met all indicators just for disproportionality um and also that's inclusive of the races are black
017our hispanic and our multiracial students and also cps met targets for reading proficiency and secondary translation transition early childhood transition so there's a new series of indicators for this upcoming school year um let me see okay you're we're i'm up okay okay pathways i got a lot of the time like now you should have told me this before career pathways we talked about that i didn't want to squeeze it out but i did want to identify that we were able to get awarded inaugural ode business advisory council rewards for our um for our career tech pathways and i and i wanted to emphasize that it's not stressed enough in our community about our career tech options and i keep reiterating that because people keep saying we don't have these options and we do and i
018wanted to note that um assistant superintendent murphy informed the committee that the district's career model are the only two things that are not inclusive is automotive and cosmetology and i think that's huge that we cover a huge amount of careertech options everything else is in the menace and you all can read those at your leisure i submit these minutes for approval okay thank you miss powers uh do members have questions or comments about the student achievement report okay i need a motion to approve the minutes the move second second all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed okay thank you um we're at the item on the agenda for presentations um superintendent i know you have a few sort of modifications or adjustments so i'll let you introduce this agenda uh yes and
019so as we structure tonight's presentation it's thinking about whole to part and so the community engagement portion of the presentation is actually captured under health and safety as we think about the holds apart together as it relates to what our community has told us about um health and safety and returning um and then so we would the first one is actually captured and the third one but we would like to begin with the health and safety presentation first and then from there go into the new cps thank you so you all may remember um two board meetings ago as an introduction to the health and safety presentation i talked about the comeback as it relates to cts for next school year as well as the last half of the school year what you're going to
020hear tonight are a lot of facts and figures and you will see a lot of facts and figures on the screen which will include the health data for the city and the county as well as the covet 19 data for cps and this will also include the variant information you will also see just as i reference to the survey results in data that captures the interest of our parents as well as our staff members and um technology will also be included so again this is the whole part thinking about all these pieces and how they fit together and although we're going to be talking about a lot of facts and figures this is really this presentation is about the future of our students in the near future in the very immediate near future and at
021the center are people our students our parents and our staff members i'd like to introduce sarah trumbull oliver our chief strategy officer to begin the presentation thank you good afternoon um so we are going to start off with the cps code data similar to what we looked at last week our number of in-school transmissions is seven our implementation of safety protocols is over 96 percent we are at 500 student positive cases and 575 staff positive cases and as of the 7 30 am huddle this morning we are very encouraged to report that we have not had any staff cases in the last 10 days since february 27th and so we're very encouraged um about the effectiveness of our our safety protocols the declining community cases and our staff vaccinations a similar trend in hamilton county
022public schools we've been declining in number of student and staff cases over the past five weeks last week in all of the public schools in hamilton county there were 56 cases out of 114 000 students in the city daily new cases as of yesterday our seven day average per 100 000 is at 12.3 and our 14-day trend is showing nine out of the last 14 days or decreasing in the seven day average the more encouraging news on the positivity rate the city positivity rate is down to 4.6 percent and the city outside of the county is at 5.5 and um still below two days for the average length for positive test results and now um we have the pleasure of um catching in dr grant mussman from the cincinnati health department we're going to give
023this a try to try to patch him in he is going to present on the virus variants and that he will be followed by krista boyle presenting the staff and family survey data thank you am i um am i audible can you hear me you are audible oh perfect uh so i was asked to talk a bit about uh the variance we didn't get a chance to talk about that at the last board meeting and there were a few questions from board members that i wanted to answer the first question was how prevalent the variants are in cincinnati and ohio um you know so right now we know about 61 cases uh well let me talk a little bit about the variants first so that there's some context to what i'm what i'm talking about
024there's there's three variants of concern um that are out there right now and and these are variants so there's variants that come up periodically with sars cov2 ovid virus and not all the variants are very successful as a virus and not all of them pose particular new threats but there are three variants of of interest of concern right now that the cdc is keeping an eye on and that is the b112 variant which is the united kingdom the one that we've seen in the united kingdom uh there is the p1 p is in paul which is the variant that has been seen in japan and brazil and then there's the b1351 the the variant that's been seen in south africa so these variants are the ones we're keeping an eye on and we are looking
025out for and there have been 61 identified cases of the b117 variant in ohio that's the uk variant there's been one of the p1 variant and none of the 351 south african variant a so-called south african variant in hamilton county uh has reported just one case the b117 variant now i i have to add the caveat that our surveillance for these genetic variants is not very robust and so right now some samples are randomly selected to be sent to the cdc as part of their genetic surveillance program but there's no very aggressive effort to genetically sequence virus and determine exactly every case of of any of these variants that are out there so another question about the the variance was is the are they more contagious do they cause more admissions to hospitals and you
026know short answer is it it looks like it so um right now the united kingdom variant the b117 looks like there's about a 50 percent increase in transmissibility so that uh you know that our value that number of of people infected on average you know may go from somewhere around 1 to 1.5 you know for example so that transmissibility is looks like it's about 50 percent increase again don't have definitive data on these and with the p1 and the b351 it's it's not really clear right now that those have increased transmissibility it's also not completely clear whether so we know that there are more cases attributed to these viruses and that in some countries they've seen higher hospitalizations from these it's not clear completely whether that's because there's just more of them out there because
027they're more transmissible or if they are more uh if they're more virulent you know if they cause more symptoms there's very very preliminary data out there but it boils down to we really don't know um and it's not known about differences in the symptoms in children whether there's increased cases of misc or you know what that link is we we just don't know that either um you know finally you know the vaccines the one of the big questions is is are the vaccines still effective against the variants and um you know a short version is yes but so out of the several of the vaccines none of these vaccines have been studied in a direct in population comparison of efficacy variant versus you know previous genetic versions of the virus so we haven't had definitive
028studies done if you look though at vaccine that we're studying in multiple countries and look at the difference in efficacy and then kind of say for example the pfizer vaccine was uh you know 86 effective in the united kingdom uh which had predominant b117 circulation uh 94 in israel which has about 80 percent of its cases from b117 uh you might say that well it doesn't look like there's any impaired efficacy of the vaccine for the pfizer vaccine um that's you know a few a few um uh assumptions there uh but that's that's sort of where our data is right now for the jansen vaccine the j vaccine they had a 52 efficacy in south africa where 95 of the cases were from the b1351 compared to 74 percent in the us and 66 in
029brazil where it was you know majority p2 so maybe there's some impact there um novavax hasn't come out yet in the united states uh and that was 96 in the uk and 60 in south africa so again you know some some difference there uh with south africa having that b1351 variant um the the one you may have seen or that i think a lot of got folks pretty worried was the astrazeneca or the oxford vaccine that was 84 effective in the uk um against previous strains but um in south africa it was only ten percent effective um and uh doesn't appear to be very effective against the b three five one so that's what got folks uh or or got a lot of uh drew a lot of concern at that time so generally the
030vaccines that we have seem to maintain pretty decent efficacy against the virus and then finally you know we don't know when the virus will peak in this area or how long that may take before they're the predominant virus uh versus other versus other genetic mutations it's just a real challenge to determine that without increasing out you know the systematic genomic uh surveillance right now it's just a sampling so i i hope that wasn't uh too confusing with trying to parse you know what we know what we don't know and what's somewhere in between um but happy to answer any questions that i can thank you dr mussman we appreciate the information and before miss boyle starts her presentation might want to ask the board if we have any direct questions of dr mussman i'm going
031to be sensitive uh to his time so and and we're talking just questions in general to help clarify things any questions okay oh yes go ahead uh mr lindy thanks president jones and for dr mussman thank you for the presentation i think it's just the same question i asked at the last meeting um do you does this change anything about your answer to what you would do if you were in our shoes and what you said last time about uh parents having choices he wasn't here um yeah so i i don't think the the variant would would change my answer though the answer there no that's great thank you thank you you're right he was here okay any other questions okay thanks again dr mussman we appreciate the uh opportunity to for you to bring
032this information to us um thank you we appreciate it all right thank you all right thank you if we can pull the presentation back up to slide 11 the very first thing i'd like to say is thank you very excited we doubled our participation so that is just really incredible and thank you to all the families who took time to share their feedback as well as staff um the other thing that i think it's important to point out is these are not just numbers right this is a very emotional topic and so i just wanted to give a little context for how we can think about these and it is not intended to be account or think about it as win and loss right it really is an aid to judgment and kind of a
033single factor and then as we think about key takeaways um parent participation like i said it was double and then district-wide very similar to our pulse checks which we'll get to in a minute and then percent of parents who prefer additional in-person instruction time was actually pretty consistent and inconsistent with staff so 58 district-wide 54 percent one at hills and 547 57 staff um and then similarly parents who prefer five days per week in person in the fall is also fairly consistent for parents and a little bit higher for staff at about 86. um on this slide this is just a little more detail the first column is the district except for walnut the second column is walnut and so as we think about key takeaways if you look at kind of dive into the
034data and look at four days versus five days more parents preferred five day over four within that group and then same thing if you look at distance significantly more parents preferred current school distance learning versus cda as we think about fall breaks out to be about seventy percent are comfortable with five day per week in person learning and thirty percent either unsure or no um the next slide is about walnut hill student survey so why was there a survey for walnut hills students was a student-led initiative and a result of their unique circumstance of being fully distanced for the school year it was served it was fielded through official school channels and interestingly they are a little bit more equally divided across um five days online in cda so distance four to five days in
035person and blended as we look at staff so for fourth quarter 57 percent of staff were somewhat comfortable to highly comfortable returning to five days of in-person learning and then fall that increases to eighty-six percent um we asked about what was the most important factor to their decision making and for fourth quarter top four were six feet of social distance robust safety protocols student instructional time learning model consistency for fall student instructional time rose to the top community health data robust safety protocols and learning model consistency and this is just a look at the more detailed staff survey results we had about i'm not sure i mentioned this we had about 1600 participants 62 percent of those were teachers and so i'm going to take a little bit of a right turn um and talk
036about just our normal kind of community engagement and post checks so just a quick reminder what is possip they are bi-weekly pulse checks that ask the consistent question about happiness um it's also an opportunity for parents guardians caregivers to ask questions share concerns and engage with school leaders can choose email or text 87 percent of our parents prefer text 71 language options and there are multiple strategies in place to encourage participation just as a quick update from february so baseline for engagement or response rate was seven percent in december february 23 gone up a little bit 26.2 our goal by the end of the year is happiness actually dipped slightly so started with 60 in december um actually hit our goal of 65 in february dipped down again to 63 in march um our response
037rate oops forgot i am in charge of slides response rate is improving so um title 1 schools um response rate went from 16 to 18 and for non-title one schools 28 to 32 this is still a gap and we are working to close it sentiment um as i mentioned earlier has slightly declined and it's noticeable especially in the elementary grades and if you look into the responses a lot of this has to do with child care and parents trying to work take care of kids or impacting their schedules so with that i will turn it over to our cio jeremy gallagher thank you krista and so to start tonight uh let's take a quick revisit back to the presentation we had in the fall regarding the infrastructure its current state and respect or in respect
038to providing a concurrent instruction model or what we refer to as live streaming right so this is the timeline we presented during that presentation that showed it was based on our pre-pandemic strategic plan and this called for us to have a three-year timeline to develop our systems to where we would be able to provide that live streaming option really was actually more than three years closer to four right so after that conversation we went back and began having an extensive list of consultations with essentially all of our stakeholders we started with a lot of our enterprise and corporate partners this is not an exhaustive list by any means but some examples was we talked to cisco hewlett-packard jw affinity cincinnati bell and of course dozens of local and regional individual solution vendors and providers we
039also met with parents parent advocacy groups or representatives of those groups as well as just in general community i.t professionals and then we also talk to other districts both large and small both local and national and a lot of these conversations focus around best practices what had been successful for some of the the districts that tried it what had not you know recommendations from the third party vendors and most of these conversations came back not about changing our path or looking at an innovation that we were missing but they really focus on timelines right and so going back to our original we recognized that we needed to really refocus and come up with a new thought about our timeline so our work since then has been focused almost exclusively to condense that timeline to be
040as short as possible so that we could provide concurrent instruction or live streaming with equitable quality to both in person and remote student that was our narrow focus of all of our work in the timeline first in the time since the until now and going forward the a few of the big steps we've already made some things that we've already accomplished to get us started on this line was we deployed the 35 000 devices to all of our students we've upgraded all of our teachers to have laptops so that they had a mobile platform to work with as well as a device capable of full remote instructions needed and we are as we speak currently upgrading our administration devices in a likewise manner to better facilitate and support our instructional needs we also provide it
041in partnership with connect our students free internet service to over 7 000 cps students just to help put that in a little bit of scope that i like to look at is essentially almost 20 percent of cps students are receiving internet service directly from us now and then finally we also upgraded all of our cps sites to support the staff being able to work inside the building in a full remote model but that also meant that they would be able to work in any kind of a hybrid in person or even in a dis in a live streaming type model so beyond what we've already done we focused on non-guiding next steps this is the the work that we need to go to move forward in condensing that timeline even further these nine things represent
042the first three essentially are extensions of the work we've already done additional devices around specifically loss prevention and device recovery access expanding our connect our service program and remote capable access and devices for our teaching supports those are the three that are extensions of what we're already what the work we've already done the next four in red are called out essentially because these if you'll forgive me are what we've talked about as the bridge right these are the four main components that we're referring to when we say that they also represent the major bulk of our time demanding work that needs to be done these are the ones that hold us up right the first is our in-building cabling the physical cabling structure within our buildings that needs to be repaired or replaced in some
043capacity due to age the second is internet and this is not referring to internet speeds but it's talking about internet services the things we wrap around it like monitoring and security systems that allow us to meet our compliance requirements for federal and state regulations it's those services third is the wi-fi and this is actually under an e-rate rfp on the street as we speak right now being re-bid that will be will allow us to get our final upgrade in place to eliminate the last vestiges of our legacy wireless system that has been able that has been preventing us from be able to take full advantage of the systems we've had for the last year and a half so it'll be a big step and then finally the last one in this category is our classroom
044technology this includes you know cameras audio microphone the physical infrastructure needs to go into the classroom to facilitate teachers being able to do a concurrent model the last two are the supports that need to be in place so that we can see the student outcomes from this work and measure that against both the in person and the remote students so to make sure that we're accomplishing the same goals and then of course training and pd across our for our teachers to be able to use this new technology so looking at what we've accomplished as well as these narrow focuses of where our work needs to go we have successfully projected two outcomes the first is condensing that timeline from a three plus to almost four year timeline to 18 months so we've cut it more
045than in half to finish this work but perhaps the better outcome is the second one that with this plan it allows us to phase in completion where before we were looking at almost all or nothing either we couldn't and then we could or nothing this provides us for a phased-in approach so that as progress is made we're able to increase the services that we offer continuously with that in mind we would be able to say that we will be ready in the fall to be able to provide concurrent instruction support for classes with the highest amount of need in the fall then we would continue to progress through the school year up to spring in which we would we would be able to say that we can provide concurrent instruction for all appropriate classrooms across
046the district at that time so jeremy if i could just interrupt for just a moment i want to clarify classrooms with the highest need and so we're talking about prioritizing those classrooms in which we have parents who have identified that they are interested in distance learning at their home school we would start with those classrooms and we are going to begin an optioning process relatively soon at the high school level and the elementary level so that we can build the schedules to group the kids together by grade level but we start with those classrooms first thank you and with that i'll turn it back over to strategic officer sarah trimble over to pogba so um in weighing all of the academic and social emotional and health risks and benefits that we discussed last week and
047with our evidence that our mitigation mitigation strategies are working well as well as the survey data that was presented today that our families do want different learning modes we are offering uh for your consideration a way to provide family choice um for learning modes depending on the family situation and how their children learn best um so there there could be a five day a week in person choice uh which includes all of the cdc guidelines with the exception of physical distancing which may be less than six feet or distance learning either through cincinnati digital academy or distance learning from home school which will be offered with schoology until our capacity increases as jeremy was discussing for the concurrent live streaming starting in the fall and so for your consideration we could be prepared to um
048offer these family choices uh district-wide uh beginning march 31st with a phased-in approach for walnut hills since this would be their first in-person learning experience and i will turn it to the superintendent so i believe that this completes the assignment that the board asked us for back in december or january with the additional information updated information about the community as well as our school data in addition to the variant as well as the technology capacity to be able to move the work along a lot faster and so we are hopeful that the board would be able to make a decision soon so that we can make sure that we are prepared if the decision is to move forward that we are prepared to do so you may notice that sarah mentioned the 31st which is
049a wednesday instead of the 30th which is a tuesday monday the 29th of march is still spring break and um teachers and students are scheduled to return on the 30th our thought is that if the board makes a decision to move to five days a week that the teachers will probably need one day to really prepare themselves to to bring back more kids than they've experienced all year but this would also just keep in mind they also have the rest of this week and next week to prepare as well but we're trying to set them up for success and give them as much time as possible and so that's what we would ask the board to be able to make a decision on um if not tonight that the latest would be the 15th which
050might put us a little behind schedule and that concludes our presentation thank you thank you thank you superintendent and to the staff um just a reminder to the board um what we've been doing is sort of uh awaiting a full discussion until after the hearing of the public but if we have specific questions while they are available if you want to pose those questions to staff and superintendent now um and then just document whatever it is in preparation for the discussion which really will come after um the hearing of the public so are there specific questions of the team i see uh mr messer miss bowers okay i'm let me go with mr lindy and then mr moroski go ahead yeah i'll just say mine is a comment to the staff and you know we'll
051do our discussion later but i have to say that was a very very thorough presentation um i think the health data to me is very very encouraging not just for our schools i think for our entire region that's exciting uh i appreciate the diligence of following up with the um the variance which matches what we're hearing every day at johnson and johnson our guidance i especially love the robust uh data about our families and staff and i think you've set a new benchmark for what good looks like i mean the participation and everything should be celebrated and i think the more we can hear from our staff and our families the better uh jeremy i have to say thank you i knew i knew there were things going in the in the background i had
052no idea how much and i mean i think people have been talking and making assumptions we should do and could do there's a lot happening and i appreciate that you shared uh there is a lot happening and then of course now into a phase-in approach here so i just want to say thank you this obviously is a lot of work presented tonight and we appreciate it thank you okay miss bowers yes thank you jeremy and sarah um this was good news to hear about the internet um options and and where you're working at jeremy i'd like to hear that i just want to be clear when i well i don't want to make a question i'll wait president jones but i want to be clear that the 21 of the district-wide parents that that um
053participated and and i think i've already spoken to you kristen sarah a little bit we don't know the number of students that they represent and i think that that would be helpful for me to know the number of students that that 21 of parents represent that is correct so this is really directional versus kind of individual i think you probably could increase it to you know 25 to 30 percent um you take all the kids into account but then how that breaks out from school right harder to yeah right that's just them when we're thinking about less than six feet that's what makes me think that and that will give me a better idea of what that looks like so that's that that was just one point to me but all of this in depth
054the information i think is great thank you please a quick question so krista is there additional information from the consultant who worked with us on this project um i so not to put her on the spot she's here sharon mccafferty thank you for all of your help um i don't think so based on how we we did not ask for individual ids or identification to go back to folks but um if you have other thoughts so is there a way if you all can talk into the mic so our public can hear you so she just asked what the question was if there's a way to extrapolate how many individual students based on individual family participation in the survey um there is can you yeah um actually there is because in the survey participants were
055asked what grade of the students um were included so we do have that information so we can pull it that way if that's helpful oh for walnut that's true maybe not for the other one i'm not i'm not certain that that is true for the qual wall trucks i think as a parent i remember taking it that it only gave me an option for want to so it didn't it wasn't like i entered both children or anything and that is um that is the limitation of the tool yep okay thank you uh mr lindy followed by mr marowski uh thanks president jones um uh i have a couple i'm happy to punt some of these to later but i think some of the ones that might be most relevant now um while we have krista
056um so to say that we've got 21 response rate from parents um i'm i'm trying to that's both sounds great and i also i'm trying to understand why it sounds great um so if the question i'm trying to answer is how confident can we be that this is a representative picture can you just talk a little bit about why you feel so confident this is a representative picture so i think a couple of things if you look at the title 1 and 9 title 1 schools that split out about 50 50. so i think that is that's very positive and probably different than what we've seen before and then just if you look at survey methodology that percent in general for our sample size it's a good sample size that's great thank you um i
057think the other question i had um the author right now i'll save the rest for later is just on the um on the the slide that shared the choice for parents with the five day option on the one side and the distance learning on the other side can can we just hear again what the schoology option would involve or so the distance learning option uh for this screen would be um current what we're doing currently which is distance learning through schoology which may not be the live streaming um if they're not currently doing it so if i'm a parent and would we opt into that one i'm basically downloading materials from schoology and then printing them out and giving them to my son mr mob will come okay thanks good evening it's actually fully remote
058so you do not have to download any materials our students are proficient in uploading their assignments into schoology so to my son would go to schoology see the work that's assigned complete it on the tablet upload it into school would you on the tablet would there be any live interaction with the teacher if we do four day you have that monday if you do five day then it's all student directed thank you you're welcome thank you mr marowski thank you president jones and thanks y'all i'm really excited about the choice piece that makes me really happy i think that's where we need to be focusing our efforts so i appreciate all that hard work i know it hasn't been so thank you all every one of you um i have a couple questions um a
059couple about the survey and a couple just sort of about logistics with the uh the option for choice one is um and i'm glad we have the survey experts here one is is there any way um that we can say with certainty that all of these responses were unique people or any way we can tell if people took this survey more than once or not it's a great question and yes so there were folks who tried to submit multiple responses many folks many responses and you are able to strip those out so the results we've shared all of that has been taken out that's fantastic thank you um and then for the student survey was that was that student survey created as a unique survey um given to the students because i know and everybody
060here it's no secret we've received another student survey that looks pretty representative of the student body i'm just curious if our student survey um was created for the students or if it was a version of the one given to parents um so it was both so there were some questions that were similar for consistency purposes um the students and yeah um the cafeteria worked with the students on this um so i'll let her weigh in as well but it was with students for students it was fielded through official channels and also has a decent or a good sample size okay if i can speak to that a little bit um the reason the student survey was done was really to give a student who had done a survey earlier an opportunity to kind of learn
061a new skill in survey development and marketing research so that was the number one objective it does look very similar to the current walnut hills survey um and that is intentional just because we felt like a lot of work was done in putting that survey together yeah that survey was done in consensus i think we talked to the lstmc we talked to the parent association some of you on this board may have seen an earlier version of it um well oh principal chambers saw chris decide so a lot of people had input into it the student did advise some um different responses that students might be more interested in care was taken in that survey especially because of the students to protect security so if you look at that survey you'll notice anytime you ask
062somebody personal information about health care especially as it relates to mental health you have to promise privacy and confidentiality that's just kind of part and parcel some efforts you mentioned earlier about uh unique respondents unique responses um care was taken to make sure that was protected both on the front end and the back end and evaluating unique ids addresses so that's right awesome thank you and then my last last time they're quick um do we have maybe it's not quick but uh if not we can save it for later but is there so we talk about the classrooms with the most need which i think is smart this is more i guess the sarah trump oliver or uh superintendent mitchell i think jeremy i think that's uh smart to do it that way so that
063we don't break the bridge so to speak um is there and this is probably a dumb question is there a make or break number like is or a ratio a make or break ratio probably the ratio more than a number like 60 percent of kids want to be remote is there a number assigned to that before we say this classroom gets that option in the fall does that make sense it does unfortunately it's not a static number sure there's a lot of different variables that go into it from the amount of uses the type of uses so it's not just a single number that we can base on just purely the number of students right it's all around the entire environment so unfortunately i don't i'm not able to give you just a static number
064cool um but and there's really not a point where we would expect it to fully break it's just a matter of um the level of service that would be impacted and that's not even yeah so a ratio wouldn't even just to me a ratio gives it more open but it's got to have even more taken into account than that that makes sense to me yeah it's a little bit more that makes sense all right thank you okay um miss bolton thank you um just a few questions and starting with the jeremy if i could um we have a master plan we had a master plan and we've been on it for a number of years and it's been remarkable compared to other districts so that's great but this accelerating the master plan is responding to
065a new interest or a new need that we have discovered in part post-covid i mean this concurrent learning but part of the acceleration i assume is financial correct what kind of financial um this is a specific question what kind of specific numbers do we see for that acceleration to be ready let's say by sometime next mid-year next year spring so there's still some logistical evaluations that have to be done for the equipment et cetera so we're looking at a fairly large range currently but what we are looking at is between 23 to 53 million for that to be complete to help the acceleration correct and and technically even though we'd be looking at where the greatest need is based upon interest and kind of in the market would you'd have to be doing almost by
066building certain things yeah absolutely rather than just classrooms is okay that's a specific question and could you address this wi-fi deserts issue how are we going to overcome that i'm sorry where we have where we we are providing and i think this is remarkable and an untold story we are providing the a wi-fi capacity for what is it twice at 20 of our just just under 20 of our total cps population so that's some that's something hard to sustain so that we might want to be addressing that so i just wanted to get that out there and then for the survey most of our schools are title 1 schools it isn't 50 50. so it's from that standpoint um but to the choices that we had in the survey we have a choice of the
067five day we have a choice of distance which is really featured cda and schoology we've eliminated as a choice blended and i'm more than happy to hear that but that's no longer a choice in what we're looking at and we didn't do the the one four but the two two choices available right now are the five day that we asked about that and we asked about fully remote using schoology and cda and where schools have it by site that could continue but that's not we're not sure which ones have that capacity so those are our two choices yes so based on the so the survey asked us asked multiple options and some of that was to get to comfort level around 20 feet versus feet but yes the options we brought today are those two
068those two thank you thank you very much miss fates i have a few questions about schoology um i'm probably i in years past i've used blackboard which you know universities have used and i'm sure that's changed since i've used it as well but just kind of going back to some of the functions of blackboard see if you know there's similar functions in schoology if uh say next year i'm not saying this year with the with uh the arrangement for the remainder of this year but next year when the classes are um both remote streaming and in session well those who are remote well they have the ability to chat with the class so yes okay so yeah that's that that makes it uh so much more real i mean not just real but very interactive
069of the conversation and also uh where you have the ability to record the class so if a student is ill is working whatever that they can review the class at another time and have a way for the teacher to know that that class was observed yes okay thank you thank you okay uh and then i get the last shot at questions um and i think they're fairly simple um i don't this isn't really i guess it's not a question but apparently there's another survey that has gone out i just want to be clear that is not a survey that the district has directed right that is not our survey it is not but can i go back to one quick thing there was a question that board member fulton asked about do we only ask
070about five days or distance learning and um on slide 13 can someone bring up 5 13 we asked about blended four day or five day so you can see that data so we did ask about before that it is there on slide 13. thanks there it is right there so to your point uh president jones the survey that krista presented the data on is the survey that was approved by the district any other survey that is out there did not go through the formal survey process that is a part of our procedures within cps that requires approval through our accountability department thank you and and i asked that because we got we the board received lots of emails from people who were asking about that and some of the emails uh made the assumption that
071it was us and they were not happy people so i just wanted to be clear about that so thank you and then secondly um the surveys that went out are they uh were they sent out as a representative sample or did every parent get the survey so yes it went through every school to the parents okay and the reason i asked that question is because oftentimes we hear that is not representative of all populations and i just want to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to complete it i really appreciate you asking that so we did do something different this time for at least the last several months which was we offered a paper option yes so um and we got more than a thousand okay responses back on that paper version thank you
072and then my last question you know and i probably should have asked this question a long time ago i i truly believe that cba is a valuable option for kids who maybe have a unique learning style that they do that and if i recall looking back on why cda was even expanded and it had to do with those students when all of the uh e-learning programs across the state closed we expanded cda to accommodate that i really want to say it and and uh i do have a question following this that i really believe cda is a valuable option although it may not be for everybody so we need to know that but i'm curious to know what has been um the enrollment i know i'm not asking for specific numbers but has it fluctuated
073is it stable are there openings that kind of thing cda is a wonderful option for lots of our families we started with 300 we are now at 1830. okay and then my next question about that is just because i'm curious about it um so that means uh there has to be an expansion of the instructors who are attached to that program yes and have we had trouble or anything any concerns about what how to manage that piece of it we have done that throughout the year um as the enrollment increase the principal there mr rozier has sent out a survey to see which parents are returning so we're we are collecting that data and several hundred of those parents are electing to stay at cda right okay and i guess i said that and this
074is probably in discussion but you know we might want to do a different type of i don't know different but recruitment for cda really explain because i think what it is is that the lack of real understanding about um cda and what they offer and how they operate so that you know just a thought okay any other questions before we move on and and again our discussion will occur as the first item on the board matters um and it is a sort of decision point discussion so superintendent next presentation so if someone can pull up the next presentation please so the last presentation the health and safety information uh along with the survey results and a potential option for this year that was about the future the near future in terms of the remaining uh
075half of this school year the presentation that you're going to now see is about the longer view and the future of our students what you will see is a vision laid out by the board identified themes strategies funding sources or funding to accommodate the theme as well as the measures that we will use to identify how successful we are on our strategies next slide please so many people know that next year is technically the third year of our strategic plan and as a result of our system being disrupted due to covet we are going to take advantage of that opportunity to restore hope and also try some things that we had not tried in the past this year prior to this year and also try some things that we haven't even tried this year and
076so this next presentation is about the future of cps the future of our students next slide the vision and the themes were called out all year long quite honestly so we didn't look at one um a one period in time but over the course of the school year we've had many town halls for parents for students as well as for our staff members we've had lots of meetings with our teachers and our principals and our managers all of our staff we have superintendent councils one for principals and one for teachers to actually hear what's happening on the ground level we have our speak up and speak out students at the central office we hold skip level meetings so that we can understand what's happening in that level just below the level on which you work
077and we also were able to get a lot of really great information from our board in their visioning session related to old shore new shore next slide so this is just a reminder of the five goal areas for the strategic plan and what you're going to hear tonight will be um a an illustration of the vision for each one of those as captured all year but very specifically focused on the themes that the board outlined during our work session earlier this half of the school year so we're going to start off with our deputy superintendent with student student-centered decision-making putting our kids first next slide please and you can move on to the next slide i'm excited to be here to open the presentation with the first goal student decision making and if you can
078imagine with me again a destination called cps where learning takes place anytime anywhere including outside in the evenings students have access to new courses offerings and experiences speak up speak out is at all our high schools and our students staff and families so that we are diverse and inclusive next slide please these ideas were limitless and was based on the board themes for student decision making we have four buckets increased student achievement for all learners innovative programming enhanced current programming and to build a diverse and inclusive culture across cps so with those themes next slide please we develop strategies based on all of the stakeholder groups that we heard from starting with increased student achievement for all learners we want to make sure we have a strong core curriculum and that our students have access
079to grade level content so we will continue with our rotation of new curriculum adoption of materials also what stood out is that we really need to um access more frequent assessments using two week two-week cycle assessments i want to take this opportunity to shout out some schools withdraw algebra department hotwell and riverview along with euler who started this process we are learning from them and then we will scale with all of our schools in the fall we also want to stress first grade reading we have done a lot of work around third grade because of ode mandate around third grade guarantee but that's reactive we want to be proactive in the future and all the research is clear we have to get our first graders reading and we can do it we're going to invest
080in support our teachers make sure that they have the materials to ensure that all of our kids are reading we want to make sure we have customized pd for our staff and under innovative programming outdoor education second shift night schools ensuring that we have african-american studies and african-american literature at our high schools next slide please and then let's enhance some of our current programming so as president jones mentioned cda that is in the works we have a committee together working with the principal um minisha house our dsl is leading this work with parents and student feedback on how can we enhance cda we want to implement a concurrent learning model have life skills at our high school and middle school expand our american sign language offering to be looking at two high schools right now
081and then to offer a support around career training having a career training center a one-stop shop for all of the supports that our students need to help with employment and to build a diverse and inclusive culture across cps we are going to start a creation of a diversity office and begin with doing an audit of all of the areas in our district next client please so we looked at possible funding sources so those are listed there and how will we measure all of these wonderful strategies that we would like to implement from first third and ninth grade map graduation the three e's and definitely disaggregating our data and looking at our subgroups next slide next up we have assistant superintendent bunting where we'll talk about health and safety good evening so we are imagining this
082destination called cps where all of our students thrive and we recognize although academic achievement is our absolute primary mission for our students our primary goal that without support structures in place they uh some of our students may not be as successful as they could be next slide please so due to the commitment of this board and due to the identification of the following themes around increasing social emotional learning student safety and physical health we have identified these as our main areas going forward so what does that look like next slide please so we recognize in the social emotional learning space that we have focused primarily on tier one within the last few years we know that we need to continue to build out those tier two supports along with our community mental health partners to
083include small group support for students and we also need to continue to expand our tier three supports for our students particularly for those students who are bilingual we are excited about the possibility of student wellness assessments right now that is an rfp process for 27 schools moving forward into next year so i'll be very excited to share that with you next next school year we also recognize that it is critically important that our staff feels supported and emotionally connected to our schools and so there will be additional supports through our employee assistance program working in conjunction with them as well as continued supports around sanctuary hours and mental health first aid we have a renewed commitment to our safe routes to schools with a continuing support or continuing partnership with our city and we are
084happy to share that next year all of our high schools will have healthy start times finally covid will still be with us we anticipate going into the fall so our school nurses will remain in place with an eye looking forward to the day where we can provide student vaccinations and we will have continued development along with our children's hospital partners and our health department partners on covid identification processes next slide please so we recognize that this requires funding you can see the funding sources identified on the slide and also with measurement we have identified the following areas so how do we look at coded transmission rates um how do we also measure our safety through our safety measure adherence measure we will also pay very close attention to student attendance and also to discipline so
085next we will have krista boyle who will share our community engagement work with you thank could go to the next slide please actually yep that's perfect i'm so excited to be here to represent community engagement and influence and would invite you to imagine a destination called cps where all of our communities feel heard and valued especially on difficult topics our measures of customer satisfaction are from the perspective of parents and families so csat first contact resolution our english language learners and families are fully integrated into all communications and activities distributed and within their school communities we expand the resources our families are able to access and our parents students and staff are filled with pride and are our very best ambassador next slide please so our board themes are proactive storytelling narratives um which you'll
086see on the next couple slides actually gets combined with branding continue engagement of staff students and parents and school level engagement next slide as we think about themes and strategies for continual engagements of students parents and community csat is a focus as we think about customer service installation of a customer relationship management tool to allow consistent responses and kpi measurement it also would help with family outreach and staying connected to their families integration with schools addition of care channels such as chat that many of our families use and personalized service um which we know people expect today for english learners a gap analysis and district-wide tool adoption school-level best practices regarding staffing and tools implemented and district-wide community engagement as we think about pulse-up so our pulse check survey surveys increase participation engagement and happiness
087and for students pure collaborative expansion school level engagement expanding parent groups and resource coordination next slide proactive storytelling and branding increase in positive place stories and engagement and engagement with those stories on social media counsel and a district-wide social media listening tool to increase connectivity benchmarking perception in brands and doing a brand survey consider a brand refresh including a persona or audience refresh and creation of an employer brand for the next slide funding sources potentially include cares act in general fund and how we'll measure pass a positive survey participation and engagement and lsdmc survey which will include school level strategies and needs assessment now i'm pleased to turn it over to chief strategy officer sarah from blog so i'm really happy to be up here and not talking about covet this time so goal number
088four optimize capabilities this goal is about rising above what people may have expected in the past from a public sector organization and having the people and the processes to run like a world-class organization and so not only to have systems that operate reliably and that people trust but delivering innovation time and time again because that's what our kids deserve so imagine a cps where we're the top destination for the best talent we attract and retain and we use a disciplined approach using the science of improvement and we direct our improvement efforts to get the biggest value and benefits to the whole organization we have a future ready infrastructure that will expand our capabilities for anywhere anytime learning and we redesign our budget process to be more student centered we have an operational and financial processes
089that are customer focused and they allow the school staff to focus on what they should be focused on teaching and learning so the board things that we heard were employee engagement infrastructure and operational efficiency so for employee engagement the strategies will be to implement communication pathways so that employees can have multiple avenues to provide input and feedback and inform decisions at all levels to develop leaders in onboarding coaching performance management succession planning and talent acquisition and to provide opportunities for our employees to learn and grow professionally for infrastructure we want to continue to improve the availability of student laptops tablets and free wi-fi and as jeremy discussed earlier today a new high priority as a result of the disruption called covid to deploy concurrent instruction capable systems also to increase data availability and business insights
090that come from that data for operational efficiency we'll continue to have focus on transportation efficiency and improved services and that will include an east west high school meridian we will continue our focus on quality improvement and applying that to the most critical areas of our operations a budget process redesign and changing our financial and procurement processes so that school staff can spend more time focused on students and instruction the funding sources will be cares general fund and title funds and how we'll measure these are through the gallup surveys and employee pulse surveys the milestones for the it infrastructure capacity expansion our qi dashboard and our department pgsms priority goals strategies and measures and how they align to the organization's goals and the last goal is growth and that will be krista last but not least
091so if we could go to the next slide imagine a destination called cps where we are community's first choice for education we retain students from preschool through graduation as we grow our environments continue to be conducive to innovation and learning next slide our board themes include enrollment recovery retention and aligning building assets to academic strategies next slide so enrollment recovery lots of work happening on recruitment there'll be an update on that on monday but that work will continue family choice so five day per week and distance learning from current school options in terms of retention reducing withdrawals to charter and private schools and housing partnerships to address mobility aligning building assets to academic strategies building expansions that include walnut hills pleasant ridge montessori and hyde park and new buildings based on increased market share or
092new programs next slide funding sources include cares act and general fund and how we'll measure building capacity versus enrollment building expansion so walnut pleasant ridge montessori high park actual versus projected enrollment preschool and kindergarten enrollment and withdrawals i'll turn it over to superintendent laura mitchell thank you so at the end of the day next slide please destination cincinnati it's about our families and our students it's about our staff members and ultimately it's about our students in terms of a life beyond cps so that they can pursue one of their career one of their chosen career options we are excited to hear the board's feedback because we we would love to hear what your thoughts are and get your feedback so that we can make modifications as we move forward because we would love to be
093able to launch this as a part of the new cps in april um i will say that you saw a lot of different strategies on the slides um so just in in the transparency all those things can't be accomplished by august and so we would laid them out on a timeline to identify when those um specific strategies would be accomplished but again we're very excited about the opportunity to move forward in cps to create a new vision for our district and to be able to welcome more people back into our district those who have gone and also new people just reminding everyone that before covet we were the fastest growing urban district in the state we were growing about a school a year about 400 kids a year our market share was increasing and so
094reason that is important is because it is saying that people are making a conscious choice to come to cps because what all the great offerings that we have here within our district so we are anticipating your feedback that we may bring back to you what we think we hear and make modifications to um the plan moving forward thank you okay thank you superintendent and to your leadership team for the very comprehensive um report on the new cts so we'll open the floor for questions or comments from the board uh ms bowers mr messer thank you president jones and i just want to tell everybody who presented that i was excited at the first bullet imagine i was really feeling excited about all that was presented i like the idea of the second shift night school
095um american sign language i think that's huge for us um of course i like the career training center one of the questions i do have when we talk krista when you talked about the community engagement i wanted to know about how do we engage our partners and identify if how they're doing and get feedback from them so you didn't think you would have to talk today today so good evening everybody so there are a few ways that we engage our community one uh quarterly through our lsdmc meeting so you know those are made up of not only our parents our students our faculty but also community members and our chairs are either generally community members or parents so that's one way and that is done district-wide on a quarterly basis but also each month at
096the school level second we have a group of lead agency executive directors and those are the people who lead our community learning center work providing resource coordination to our schools we meet with them every month and then thirdly there's another group crc ymca boys and girls club we were meeting monthly now we're meeting like every two weeks uh and that was basically as a result of clover and them assisting us with uh child care essentially is there any information that's disseminated to the board from how those meetings are going or if there are some things that need to be worked out or i definitely can provide you with a summary of that work i appreciate it and the last question i think was for growth could um could you tell me more about the housing
097partnerships i like the idea i just i'm not sure if i'm on the right track of what it means it is very very exciting um so we are working with metropolitan cincinnati metropolitan housing authority um to share lists as well as be able to reach use community their communication tools to reach out directly to their family about enrolling into our schools um so all of their families but yes we assume many of them are either enrolled or we absolutely want them okay very good thank you chris thank you assistant superintendent great uh mr messer followed by mr muras yes i i just i mean this is why we're here and i am thrilled i mean it has been a painful year nothing we can do about that but it feels good to get back um
098into the conversations that were started and and i think you've taken them to the next level clearly you listened to the board because i kept hearing the themes i'm like oh you've said oh someone just said that so that it i think that that piece admittedly i think i have to process some of that because it is so much like i just kept writing like great stuff but one thing that i think is unique um is uh you called out a crm and coming from an environment where we live in and die by quality customer service at my company how fascinating that that popped up in here and i am like i think that there's so much that could come from that so maybe you could expand just a moment on that yes i promise
099not to talk about it for the next three hours but so i don't know if you guys know my background prior to cps which feels like ages ago was actually with a customer care company so customer care crm you know preference that is a very exciting and spot for me and so very excited to bring some of those to cps thank you mr moroski this is excellent um i just want to call out a few things that i think are excellent and ask one question the first grade reading as miss amon knows that i don't have a question i just want to call it out it's awesome as you know in student achievement a couple years ago i got all high into the right about letting our kindergarten greeting specialists go and uh it's just
100awesome to see that that's happening because third grade is too late and often cases uh the black history black literature amazing the diversity office i guess that's a question are we planning on having that diversity office and the officer in the fall is that cool i thought that was part of the plan and it might have been said and if i missed it i apologize but for the public just to reiterate it then that will be ready to go in the fall i am excited to say we had many applicants for that position we are conducting interviews tomorrow oh wow very excited that's awesome thank you this is good this is great um the proactive storytelling and the focus piggy back off vice president messer's point of the crm just the focus on making sure
101all of our families feel comfortable and i like the way it was worded um especially around difficult topics i think that's great um it's not a glad to see you're great it's awesome oh no i'm no no question um uh i'm about my best behavior for now for now uh and then my one and she was like mary goes again uh i have this one one question um and not surprisingly around the healthy starts i uh so that is awesome that it's still happening i know it's been challenging are we talking 8 30 a.m we are talking at 8 a.m or later 8 a.m or later yes okay and board member morowsky and somebody like fact checked me on this but i believe the resolution policy had said 8 o'clock or after and not 8
10230. but i need someone to fact check me on that sarah shaking her head i believe that's right okay thank you okay um any other questions uh miss bolton and then mr lindy um i'm i'm very excited about this i think it's wonderful um i'd just like to add some uh messaging items i think we already are at that destination so we don't have to kind of imagine anymore we're really talking about a new cps i mean the destination piece was the strategic plan or what i think just to kind of jump start it just to be thinking about that i think again like we said when we first introduced the strategic plan we probably need to hear more words that talk about equity or reference to equity um and now that we have the
103new anti-racism policies too that messaging probably has to be part of it some specific things mr uh mr messer introduced a couple of years ago the green initiative from the city might not be a bad part of the growth and health if that gets reinstituted or rediscussed if that's a word um i love the uh customized pd and i would suggest again that part of that most customized pd is going to come from otez 2.0 and now the opez which truly is individualized based upon evaluation uh the health piece and i say this all the time i've really been impressed when other schools and this particularly happened at euler when we really go deep on vision testing it's it's it's three four five times the number of kids that show some vision uh deficit when
104we go deeper into the testing with kids i think the life skills course which we've all wanted i think mr messer also uh introduced a couple of weeks ago increasing the civics component throughout and and i think somebody else mentioned especially since we're doing so much uh let's say about remote and this new phase we're all in um cyber literacy because we really have a lot of illiteracy about this part of our communication um almost done for the family engagement parent organizations it would be great to see more reference of ptas which i know are part of our strategic plan and more referenced as uh the assistant superintendent mentioned lsdncs and clcs and the meridian plan actually has three quarters it has an east and a west but it also has that central corridor it's
105particularly important for our career tech emphasis because most of those exist in the central border and a super expansive vision by you all on cda and what that could be relieving as much of the pressure at school sites and a very very big and assistant superintendent won't be surprised to hear me say this two giant expansive approach to careertech across the across the district i mean all this is wonderful i'm just oh and to mr morosky's point some years ago on the health our our efforts in nutrition are second to none so if we're emphasizing some of our assets as well as some of our deficits i'm very impressed i'm very excited about all of this thank you thank you miss bolton uh mr lindy uh thanks president jones um what i wanted to do
106is just briefly share two specific things that i thought were great uh and then just ask one question um and on the on the the two specific things that were just really exciting i love that it started uh very first point um with increased learning for all students um i think that's exactly what i believe the priority should be it's great that it's in there and great that's listed first i thought that was just fantastic so thank you um and also that part of part of what is coming through is a ongoing commitment to looking at the experience of parents um as like one key measure of how successful we're being um i think those two things combined student learning parent experience uh for this board member feel like the most important things and so
107i was glad to see them not the only important things um but i think things would be at the top of my list uh and so i want to say thank you for that um just had one question about the growth section as i'm reading that i'm understanding that to be like our goal is to get back to where we were um but the goal is not to grow beyond where we were and i wanted to check if i was seeing that correctly i think our goal is to grow as much as possible because we are the educator of choice so i think it is thanks does that help that's helpful i i think um you know i think from for from my part my perspective on that is that if we're gonna aim to
108increase our market share um we also need to be able to show that the academic results we have are stronger than the alternatives i think in a lot of places we already show that i think we can show it everywhere um uh and so from from my perspective that's just one important part i will say that that is obviously um something that we're very concerned about as well um in addition as we've looked at over the years surveys and um questionnaires from parents who left cps to let's say go to charter schools their number one reason wasn't because of the academic offering their number one concern was how welcome they felt in our schools and so that's why we're putting a lot of emphasis on the parental experience and engagement okay and then finally to
109close out i just wanna i am i'm thoroughly excited i i think this is good and i applaud the board also because this was the work that we did that uh led to this very comprehensive look at what new cps will be um i especially wanted to comment around um the fact that student voice does work um and two of the things clearly that i know noted that were included in this plan had to do with the focus on life skills and curriculum and we've heard a lot of our students talk about you know we want something that applies to me you know i want to learn more about myself you know i don't want to learn all this old stuff that you know we grew up on you know but um that and the
110practical life skills that um are so important these days so i'm very very excited about um knowing that that's in there and uh well everything so feel real good about it and if we're not careful we're gonna have about three or four more pages so we're going to cut this off in a minute go ahead mr messer the only thing and think miss bolton caught a couple of the ones and yeah she was watching that so um because i do think the green initiative fits with all the great things that are happening with the zoo partnerships and all the discussion of the outdoor learning there's a whole i think story there um and uh the one thing though that i think hasn't necessarily been mentioned but i i just really my heart of hearts that
111uh if we know that the jobs coming to this region are in health care um the idea of a a counterpart school to scpa school for the life sciences where you know we are preparing for jobs being certificated actually talk to the head of our program ms jones at woodward right with the body and i see what she's doing there like there's every specialty and everything else and then preparing students going nursing and the youth program that i worked with in over the rhine um i'll never forget the kid that said you know i'd love to be a doctor but are there black doctors and you know i think there it like there is an opportunity here for um you know as we hear the jobs outlook that's where the jobs are going and i'd
112love to see us just as we had an scpa kid in the movie we watched in our home on sunday night i'd love to have an scpa kid i know i do watch it um i'd love to have an scpa i mean a school for the life sciences kid um solved the cancer that my dad was diagnosed so i think um you know that is such an important part it's part of the career that i'm in but it is a part of our future and a huge part of this region and our commerce i'd love to see us invest there superintendent yes so if i could in summary capture what i think i heard so that we can make sure that that is infused into the plan that we can bring it back to you
113one last time next week at a shortened version so that in april we're able to launch this as the new direction of focus for cps so the last one um science or school for life sciences to really capitalize on health care equity infused throughout our plan more moving forward a focus on green and sustainability and making sure that we incorporate the zoo into that work customized training especially as it relates to otez and opez a real focus on health in our schools and particularly around nutrition and vision and dental care civics for our students in terms of course offerings cyber literacy more emphasis on our ptsos or ptas as well as lsdmcs and um we do have not only the east west meridian but we already have we just didn't say it um the central
114corridor so i think that those are the items that i captured that were different and new that we want to make sure that we infused into this plan okay thank you thank you okay um if we're ready to move on okay all righty so uh we're about to uh do the hearing of the public um but before we move on to um hearing of the public as our next agenda next as our next agenda item i want to address very briefly the article in the cincinnati inquirer today regarding board member communications um and if there are other board members who want to offer any response afterwards i'll be glad to recognize you um from my perspective i want to say that this board is very committed to transparency and conducting the board's business in the
115public in public meetings um those who have been following board meetings over the past 12 months have been able to watch live as the board debated and discussed plans for remote or in-person learning models as well as many other important board decisions business decisions one of the positive impact of the clove at 19 crisis has really been the dramatic increase in public participation in our board of education meeting it has always been our our intent to be as inclusive um in terms of the numbers of people allowing people to speak even though you know our bylaws might have stated something different we really wanted to make sure every voice got heard um never before have we had as many students parents employees and community members watching and participating in board of education meetings with respect
116to the article i think we should welcome the scrutiny of how the board is conducting its business and i think my board colleagues would agree with that this year has been a blur of new information and updates and it seems like the board has been presented with new critical decision every meeting i truly believe our decisions were made in public but this can also be an opportunity for us to be even more vigilant in the future so i thank you and i i felt a need to make this statement and want to offer other board members opportunity to respond as well ms bates thank you thank you uh president jones um i mean this has been on my mind all day as i'm sure all of us you know that uh this uh article had
117uh had been written and uh printed and so i called president jones and let her know that i wanted to make some comments uh this evening and i was you know very very glad to find out that she was planning on making comments too so um i support president jones comments and i want to make some a few comments of my own just just because i can and because i feel very strongly about this but uh you know there as we all know there are allegations in today's enquire of our board's uh violation of the ohio open meetings law and you know i'm not a lawyer so i'm not here to dispute that but you know i'm here to say that i'm not perfect and we all make mistakes and if i made mistakes uh
118please know they weren't intentional around this and i apologize and pledge to continue my role as your self-appointed watchdog of the board to advocate for ongoing compliance and to continue to have open and transparent board discussions uh with you all thank you any other comments desire okay all right so we'll move on um we are now at the item on our agenda for hearing the public consistent with the state's direction to minimize public gatherings we are we are convening this video conference call to include opportunity for public comment each speaker will limit their time to one minute 30 seconds and will direct all comments to the presiding officer consistent with the board's bylaws the board has the ability to limit the hearing of the public on any single issue and will exercise the right to
119do so if needed we respectfully asked employees of the district to direct all questions concerns and comments regarding district return to in-person learning to your building representative your building leadership and the district safety hotline once once a request to speak has been granted you will be invited to enter please click on the camera icon to go interactive provide your name your affiliation to the district your school community your topic and your contact information if you want a direct response to any questions you might have this request is consistent with board protocol and we appreciate your compliance we reserve the right to not permit you to speak if you do not comply again each speaker will have one and a half minutes to speak and may only speak once when the timer goes off your time
120is up please refrain from discussing any personnel items after speaking you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all those listening in thank you are we ready okay oh sorry your voice cut out for a sec hi my name is yousef meniere i'm a senior at walnut hills high school and i'm the president of young activist coalition first thing i want to talk about is the cpd out of cps and specifically speak up speak out committee's proposals for the most part we agree with a lot of what they're advocating for however we think that their uh desire to advocate for a better relationship with cpd is unfounded the first thing is and is not proven to be
121effective at reducing the racist violence that police cause in schools the first thing i want to talk about in relation to police is my own personal experience because members of the speak app speak out committee said that they had never even interacted with an sro i have interacted with an sro and in fact uh as of september of 2019 uh during and after a protest while i was still on school campus i was threatened with an arrest by an sro i was again threatened with the rest by an sro on school campuses next thing i want to talk about is how there are two arrests every day on average every academic year done by an sro now i want to talk about why we made our own survey in relation to school reopenings first it's
122because the district displayed clear clear bias that wouldn't be allowed in any single one of my class i want to talk about how the one that we made was racially representative of juan students and representative by grade level now i want to talk about how 65 percent of walnut students said that if they had to choose between cps's blended model and the current remote learning option they would pick remote 65 would pick remote learning that is a majority of students who said that they would prefer remote learning over in person and yet your your survey magically had other results speaker is sheena potter jaffee followed by katie moore followed by kendra phelps hi um thank you to the entire board of education team for the love and care you've given to our families over this
123most trying year and the wonderful work you've presented here this afternoon my name is shayna jaffe i'm a parent of an eighth grader and a rising seventh grader at walnut hills high school i'm humbly asking you to please help our children get back to in-person learning as a demonstration this quarter that that is possible the obstacles are real with science and the experience of other schools is real the time has passed for listening to parent opinions and apparent feelings it's time for our school board to lead it's time for you to provide in-person learning the majority of the students who can and for those who cannot to find truly accommodating real-time options the american academy of pediatrics has guidelines for adolescent specific suggestions if six feet of distance is non-negotiable let's create physical spaces to
124meet those requirements sadly coveted is here to stay sadly our children already face unimaginable risks security guards and metal detectors have become the only way that students can enter buildings to learn and we've adapted to those risks education is not only about academic growth but learning to navigate the world and develop concrete skills in confidence in social settings let's adopt some of the solutions that were presented today and let's get our children back in the classroom thank you so much for your time and your dedication our next speaker is katie moore followed by kendra phelps followed by kristen copeland go ahead ms moore and to put on my camera however i have a flip phone please don't laugh at me it's it's not working i don't know how to get it work is that okay
125i'll just go ahead so i think that we got that we all should definitely we pay attention to the information that the doctor was not able to provide today for the many variants and the research that he couldn't find that he couldn't do and there are a lot of parents who speak about their children's emotional and mental health well i'm aware that you guys are providing these services so they can definitely get their kids the help that they need the school is not for parents who don't want to pay attention to their kids and be parents let's be clear about that enough is enough of the i don't want to care about my kids i don't want to deal with the problem so i'm going to go ahead and send them to school i'm going
126to pressure the board and what pressure look what happened with melanie bates she was pressured into the horrible things that she said bowers it's over over this is the most that you spoke this year because you know that you're on the line but you can get out of the line eve i love the shirt ta and the green of everyone else thank you bye-bye our next speaker is kendra phelps followed by kristen copeland followed by ashley mccartney go ahead ms phelps hello i want to expose the fact that the distance learning option in the spring is not an adequate choice students completing activities independently with no instruction from a teacher is not student centered and it's not sound in addition who is going to complete who's going to prepare the activities for the remote learners
127when teachers are preparing lessons for students in person five days a week which are vastly different as a parent i found your survey manipulative you're asking me about how many days i want my child to be in person when the real issue is do i want my child in an environment with six feet social distancing that the cdc recommends or do i want my child in a situation where they're defined as a close contact with the four peers around them um we had 113 students since february 1st uh testing positive for covic and we only test students who are symptomatic if that if we were in a situation with less than six feet social distancing that would be 565 students who now have to quarantine because we're not following the cdc guidelines i am not
128okay with it we do not know the long-term effects of this disease on people including children please respect the science follow the guidelines of the cdc with six feet social distancing for all students thank you speaker is kristin copeland followed by ashley mccartney followed by perry uh good afternoon uh president jones and members of the board thank you for preserving the hearing of the public uh thank you i'm gonna keep my comments brief thank you for offering choice encourage you to make sure that the choice that you're offering is equitable both for the remote and the in-school options for the in-school options i i have a few questions particularly around meals and how social distancing of six feet will be uh allowed during meals uh how the variants that are 50 more contagious will be
129accounted for and how transportation on crowded buses will be um brought in particularly for walnut hills going back this will be the first time these bus routes have run this year then secondly thank you for bringing back school start times i'm delighted to hear that uh the new plan is going to include healthy start times many of our children have enjoyed the opportunity to roll out of bed and get to school at 8. i will remind you that the american academy of pediatrics actually says healthy school start times are 8 30 and that the resolution passed by the board said that it would be 8 30 but for reasons for some schools for logistics or transportation it could be as early as eight but thank you very much for the hearing of the public and
130thank you for listening to parents and students as always thank you for our next speaker is ashley mccartney followed by harry schiapley followed by bryce mccartney good evening everyone i'm a teacher not a whiner and not making 70k like someone mentioned i do during their time in a saint bernard pub from awl are we going to talk about the 113 student cases in cps since february 1st are we going to talk about these cases being found without testing for no symptoms imagine how many more are present in schools that aren't being tested for because of asymptomatic kids i informed my families that you were floating five days i passed along the survey to my families last tuesday and then i realized i have a number of families who don't know english or don't know much
131and so when they saw the survey they likely closed it and didn't reopen it not even when you added four languages two days later the fact that it wasn't made for families who don't have english as their first language tells me that you didn't have them in mind when creating it equity where how is it fair for parents to be able to talk on return to school but employees can't i thought you welcomed input from your families and employees sorry sadly cove is here to stay sadly your surveys are representative of your families and staff and sadly dollar signs usually end up on your bottom line thank you thank you the next speaker is perry shiaway followed by bryce hi everybody perry tribely here i have been a long time viewer but this is my
132first time speaking publicly so hopefully you can hear me i'm not really sure i have two children at walmart here you can you click on your camera please my camera should be on okay go ahead now okay it's gone so i'm not really sure um however i have two kids at walnut hills one in sixth grade who will hopefully be going to walnut hills next year um and you know i'm not gonna talk at you guys i we really appreciate everything that you guys have been doing and know you're in a tough position but as a parent i'm in a tough position too because i want to support you as best i can i've really appreciated the education that my kids have gotten to this point unfortunately um you know you have the statistics and
133things that you need but i as a parent feel like my kids need to be in school five days a week my oldest is a senior she's very driven she can take care of herself she has a good scholarship she has given up on school um and being part of walnut hills for this year that's sad to me but the bigger issue is my freshman doesn't care anymore she's been a very good student she is struggling she is not turning in work you can maybe say that that is a parent problem but um you know our family i have to work as well i do my best to keep on top of things but if any of you have teenagers or have had to deal with teenagers uh you probably know i can't hold it
134right 20 40. thank you thank you thank you followed by children hello rice my name is pricey pong and i'm a student at walnut hills high school um i along with many others including teach teachers other students and people have been and we're very pleased with the board's decision and deciding to keep us remote and to send out a survey to get an idea of the public's opinion and comfortability with returning us in per to in-person schooling and i know that myself along with many others have encouraged people to use their voices to let you guys know how we feel pda is not an adequate option for the students especially at walnut for being honest and i encourage you to focus on our fall semester when it comes to returning to school um seeing as
135there's only about a quarter left in school and it's unless it brings a necessary risk to bring us back into school not only to us but to our families i want to let you know that um when you listen to your constituents it can give you great insight into the decisions that you should make especially ones that can be as fatal as the when it comes to bringing us in school throughout a pandemic your job is to make decisions based off that you feel are adequate for the safety of your constituents that you represent and i do truly honest honestly encourage for you to listen to the cdc as the policies are updating and changing in great ways they're even saying once fully vaccinated people can be in rooms together with no masks or social
136distancing and be safe this is this is a huge leap forward but we must have patience seeing as only 17 of hamilton county is vaccinated and your job comes with great power and to shape the district in great ways and i encourage you all to use that power to form cps in a way that you can be proud of whether that's with covet or other issues that you're being addressed thank you speaker is steve simon followed by chill to vargas adams followed by mr simon common and i bet you'll continue to um but now you don't have to wonder what does walnut think what does cps think could you please click the camera please i just did okay there you go you now have the you have the data from a very fine survey a
137clear majority district-wide and including at walnut want their kids back five days instruction um i read correctly close to a third preferred remote and even 26 percent don't even want to go back five days in the fall i think what you've learned through this process now that you have this data in your hands is that the group who wanted to stay remote punched above their weight at these meetings and i understand if you are scared of what's going to happen to your child to their health and safety maybe that's what drives you even though scientific american had a great article this week showing that for a certain range of kids your chance of getting covered versus your chance of buying a transportation accident a car in the car was 15 times higher so sending your
138kid to school is far far riskier than anything that's going to happen with covet in the classroom but at this point you have to ask yourself as a board why not tonight send these kids back five days the most vulnerable parts of the population are getting vaccinated even young 52 year old 52 year olds like myself are scheduled to get a vaccination shot and of course the staff is fully vaccinated it's time to get these kids back in school thank you followed by perish followed by holly miller go ahead ms vargas hello my name is gilda vargas-adams i am a pediatrician and a walnut hills parent first of all i want to congratulate the district on their careful attention to the data on community spread of sarsko v2 the community should celebrate the conditions are
139improving if daily cases continue to drop dps will be clearly in the cdc's yellow range and most students can safely return to schools five days a week with recommended mitigation at the same time i want to encourage the board to think carefully about decisions for walnut hills high school while that is different than other schools for better or for worse with new variants gaining a toe hold in ohio mitigation strategies including physical distancing are likely to grow ever more important please ensure that science and safety are not overridden by the fervent desire to have things like they used to be should the decision be made to return students to crowded walnut classrooms in defiance of cbc guidance or not do not sacrifice the students who should not return while some students may have no close
140contacts who are high risk and unvaccinated many do not have this privilege ensure that those students who cannot return to in-person education can be in the same courses with the same rigor the same instructional time and with faculty who are equally talented and engaged so far students have had equitable access to the same education do not punish any group of students now demonstrate to them that you can be fair and just and appeal to sight and guide what you do and keep your promise to put the students first thank you thank you thank you our next speaker is danita parish followed by holly miller followed by alex goodman my name is and i am a parent of students at walnut hills high school i was very impressed and heartened to hear the plans um that
141the district has for the anti-racism curriculum curriculum i commend the board's commitment to those initiatives and i have a sense of hope that the board is really interested in and working towards addressing systemic racism and education i'm concerned that you can't do that without looking at the issue of police in our schools the criminalization of our children especially disproportionately and inequitably black and brown children i asked the that the district look into that issue really look at the evidence as to what benefits um and what cost to students having police in the school's causes and really look at that in terms of what's best for students not what has been done in the past and what is most comfortable i also answered the district look in terms of equity in terms of the um options
142for remote learning black students across the country who in part because of health inequities are at higher risk of covet have less equitable and disproportionate access to vaccines our next speaker is holly miller followed by alison goodman go ahead hi i'm holly miller and i have a student that attends data story i'm also a teacher at roseland condon so i wanted to first state that i took a training yesterday that was fabulous it was on secondary trauma and stress and i advise every group participate in that as well return healthcare plan and plan of action for dealing with stress and trauma which we're all experiencing so i would only encourage you guys to take at the last meeting i was cut off and was transportation for my son his driver refused to wear a mask
143um he's not had a mask on the entire time my son's been back in person two days a week um i they're not district employees but i strongly encourage the board to pull tapes and monitor transportation and what's happening on buses i know feature had to directly address many drivers and aids on buses for not masking and masking appropriately so i encourage you to look into that students are way more vulnerable on the buses than anywhere else and um please look into that i would greatly appreciate it thank you jones can i ask a quick question miss miller before you leave which school does your child attend which school dave cory and he's picked up on north bend from college hill okay we are requiring our bus drivers to wear masks and so we need
144that information to be able to follow up tonight before the bus arrives tomorrow so you say data yeah dater montessori and where's the pickup one more time uh north bend at the college hill library got it all right okay thank you that i apologize for that thank you thank you thank you name's ali good speaker is sylvia followed by andrea there she is ms goodman are you able to try one more time here i apologize confusion sorry it should be coming to the video there now yes okay hi thank you to um board president and all the members of the board who are willing to listen to the public i want to speak very quickly i'm a parent of a seventh grader at a cpa in her first year there and a third grader at
145pleasant ridge montessori and um i appreciate all of your willingness to listen to public comment um and i appreciate you addressing the article in the newspaper as well i would just like to say on a positive note a kudos to the athletic department most specifically brent langhorne who helped elementary athletics happened this winter successfully at prm i'm the co-president of the boosters there and we had a very small season but we also had a very successful season so josh harden does a great job and um brent langhorne as i mentioned as well and so thank you and kudos to them they've worked really hard to make that possible for a lot of students in cps i appreciate your hard work to um make big decisions that makes you love your hard work thank you good
146man our next speaker is sylvia followed by andrea followed by kimberly that's sylvia yes you can you hear me now hello okay great um i i'm sylvia nelson i'm a parent at walnut hills high school and um i have three kids there and um we we just want our kids in the classroom five days a week um i understand that um the board has had a lot of work ahead of it and um has done a lot to to try to make choices and appreciate the opportunity to have choices as the superintendent presented today i noticed that there was a phased approach for walnut hills would like them to be in as quickly as possible some kids can have the maximum time in the classroom um thank you for advancing the technology so that families
147have choices thank you thank you our next speaker is andrea wilkerson go ahead mr wilkerson hi good evening my name is andrea wilkerson i'm a parent of a ninth grader at walnut hills as well as a seventh grader at clock montessori um as many families have experienced a range of emotions through the last 12 months highs and lows frustrations a lot of grace and agility and i think that we're at a point now where we have to continue to push forward and put our kids first put our students first and it's time to bring choice to the forefront for families as a researcher i was delighted to see all the data that was presented today from a health standpoint it's encouraging to see how the county is turning around how the city is turning around
148and improving it was also important to see the survey data across the cross section of all the cohorts students parents um faculty and staff and as well as the amazing technology upgrades that are happening and are coming all this leads to the decision for choice for families the data is very definitive and clear on options for choice for families i encourage you to strongly consider getting our kids back into the classroom to maximize their time for the remaining of this year as soon as the schedule will allow beginning this month please put choice force first for families thank you thank you our next speaker is kimberly lundgren go ahead kimberly hi um i'm grateful for you prioritizing us getting back into the classroom so that we don't continue to fall behind our counterparts that are
149even just our neighbors um as well i did not read the cincinnati inquirer article and was not aware of it but my comment was that it is remarkably difficult to be in touch with individual members of the school board your emails are not provided there's only one general email to send any comments to i have served on a school board in a different district and we were able to have conversations with members of the community and i found those as a member of the school board extremely valuable in you know crafting policies and making priorities i just one other comment comes from the live stream and and in class options together for the younger years it might be wise to try and consider grouping those live stream students together as it would be very difficult
150in those elementary years to try and have a teacher paying attention to both the live stream and in class and successfully do that i think both of those groupings are slightly disserviced as i have tried to teach in those circumstances thank you very much i appreciate you listening here is stacy smith followed by cfc president julie go ahead and snap good afternoon i apologize if my camera is not working it tends to not do that i am one of the mental health partners with cincinnati public schools and i wanted to ask if the board would be able to collect data on resuming recess for students especially if they are returning to a five-day model this has been an incredibly stressful year for them and outdoor play is so important as a coping skill for them
151so i wanted to look for data on the safety of recess or to get an idea of when recess will be allowed and encouraged and planned into their school day thank you thank you our last speaker is cft president julie go ahead miss sellers good evening um i i have several things that i would like to address this evening one of them is about the enquire article that was out today um i think that with that article it's something that everybody should be grappling with of transparency is a must to be successful collaboration is key and if there was greater collaboration throughout the past year i believe that it would have been less contentious throughout this entire school year as a board and district there have been many issues that have contributed to broken trust
152and the enquirer article proved that all committee meetings have not had a hearing of the public so i believe that it is imperative that these meetings be held in person like you are expecting of teachers um that i think that the ilc could accommodate these meetings and that we need to get back to where we are having in-person meetings um especially among adults because i believe everybody here has had their vaccinations as adults um there is um for the career i'm very happy that the cases for employees have dropped to zero for the last two weeks and that the community spread is beginning to drop what our concerns are and confusions remain are is what criteria will be used to determine if schools can remain open due to future community spread i am still i
153have asked and asked and asked what are we looking at to determine if we are going to be open or closed as of today we are still bordering on the red but we are trending downward there have been four out of the last seven days where there have been ups little up spikes and so but we don't know what will happen within the community with the variance and spread and what may happen with spring break our current spread is nearly identical to the numbers of last summer and there are concerns that spring break travel could increase the spread similar to the spread that we saw over the holidays will the district be following the cbc cdc guidelines or are they going to have their own guidelines for what is going to happen um we need
154also need guidelines for quarantining of students i know a couple of people have brought that up um how will students quarantines happen and how are they going to be monitored because a lot of people are feeling like that tracing and tracking isn't happening but if kids are less than six feet are they will every child within boundaries of that um have to quarantine are you saying that we will not have six feet of social distancing is that really what we are saying and um and how is this going to look for um our students and then um there's still many concerns about lunch and how are students supposed to take their masks off and eat lunch in classrooms or where are they going to have lunch we cannot say we're going to eat lunch outside
155every day because that is not a possibility um so how and also teachers would like to know how are all the classrooms going to be reset because half of their furniture has been removed and stored um there are filters that are hepa and carbon filters and they're called active pure technology maybe every classroom that has less than six feet of social distancing or any classroom where there is um students who are eating or possibly kids can go back into the lunchroom and you can put those filters in place so that the students can then um begin going back to having lunch together um the phase in um for walnut parents um there were concerns about the survey that you did they do um i do want to bring up that parent survey there was a
156large group of parents and students who felt that the parent association ignored their recruit their requests and had and they did not have any input into what that survey was going to look like it is a terrible shame that a large group of families felt disenfranchised and felt that they had no option but to reach out to parents to get authentic student input the survey results have some very beneficial findings that you should look at and consider those are still valid and reliable responses cft did help to provide cover and technical support because the parents concerns were to remain confidential in order to protect their own children from retaliation and bullying this survey has a good cross-section of responses and should not be ignored especially in your desire to become more transparent please take these
157options into consideration because i really do think that the survey that you had was designed to get the results that you want and that is to open schools five days and i am really disappointed that um through all of that time when when you were making all the comments about cft and teachers and me specifically that every single person on the board has my phone number and none of you had the courtesy to pick up the phone and give me a call about any of those um issues that you were having so that's all i have to say this evening but we need to get back on to the same page and start working together so that we can move our district forward and we can do so in a way that is productive and
158not counterproductive thank you okay um i believe that we don't have any more speakers right okay i believe superintendent you just wanted to make a brief comment at the end of this yes so um thank you for everyone who um spoke and shared their views at the hearing of the public there are some items that we will be following up on to assure not only the board but the public that we will have and do have a resolution in place i think that there are some very valid um um questioning about meals and how we will handle that and so we will make sure that we are able to get that information out um to you next week at our next week's board meeting so that people understand that's a very valid understanding in terms
159of a question as well as transportation so we will be able to provide that information as it relates to transportation next week i'm looking for sarah to be able to to verify sarah trump oliver to verify in terms of the reset of furniture if the decision is made to move forward in terms of more days after spring break we already have a plan in terms of how to move the furniture back um before that um before students return during spring break in addition we will look into [Music] filters in terms of air quality just to make sure that we have the absolute best for our students and also for our staff members one of our parents mentioned i think was miss london mentioned live streaming in terms of putting our kids in groups of kids
160who want to do the streaming concurrent instruction at the same time and so that is what we were talking about in terms of putting a priority to the classrooms that receive the capability to do concurrent instruction in the fall first so when i mentioned earlier the optioning we were we are going to find out from parents elementary parents and high school parents what is your optioning for next year as it relates to in-person or distance learning that will help us better be able to build the schedules so that we can put the kids together who want that option to be able to um have a capacity of the the system to be able to handle it until we are completely ready for concurrent learning next or the second semester so we've thought of that but
161thank you for the ideas and um just know that we have thought through many of these things and we'll be able to give the board an update at our next board meeting thank you thank you superintendent um this is not really a question and answer but real short or what are you looking for thanks christian i can't tell if it's a now or later for you um there just were some questions about the validity of the walnut survey versus the second one that you brought up that wasn't sanctioned by cps at some point i wanted to be able to ask well we have i don't know that's krista or whoever about um why we feel like there is or isn't bias in the survey that we administered for walnut okay if that's later that's fine
162well we're getting ready to go into full discussion about this so it go ahead we'll move into um our discussion around the health and safety plan and that's part of that so if you want to go ahead and leave with that question as well who are you you're asking the super i think it's whoever would be best positioned for it um we got both sets of results i think hearing about why we like like is the wrong verb but why we feel that one is valid versus another i think could be helpful or are they both valid okay so when you say both i um i think that you're talking about the survey that was district provided that came out of christus shop and the survey that was created by some group outside of cps
163is that what you're talking about and i think julie emailed it to us before the board meeting started it was a separate set of results yeah and i'm i'm into leading from data so i wanted to hear about how we trade off the pros and cons of the two sets of information yes um so and i don't have complete understanding of the survey that was not administered by the district but i will say that it did not go through the formal process that is a part of our procedures it is my understanding that the survey was given on behalf of students and behalf of parents but i'm concerned i don't know about that because it's my understanding that if you call the number there's a number on an email that you can call her in
164a text message that you would call if you have questions about the survey that the person who picks up on the other end of the phone says that you've called the cft office so i'm not familiar i'm not sure about um cft's representation of parents and students in the development of a survey number one i am not saying anything negative i'm just confused about that my second um [Music] questioning is about asking for very specific student information that would be then sent electronically and so i believe there are some health related questions as well as student id related questions and so these are things that we would not include in a district supported sponsored survey and that's all i'll say about it chris do you have anything to add to that now i think that
165not in terms of the non-official survey i think in terms of the official survey we followed a pretty robust process um we did engage the parent organization as well as the principal students right for the student one so i think we feel really good i know i've i don't write surveys as a profession but certainly manage that process and i felt very good that these were not leading questions right gave all the options pretty clear on what they included so i feel really good about our survey and i think that's where i would leave it that helps i'm not missing okay i think we're okay i don't think we just know enough about this survey we weren't made aware that the survey was coming out prior to it coming out okay uh we're focusing a
166lot of energies on the survey that's not ours i i think if just wanting some clarifying questions or whatever that's fine but let's not get into a full i haven't even seen it i guess it's out but i haven't seen it so real quick mr messer yeah i think my my challenge with it is we did get lots of people who were sending notes to all the board and you know i didn't know how to answer that but i did have a conversation with two different people one said oh well this was sent the lstmc did it and they didn't circle with anybody and they sent it out as a couple of them and then i heard it was sent by another group and that we got it that is not how this happened but
167you know i think in this craziness of this debate you know if somebody doesn't like something i feel like we've been given permission to just make something up so that then discredits what the other is so i just wanted to make sure that like these are some of the rumors that i heard that is why people then felt like they needed to go do a survey we got to be crystal clear like this followed a process from it was a district sanctioned survey okay thank you miss powers yes krista can you clarify for me because i've heard you say that we had a student survey did we have a student survey too for walnut yes okay all right did that end this data because i didn't really see this i want to say it was
168slide 12 something it's it's in the middle so it went through the parent data and then for walnut or for the district and then after that walnut specific and why why walnut students had a survey and then staff responses in the powerpoint okay it's slide 14. if you can go to fly what where okay thank you super is this in my information that was sent to me crystal because i didn't we it was you i would suggest that you send this powerpoint to if people are missing maybe it's in there and it is it's an email from before the meeting today but it wasn't in the this form that was okay because i thought i keep hearing if i said that i must have missed it because it was not it needed information it needed
169a little bit extra tlc in terms of vetting the accuracy of the answers okay so those came in later so this was not in this information so i didn't visit thank you yes okay thank you so and as we we're in to uh having a discussion about the health and safety update which is really kind of a decision point for us and we want to open the floor for discussion um i think that it's important for board members i mean we want to have a as robust of the discussion that we need i think the superintendent and and the leadership team uh have been very clear about what the options are um it would be great if we could reach consensus around the plan um without having to formalize motions and things like that it
170would be great if we could reach consensus um so having said that uh i'll open the floor up for discussion from board members your if you have um other questions comments or you just want to state your official opinion on that um we'll move forward miss bolton and mr morrowski yeah just a point of clarification regarding what i asked before and the superintendent said that it isn't just down to two options although those might be the preference or the cho is because i asked if blended was off and i asked if one four was off and were we down to just five days or fully remote and and i was i guess i might have been referring to the survey and you reassured me that the survey addressed all of those and i didn't know
171if all four of those options or which ones of those options might still be for discussion so i'm looking to krista can you go back to the health and safety slide slide number 13 to ensure that the way i read this slide is the my correct understanding it says that blended learning was given as an option four days or five days of in-person instruction and five days of distance learning were all given as options is that correct that is correct those all were included in the survey as discrete options okay and that's that's what i'm reading so um to uh if is it time for us to state our view yes if that would be your preference now i am i am thrilled that we might be close to sending more students back for a
172longer period of time of in-person instruction i'm more excited about the emphasis that the superintendent's been placing on choice for me the choice of five days or eulogy is is not necessarily an authentic choice as much as i've supported schoology wanted to fund it from the get-go there's not that interconnection um with the teacher on schoology it's a it's a platform of assignments and whatever else i guess we might do so i my preference is going to be still the monday virtual the week we have now which is monday virtual but four days instead of a and b students all coming back on those four days so one of the reasons is not just the teacher experience and the student experience but i think we would just be offending another a different group we've been
173offending the in-person people for a long time i'm just trying to reach a to your point madam president a consensus that i think the one and four allows us to bring children back it also will not force some kids that may not want to come back it won't force them to come back if they have at least a better alternative a more authentic alternative a virtual monday and four in in-person days and i think that's that's sort of where i am on that it's i'm still concerned about the six feet and i don't necessarily want to bring everyone back when we might be able to how shall i say it phase the kids coming back and keep it more at a greater distance plus i will tell you in my neighborhood a lot of our
174kids have jobs on mondays now um and i know that that shouldn't enter into anybody's thinking but i would prefer the one in four and i am thrilled with what the administration has been able to lead us through throughout this regardless of whatever we decide but my preference is one and four we'll keep more people engaged okay thank you mr marowski i have a few questions i'm prepared i think to give you know as direct an opinion as miss bolton did regarding what you know what i think should happen next i do have a few questions that i didn't want to ask the first time we're in the board matters now right where we're okay question number one i asked this um when i used to sit over there uh i hope you aren't as
175cold as i was but uh what is if we send kids back five days a week four days a week what is our criteria to close i haven't seen that do we have it do we have it are you asked i'm asking this administration or anybody who might know the answer do we have a criteria to close so what we propose to the board as a criteria and um respectfully i didn't think it was the board wanted the administration to make that decision um so what we proposed in december and i'm going back to my memory unfortunately i don't have that powerpoint um was a return with um 40 per 100 000 as a first phase in group and remember we phased in pre-k through third grade first of specialized classrooms and then if we
176were able to go down to 30 per 100 000 to fade in more students um and so that's what we presented to the board as an option in december there is there another component to that that i'm that i can't that i'm missing on that so that's what we proposed to the board back in december um and but i don't know that a decision was made about the criteria okay okay i appreciate that that's my first question um and i remember that and as i i've noted before and we we not you all you all have done amazing work you all be in the administration we have elected most of us elected to ignore that and just send kids back which is why i still have concerns we ignored that criteria and we don't have
177any current criteria in case we need it hopefully we won't need it um second question kids with ieps who have to stay home cancer etc they'll still have the access to the ot speech intervention specialists etc yeah if we send kids back go great thank you assistant superintendent monty um and then the walnut phased approach is that the same one that was before where it's like seventh and eighth or is it is it different because it was alluded to i just wondered if it was different or the same before uh so we've talked about a couple of different things but we didn't think it was a good i we don't think it's a good idea that if the decision is to bring kids back that you bring all those kids back at once because they
178haven't practiced the procedures and so um our thought is to bring back uh seventh through ninth grade the first week so that would be the march 31st and then to bring back 10th through 12th grade the following week so giving the staff just the opportunity to work with uh three great levels at a time great awesome um and then this is my last one i believe if we elect to send the students back we discussed with the schoology so i'm with miss bolton as everybody knows last week i used the the phrase spectre of choice where you know was saying you can go back to in person or you can do the schoology or the cd isn't really a choice a specter of a choice it's not an authentic choice that being said enough being
179put aside for the moment who would be prepping lessons for these kids who are staying home anybody or is it just worksheets is anybody prepping the lesson since the teachers are going to be prepping four or five days in person ostensibly so while the deputy superintendent comes down so the teachers are still preparing preparing for the same number of students as they have all year okay great the curriculum department has prepared lessons in reading math science and social studies pre-k through 12. the other areas uh we have enrichment-like um lessons and activities on our remote website all right great thank you so much deputy um so if we're giving opinions i mean my opinion um is i'm so excited like i said before about the idea that we've got to have the ability in the
180fall to stream the classes and um my opinion remains the same that we stay virtual for the rest of the school year until we can offer people authentic choice in the fall thank you i guess virtual i'm never really been a fan of the hybrid as everybody knows so but i guess status quo um even though i would prefer virtual over hybrid again everybody knows but i do think waiting till the fall is the best and we can offer a better choice okay all right any miss powers do you want yes i um i have um great concerns about not having a six foot distancing and and that's why i was asking about the number of students who were involved in the 21 appearance that gave me a better idea of the percentage of kids
181that that students that that would include with going back for a five day which what may allow for a six foot distance i'm not comfortable with anything less than six foot distancing for our district-wide students regarding wanted heels i think that needs i need a little bit more data on the number of people who are going to feel comfortable sending their kids back i see the 40 were actually surveyed but that's not actually the number of people who have agreed to send them back in addition to uh since we do have the streaming option that jeremy gave us that gave us a little more insight of maybe having that um concurrent instruction so i felt comfortable with that the bus and the in the um lunch time and i think last time um dr amin
182i believe expressed that you still need six foot decision for eating so i'm glad that you're going to look into that about how that would be done not sure if that would have been able to happen in the cafeteria it might just be more much scheduled breaks or something not real sure but that is a must and if that is a must for eating that is where i am with with being in the classroom so mines would probably be to stay remote for the um hybrid remote so status quo what we do now okay mr master do you want to go next yeah i'm happy to go next um you know i think that um it's been great to get the data the good news is um there is there's not like an alignment out
183there so um you know i i think uh the way i look at it is there is a majority who want their kids back in five days um schoology i don't believe is the only option because we do have a lot of schools that are streaming today so i don't think that was necessarily brought up but there are a lot of people that are happy with that and some people that they weren't interested in and some other schools um but you know my opinion and i appreciate board member bates um comments are on the four day mine is you know we're not gonna make anybody happy at the four day because you got the group that doesn't want to go back and then you got all the people that want to go back and clearly
184said they want five days so um you know i believe that um we have to let families decide what's best for them i can't decide what's right um i think we've got a lot of people who have very serious concerns and that's okay what i don't want is somebody making a decision on what my husband and i decide on what's right for our kids or what other people believe what's right for their kids i believe that we have to allow families to make the decision on what's best for them i was an advocate and i want to celebrate that today i believe is march 10th and that is the day that our teachers vaccinations have now made them effective right i believe it was the date of march 10th i was an advocate of making
185sure that that happened um that being said i think it's now it's up to to families and i don't think it's right for me to tell somebody that you can or or you have to come back or you can and i love that we are evolving to a world where we're going to have even more options uh you know but the people and i think the data has said there's a whole lot of people that for some reason or another want their kids back in five days and it reflects frankly what i'm seeing in the community um and uh i i fully support going uh five days thank you okay miss uh fate yes um i i yeah a lot has been said that that i would support uh already but i i do agree
186that not offering five days is giving no choice to parents when they're you know according to our survey uh there is a preference for five days and i believe we need to respect that now on the other side the students who are being moved to the schoology platform uh somehow there has to be some teacher contact um in some way whether there's you know office hours or the ability to communicate via chat or something so that uh those students who get uh the attention that that they need i think that that's important but i i do believe we need to give an option of five days because that's you know what what many people prefer uh and again as mr messer said who are we to tell parents uh you know what's best for their
187children i go back to the you know no risk low risk and if we can keep a three to six foot spacing with all the other factors you know this the staff vaccinations uh uh the masking the you know increased uh uh all of that also as far as lunch i mean not that i'm i know cincinnati weather so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be too cocky about this but you know for fourth quarter uh children can eat out i go past saint ursula and springer when i'm on my walks during the day and those children are all eating on their lawns uh even in this weather so i think again i keep on harping on outdoor education and using the outdoors that uh we don't have to limit students to their cafeterias uh
188especially in the fourth quarter um we um we've seen we probably have our own data not probably we do uh looking at our four day a week preschools and we have had sports we have not stopped for our extracurricular sport programs at all so we are permitting with parental consent those uh those two programs and we have that data as well and if that data showed that we you know there was spread then we would have shut down those programs uh which you know maybe we have during high contagion periods or high transmission periods but for the most part you know we have half going to what district finals this weekend so uh among others who who participated up to this point um so that's it and the hype didn't hybrid kind of rank the
189least favored on our survey i mean we really we really have to i agree with the um with the proposal that the superintendent put forward that remote and five day are the most highly preferred and it would be my my um preference that we offer both of those for the fourth quarter and then you know move towards as many as we can in full five days in the fall okay you lost me on the last sentence you said what to go five day a week and the remote option okay with with more teacher contacts and i know it's mr messer said i know that's occurring because in some schools teachers are setting up or schools are setting up different kinds of programs for that so okay thank you mr lindy uh thanks president jones um
190i think i'll promise i'll share my perspective on this in a second but i want to be clear that i think from my perspective there are two different sets of decisions we're trying to make and i want to check that this is right one is about fourth quarter and one is about next school year um my hope is that we can come out with a clear statement about both of those things tonight i think that's where we are i just wanted to it wasn't coming up the people's comments and i wanted to check um because i do having heard from a number of parents who are uh trying to think about their kids experience in school for next school year now i think one of the things they're wanting to hear from us is some
191clarity about what they can expect uh for just from from my personal perspective i think that's pretty reasonable that that is my understanding i think that's what the board is saying that there are two decision points one is what happens now and what happens in the fall great yeah so so for for my part um i fully support the five days um i support that position for for a couple different reasons uh i think the scientific data feels strong on this there was just a study i saw today that explicitly looked at the difference between three feet and six feet and found no meaningful difference between the two of those things i've only read the abstract so i want to be that's not the only thing that's driving me here i think there's been several
192studies that pushed me in this direction and that melanie's point about walking past the other schools just seeing what's happening at local schools around also make me feel good about this and the survey um i think the survey is really powerful uh and i think it is clear that that's the largest group of of parents both for walnut and for the rest of the district um and so i think we need we need to have a pretty big reason to say we know better than parents do um and so i think that all of those things together uh make me support five days for fourth quarter um and five days for for the fall um i think like the next next paragraph though is i do think there's really really important work that we should
193do um i think in this meeting uh about what what does the option look like for the 20 25 of parents who really do prefer virtual um because that's not a small number um it's not 50 but it's it's not it's not a small number um and so i think you know one of the things that came up earlier was the idea of recording lessons you know like if the difference between world a i'm doing activities on schoology with no teacher contact versus world b i get to watch the classroom leader and i get some live contact with that teacher in a given week every week there's a big difference between those two worlds you know and so so one of the things i'm hoping we could get out is like like what is the
194best version of the of the the choice that's on the table for those families but that's just something that feels really important to me um and then i think um two very quick things um i think sometimes i'll speak just for myself i know i have made the mistake of not fully taking into account some of the differences that apply to walnut when we've made these district-wide decisions so i just wanted to make sure like what i'm seeing is that walnut would be included in the group of schools that would come back five days in the thing i'm advocating for i just wanted to throw that out there and make sure i'm not not imagining that um and then this last topic i don't i don't know when the right time to get into it
195is might not be tonight if it's not that's okay but i think this question of like how much does the tech the the technology investment cost like that range of 23 million to 53 million those are big numbers um and before we decide yes we're going to spend 53 million i would like a chance to get more into the details on that and really understand i don't know that that has to be tonight i just wanted to register that as something i'd like to hear more about at some point thank you thank you okay um so um there are a couple things clearly that that i heard and uh after hearing more about the survey um i have heard since day one that people you know people were upset with us because we didn't offer
196choice and i've heard that consistently over the uh this past year i also want to say we know a lot more about the virus excluding the variants which we probably know very little about but we know a lot more i have 100 confidence and faith in our district leadership around the mitigation measures and the strategies that are put in place to address any kind of increase where we're seeing patterns in schools the superintendent did that last year i mean it started at one school and you made the decision to close that school i think we have to continue to do that and that it has to do with well what are the the the criteria i think the criteria is there i think we have to say to the superintendent you know if we know
197that there's a pattern and more and the numbers are increasing she has to be able to make a decision she can't wait on a board meeting you see so i'm just saying that i have full confidence in in the decision of the um uh district leadership around the mitigation measures and what needs to happen um i believe that we're in a position now and everybody says we the science the science the six feet or whatever but i believe that we're in a position now where it and for me it's more about what is the minimum risk instead of the maximum risk and i think where we're at now is we know enough to be cautious and careful and safe um does that mean people have to be at six feet not necessarily especially now since
198um people have the vaccine um so i'm not as concerned about the six feet i do believe that in that on the hills phased approach i do have a question um with walnut hills given they are unique and with the overcrowding any thoughts about uh mobile units or something to space them out but this year for next year um probably more so next year but this year probably time wise i mean it may not make sense to do that yes so um that has been a part of our conversation and plan for a while now to be able to have um mobile units outside of walnut like we put outside of um hyde park um but to like get a mobile unit like next week or by spring break is probably not likely to happen
199okay all right so i came into this after reading all the information and just kind of thinking about uh where i was with this and i definitely feel like choice is appropriate um i was coming into this meeting leaning more toward the one and four where miss bates was because my thinking about it is around the quality of the instruction for remote making sure that kids had that contact however i think looking at the numbers on the survey where it says clearly that people are preferring the five days my personal belief is people who want to come four days or five days they should have their choice people who want to stay remote they should have their choice and i think we have to recognize none of it is ideal but that's what we have
200right now in the short period of time that we have remaining in this year but i look forward to lots of development and planning and sort of solidifying where we are for a five-day start for next week for next year so that's where i am i mean i prefer the one and four but i will go with the five day is what i'm saying okay so um questions comments miss bolton yes thank you um choice means let me start in holocaust education they call it choiceless choices and and very frankly that's sort of not to not to make this as horrible as thinking in terms of great giant human tragedies or anything but we this is eulogy really is not a choice it really isn't it's a it's a platform it's not instructional it is
201not connecting the kids with the teachers and the teachers are not necessarily going to be able to do both right successfully that's part of my concern so it's an instructional issue i have complete confidence in the administration all the mitigating things that we've done complete confidence in all that we can do and and what we've done but to for me the the children and the families that want to remain remote they are not going to be getting instruction well can i respond to that and then let me let me find i've asked at least twice i think three times about schoology and since at least two times there's been no change about what it is it is posting assignments now today we've said well maybe we can record lessons and that will be there even
202if we record lessons and it's posted someplace which we talked about four months ago that still is not any kind of contact and frankly one in four is not very much contact but at least the whole class is having the same experience plus you you've iced out particular days or hours on monday for office hours or for professional development so i'm just i'm i'm just very concerned about five from an instructional standpoint not a safety standpoint although i don't want to force kids back that that don't want to come back but right that's where i am yeah okay and i i'm not disputing that i don't know you know but but what i'm saying i'm concerned too but i'm concerned about the quality of people going into the school you know what i'm saying but
203i i feel like we gotta start we gotta start somewhere uh you know the the um i have heard from many schools how they developed their remote programs and there's some pretty solid programs that they've done and is it based around schoology for the most part it is so i'm saying schools can be real creative about how they utilize schoology i i just don't know and i'm not the person who's coordinating it our our staff is coordinating it but i'm just saying that um i don't think it's you know all that bad but i i could go with either one i could go to one and four or i could go to all five days yes miss powers thank you and i just want some clarity and i did not state my opinion for the
204fall and i am okay with the five-day fall return and preparation for that i don't think i said that after i heard um board member lindy inquired for clarity but i wanted to ask um superintendent regarding the one are we able to dive a little deeper to see how many are gonna are interested in doing the concurrent streaming and the 5a in class is that is that the option that we're talking about for walnut as far as for fourth quarter that is what we are prepared to do as a proof of concept and because walnut hills has not been in session all year so we will have more data as to what percentage and what percentage um so two things um do i know the exact number of parents who will choose distance learning at
205walnuts i do not when we do our optioning process once the board is making this makes a decision then our next thing was to do that optioning very quickly so that we know um we have talked about putting the mechanisms in place to do concurrent at walnut um for the remainder of this school year as a proof of concept and considering the fact that walnut has not had any in-person instruction all year i will say that it is not a system that we're trying to treat walnuts and give them preferential treatment that is not um the desire but it is to acknowledge the fact that their situation is different because of the number of kids and the size of the building just i just need i'm still not clear when you said option and that's
206that's for the fall is that what you were referencing are you talking about optioning now for the fourth quarter yes we want to know how many kids will come back to walnut five days a week for the rest of this school year and when do you plan to get that information as soon as a board makes a decision because that's going to help me make my decisions the point i'm trying to make i don't know that you know it's like which comes first the chicken of the egg i i don't know but but okay it's it's not an argument not an effort to be an argument but i'm saying that we have survey data that gives us some clear indication so you what you we have survey data on forty percent of the parents but
207what are you guys what are you asking for to help me understand and i'm going back to my six foot distancing for me to feel comfortable to okay that option i would really like to know the number of students in this 40 percent or overall that are planning to come back that will help me so that's why i'm asking that okay because uh mr master do you want to go ahead yeah i just had a couple of texts actually from teacher friends who said we can help figure that out and i wondered meaning the remote piece and i think there was a remote learning task force kind of at the beginning kind of giving some advice i wondered you know with some very capable people could we get some teachers to say all right here's
208here's this here's kind of what we're thinking let's pull in the best practices because to miss jones uh example i've heard many creative ways uh where teachers are trying to bring this to life um and i think that was does work definitely a little for maybe the older kids but i'm just going to speak open real i've got a kid who should be reading at a much higher proficiency than he is and we sit with him every day and i think there's a bunch of kids out there that aren't and i think you know the you know i think it just it's much more hands-on and that type of thing for the younger ones but i think they have gotten very creative in how they're doing the distance for the older kids just based on
209what i've heard so the question is can we just pull those best practices so that you know we help bring those maybe to some areas where maybe they feel that that could be helpful okay through that task force but okay so one one of the things that i'm hearing and of course i'm not hearing any consensus around this stuff um there is an additional request for more information which i don't think we're going to get by the 15th which is when we have to make a decision so i don't know how we handle that piece of it um if if uh one of our board members wants to have very specific information about the numbers of people we have until friday to get that information to make a decision on the 15th which is when
210monday i okay so so given that i mean to me well i was going there we can't reach agreement and i have to say this to this board we're doing the exact same thing that he said our families were doing um we were hoping to be able to reach consensus but where do you where do you start what what are we trying to do everybody has their own preferences about thing and there's not one option that stands out for any of it okay miss uh um no you have uh you have four people that have said they will go to five i mean so if that's where we have we're going to be a 4-3 again um so be it i mean you said you actually preferred 1-4 initially but you're willing to do five
211yeah so i mean i just um you that's that can be the decision and i'm telling you instructionally everybody says if we can do something with schoology that's that's that's i don't think by next monday regardless if we do get magic data by friday i i i i'm saying i'm saying even if we do get magic data we were able to get it that quickly by friday i don't think there's going to be consensus monday either and i was just going to say what bolton said it sounds like four people agree so i would i would ask one of those four to go ahead and make a motion um because that's what it's going to have to be because we're not going to change our minds by monday and i just want to say one
212more time all right let's let's just decide on that now i would like to finish if it's okay okay i'm sorry i would like to finish and i would like to state again for the record that waiting until the fall when we can implement real choice is a good idea and i need to piggyback off this board one more time we are not offering families we are we are sacrificing kids who want to stay around education for people who want to go back in buildings is what i feel like we're doing anything different to add or yes yes i do in regards to what the superintendent said we are making special allowances rightfully so for the walnut folks because of space and numbers and they have a better person that's true but when you look
213at the other 14 high schools or the other schools and they see that we are doing something extraordinary for walnut it's not going to necessarily be interpreted in that way but and i think everybody knows that so i'm just just really would like more of an authentic choice for the kids that don't want to go back but i think uh you know it that is what it is just a question would it be if if it's decided to go back five days or four days whatever what you're describing is authentic choice you think you're saying that having that one day makes the choice authentic it makes it more authentic and it also makes it more instructionally sound for the teachers and kim that have to be both i hear you is it possible that we
214could just make a suggestion that that administration consider um in working with principals and buildings to develop more authentic ways to engage with their staff with their families on schoology rather than make a blanket decision around them because schools are doing it my yes and some in some schools that i'm particularly fond of have been doing it yeah but not all schools have been able to do it and and i think this staff this administrative leadership group and our staff district-wide have worked and worked and worked and it would seem to me they wouldn't have come with some other they would have come with another idea besides schoology if there was one okay and would that be any different than in the fall then the with if you said if there was one would it
215be any different if the remote kids could have some sort of connection with their teachers besides having assignments posted i would feel better and if the teachers knew that they could do both reasonably well instead of really kind of having to focus all of a sudden on kids that are just coming back i mean i have complete confidence in everything everybody has said i'm not trying to disagree i'm just saying there's an old teacher this is this is problematic okay miss bauer's something different i want to just get clarity um from what you and eve were just expressing about from so from spring 2021 to december 2021 is it possible that a parent would be doing schoology for that long if their if that school is not identified classroom is not identified as needing a
216concurrent streaming and is that a possibility that a parent would be doing schoology that long i don't know i'm not sure if i understood what your answer is for the rest of the calendar you know i'm talking about even in the fall because of fall i believe i understood that it's ideal to begin with those classrooms who parents have identified that they want their kids to still be in distance learning right but there might be some some classrooms that are not high numbered in business learning but some of those students will still be doing schoology in the fall go ahead can you my assumption is in the fall we're going to be back five days yeah okay in person under healthy safe conditions with the option of having like we talked about last week this
217wonderful idea that they've come up with which is this concurrent that will also have that option and i think we have to tell the community that's what we're going to do right i think we all i think we all agree with that but he said in the fall it would we're looking to come back five days but i think that's what we're saying but i think the issue that i hear expressed is that for this short term and it is short term it's it's the end of march to whenever school is out right that that we're talking about uh uh i hear everybody saying choice the question is one or four or five days right okay so superintendent and now that was busy if i could just add a point of clarity for board member
218um so and i say this extremely respectfully this may not be something that people want to hear or like there is another option other than schoology which is cda so we are offering choice to people it may not be the exact choice and i'm not saying that is the best option for every family but i'm not really sure that it's representative of what's happening to say we're offering no choice for distance learning students because there is a choice and a cda again that might not fit everyone's situation and it may not be acceptable i just want to make sure though that we're really clear about that it is not our plan in the fall for families who want to stay at their home school to access schoology only so let me go back through um
219what i was saying to the parents who called in and what jeremy was saying when he did his presentation what we're going to ask our families to do for the fall is to identify an option of distance learning at your home school distance learning at cda or in-person learning if you are choosing optioning for distance learning at your home school we need to know it now so that we can create schedules to accommodate like students who want that same option of distance learning who need the same course jeremy and his team will work to prioritize those classrooms first to make sure that there is the opportunity and capacity for those kids to do concurrent learning that will happen at the high school and that will happen at the elementary school so take a group of
220third grade students as an example and you have three classrooms of third grade students before they enter into the classroom for the fall we're going to see of those all those kids who want concurrent learning we're going to put those kids in the same room so that they aren't spread across three different rooms and then jeremy's team will work to outfit that one classroom to make sure there's the capacity to do concurrent learning so my apologies if i haven't explained that well okay thank you that was that was helpful okay and i believe that ryan wants to put emotion on the floor but um mr lindy did you have a quick question i do um and it's a question for the administration but um with this number that we have in the survey um assume
221for a second that that 22 is right and that there's 22 percent who are going to want to stay virtual um even even if we go back five days does that change in any meaningful way our ability to offer concurrent learning for the fourth quarter or not but my hope is that because that's a relatively small number it's less tax on the system so there might actually be more out there but i'm not sure if that's in any way correct from a technical sense i don't believe it would we will need to do a little bit deeper evaluation on those numbers for where they're at how they're grouped et cetera but i do not believe it would make a significant difference okay thank you one caveat to that though from a technical perspective it may
222not cause any harm to the system however the teachers of those classrooms need to be equipped to teach in that manner so i just want to put that out there okay okay thank you mr messer yes um i would like to move that cincinnati public schools board of education adopts the return to school plan presented by superintendent mitchell will return to instruction for fourth quarter and the 21 22 school year and then as part of this plan the superintendent will lead the team to maximize the remote option within our capabilities in a q4 and following the plan presented for the 21-22 school year that's confusing to am i the only one well they're i'll just i move the cps board of education adopt the return to school plan presented by superintendent mitchell for the fourth
223quarter and the 21-22 school year but which what is the i'm sorry that her her five day okay what that is that's what you need to say in the motion okay you need to be specific the return the five day return to school plan presented by super five-day return to school and we are gonna have discussion in a minute okay is there a second on that motion i move that the cincinnati board of education adopts the cps return to school plan for five days presented by superintendent mitchell for fourth quarter second i just cut off the rest because if people think it's too i can i'm happy to make it make it true the motion is just about the fourth quarter of this year yeah it sounded like people wanted the two separated so i'm
224good with that so i just i'll do one with fourth quarter for five days can i can i just say this though i i think i think we've reached total consensus of seven people that we would agree on the five day for the fall yeah let's vote on that before that's what yeah we can vote on that unanimous i hope yeah but i but that's what i thought but anyway so we might have two emotions before go ahead with this motion mr messer again reread i move that the cincinnati board of education adopt the five-day return to school plan presented by superintendent mitchell for the fourth quarter of the 2021 the 20 21 school year okay is there a second second thank you any discussion okay yes sir so um the assumption i have i
225want to check with you all for the families who are not who are who are exercising a choice other than five days in person the assumptions i have about what are going to happen the administration is going to look into things like can the teacher post a video we've talked we've seen this is why i'm asking because i'm not sure that we're all on the same page and maybe wrong like i i think that um i think that's important and i would like for that to happen that's why i'm asking the question so um at the risk of sounding abstinent because i really am not we have presented to you what we believe that we can support at a district-wide level you're asking me um can we have every single teacher create videos and then
226post those videos um i can't guarantee that i can make that happen for every single classroom and it isn't that um it isn't something that we want don't want to do so we have presented to you what we know that we can support at a district-wide level is this something that we will look into and explore and then just just for the the record our deputy superintendent pulled together a group of teachers to explore just this thing in november december so we've had lots of groups jeremy's had a group of people and so we really have talked with people beyond the performance leadership team on all of these issues um is this something that we will work very hard um to accomplish it is that the end of the day i'm not the person in
227the classroom who has to do it and so um several steps to remove from making sure that it's happening in every single classroom with about two weeks to go so i'm just being realistic with you we will work with our people as hard as we can that's okay thank you okay any other discussion yeah um the motion is very specific about the superintendent's plan the superintendent's five-day return is eulogy five day in person so or cda yeah i'm sorry yeah or the schools that are already streaming today we have plenty that are there maybe 17 but but here's i'm just saying if the plan is we can't make a vote based upon what might happen you'd have to be able and if the motion is about the plan it's schoology it's five days and cba
228and that's and that's where it should be i shouldn't ask them to be able to come up with something or hope they can they've been working on this for a year well and and just a point of clarity that the wording what you just said is what i think i heard i think the side conversation was that some of us believe that schools are already creating create have creative ways of utilizing schoology some of us disagree on that and not all schools are doing that and we're hoping i mean what we want is for people to be as creative as they can be from march to the end of the school year with with this option that's that's what i think yes miss power question about the motion and decision in fact i want to
229say yes the part of the the motion but not the whole emotion you want to ask a question i want to i have two different okay answers to the one motion based on district white and water hills so how do i how do i say that when it's time to vote i'm not sure i'm not okay with with the district with i'm i'm going to say no to that one but what it feels i'm okay with that with what jeremy presented as far as congruent learning so how do i say that separately or is that two separate things which is i think how i got caught up the first time when we voted for remote but then water hills was not a separate motion so i i'm having to vote on the first if it
230fails then we do a second motion i think so it's not inclusive though my decision is not inclusive for district white and walnut hills they're not the same decision okay so i feel like that's even too emotional well my motion was district wide only okay yeah yeah and then this motion was district-wide based on my status too what his motion said was to accept the plan that was presented for five days a week fooligy cda as the option period that's for all the schools and if you don't want to vote for that plan then you would have to say no and then if if for some reason the majority doesn't rule then you are free to enter a new motion the way i understand it okay just as a caveat the walnut piece i see
231what you're saying because it is that we're doing this district wide in two different ways there's walnut rightfully so and there's the rest of the district the walnut strategy is different than the rest of the district is what i think what miss bowers is saying but i i think the motion holds yes but as long as people know that there are two different the implementation is different yes emotion holds it's the implementation that's her job right what's all the questions because the questions and stuff are different so it's really too different to me it's two different things even though i get what you're saying and i get what you're saying okay well the motion the emotion is on the floor okay does anybody need to hear it again okay oh miss wagner mrs bates miss
232bolton no this is bowers no mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr marowski no president gems yes okay that was 4-3 yes okay so we have a plan that is the flame okay anything else on that one okay so if we're ready to move on anything else to pretend that you need from us regarding that okay we're ready to move on miss bolton this is your item committee of the whole yeah uh just quickly uh as uh last meeting you uh asked mr messer and i to start to work on the board uh calendar uh and uh we almost started with that but i wanted to bring a discussion item to the full board before we continue our work and that is the possibility has been suggested to us by a couple of people that
233we return the committee of the whole back at a like a monthly uh gathering so to speak so if it's of interest to the board we can build two calendars or if you want to really think about having committee of the whole uh once a month uh we can make that determination for people that are new committee the whole was not where we vote or take action but it was instead where we have sort of a sit down it's public meeting it would need to be streamed but we sit down with the leadership and we are briefed and we also have much more i think opportunity with dialogue with the administration and it's a long-held effort but we we deviated from it for a couple of reasons one it's usually held during the work day
234uh not not surprisingly around wednesday when the fried chicken is uh in the cafeteria but uh it's it's the idea that we don't necessarily vote at those because we don't do business we changed got rid of committee of the whole because there was so much business to be done in part by the board for a number of years a few years that the administration thought it would be good and we thought it would be good that we could actually have a full business meeting so we deviated from committee of the whole and mr mester and i would like to know if you want us to design a calendar that has those in them and another calendar without or should we just move ahead and do one of those um i just want to ask a
235question about that because i agree with everything you said and i wanted to add something to that cool um committee of the whole lot lost its focus and what happened is we began to make it a business meeting and so i am concerned that that will happen again and and then number two are we talking about adding another meeting good okay so we could use one of the meetings within the month as a committee of the whole yes i think that would be the interest okay i'm not interested in adding another meeting okay all right go ahead mr messi yeah and i i mean i think wednesday is a very good choice for obvious reasons um as miss bolton said but um you know i do think that you know that i i think there
236is an opportunity for more discussion because i will say that that's like as i've told people that we all talk to people who write to us and call us and all that and one of the things is this is what you get and sometimes you just need to talk through things and i i like that idea of having us like have like meaningful topics about hey this issue is here or this and really get into good dialogue um you know and then letting our public see that be a part of kind of the how that process works but i think it's good to replace an existing meeting okay thanks oh i think having a committee of the whole would add to the efficiency of our business meetings because part of our business meeting is what
237we used to do it committee of the whole so if we dedicated one meeting a month to you know two or three meeting topics that would make these meetings much more efficient and and they serve the purpose of discussion no decisions right okay but more action oriented because it's a committee but more action exactly and much more dialogue between us and the administration and whomever okay mr lindy and dennis powers um i i think president jones asked the big question i wanted to ask another one or in place of and so i think that given it's a place i certainly think it sounds like a great thing to try the perspective i wanted to ask was from the administration do we make your life more difficult by doing this do we make it easier by
238doing this is it totally the same i mean i think the discourse is good we're able to really have a conversation with the board and so it yes because i'm not real clear on what the committee of the whole used to be can i can can somebody just give me a definition by email or something about what it old is do we want to send out can you send it there yeah because maybe staff can help and i just declare up it's it's presided over uh in its initiated by the president of the board and then the superintendent basically runs the meeting so she serves as chair and one person will be happy and it won't be the super cute but no it's a superintendent presides and then they bring topics and we bring topics
239where we then they educate us or we educate them i think as we move into this new cps that kind of dialogue would probably be helpful rather than what we're doing i i might suggest that that the superintendent and the president or whoever worked together on designing the agenda for that meeting i mean i don't know how how we came to that conclusion the superintendent was running whatever i don't have any problems with her running just that's what it used to be i mean that she would share you obviously we bring agenda items they bring agenda items and it's just it's sort of like an extended uh presentation i can vaguely remember how it actually yes mr did you have a question okay miss davis is a comparison like i could see it working like
240the visionary we had something we were going to talk and we all kind of gave input and it i think that was like i felt good leaving that like we heard people's opinions and it was captured and i saw the administration taking notes and they shared some stuff where they started i and i think that is being able to do that more often than like every six months right okay so it sounds like a good idea to move on with that okay other meetings okay okay so that sounds like we're ready to move forward with that okay great okay um president jones when are we starting the committee of the whole meeting i don't know well it's gonna start that has not been decided she i think what we can do is let uh miss
241bolton and uh mr messer just develop the calendar so it'll be on there and as soon as we approve the calendar and get started okay all right so the next item is around the collaboration with um city council around reestablishing aces so i just kind of wanted to share with you guys kind of what have been done up to this point and make a suggestion um i did have a chance to meet uh to have a conversation with council member sunderman um and uh one of the things that i think that i would like to do as part of my assignment is pull the information around the charter like what did the aces group what was the purpose of aces group maybe pull some of the information around um the minutes and things like that
242i don't have to dig for that i think that's going to be very crucial in helping not only us especially because we have people who were not part of the aces group but it also will help council member um thunderman to kind of wrap her thinking around what this group did um so i'll be happy to do that work and i'll be happy to reach out to her my suggestion is that we not consider this sort of a top priority uh move and that we wait until we get through this transition in the summer and maybe reconsider this and work on it we can be actively working on it um and then uh maybe try to coordinate a first meeting for after the new school year starts sometime in the fall that that would be
243my suggestion yes go ahead in the space and sure thanks no i i think that's fine that's you know we're trying to get through the end of the year uh and we can start this new this this additional meeting you know afterwards but i do want to say that what we should do immediately is address the concerns of uh assistant city manager john jueck uh he had a list of what he considered unfinished business i guess and there were some issues that uh i thought was resolved myself other issues i didn't even know and that came before her committee so if before we start working with them we have the administration take a look at mr juice concerns and then resolve them so we can move forward with our partner yes i asked uh mr
244hoyne if he would access that document for us because i listened in on that meeting as well and i too was uh confused and especially because they were using language like we refused to work with them and i wasn't aware that we refused to work when i don't believe that that was the scenario so i think it would be who was to really look at what uh that document that he was sharing with that committee and maybe um ask the administration to take a look at it yes what i remember is that dps was being asked by the interim city manager at the time to provide funding for during the day care of students and so if that was interpreted as us not being cooperative we did not provide funding because we cannot provide that
245type of funding and so that was expressed and that is what i recall as the conversation related to a partnership yes and it it it actually my conversation with council member sunderland actually went a little deeper than that and i don't really want to talk about that but but uh i i think it might it would help us just in turn especially if we're talking about re-establishing this alliance i think it would be helpful for us to really address that as a first step because i think that's going to be a sticking point from now until when we sort of re-establish with this group so yeah i agree um i'm sorry did you want to follow up this year yes i was just going to follow up on that i i i also listened to
246that meeting as president jones did and it seemed like some of those were communication issues we discussed them but the word hadn't gotten back clearly to the city so um i i think that this can all be resolved with attention to the list you know revisiting some of the conversations internally and then working with them okay mr mess i believe you were first we'll just go around yeah and i i think this is exactly why these meetings will help because if there's questions and they could bring you know and people took away from that meeting well hey people are saying why are the what role do they have do they have to bless your plan for the schools but how does that work so hey i think i think some people got confused but then
247you know out of that came oh well they offered you the rec centers and you could have used this to space out your kids well 500 doesn't help a district of 36 000. and so it did provide some day care option you know and the mayor did offer that but these questions then people took it to the next level that they had offered us conventions and all this stuff and i was told very clearly by leaders of this city including the mayor that they could not control that so that was not theirs to give so i think just getting people together will help uh make sure that these well i i think we have to revisit the context of the aces meeting i am concerned about and and if i could be transparent i'm concerned
248about in them inserting themselves and what's going on right now with us coming back to school and i shared that i i told her that i wanted to be transparent about that and the way things look right now that's the effort that they want to do so i'm not i you know i think ultimately we have to reestablish the parameters around the aces meeting and we can do that jointly with them but even even her own committee members were concerned i think about what jurisdiction they had in in that so that's why i'm asking to postpone it a little bit so i saw another hand mr morosky um yeah so that my couple couple points one is i respectfully ask that we stop calling it aces it's terrible we don't have to okay please and
249it's just i know it may just be a word but for people that do education for a living or have it's not the right word second i would ask why councilwoman sunderman but i guess it's because she's the chair of the education committee that all of a sudden took a great interest in what we're doing because it's a campaign year i'll be more direct i'm not interested in being a part of that um to be honest we're going to talk about real issues and reframe it for real i'd love to be a part of it but that's not what i saw i watched that meeting too lastly we never voted on the fall do we want to do that on the fall we were gonna we so we just took consensus for the fall so
250we don't need okay okay um your comments do we know it notice about miss bolton just as a historical reference the aces or alliance or whatever we're calling it uh ended in this room when the city presented a completely fantastical interpretation of tax abatement issues that is what it ended every board member said well that's it we're done i did want to have the treasurer actually present reality in the next meeting but we were so frustrated by their fantastical interpretation of the tax abatement issue we just ended it but i do think there is some value to have it uh return but probably not in the midst of an election year right i agree remember jones yes i did remember just a couple of things i think i mean i try really hard to always
251set the record straight um and so i wanted to be noted that the conversation with the city was around paying for daycare services i forgot until i was sitting here that we actually provided food am i not correct we provided food to those those centers where our kids were going so it wasn't as if we didn't do anything and we had jeremy's tech team go out is that right jeremy and visit the centers as well so um it may be an interpretation of a no one the money meant that we weren't working with them which is not the case i'm happy to look at what their um their thoughts are and um more than happy to enter into whatever conversation the world would like me to have i i kind of felt that way superintendent
252that based on what you just said i wasn't exactly sure what happened but i knew that we had had some dialogue around it i was uncomfortable though with the presentation that we were not cooperative and and that's that's what i felt like needed to be dealt with so or addressed but anyway we're we we got an understanding about that right so we know we want to change the name we know we want to wait until later um after the new school year begins so okay sounds good all right um any kudos yes uh mr messer and then miss bolton yes i went to uh a dad's group meeting last thursday and uh this dad said i don't know how much you know about your intervention specialist but they are angels on this earth he told
253me a story about his daughter who has down syndrome and the progress that their innovation interventional specialist has had on her since she's been back in learning and he said she started to read for the first time and he said there is nobody that cares about my daughter uh anywhere close to us except for the intervention specialist and i think it's a good good reminder of the importance of that role uh to our district uh second um i had a little boy who uh maybe did maybe what his papa had done at one time and decided to tell the teacher he didn't feel well and then said he was tired and all these things and uh he had to uh go to the office and then he did his he did his test turned out
254negative but he went back in but i just got to see firsthand the school nurse at play the principal at play and how everything was just set up just in case so i just want to give kudos to that school nurse specifically um because you know they're they're dealing with not just the covet stuff there's plenty of things and you know i learned how many she had different kids to do do medicine for so those school nurses i think are a real benefit to this district and i'm so glad we made a step forward there and then last but not least um a shout out to the women that i get to serve with on this school board and to laura and jen and the rest of the ladies in this administration um who set
255a great example for little girls like mine and happy international women's day that was just thank you very much thank you okay any other any more kudos miss fulton yes um i i received a couple of texts today during the meeting one was two of them were from principals one principal really likes the shirt that i'm wearing and another principle suggested that immediately upon the end of this meeting i need to go home and make sure that i uh cleanse myself now yes so my point is i want to give kudos to the fact that people still love and care about and very loyal to their high schools in cincinnati no matter what and i really want to give kudos to the taft senators who are now competing in a basketball pathway to state the
256game might already be over i've been trying to follow been unable to but i think it's a great testament to their program and to the school that through this all they have been able to progress and and represent cps and taft uh so brilliantly thank you ta y'all gotta do better than that t-a-f-t all right yes nice great okay retirement we have none in this report okay great all right we're down to resolutions mr moroski please present the first resolution i would be happy to president jones thank you i would like to present a resolution amending board policy 7230.01 donations for buildings and ground projects this is the policy i referenced during the presentation of the minutes um and again not to beat a dead horse but i know vice president messer was interested in
257this when he was on policy and we added a bullet point uh the potential gift or donation shall contribute to an improvement that will and there's an a and a b we added a c b consistent with the expressed values of the district including but not limited to the board policy 2255 equity and excellence and education and board policy 2256 anti-racism policy i present the resolution as written okay is there a second any discussion miss wagner please call roll mrs bates aye ms bolton aye this is bowers mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr marowski yes president jones yes thank you miss bolton please present the next resolution thank you very much i have a resolution amending board policy 7410 maintenance and uh the additions the changes are in the second paragraph the last sentence
258which is maintenance effort shall be made to improve the campus environment to foster academic achievement and maximum community involvement and we've added an additional bullet point which is the bullet point g which is regular schedule of testing water and air quality within the building i present and hope for approval thank you is there a second second any discussion miss wagner i'm sorry i missed who was the second mistake okay thank you [Music] hi this is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr asking yes president gems yes thank you superintendent do you have a report i do not oh okay do i have a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation mrs bates hi miss bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy mr messer yes mr morosky yes president jones yes okay do i have
259a motion to approve the revised report of the treasurer still moved second second thank you any discussion ms wagner please follow him but i just wanted to point a new thing out on page four there's a new page there um it's entitled financial news and so it's my attempt to keep the board informed of financial matters that come up between board meetings or financial many many um so um this will be a part of a regular part of the treasurer's report moving forward okay great thank you mrs bates aye ms bolton hi mrs powers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr marowski yes president jones yes thank you are there any inquiries and updates mr lindy uh thanks president jones um i do want to return for a moment to the issue i raised the
260last board meeting about whether we have a process for learning war when there have been some kind of meaningful or significant allegations raised about a board member um just as a reminder for my part i want to be really clear that two things felt true here one is that there are some genuine outstanding questions about what exactly was said and what the context was that i don't feel like i know the answer to and i'm not alleging one version is true or another i feel like i don't know uh second um the allegations did feel serious enough to me that i wanted to raise this question with the board um i appreciate miss bolton's uh alerting me to some of the bylaws to be had i appreciate phyllis sending them my way and i appreciate
261the conversations i was able to have with president jones and with uh our general counsel mr hoing i think what i learned from that is that although there are some things in the bylaws that are close there really isn't anything that's perfectly on point for exactly what i was describing um what i did learn though from talking to dan is that we could decide that we wanted our internal auditor to run some kind of process to learn whatever we can that could look like offering to interview anybody who is willing to come forward publicly as a witness would give any board member the opportunity to give their version of what happened and then put together a set of what we can verify what we can't um that we could then use to make some kind
262of uh statement or recommendation uh on this or any future issue i happen to think that's a good idea um not just for the current state but for the future state as well but it would require three other board members to agree with that so the inquiry i wanted to ask tonight is are there three other board members who agree with me um and if there are um i would love to set up a process with our internal auditor that we could use here and in the future and if i'm totally on my own on this i will good to move on but i want to see if other board members feel the same way that we need a process for this okay so are are you what are you asking for tonight uh i
263i don't i don't um really i just wanted to see uh straight like i'm not uh asking for a vote but just like a straw poll like is there anything like i genuinely don't know where the other board members are on this um and i'd like to know if i'm on my own or if some people agree with me anybody have any thoughts or feedback on that yes miss bolton and thomas i believe we do have the processes if it rises to the occasion and i think in this particular case it would be a misuse of the very important function of the internal auditor but there are options that mr wendy could maybe pursue if he wanted to perhaps through policy committee okay mr marowski i was going to ask for clarity i don't know
264if i have that i have an opinion on it right now but the the proposal mr lindy would be that we create a new process so to speak to investigate allegations of this magnitude which what i will what i i can and prefer to agree with you they do feel serious to me well that i can have no problem agreeing with i don't know what was said or anything obviously i haven't heard this thing but um i think it sounds feels serious but what you're proposing is a new process through which we would have protocols or mechanisms to investigate these kinds of allegations that doesn't currently exist and using the internal auditor in some ways for that process that's right yeah i don't know that i have a real strong opinion on it i would
265agree with ms bolton that it probably sounds like a conversation for a policy committee um which you know i'm open to having it on the agenda if you want to make an assignment oh yes okay if we heard you we get it um any other comments around that i i think i agree that it's something that can be assigned to board policy to in um research and and decide make recommendations to the board if there is an appropriate next step if that's warranted is that i i'm not i'm not prepared to assign it yet if i'm the only person who thinks it's important uh if somebody else wants to assign it and join me i'm in well you you it's not we don't necessarily need to vote on it i mean i don't know that
266we need to vote on it i mean if you want to pursue it then you have a right to make an assignment for it to be pursued because the final vote comes in whether or not it's recommended it's a recommended change for the board policy and i i hear that and i appreciate that 100 percent i truly do i think i don't i don't really want to push it further if i'm on my own um i would want to be doing that uh with others okay all right um did i see a hand no mr morosky you know i was just gonna say i mean the assignment would really just be to have more discussion i mean i think it's a worthwhile it's just to have more discussion not to create you know this whole
267procedure i mean it may die in committee as they're you know as they say or may not thank you so but i'd leave that to you okay are you comfortable with where we are now yes thank you okay all right thank you any other inquiries and updates mr morosky along the lines of the new um donation bullet point about not accepting donations from groups you might be at odds like 22 55 or 56 um i think this is an inquiry and not an assignment might be an assignment but i'm going to ask it as an inquiry um it has come to my attention that there are there are some groups that have pretty openly engaged in discriminatory behavior particularly against lgbtq folks um groups that are associated um with certain religious institutions that advertise on
268their facebook page and website that they are in one two three four five six of our schools without our permission and i'm curious if there's i'm not gonna i don't want to get into that whether or not you feel i don't think they should i think everyone knows where i stand on that i don't think they should even be in our schools but the fact that they're using our school's names without our or the school's permission upsets me and so i'm curious if we have if there is protocol for that if there is i'm not looking to shame or call out anybody right now be happy to provide more detail if people want to follow up i'm in administration dan mr hoing sorry before i'm not familiar with what uh specifically you're talking about but
269once i can get the specifics would be more than happy to look into it sure great can you give me some more can you ask that again sure young life is uh an organization associated with the catholic church that is uh engaged in very well-known discriminatory behavior against lgbt and they advertise on their facebook page that they are in one two three four five six of our schools without our permission and it bothers me and i'm curious if we have any recourse there to tell them to stop i would prefer they not even be in our schools but that might be a bridge too far for some yeah but if you'll allow let me investigate what they're right advertising and then awesome thanks man appreciate it okay great um any other uh inquiries or updates
270okay assignments ms bates yes i would like to assign to the policy committee a review of the out of district open enrollment policy thing as though now we have uh facing issues in in many of our schools that uh it may be the time to not to consider closing our borders until uh we can accommodate yeah yeah yeah and i can have um the administration look into since you can have the exact numbers of out of district kids who are actually in our district they've actually gone down significantly over the last couple years but we can tell you how many kids and where they are so crystal would you look into that thank you if you can if that can go to the uh policy committee thank you um this morosky i happily accept that
271as you may recall i brought that up my first year on the board and second year so i think it's a pertinent time to start talking about it so i happily accept that assignment my assignment is simple i think um on the gamble uh montessori sign under marquee it doesn't say montessori and i i know some folks neighborhood community teachers cetera you know clark has clark montessori wanted the montessori on their sides like to assign that high school or elementary i need neither either i was talking about high school but he would know better neither got it sarah thank you bolton yes uh i would like to assign to the administration something that came up in student achievement uh last week which is this idea of dual enrollment within cps meaning our students could be
272enrolled in both maybe two different ones of our schools which could really facilitate career ed and a few other things possibly and also i would like to assign the to the administration if it's the will of the board to kind of investigate some of the facilities that we have that we could not necessarily use for instruction some of our partners are interested in locating at some of those buildings examples might be some of the the houses on the gamble uh campus or the coach house barn at rawson uh it might be an interesting opportunity for our our partners to share with us some of the property it might be something that would be useful for our students so um what would be helpful is if we knew if we had a list of those properties
273and um just here's my reasoning for wanting to know [Music] i happen to know that the properties on the gamble site are significantly in disrepair as well as the carriage house and so my question would just be like who would be assuming the cost to bring that up to code for people to move into it but happy to look into it we have the list that'd be great okay thank you any other assignments okay so um hearing none um i would need a motion to recess into executive session i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm not sure for the purpose of employment of a public employee or official uh preparations for conducting or reviewing negotiations and pending litigation is there a second thank you um miss wagner mrs bates ms bolton mrs bowers mr lindy yes mr
274messer mr marowski yeah president jones yes okay having uh we will go into uh recess um and just if people