CPS Board of Education — March 1, 2021

001i called to order the march 1 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 mr messer please lead us in the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] thank you miss wagner please call roll mrs bates president miss bolton president this is bowers here mr lindy here mr messer here 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 name your affiliation to the district your school community your topic and your

002contact information if you want a direct response to any questions you might have okay i need a motion to approve the minutes from the special meeting february 22nd 2021 and the business meeting february 22nd 2021. so moved again thank you all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed the minutes are approved as presented okay so in committee reports we're gonna start ms bolton please present the budget finance and growth committee and i just just as a matter of favor please for all the community reports they're pretty extensive reports so if you could just hit the high points we'd appreciate it miss bolton thank you madam chair um i'm presenting a minute so from our last meeting uh we did have again an extensive agenda uh and some of these are regularly appearing agenda

003items and a couple are different and new and some are repeats where we've raised the issues before uh we had a great presentation about the monthly financials uh and posted that on our site we also had an additional update regarding preschool promise and cps preschool expansion i want to draw attention to the fact that the preschool promise folks again mentioned that the completion of an audit of their work they had an un modif unmodified audit which is to be complemented for their good work also want to point to the second time we've seen this really new chart and i would hope that the board members uh really check it out it really deals with the status of all of the grants federal and state and private grants that we have and it's a it's again

004a new tool to kind of follow that along we talked briefly about the extended learning opportunity uh that the administration is beginning to work on and what kinds of monies that might uh actually uh cost us and some of the challenges and we're glad to hear that and i'm sure that's a topic in all of the committees uh we also had an interest by a member uh messer regarding uh preschool and preschool deserts which is one of the promises that we all made during preschool promise that we would be addressing that we found uh out from both vera brooks and also uh the preschool promise votes that 4c has been conducting a rather extensive study about that very issue of preschool deserts if you will in particular areas of our district and so that'll be

005coming forward in march or very early april and that will help us in our overall growth plan for cps as well as expansion for cps preschools and appreciate them doing that report also we heard a report as well from our treasurer regarding and this is something else remember messer was interested in that was the covet impact and the coveted financial impact as to how much the prices extended crisis has cost us and those sorts of dollars that have also been coming in regarding revenue as a result as well as some of the savings then also we did back on the preschool piece it did come up again about and i think the president is going to be dealing with this at the carryover joint resolution for mutual resolution we talked briefly and then more extensively

006about how can we build a budget without having made pretty firm uh decisions about what the enrollment may look like and the impact of the enrollment the treasure got us updated as well on the ode letter that had to go back regarding when we would be facing a deficit and uh good news that increased revenues might be an easy answer to that and then we also had another report about transportation and again it was an update on the mou regarding supplying of drivers also the issue of whether or not to extend the five or six contracts with our five or six transportation vendors the committee continues to be concerned about that extension not about the vendors but under what conditions and there is an interest in also waiting additional year to do a very big

007rfp or rfi uh so those are things that we have to come to grips with and mr johnson director of transportation said we haven't till april early april to make some sorts of decisions about that and uh finally uh we did an evaluation session an executive session for our treasurer and i submit these minutes and with these minutes attached as you will see is our work plan and our work plan of approval of these minutes tonight will be the approval by the board of the committee's work plan i submit hope for passage thank you miss bolton do board members have questions or comments about the um budget finance and growth report okay and thank you for pointing out about the plan it's in there all righty moving on this base please present the health and

008safety committee meeting report yes thank you uh our first item uh on the agenda was our report from our governmental liaisons mr kearney and mr glover and that is attached to this uh these minutes so you can read those at your convenience uh we also have our oh the one we are also planning very very soon on march 18th a joint meeting of the budget finance and growth committee and the health and safety committee with senator blessing in our governmental liaisons and he's been meeting with us before and it's it's uh we're very fortunate that he he fostered this relationship with us so we have that to look forward to um we also have attached our committee work plan so we hope that that is accepted as well with the vote to accept the minutes

009what's a little different uh is that we have included updates on positive school culture and a review of discipline data and those will be quarterly reviews of discipline data the administration receives monthly reviews but uh we were told by ms bonte that this would uh not this would be an easy thing to present because it's something that's already done for the administration and on these the dates of the quarterly updates and this will probably be organized closer to the new school year next year is that where he will ask the administration to uh bring together and i believe that superintendent um mitchell has already organized this group a group of students from all of our high schools uh and invite them to attend when this is uh disseminated and we can you know receive their

010input as well so that's something that we have some time to put together we'll receive the uh quarterly updates beginning with our next meeting in march but the student participation uh will take a little bit more time i think and understandably so and we'll begin that next school year uh and we received a pedestrian safety update and that powerpoint is included as well or for your reading and i submit these minutes as uh written with the committee work plan and hope for acceptance thank you do board members have questions and comments about the health and safety committee report uh did i see your hand okay thank you thank you miss bates miss bolton again for uh the uh audit committee report thank you and just for the public's sake the audit committee is a committee

011made up of community members with particular expertise in financial matters and the i report not only is finance chair but the chair of the audit committee is mr tim hellman we have several items uh from the audit committee's work uh they did uh determine their year's meeting schedule uh and that's included as you see also we had a continuing report an update and some news regarding the benefits audit that's being has been conducted and how to implement certain aspects of that audit we do have the hiring of a i believe a third party that will be helping us with that i think that may be appearing in the treasures report soon i think transportation gave a tremendously long uh report about many many different things regarding how important that transportation is again the issues were

012raised about the extension of the five or six uh current contracts with current vendors as well as the need for an rfi and rfp uh unfortunately or unfortunately depending on how you feel about it uh we some of us were coming from a meeting it was a briefing of the governor's budget and there are a significant number of things happening within the governor's budget that will force us to be rethinking some aspects of our transportation uh services uh mr johnson was well aware of that but again a very extensive regarding metro and regarding yellow bus service and then also a new role for the hamilton county education uh service center to somehow be a mediator if you will uh among the charters and the parochials and the privates and the public uh system that is

013ours so that's sort of interesting i would say our our internal auditor laura roberts gave an update regarding the status of both external and internal audits that are occurring and kevin ashley again presented the financial matters on a monthly basis and audit meets every other month uh treasurer again updated cares act two and interestingly enough chairman heldman decided to uh put on the agenda as well and see if there was interest to actually have a audit committee financial boot camp for committee members and i'm sure that board members would also be invited so i think that's great and it's a wonderful group that really does advise us and gives us a very different perspective and appreciate everyone's interest and submit and hope for adoption thank you do board members have questions or comments about the

014audit committee report okay thank you i need a motion to approve uh the committee minutes as written so moved second all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye motion carries then it's are approved okay we have two presentations tonight superintendent please introduce our first presentation yes thank you board president jones so we do have two presentations the first one is um centered around our board goals student center decision making and this is a very exciting one as we talk about our young people and i'm very happy that you'll be able to actually hear from our young people tonight through our speak up speak out group under the leadership of assistant superintendent shawna murphy thank you am i advancing my oldest vlog thank you thank you superintendent mitchell good evening everyone and thank you so

015much for allowing me to do this presentation tonight this presentation focuses on the district's at least partial response to the death of george floyd as well as the civil unrest that was happening our community and in our nation uh we were away from our students at that time they were hurting we were hurting there was a city-wide curfew going on uh we wanted to figure out how we could get in contact with our kids hear from our kids and let them share with us what they were thinking about this time next slide please and so next slide please uh because it is one of our goals and our strategic plan to make decisions based on what our kids want what our kids need uh the superintendent reached out to me and asked me to pull

016together a group of kids as she mentioned uh next slide please and so tonight you're going to hear about three key messages from our students and so those messages are centered around inflaming you about what their demands are also collecting feedback and clarifying any information that's shared through those demands and then of course identifying a path moving forward so tonight uh next time please i have with me uh josh hardin our district's athletic manager as well as uh ashley phelps helped in this work and so josh is going to introduce you actually to some of the students who participate and speak as we go and they are going to do that virtually thank you assistant superintendent murphy and superintendent mitchell good evening board president jones vice president messer and and the board it is good

017to see you all once again we're looking forward to this presentation that will be led by our speak up and speak out student leaders this initiative was created over the summer to give our african-american students an outlet and have their voices heard surrounding racial injustice and inequities to date we have hosted eight live sessions including the recent virtual rally we have hosted many productive sessions with city leaders city council members we have the cpd police chief and many cps staff including superintendent mitchell deputy superintendent ahmad principals counselors social studies teachers and many members from our curriculum department our city leaders have been a part of great dialogue and have empowered and supported our future leaders on how to effectively create change uh the virtual rally that took place last week currently has 1.4 000 views

018and counting this rally can be found on our imcps facebook page we would like to give a special shout out to joy matose mike davison rob wilson tisha o'connell and nia balcke with co here for uh the behind the scenes work and of course our stars in addition to our speak up speak out students um we had izzy rudnick and the cps jazz academy uh eric davis and the cincinnati reds black owned in an interview with paul mcmillan our taft high school cheerleaders led by rebecca beach cincinnati public school athletic directors and your very own board president jones for the great involvement rally we really look forward to watching the growth of this program and our involved students and and believe their initiatives truly align well with our newly formed anti-racism policy newly created a

019diversity equity and inclusion manager position i would like to recognize ashley phelps who have truly been instrumental in guiding the students throughout these past nine months nine months wow uh we have a few of our speak up and speak out student leaders here today to share their list of demands and at this time i would like to ask walnut hills junior who happens to be an excellent student athlete herself uh simone simmons to come on and begin the student presentation simone um can somebody please present the slides thank you hello everyone i would like to present to you the cps speak up and speak out executive committees list of demands which was created on august 5th 2020 next slide please our own superintendent referred to it as an opportunity for the young people in the

020city of cincinnati to rise up in peaceful demonstration take a stance against racism that is seen within our communities and potentially all experience within our school dps speak up and speak out is a way to encourage our fellow classmates to get involved any way they can and we feel that our program is the perfect opportunity to do so for our young students next slide please that's a picture of me simone simmons i'm a junior at wanted hills high school i'm also a member of girls to women at walnut i play basketball and i am a part of the choir for wanted hills outside of school i am a member of jack and jill of america and a member of the teen ambassador board for the attorney general next slide please i would like to present

021to you all our first demand our first demand is that we demand that every high school develop a dedicated peer group to discuss the issues faced by black students in their respective school we want to make sure that it doesn't just end here it is important that school is a safe place and feels like family with the group dedicated solely to the discussion of these topics students will be able to provide a safe place in their school where they can unpack emotions and share fellow experiences with their fellow students that they might have in common with each other next slide please our second demand is that we demand the district create a platform for all voices to be heard through a student-led public rally whenever it becomes safe for us to gather cps should acquire

022a spot downtown to give a platform to those who want to speak and raise awareness about the injustices that young black people face this will allow more teens and adults of all races and ethnicities who may not have been a part of speak up and speak out to join the conversation this could be organized and led by any cps student who is interested in supporting the effort just this past thursday we had a virtual rally but in person would have a much different look and feel about itself an open podium for all students and adults who would be proof would be provided to share their thoughts and the changes they want to see within our district and our community next slide please um hello everyone my name is rachel scales i attend river i'm a

023senior at riverviews academy i am a part of girls to women um a better view and peer leaders at school i'm also a volleyball player and a softball player i'm outside of school i am part of speak up speak out the superintendent's student council um i am really involved in like my community so yep that's a little bit about me next slide peace um our third demand was we demand black history is embedded in the curriculum throughout the school year not just in february um we want to be taught about the injustices attached to our economic status as well as our political status and our empowerments we demand that a non-filter updated and accurate history course required for all students to graduate high school whether offered virtually or in class um additionally we would like

024all staff to participate in an ongoing culture training to be able to properly teach these courses um we were like for curriculum to be changed because we feel like we're only taught black history when it's convenient which is only in february um as we know february is we feel like we're only given 28 days to know about years of history so we would like for that to be changed to only to all year round we taught more of white history than we are black so we want to be taught equally more about our history as well um the next slide please um our fourth demand was we demand that cps actively support students who want to become more technically engaged high school leaders should support all students that are of age to vote by taking

025students through the registration process and providing credible information in regards to candidates we also demand assistance with understanding the voting process for those that are not of age to vote and hopes to be best prepared for the future um as we also talked we came to the conclusion that we aren't taught life skills as in voting i have not been taught how to vote in school um what to do in the vote how to go about voting or even how to register to vote um so we would like for that to also be a part of cps or a part of a class or maybe um an extracurricular activity for kids to be able to be a part of so that when they go into adulthood when they turn 18 or and are able to

026vote that they're not thrown to the wolves and don't know how to go about voting on the fifth slide please um our last slide was we demand that cps facilitates a strong relationship and a better understanding between students and the cincinnati police department building a relationship with cpd could could assist with the tension felt between students and police officers in the community we hope to have a relationship with officers that make us feel safe and not threatened or looked at as a criminal just because of the color of our skin um we started speak up speak out based on the death of george floyd and his death was caused by a police officer so this kind of started it all most of our dps schools have resource officers in them and most of the kids

027don't know their school resource officer and when they do see them it's because it's a bad reason a bad purpose so we want to break down the the stereotype that all police officers are bad and we want to also break down the stereotypes that all black kids are bagged because we are black um we would like for cpv to join um to be able to come to all school events out of uniform and unarmed because any time we see them armed or in uniform we just see the uniform we don't see them as the person in the uniform we just see a uniform so that frightens us um we would like for them to be we would like for our training to happen for cps and for cpd um so that we can get more

028acquainted with each other and so that it's not so much attention when a kid is stopped by a police officer or when they're strictly just coming to talk to us as maybe to ask us about our day we don't just get super defensive or super nervous because that always turns bad really fast um so that is what we would like for that to happen um next slide please and i'll pass it on hello everyone my name is jordan harrison i attend washington hilton university high school as a sophomore outside of school i'm a part of speak up to speak out inside of school i am a student ambassador i'm part of the peer mentoring group and i am also i am also a member of the national honor society next eye please what so what's

029next for speak up and speak out over the over the course of the past few months we have created a list of demands to better our school district whether it's in our schools or our communities we've all worked together for change moving forward with our list of demands we would like to see our all of our goals in that in order to build a better and more concrete education system for younger generations within cincinnati public schools our alyssa demands support students both mentally and physically to build their to better their future and potential in life working together with board of education has instilled strength with all of us now i'm going to list some ways that the board of education can help us they can help us by supporting our list of demands hearing our

030feelings ensure that our list of demands our blame are being implemented in our schools but a better school district for future generations place policies that abide by our by our list of demands improve the diversity of our of our teachers and our schools next slide please thank you for attending our meeting we hope that you enjoyed it and now we have a lot of open session for questions next slide please thank you assistant superintendent um murphy are they available for questions yes uh they should be available i believe they've been brought into this meeting okay so um are they gonna be how do we do this okay so we're going to open the floor for questions or comments from board members uh miss fates first and miss bowers and then mr messer well thank you

031thank you so much for this presentation and and it's really important that we hear from you and that way we can do something about this but i wanted to ask you something because i found this to be really cool have you all and probably some of the adults in the room have heard of this the ywca's racial equity and social justice started today are you and is anybody familiar with that i've heard them yeah and so i it's i think a statewide program of the ywca and it's really an in-depth study of uh of uh the background of inequities and uh ways to well first the background and and then i expect ways that we can work together as a community so i just thought if you know you you in all of your spare

032time with your multitude of studies and getting ready that would be a really cool study for students and as well as adults i did the first day and it was a study and actually at least it was over an hour's worth of work in reparations and the history of reparations and it was super cool so anyway um not that it's another adult giving you homework but i just you know it's cool for the adults to learn more and i just wanted to share that for you and this was a stupid presentation and thank you so much thank you miss bowers yes thank you um everyone rachel is it and simone you guys did a very good job presenting um and i like uh wants you to know that your demands are duly noted um the

033one question i do have we have heard over and over from a group with the um from the young activist coalition they actually presented to sac committee um and the idea um and it was probably reflected probably not as well reflected in the notes that they're we're we're trying to create an opportunity for um you guys to come together because i think there's this group that i think is this other group how do have you guys had any type of conversations with the young activists coalition i'm miss simone i see your hand um i'm actually i actually have a class i have a classmate with somebody who's a part of it and we have communicated about like mixing in and helping each other out before but we haven't like done anything officially and i'm hopeful

034that thank you simone and i'm hopeful that doing our health and safety committee maybe we can bridge those two groups um because similar things but different ways of getting to a certain point but i think it is appropriate for us to do give you that platform and i'm hoping we can do that in health and safety thank you guys okay thank you mr messer followed by mr lindy i'll just echo the comments thank you for your leadership on behalf of our entire district coming together uh to represent the work of the committee so thank you to each of you coming tonight um and my my comment was going to be somewhat similar in that you know it's trying to like bring things together so we can actually start to solve some of the uh challenges

035and i can assure you um i can i think i can look across the table and say you've got a board of uh school board here that will support these demands and now we have to actually get into the work and and kind of uh build those plans to actually go through each of these to take where they need to be so hopefully we can engage you in the work to actually bring these to life um but i think you know maybe just sharing a little bit more of how you meet how often you meet um and uh you know if they're parents who are on the phone or students who are on the phone or participating in tonight's meeting if they have input or if they'd like to share with you um maybe you

036could share with kind of your frequency of meetings and maybe ways that they could connect go ahead miss go ahead rachel um we meet um it used to be every week when we were preparing for our rally but now it's like every two weeks um we meet just to come up with new ideas come up with some new approaches see if we've seen any changes um we you are able to talk to your history teachers and your um sports person can't think of the name of them right now sorry um you're able to talk to them to get in contact with miss ashley and or mr will and or mr josh to be a part of speak up and speak out um and then we do have like links and things on cps's website great

037so i just want to repeat a couple things i heard so you said the website is one way to reach out to you and then um history house athletic directors okay and the athletic directors that was the second one okay just wanted to be clear about that thank you um mr lindy thanks president jones um and and thank you all of you uh i thought your presentation was just great uh and i'd say specifically there are some things you mentioned that i've heard come up in other conversations before and some things i haven't um and some things i hadn't really thought about myself before either and i appreciate that and just be really specific i think the ideas around curriculum uh i totally agree and i've heard them come up before but some of your

038ideas around voter registration and training i thought that was a beautiful idea and that's something i hadn't thought of um and someone to say thank you uh i think for my my real question i think is to the superintendent which is about um uh of these five which can we do uh they all seem great ideas to me and i was curious what you thought about that so we have been working on many of the ideas and i actually had a chance to meet with these young people um maybe a month ago to give them an update first of all i want to say that they are very positive and progressive people and although these are called lists of demands they are not saying this in a harsh or forceful way but just saying this

039is what we really want and what we believe in um i know that our deputy superintendent is working on the curriculum and actually i think there was a presentation that was provided probably around december or so giving an update about our curriculum um assistant superintendent murphy has been working with the police department um to better the relationship with our young people and as a matter of fact uh we actually had a presentation scheduled tonight but moved it to another day to actually hear feedback from a forum that our assistant superintendent helped with the police department as it relates to what our young people are asking for and so um we have been working through the list of demands um hiring is another area and the board is actually talking to us and working with us

040about this for a number of years um which one which other one am i missing can you all tell me which one i'm missing the peer groups thank you so they hosted the uh speak up speak out group hosted their rallied last week and um we may be able to work out to formalize a collaborative so each of our high schools there's a women's group a men's group philanthropy group um they're two more college group and i can't think of the last one right in a career and so we can add this one as a sixth um collaborative so that there's actually a um an advisor who will work with the young people who can pull them together to actually have these groups within their schools right we can make that happen that's easy thank

041you mr moroski this is great y'all i really appreciate um your list of demands and i appreciate the superintendent's words but i will invite you to be harsh if it calls for it because um radical change like centering black voices and black students is going to require oftentimes not being polite as generation after generation has gone out of their way to make sure black students under perform their white peers so i just want to make sure you hear that and um know that you do have a board echo vice president investor that supports these demands um the first one i think that's great centering black voices is what i hear that's so cool to hear the superintendent talk about a peer group um that could do just that because if we don't do that within

042our schools nothing's going to change um the rally sounded great the curriculum is well underway that's really exciting too super excited to be able to hopefully vote on that coming up um as you are aware the anti-racism policy will help bolster that curriculum so that students are taught black history because black history is american history so thank you for calling that out all three of you and the rest of your team number four uh this board has uh talked about this quite a bit recently actually about how civics um and how to be civically engaged has been sorely missing and i know ms bolton who taught social studies for a number of years um believes that dearly and being able to teach more directly how to be civically engaged i think is important the one

043thing i would suggest the presentation talked about kids who are voting age and discussing voting and how to register to vote i would i would uh challenge that a little bit and say we need to talk about that in second grade third grade maybe kindergarten um all the way through um just so that voting you know i know speaking for me it was always beaten in my head that that was important my family grew up in a country where they couldn't vote and so voting was always really important um but that may not always be the case right so socializing kids when they're really little i think is good and as far as the police piece um you know i i think this is a good conversation to have i would love um to see

044whether it's from y'all at speak up speak out um as miss bowers has brought up it's no secret uh the young activist coalition very outspoken group um is very opposed to student uh school resource officers um i'm on the fence admittedly i'd love to see some more research and data that shows the efficacy of the fsro program because there's a lot that shows it's not um beneficial for kids and so if we're gonna work on that relationship i would love and need to see some more data that proves it um so thank you so much keep it up and don't be afraid to be a little harsh with us if we need it all right appreciate you hey miss bolton oh yes thank you and thank you for the presentation and thank you for the

045demands uh we will work on those i know and you will have to keep pushing us to work on it as best as possible too so hold us accountable uh just a couple of uh real quick things and this is to the three things now the superintendent mentioned a number of cohorts or clubs in our various high schools i want to give a shout out to the superintendent who invented that four years ago now as a way to begin this effort so those are early first steps and greatly appreciated that she did that the other one is that from my alma mater which is aiken and i won't say swoop loudly but uh from my alma mater they have a wonderful program that i've been hearing a lot about which is the diversionary court program

046and you might be interested in looking into that it gets pretty good reviews and it deals with the whole discipline piece and also in part the relationship with the police officers and our students but that's at aiken and that's a diversionary court and then to the superintendent again as a retired social studies teacher and as a person that was very proud to have the curriculum development of the social studies curriculum three years ago if i recall correctly and i know mr moroski was part of that too and uh mr davis um i'm concerned that the the students don't see uh the results of that relatively progressive at least a social studies curriculum go i'm still very concerned that they're not seeing it there's much more that we can do with it there's it's just a

047very exciting thing i know mister that lindy has a number of ideas about how to fix that curriculum or get it better and and even more progressive and he's mentioned that uh early this past year but i am very concerned i don't know if that requires an audit i don't know if that requires a a pd or whatever but i put the superintendent and those folks in charge but thank you keep at it keep on us and and make us do right thank you thank you so in closing again i want to say congratulations on a successful rally and thank you for inviting me to participate um we're looking for great things from you guys and you're starting there you're you are starting and so uh we really appreciate that you're willing to do this

048because it starts with you so thank you again for your presentation and we look forward to hearing more from you soon thank you have a good evening wonderful okay we're ready for the second presentation superintendent yes we are so tonight we have a presentation which will be a health and safety update and before we actually get into the presentation um it would be remiss of me not to mention um our partners our expert medical team who are here with us tonight so we're so excited and always always deeply appreciative of the health department a partnership with us whether we're talking about safety protocols or the vaccine or the health data and so very say and happy to have dr grant muskman with us this evening as well as dr maurice amin and i see that

049dr khan from children's hospital is in the audience as well they have been with us from jump start day one and again i cannot speak enough about the importance of the relationship and um how much we appreciate them being with us this evening next slide please all right health update so go back one slide thank you so um i believe it was a few months ago the board gave the administration an assignment and the assignment was for us to be able to look at and come back with a possible plan to move to more days of instruction beyond two days a week the blended learning model and so we're going to present some information for you tonight along with the health data another assignment that was given was for us to be able to come

050back and talk about a criteria to be used to make decisions and you will hear tonight that there are a lot of things to consider and one thing is not more right than the other thing and um you will hear ideas in which we can move forward as it relates to a criteria the third is an update on the cdc considerations and so again i'm extremely excited and happy to have our healthcare professionals here with us this evening to help us with this presentation next slide please so i'm a wholesale part person and so last week we began our conversation talking about this kind of call to action let's all come together and it really makes me think about the young people who spoke tonight one of the things rachel said is we all need

051to work together for change and so i think that what we're doing is setting the frame with everyone with the board and the staff as well as the community in terms of a way forward and so we've laid out a timeline that will actually get us into the next school year and that's the future of cps and it really has to be it's really centered around restoring hope so by um before the end of this month thank you susan bunty and the health department all the staff members who wanted to be vaccinated will have been fully vaccinated with two doses of their vaccine so we're very happy and excited about that yeah thank you and we do need to have a special presentation resolution for the health department for that huge lift that they did

052to get this all done it's been fabulous so you need to do that in addition in this month we will provide for you our deputy superintendent an update on the summer scholars program which is really about closing the gap for many of our young people and then how do we move forward with the decision in terms of more days of instruction before we leave the month of march we will also present to the board next week an update on the new shore as represented during their visioning session a couple of weeks ago and so the administration will bring back to the board what we think we heard you will give us some feedback and then we'll take that feedback back and then bring it back to you on the 15th one more time and make

053sure that we're crystal clear because we believe that april needs to be a pivotal point in our district that is the time that we launch and say here is the vision for the new cps and we're all ready and set to go next slide please so tonight's focus you can see that there are three areas that we're going to focus on and as we get ready to listen to our experts regarding these three areas it's important to say that tonight is about choice and the presentation tonight is about choice i've heard from teachers who have said they really want their kids back in school with them they need them back more teachers have talked about that with the blended learning model and we had to do it at the time that we did it it

054served a purpose that there are five days in which they don't see their children so five days go by until they see their young people again i've heard from parents through the hearing of the public as well as through emails and phone calls um that they need more instruction for their young people in person um this is this is a funny story i was talking with a kindergarten teacher last week and he said that he was telling and talking with his his little kindergarteners about the lunchroom and they said to him we have a lunchroom here so it just goes to show you some of the disconnects that have happened as a result of the situation that we're in we don't use the cafeteria as we once have used it and so our little kindergartners

055didn't even know that they're at the cafeteria again tonight is about choice and our chief strategy officer sarah trumbull oliver is going to begin our presentation and then hand it over to our medical experts and i'll come back to close this out thank you good evening so we are going to start off with the assignment to review the cdc's most recent considerations next slide please so two weeks ago the cdc released new considerations for schools and it includes a list of essential elements for safely operating schools as well as additional prevention measures and dr amin is actually going to review this in a few moments it also includes a brand new correlation of thresholds linked to suggested learning modes so virtual hybrid and full in person and they base it on two community measures the

056seven day total of new cases per 100 000 and the positivity rate and so the most important example is that the cdc suggests hybrid learning levels at all grade levels with strict six foot distancing until a community is below the equivalent of seven daily new cases per 100 000 and for comparison the harvard new guidance for strict six-foot distancing is much higher at a hundred daily new cases per 100 000 and our current for the city is 16.9 next slide please and so it's important to remember that uh these are considerations and not requirements for school districts in the united states and having balance and knowing what's best for your community and how effective your safety protocols is also important and as we have presented all the way back to the summer we're considering how

057to balance covet health risks with academic and social risk next slide please let's look at some of the academic risks this was a report released by ode several weeks ago about the effects of the pandemic on schools across ohio enrollment in ohio public schools is down 53 000 students or three percent chronic absenteeism increased by 13 in urban school 16 for black students 9 for hispanic and for white students on the fall 3rd grade ela test there was less participation and a decrease of eight percentage points in proficiency black and hispanic students saw a decrease of 12 and 10 percentage points respectively next slide at uh cts our fall third grade ela test we decreased participation from 99 to 77 and we decreased in proficiency rate from 38 last year to 21 this year next

058slide student attendance decreased from 91 last year before covid to 86 this year next slide so we also must consider the social emotional risk for kids not being in school and so dr mussman is going to present the social and emotional considerations followed by dr vanderhoff from the ohio department of health with an update on virus variants and then dr amin thank you members of the board thank you superintendent so i want to talk a bit about social and emotional considerations and risk for different modes of learning and i need to start by acknowledging that there is a lot we don't know about this um the impact of distance versus in school learning is is really difficult to measure and parse out uh from the current situation uh concern for a disparate impact of uh

059of the pandemic and associated uh school closures on different populations and populations who have faced inequities has been raised by organizations such as the american academy of pediatrics the ohio department of health and the cdc uh and there is some early evidence of social and emotional harm from the pandemic in general we could go to the next slide so in general nationally there has been a 24 increase in mental health emergency department visits children 5 to 11 in the united states and 31 for older children now this may not be true in cincinnati so at children's hospital they are looking into this and looking at their numbers and early preliminary data suggests that they might may not be seeing this same increase another measure of the impact of the pandemic on children is the food

060insecurity rate uh which has gone from 14 to 18 percent in hamilton county according to the association of food banks which is an increase of approximately 13 000 households so if in summary concern has been raised about the social and emotional impact of distance learning versus in-school learning but it may be some time before we can parse that out exactly from the from the background of the pandemic in general and if you want to go to the next slide i believe we have dr vanderhoff who is the chief medical officer of the ohio department of health hmm we're going to work through our tech technical difficulties and dr rameen will come up good evening everyone and thanks for having our cincinnati health department team we're very happy to be here um shall we move to

061the next line so i just wanted to go over we've seen uh the information about uh measures to inform school planning and so i just wanted to review some of these measures that we have been looking at and these are considerations based on primary and secondary measures so for the primary we look at number of school cases and quarantine cases among our staff and students and we look closely at in school transmission um and the number of uh in school transmission cases uh we look at the staffing levels um are there enough stuff in this school to adequately meet the needs and adherence to the protective measures secondary measures include the rate of new positive cases in our community and the ohio public health advisory system next slide please so i think we've seen this

062in previous presentations but just wanted to remind everyone the swiss cheese metaphor so when you look at single interventions no one single intervention is is protective and there's many holes in the process but when you link all of the protective measures together um that helps um to what we say is you know reduce the risk of transmission and those are looking at uh social distancing masking hand washing and all the measures that we've been talking about and next slide please and now we can add an additional layer of protection which is the vaccination amongst our teachers next slide so i just wanted to highlight some of the social distancing guidance between our agencies so the centers for disease uh control and prevention have said that six feet um or is the uh as possible as

063the greatest um uh protective measure um the american academy of pediatrics has said three to six feet if six feet is feasible otherwise three feet would be acceptable um ohio department of health has adopted both policies saying that we know that six feet is the safer route but when if that's not possible then three a minimum of three feet is also acceptable and with and harvard has also said three feet for younger students and three feet for high school students unless the rate of transmission in the community is above a hundred per hundred thousand and with all these uh pieces of guidance what is equally important are the mitigation strategies that occur in the school um and that the guidance is used to help support the school and what it what the community and what

064the students and staff need next slide please so the essential strategies as we've mentioned before that universal masking even while speaking uh hand washing bathroom hygiene proper ventilation physical distancing isolation and quarantine and following those close contact protocols or contact tracing protocols as closely as possible and cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities additional strategies include the diagnostic testing for vaccination and screening and so cps is working through all those that have a check mark um they've successfully vaccinated the staff who want to be vaccinated they're doing the diagnostic testing on collaboration with cincinnati children's hospital and they're looking at um doing screening testing amongst their students um so they're working very well on the mitigation strategy next slide so i just wanted to highlight where we are in the community level uh over the last month

065we've seen a steady decline in our public cases in the city of cincinnati we're about 17 per 100 000 as of today next slide please and for our positivity rate for the city of cincinnati we've seen a decrease to 7.6 and for hamilton county outside of the city we're at 7.3 next slide so i just wanted to highlight some of the data that between our partners and health department have been able to capture and so the first bullet point is talking about where schools school districts and in our region have been going in-person learning and they looked at schools who have had three to six feet uh students that are three to six feet and students that have been six feet and they found that there's no significant distance difference until up to a point

066where our community rate was about 50 per hundred thousand so with that there's some limitations so what we don't know is uh of the schools who were three to six feet how many were three feet how many were five feet we just know they were in that range uh we also don't know is the school cases was that due to in-school transmission or was that a household transmission that's not you know significant determined um the second piece is looking at the non-public schools in the city of cincinnati um overall we've had no school closures there has been some classroom closures mainly in the lower school of the pre-k elementary classrooms where they've identified a case and just as an extra precautionary measure they close the classroom just to be safe they've had limited in school

067transmission most of the transmission has occurred within either extracurricular activities any social events or household transmission and the limitation here is that we don't know which classrooms were three feet or which classrooms were greater than six feet um that's the summary for the health data thank you so it looks like we did lose dr vanderhoff off of the virtual meeting and so we'll um get the questions about the variance addressed um as soon as we reconnect with him so um next slide please so we've heard from our regional health experts that they recommend using school measures as the primary criteria for making decisions and now that we're back in session it's possible for us to utilize our own data as shown on the slide here to make decisions about the amount of in-person learning choices

068we can offer before we had our own cps data we were relying on community measures but now that we have more relevant data about whether we are operating safely we submit for your consideration using this criteria to make our decisions number of in-school transmissions percent of implementation of safety protocols number of classes closed due to a cluster number of positive cases for students and staff and then staff attendance for certificated and civil service and then once we get our screening testing program in place which is in progress the percent of those screening testing results that are positive next slide please so how will we monitor that our safety protocols are mitigating the risk from the community cases and we've been doing this monitoring so far these are our data sources the daily huddles with the

069health department our cps cova dashboard our safety hotline our daily staff safety reports safety huddles with principals and the safety reports that are reported to the union we will also be able to use the screening testing results to monitor any asymptomatic in-school transmissions once that program is in place next slide please so we began to ask ourselves what would have to be true for us to offer families a choice for five day a week in person learning and it's these mitigation strategies masking hand hygiene ventilation physical distancing to the maximum extent possible isolation and contact tracing diagnostic testing and staff vaccinations next slide please so now that we have been in blended learning and we are confident about our safety protocols we would like to present an option on how we could offer a choice

070to families for either a full five day a week in person or full distance learning each family can decide based on their own family situation and how their children learn best the five day a week in person choice includes all of the cac safety guidelines however the physical distancing will be to the maximum extent possible in the space and may not be six feet in the classrooms and on buses the distance learning choice is either cincinnati digital academy or distance learning from the home school using schoology and our office of communication engagement is conducting a parent and staff survey to determine the level of interest in these learning choices and we'll have those results by next monday next slide please and before i turn it back over to the superintendent we've reviewed the defined academic

071and social risks um for for less than full in-person learning we have all of the essential mitigation strategies in place and on top of that our staff will have maximum immunity by march 19th that's two weeks after the last people get their second dose and we're in the planning stages of a screening testing program that will allow us to monitor asymptomatic cases so we are bringing forward for consideration a way to offer family choice of either distance learning or five day a week in-person learning based on their family situation and how comfortable they are with the safety protocols in less than 60 distance and superintendent thank you next slide please so in summary this is a balancing act and we have to be able to weigh very carefully our ability to be able to manage

072and mitigate um situations and circumstances and we believe that we can do that with our partners no threshold will be a hundred percent assured the information and data is changing on a regular basis the thresholds are shifting on a regular basis as well what we can do right now is to offer our families options and choices within our district that will fit their needs our last slide offers you the references that have been used to pull all of this information and work together so again we could not do this work without the joint partnership with our health department as well as children's hospital and all of our other partners so thank you so very much do you know if we were able to get dr van der hart back on no okay so we will

073um definitely work to get your questions answered regarding the variant and that concludes our presentation okay thank you superintendent and thank you to our uh health experts um so at this time what we'd like to do is to offer the board um opportunity to ask questions of our health experts but i'm also asking the board that you know to kind of hold on to any general comments and discussion until after we hear hearing of the public so that'll actually be the topic as we move into discussion it'll be the first topic on the board matters so we can talk about uh the information tonight but right now this is just sort of a question and answer period for the local health experts so we're going to open that up um okay we'll start with miss

074bolton followed by mr moroski i i have a question about a question uh the questions that we submitted today is that what we're asking or are those going to be re let me let me ask the superintendent we did you're right we did submit questions and yeah i don't know so dr me and dr muskin do you have any responses yes excellent thank you okay maybe that's a good place to start okay dr amin mr marowski do you have a question or do you want to wait after this part is done i i have i have questions yeah but i can't wait till this is done okay perfect um so should we just i guess we'll start with your questions i i think um so the first question was to explain what is the most

075recent cdc guideline and justification or explanation for having differences between k through 8 and 9 through 12 students uh concerning social distancing so um it's the it's the aap guideline the american academy of pediatrics that actually separates out um k through eight versus grades nine through twelve uh as k through eight being three to six feet and nine through twelve as six feet but they don't explicitly state their rationale what they do say is that there is likely a greater impact of physical distancing on risk reduction in secondary schools and that current evidence for k through h schools shows that the majority of transmission occurs primarily between the adults mainly the teachers and then i don't know how we want to do this if we want to just go in the order let's do that

076so the next question was asking about uh reasons of how and why cps has success regarding spread within our athletic programming um so there has been transmission within the athletic programs however they've been able to work closely with our school nurses in identifying transmission and also working with the athletic staff to make sure that the students are in quarantine in a timely manner so the next question is about uh what would your recommendations for our summer extended learning sessions what should be the general health outline for that programming so we would recommend that you follow the same protocols as you are during the school year um and then there was just i think a comment about there's some hope of using the summer extended learning sessions uh to catch up and even get ahead for

077the 21 21-22 school year physical and mental health checks and services for our students and families so the next question i think we just needed some clarification on uh it was what must we do june 1st to be ready to open at one to four or five uh on our current opening date in mid-august would it make sense to begin earlier in august or start later in august my interest there was that okay we get through the school year and regardless of whether or not we have the summer program or not on june 1. do what what do we need to be doing to get ready for the next school year safely but then also does it make sense to start earlier than maybe our mid-august or would it make sense to start later for

078to be the safest we could be for the next school year yeah so i think you know just time will tell there i think um you know planning at starting at the um at the expected time would probably be sufficient at this time right thank you thank you very much okay um so our next question was from pamela bowers uh is we have maintained the cdc guidelines inclusive of six feet social distancing as the standard for in-person learning how does the swiss cheese concept strengthen the idea of three feet social distance now the teachers are close to be fully vaccinated and you know just like you saw on the slide the more layers that are in place the safer that the more protected that we are the cdc guideline for example considers measures such as

079testing of symptomatic students or screening testing or vaccination as additional measures uh which are not part of their core toolkit so as we have those layers in place that's just more layers and you know no layer is perfect i think is we want to make sure it is well understood but the more you have the better let's see i think hopefully we can get dr vanderhoff on the on the line to answer some of the questions about the variants um there's a question from uh mr marowski about uh the long-term lasting effects of the virus on children and so it's it's not completely clear there are case reports of long-term cardiac effects in small numbers of children but there's no way to compute an incidence from a case report so and then there's the multi-inflammatory

080the misc um and again we don't really know what the instance of that is it may be useful to have an infectious disease expert give a presentation about that okay so our next question was we talk a lot about the mental health benefits of being in the classroom and are there concerns about the adverse effects on children who are scared to go back and i think that's a great question it is reasonable to be concerned about the possibility um it's definitely i think as we all know a time of really high anxiety uh just in in general and children pick up on that uh very well that that is that is known um i don't know how to quantify this in a way that you could compare the stressors of being out of school against

081anxiety for possibly going back or what if you've been in two days and now it's five days so i don't really know how to answer that part um i think it is important to know that uh it nationally and in cincinnati uh probably reflects this somewhat 35 percent of children who access mental health services do so exclusively in the school and uh 57 do so partially president jones yes go ahead just a quick follow i appreciate that dr muscle and the reason i had asked that is so the number that you decided um which i'm familiar with the 24 uptick in the mh um ed visits i think the point i was trying to make i brought us up to last meeting to my colleagues is that um oftentimes being back in school is used

082as a panacea for mental health issues i think it's important to remind everybody that we that that 24 number is not broken out we don't know what those are it's not 24 and the assumption often times when you put up a slide that quick and move on is that it's because kids aren't in school that's not the case we're in a pandemic and people are feeling a ton of trauma everywhere and there's no panacea anywhere i just think i wanted to make sure that that was front of mind so i appreciate your response yeah absolutely i i do want to make sure that is clear um that's you know the stress of the pandemic in general is something that's very difficult to separate out there was one last question here um which was is there

083any change of the recommended distance of six feet um and i think we've covered that pretty well in in our presentation the ohio department of health has given us guidance in their written notes that three to six feet is a workable solution with correctly implemented mitigation strategy um any other questions i i just have a general one and and i know that uh dr uh menderhoff was supposed to talk about the variant but is there any information that you can offer i think there is a general concern about that hitting us now timeline time frame from when it's been here do we have any idea what it looks like and how it manifests itself and the impact overall and i don't know if you could answer that but just general information about the bearing yeah

084so um i think what i can answer is that um there is some suggestion that the the variants spread a bit faster and there's question about whether or not there is a higher mortality rate or whether it's just that there's more people infected but exactly what those numbers are or how that breaks out or how each variant relates to those i i can bring that back to the board i'm not prepared to comment on that now okay thank you mr lindy thanks president jones this could be for dr mussman or for dr amin but i think this is the um forgive me if this may feel like an unfair question i just think it's the honest one that's on everybody's mind which is if you were sitting in our shoes what do you think the

085right thing to do is i i think it's really important that uh this decision be made by the folks who are the stakeholders here um i am a cps parent but i'm just one cps parent uh so i i think it's really hard for me to put myself in that role and think about what i might say uh which without being somewhat biased in my opinion good answer he's too smart for that he's too smart for that okay uh do we have mr moroski um is i didn't know if this was time for more questions for our is it time for more okay so we've gone through the list i'm assuming so yes go ahead yeah okay cool um and just a few uh for clear for clarity so i love the whole idea of

086choice in our presentation the cps slides i love the idea of choice i find um and we intelligent board matters more of course but um i do there's a difference between the specter of choice and real choice and if black families are more prone to getting this disease i want to stay home and have to do tda or schoology i don't the choice isn't as robust as maybe it could be but we'll talk about that later i'm curious what our experts recommend for meal times um if so if we start sending more students back when without mask is it okay indoors at a few feet apart should they eat outdoors is there any guidance on meal time and these are all things president jones i do have a few questions but to be clear that

087they're going to be really helpful for me to be able to make some kind of decision i need to have some of these answers yeah so i think whenever possible it's great to be outdoors um but it is recommended to be at six feet um when eating lunch okay thank you dr amin um um um okay we did that we talked about that um i did that did that actually i don't think i have as many as i thought president jones um a couple clarifying questions so the the harvard study that is referenced it's not really a study though is that an opinion right it's not it's it wasn't a study by definition i just want to be clear about that with the 100 cases piece just so i know we're making decisions based on

088all the facts it's not it wasn't a study was it no it was not a study okay and it's it's not clear where those thresholds come from in any of the guidelines okay at least they're not referenced okay good i decided i just wanted to make that clear and also make it clear that hamilton county's cases are 121 out of 100 000. so i know the city one looks better but today it's 121 out of 100 000 i want to confirm that uh i haven't actually looked at the hamilton county cases uh today cool um i appreciate that doctor i mean so i did and i just i think it's important again that we have all that out there the 16 number looks great it's 121 for 100 000 the moving seven day average so

089i just want to make sure that that's out there well before we have the a more robust discussion and then the last one and i think this is probably the biggest one can you hold on one second yeah um let's trimble oliver were you going to respond to that if i may um so the 16 is one day um and 120 is the whole seven days right so 100 comparing apples to apples no the 120 right but the the what we were using to make our decision at least in the past was the seven day average this this seven day one day average i know that's confusing but that is controversial one day daily it's confusing because the cdc and harvard use two different measures one is a one day average which is averaged over

090seven days and one is a complete seven day sum right so it's gonna be confusing and so it's gonna compare to apples to apples right and so well it still would be different because 121 is the county's seven days so the city though would be 16.9 or 0.7 plus all the other six successive days i just i i just want to be clear because i think there are people in the public that assume we are using the seven day average which is what's often referenced and so when they see a 16.7 number i just so that's perfect that's great but as long as we're talking we so we're talking about different things which is fine initially i was in the impression we were talking about seven day averages but that's fine if we're not now

091but the last one is the most important one is what studies show that three feet spacing is okay if there are any studies that show that so um i think there haven't been very many studies that look at that um i mean i think they're comparing the three to six versus the six um and in my i don't know very many um that that can tell us definitively that three feet is okay thank you dr mean yeah that's all okay additional questions for our experts ms bates yes and and i assume this data will be coming later it was referred to in the uh powerpoint but uh i know there haven't been formal studies done on the three to six feet but we know that there is data from all the school districts in the

092area and uh if and we know many of those schools are distanced at three feet and there is data for that so i'm not sure if you would call that a study i did request that i requested it today so i you know i'm not expecting it you know right now yeah and so um for the non-public schools we just don't know um for the public school districts in hamilton county that are not cincinnati public okay so there um that that data looked at who was three to six versus six um but it didn't look at three only and six only um so we just we don't know um that what the transmission rate was for three only versus six only does that make sense right can we i mean is there a way to

093find that out um we can ask we can check with our partners what else they know um but we can get back to you whether that's possible or not okay any other questions before we turn them loose okay president jones i will say and i'm i'm thinking trying to come up with the way to get you your answers regarding the variance i'm very disappointed that we weren't able to make the connection with um the doctor from the ohio department of education and sarah we are not able to get him by phone either no i just want you to have that information before next wednesday we can send the questions um to odh and we can get your responses thank you that would be helpful okay all right so if there are no other questions we

094want to thank dr mussman dr amin dr khan up in the audience um we and and i just want to say again we've said it but i'm going to say it again that we appreciate the partnership um that's been really consistent it's been helpful uh we ask tough questions because it's just a tough situation that we're in and so um we do appreciate you're taking the time out to come and and share the information as as much as you're able to we appreciate that thank you so much you're welcome yeah yes thank you okay so what we're going to do we are going to open this up for a broader discussion but we are going to go to hearing of the public at this time um and we'll do our discussion following that so we

095are now at the item on our agenda for hearing the public consistent with the state's direction to minimize public gatherings 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 do so if needed i'm sorry oh okay 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 or or the district safety hotline once a request to speak has been granted you will be invited to enter please click on the

096camera 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 is 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 and remember we are an institution of learning and our students are watching thank

097you good evening our first speaker is richard gangulin followed by amy parks ely go ahead richard good evening thank you can you see me we cannot yet there you go thank you hi so i i am richard ganulin i represent warner hills high school parents for remote learning 2020 to 21. and several weeks ago a scientist presented data to the school board indicating that the viral exposure when a student is three feet away from another student is conservatively speaking nine times greater than six feet it can be four times greater and if the student is two feet apart it's nine times greater four to nine times greater viral exposure when you put the students two to three feet apart than if they're six feet apart and we've not received any rebuttal data to that and

098nobody on this board would cluster your chairs two to three feet from other board members take off your mass all of you take a sip of your water at the same time and create that magnified viral exposure so there is no data no scientific analysis whatsoever and i think you heard confirmation tonight from the cincinnati health department that there are no studies establishing the health and safety of the kind of distancing this nostril to nostril distancing that you are talking about or have talked about for water hills high school and our focus is warner hills high school there's also been no thank you our next speaker is amy parks elite by sean kelly go ahead amy hi good evening so i'm amy parks ely from the kilgore community this past year we realized has been

099really challenging but reactive planning has resulted in a lot of families fleeing the district and a lot of divisiveness and it's clear one solution for all isn't working so we're encouraged to hear the presentation tonight about choice and as a solution we're requesting a comprehensive plan for the next 21-22 school year hopefully to be committed to and shared publicly by march 15th so that families can be informed and planned accordingly we're requesting that the plan include in detail one an option for five days in person instruction two a remote teacher-led instruction option the cda is not currently a viable option for many of our families and a procedure in place in the case of quarantine we should think the plan should include creative solutions and collaboration with parents in the community principal empowerment so that

100they can be in charge of their staff and part of the solutions benchmarks and best practices from local schools and address revisions needed in the contract with the cincinnati federation of teachers where it might be presenting preventing flexibility or solutions like not um allowing teaching in quarantine or mandating sick days for example and creative solutions for space so we really believe that the future is now and the time to start leading is now to make cps the leader in the city that it can be thank you thank you our next speaker is sean kelly followed by ilya dalinsky good evening board members this is sean kelly a cps parent with students at walnut hills and fairview and i just want to thank uh all responsible for the great survey that came out this evening for

101walnut hills families uh it's it's it's the first survey and i think it's just a great step to give families choice and to give families options and let them truly express what their children are going through and what is best for their family moving forward so thank you for getting that out the door and i look forward to hearing the results of the survey have a good evening thank you oh yeah the linsky is followed by hi uh i'm ilya valinsky i'm a parent of uh 10th graders at walnut hills high school and i just wanted to also thank you for um beginning to really look at the science um and give stakeholders um a voice and hopefully a choice one thing that i wanted to make clear in our assessment of risk is that

102yes we all realize that we can't be completely safe while the virus is still around and nothing is going to be risk-free but we have seen that there's spread within schools once schools were opened up at cps and we have to think of not only the teachers which is great that they're immunized but the kids and also the parents the grandparents the community because cps serves the community that the children belong to as well and the board of education has to consider community spread as well um you know we have to realize that we're adding risk to kids uh when we tilt the balance in favor of just getting kids to school as soon as possible for as long as possible so that's that's what i wanted to say thank you thank you [Music] go

103ahead hello hello go ahead and frozen ah there you are there you are come on yeah hi um my name is elky bushberg i'm a parent of two at wonderland high school i'm also a scientist i'm a professor at the university of cincinnati i first want to thank the bird members who supported the petition on february 8th and kept one of his family seat and online and i truly appreciate that you're now talking about choice i do have some concerns for example one of your criteria has been that there's low spread between kids but unless you start routinely testing all kids you wouldn't even know that right because kids often are asymptomatic and so i'm concerned that them bringing a copy at home to parents and grandparents and in that case they would get sick

104and not even know that they got it from the kids so to get a full handle i feel like you have to test them i'm also um concerned i'm wondering that that uh your proposal doesn't have any strict rules in regards to social distancing and i was wondering if there's any minimum distance that you say you go hana at all distances all cases for example would you ever allow a school to open with less than three feet separation um finally i really appreciate that you look at multiple studies and i appreciate that you already realized that they are not all equal and some are more data driven than others i find that the cdc guidelines seem to be really good and they seem to be crystal clear that online should be read right now for

105many of the high schools in the district including has bonded hills high school they are saying explicitly physical distancing of six feet or more is required is followed by anna schlosser hello uh can you see and hear me yes go ahead okay thank you my name is joya logue and i'm a parent to two wanted hills high school students and one hyde park school student i want to first thank the board for making the right decision to keep our students safe by remaining virtual at walnut hills until safety measures can be met and insured in an already very extremely overcrowded building our students are getting a full week of virtual instruction which is much needed i want to thank the walnut hills high school teachers who go above and beyond every day to engage our

106students virtually they're doing an amazing job i also would like to ask the board to let science and guidelines by our experts in the field continuing to lead the way for making decisions as you've presented them tonight that's been great to hear and i think especially as variants move into our city that the optimal social distancing that is needed at the high school level be evaluated as tonight dr amin just stated that for a lunch example indoors there needs to be six foot social distancing lastly i'm asking the board to focus on the upcoming 21-22 school year instead of disrupting the remaining weeks this spring at walnut and to make sure that we start making plans and options for all of our students for next fall thank you thank you anna schlosser is followed by

107dillian whitaker hello my name is anna and i'm a junior at walnut hills high school and i'm here tonight to ask the board whether to continue to keep walnut hills remote for the foreseeable future as well as to ask whether or not the new five-day week plan applies to walnut hills we saw today that the first strategic goal of the board is student-centered decision-making you claim to put the students first as you are severing students please survey us students as well and value our input after all we are the ones that this major decision affects the most many students and at walnut work jobs outside of the school volunteer in the community or live with older family members so sending us back in person not only affects us but affects our family teachers staff and

108the greater community and we talked a lot today about choice and the choice as we go back into hybrid or in-person models and i just want to make requests that any choice for an online option is fair and equitable which includes things like making sure our classes are available online ensure that a teacher is actually teaching the class and that we're receiving equal education time to our peers who would be in person keep in mind the cincinnati digital academy only offers 13 out of the 35 ap classes that wanna offers and we have not seen a clear plan on to how this online learning model would affect students like me who are in these ap classes remote learning has worked well for seven months so far at walnut hills going back in person or in

109hybrid means less time with our teachers less collaboration with each other and a much higher chance of contracting coven 19. so please continue to keep one at hill's room out thank you thank jillian you is followed by ruth de bono hi this is julia um i'm a parent at walnut covedale and dater montessori um i wanna just first off thank mike for asking some hard questions tonight uh it seems like a lot of times when the doctors come in uh certain board members like to cherry pick the data and um i think that there are hard questions that need to be asked and i appreciate everyone who is asking them additionally i would like to as usual um promote my preference and my students preference for keeping walnut remote um and also for an equitable

110online option for other schools currently i have one student in a school who gets two hours of instruction a week and nothing but paperwork other than that uh this is an ongoing problem that you've also been faced with with the cda even before covet um so please take this time to consider how you can revamp that moving forward i know that it's a giant equity issue and then it's been addressed multiple times by the parents um but it's not going away finally uh again i would call for the resignation of melanie bates um i find it extremely disappointing that no one on the board is addressing the comments that were made by her two weeks ago um this needs to be addressed in a board meeting with the public and everyone's opinions on what was

111said needs to go on record uh it is a dereliction of duty at this point to allow her to remain on the board thank you for your time ruth de bono is followed by braden wormley go ahead mr ball now um okay my name is ruth devonno i'm a junior at walnut hills high school and um in terms of the plan we have we have been talking about with cobit i think it's great to make to give people the opportunity to make a choice that choice needs to be based on science and studies and reasoning not just people's opinion and um desire to have our students in schools it still needs to be safe and it still needs to be a safe choice and a safe option additionally in response response to the um speak

112up students relationship with the cpd um i think it's important to mention that and i'm part of ysc and in our conversations with many community members people have great relationships with sros and look at them look up to them and even people who may have been punished by isro some of them had bad experience but some of them even still liked the sros it is not an issue of how strong are the relationships are if you want to get make strong relationships that's fine the problem however is the punishment and criminal criminalization of our students even if you have a great even if we have great relationships with our police in their own mission statement they say that they are police first their goal is to [Music] students and be punished and criminalized and not

113in a place where they should be taken out of class and punished or arrested and referred to the police in cps schools black and brown students are black students are referred to the police expelled and suspended and much higher rates than white students thank you and thank you our next speaker is braden wormley followed by amy blind hi i'm brayden wormley i'm a senior at walnut hills i'm vehemently opposed to walnut returning to in-person school the main issue i take with going back to school comes from the ethical implications of the board's decision and such a decision is made to force us to return the implication is that a school board is able to knowingly and willfully endanger the lives of students for whom they work the members of the school board may have been

114elected by the parents but they are elected for the students and such a decision would contradict that on that note we should be asking ourselves why we elected the members of the school board we as a community entrusted them with our children that is to say we entrusted them with our collective future so i now ask all the parents in attendance what sort of conduct do you want out of the protectors of your future what characteristics what virtues must they display in a crisis for you to trust them to handle the next crisis um additionally uh in reference to speak up speak out i want to say that i'm a little disappointed that the general student population wasn't really consulted in any meaningful way i think we were able to organize we could have represented

115the views of all of the students and we could have had much more powerful demands thank you amy boyne followed by kristen copeland hello uh i would like to first thank superintendent mitchell for securing vaccines for all 6500 staff members additionally thank you to all teachers in the district for all of your hard work this year thank you to everyone that we rely on to get this important decision right the lives of the students and their families are at stake and i'm here to continue the dialogue about a safe return to wanna hills high school the data cited this evening doesn't support a return for high school students utilizing a three-foot physical distance full stop not the outdated american academy of pediatrics guidance from may of 2020 and not the recently updated cdc guidance yesterday

116cnn's dana bash reported new york state school superintendent said it would be impossible to return to five days for elementary and middle school students using a six-foot metric and so she pressed dr fauci on the record to say three feet was safe he refused to do that with the many new variants and risk posed to unvaccinated students and families now is not the time to let our guard down let's plan for next year it is expected the next five to 14 weeks will be really hard on younger individuals in those 65 and under due to the widespread uk variant i do hope to get an update uh next week on the variance as well and i just want to finish with this do you have a plan in place to address the many new variants

117finally we appreciate our daughter's continuity of education thank you we have kristin copeland followed by kayla reedy good evening board members uh i'm kristen copeland and i am speaking on behalf of my 11th and 9th graders who are currently at their socially distanced uh musical practice um at walnut hills um and encourage you to um check out the uh musical which is available for live streaming this weekend but they have been at that rehearsing at all of these board meetings they would want me to say virtual is working really well for them uh teachers are doing an amazing job uh my kids would want me to tell you that anything less than four days face to face with your teachers is really not acceptable given the caliber the difficulty of their classes uh and then

118for in person less than six feet is not safe particularly for high school students and for high rates of community spread as the medical experts said specifically six feet is not safe or less than six feet is not safe for meal times as dr amin said tonight uh one piece that i'll add that my students may not know about quality improvement is to start small test and scale so start with a small group of students not the largest high school to go in person um last i did fill out the survey for walnut hills it was not well worded and it specifically wasn't at the student level so i want to thank you guys for keeping my kids instruction in mind as you make decisions and i encourage you to as the other students have

119asked to go ahead and survey the students themselves thanks thank you next is kayla reedy followed by elinda rico um hi my name is kayla reedy and i am a senior at walnut hills high school i am here today on behalf of young activist coalition to discuss several things the first of which being the return to school the new strains that have just been found in hamilton county will have more severe impacts on children continuing in-person schooling especially at anything below six feet which is the cdc recommendation is not safe you must close all schools in cps before it is too late and a student family member or teacher dies i would like to thank all of our wonderful teachers and cps for everything you have done for us this year and all of your

120hard work in this unprecedented situation the second thing i would like to discuss tonight is the presence of police officers and cps schools black students in cps are three times more likely to be referred to law enforcement officers and five times more likely to face exclusionary discipline overall this is absolutely unacceptable additionally 50 percent of people who die at the hands of police on a national level have a disability and black people with disabilities experience the highest cumulative rate of arrest at 55.2 percent by implementing true restorative and transformative justice in cps we can and must remove police officers thank you owen dorico will be followed by vanessa spatera hello my name is owen de rico i'm a sophomore at walnut hills high school i'm speaking on behalf of the young activists coalition and i

121would like to use this short time i have to dispel several conceptions that seem to exist around our goals and our relationship with speak up speak out as a program first of all i would like to be exceedingly clear in saying that yac is not in an adversarial relationship with speak up speak out and our goals are very much one of the same in many areas when it comes to the creation and sustaining of safer and more inclusive school environments curriculum and policy we consider the majority of their demands to be very much necessary for facilitating this and of course the elevation of the voices of the students whose who's who this policy ultimately concerns most directly is highly important however this policy is just the beginning of what needs to be done and i

122believe that a problem arises when the board utilizes the demands of this group as the be all and end-all of the board's involvement with this kind of policy and is a shield from properly and publicly engaging with questions and issues which are less easy or convenient for the board to confront and when this is combined with a limited range of student involvement this becomes even more problematic second of all i would like to be i would like to thoroughly refute the idea that we have ever made the claim or believe that all or even any significant portion of the sros stationed in schools are bad people on an individual level however regardless of individual relationships sros may have with students and regardless of how good they may be the statistical realities of vast disparities in

123how punish is allocated in this district remains to engage with these subjects responsibly the board must be willing to confront uncomfortable subjects also lest anyone forget melanie bates you need to resign thank you thank you vanessa skachera will be followed by gilda vargas adams good evening cps board of education superintendent i want to express my appreciation for keeping volunteers remote i have a few questions and one note the note is as far as mental health there can be other topics related to pandemic that may cause health issues you know mental and fishes like maybe parents lost their job or people lost their relatives to the pandemic and many others so yes there is an increase in mental health problems but they may not be because their kids are home from school the other question is

124what does it mean a remote school with schoology it was not clear and also i would like to understand why the board of education is not following the cdc guidelines and dr fauci appeals to not open everything all of a sudden like everybody is doing in united states because now the infection are plateauing they're not going down anymore that's the problem because from plateau we can go up again thank you joel devargas adams is followed by olga san miguel hello i'm jilda vargas adams i'm a pediatrician and a parent of walnut hills high school students once again i want to appeal to the use of science science is real and there is robust unbiased guidance regarding covenanting the district must demonstrate decision making that is driven by science evidence and rational thought in this case

125it means following cdc guidance in any proposal to return walnut or any other cps student to the classroom walnut hills is an outlier and a challenge these students are profoundly aware of the risks of their high density school environment and they are similarly extremely motivated with academics their concerns about inadequate physical distancing and slashed instructional hours with a hybrid model are salient and voiced previously in this forum i ask you have science guide your decisions not pressures from the state or the parents who speak loudest and not to appeal to choice as a way to avoid accountability to science the cdc's current guidance does not support walnut students return to in-classroom learning unless they drop to only one day of instruction per week equating to six feet of distance and no one thinks that is

126sufficient with high levels of community spread and highly contagious variants taking hold in cincinnati mitigation efforts in keeping with the cdc guidance are imperative whatever decisions are made please let science be your guiding light thank you thank you olga san miguel is followed by bryce aguipan hello and my name is olgas and miguel valderrama and i have a student in walnut hills seventh grade i'm also a professor at the university of cincinnati i am deeply concerned about the fact that walnut high school is the only cincinnati previous school that remains remote to achieve the district's goal of equity students at one hill should be given the option if they wish to attend school in person as other students in the district i am requesting the board and superintendent mitchell to please create a concrete and

127feasible plan to enable the choice of in-person instruction at walnut hills during the remaining of the current academic year but more importantly is for the board to carefully plan for five-day in-person instruction for next academic year in august 2021 i would like the board to declare in this meeting a firm commitment from its members and cincinnati public schools to create a feasible plan to reopen walnut hills five days a week in august 2021 many parents including myself need to know what are the plans for next academic year so we can make informed decisions about our kids no one in the community can change the risks the concerns and the fears by many constituencies in the school however the lack of a concrete plan to resolve for instance the lack of space or streaming live classes

128is extremely worrisome keeping all children home reduces the risk of the viral transmission but it increases the risk of other very serious mental social and emotional health concerns thank you uh bryce aguipan is followed by holly miller hello can you see me yes go ahead okay hello my name is bryce ajpong and i'm a student who attends walnut hills high school i am very pleased with the board's decision and keeping us remote and not signaling i mean science sorry signaling out and uh leaving us with less protect and i'm ashamed to see that board members are considering sending us back as we see with the data the positivity rates in the cases per 100 000 are on a decline which is a great thing but remember that these can spike up much faster than they

129go down especially minority communities i'm glad that we not only have had the opportunity to vaccinate our teachers but we also have new cdc guidelines that strongly encourage you to follow keep in mind that students and their families will not be able to receive the vaccine for a little while and that new strains will spread rapidly throughout communities i urge you all to remember and take pride in what you do as board members you all are held to a higher standard and elected by the people to protect and care about the student staff and the community in general yes that includes grandparents as well not just with covet but in other aspects that we've seen presented today i encourage you all to err on the side of caution when it comes to public safety even

130if it means you will not make everyone happy as long as that keeps you keeps us safe because that is your job and that is why you were voted in and that can be taken away depending on how the public feels with your actions inside and outside of board meetings because your actions have consequences and they can be fatal thank you for listening and thank you for your time thank you holly miller is followed by carrick and kelly how are you with us hello so can you hear me we can hear you we can't see you okay i don't know if it's gonna come up or not i don't know what's going on but my name is holly miller and i have four graduates from cincinnati public school and i also have a son who

131attends state or montessori and i also work at roselawn condon with medically fragile students um i know last week i talked to the board so um i wanted to just explain my copycat reference this is what i hold up for students when i want them to copy my behavior last week we had um behavior that wasn't meant to be copied and that's kind of what i was alluding to but this week i want to talk to you about the very real fact that it's very frustrating to hear people talk about walnut over and over again and the safety measures not being able to met when this district is well aware that the safety protocol is not being met in the specialized classrooms district-wide students are mask exempt there is no six feet of special of

132social distancing in these environments and teachers are sick in fact i have a colleague of mine right now hospitalized with kobit um i would like you to know who works in a specialized unit so there are real consequences to us in this district the other thing i wanted to point out is my son began his first week of in-person learning thank thank you kelly is our next speaker followed by luke floater hi um [Music] um i think it's really important regarding the food um just this said um the evening the doctor said that uh dr dean said that six feet is the um guidance nothing less than i just wanted to make sure miss bates did hear that in fact also um to the three to six feet question about community spread that that data

133was not yet um available and that that would be forthcoming so finding that we should base our decisions um i also would like to say that i am so appreciated to of our staff and our teachers um i only have students thank you thank you hi my name is luke bloacher i'm a parent uh two kids at the clifton area neighborhood school um i'm here tonight in support of a five-day full-time return for at least elementary age kids but i support it for all students in the district as soon as it's possible and in all instances uh this semester i say that as a parent who believes that it's best for my children but also as a citizen of the community articulating what i i truly believe to be the best short and long-term interest

134of everyone in cincinnati i'm also here to support the concept of parental choice i respect unequivocally and deeply the concerns of families who prefer to stay remote i've come by my views honestly and with a lot of reflection and i have no doubt that those who disagree with me completely did as well i'm not asking that those of us who would like our children to be in person five days a week be able to force that decision on those who don't but i am asking that those families who want to stay remote do not control the decisions and options for those of us who want to be in person i want to encourage the administration and the board to find a solution that will allow for school-specific remote participation in parallel with a five-day in-person

135option as it appears based on tonight's presentation they are and i was very glad to see that as i know many people were i also want to ask the administration and the board to develop this solution in close consultation with our wonderful teachers who of course are the ones whose teaching skills much more so than whatever technology's developed will allow this to work let's get these kids thank you thank you i'm not sure if i'm next mika clincy i'm sorry no um you guys turn your cameras in your head eric larson is up next eric larson can you see me all right yes wonderful thank you my name is eric larson um thank you to everyone for being here and i echo all of the uh the the compliments to our teachers and staff and

136everyone else um my daughter attends walnut her mom attended walnut her grandparents went to walnut and her great-grandparents went to walnut so we have a deep love of the school the teachers the staff and all of the families in our school community but in accordance with the cdc's updated regulations we have to oppose going back to walnut with merely a three foot distance looking at the cdc's website right now it was updated on friday they clearly speak out still for six feet of distance and i think what i want to make clear because other other people smarter than me doctors have made the point already about the six feet of distance is that our younger child is in person at pleasant ridge we're not opposed to going back to school what we are opposed to

137is the conditions that would be necessary at walmart this is about staying safe not only does our love of woman run deep but we love and support our friends and their children whether whether they want whether they're pushing to to return full-time or not but what we're dealing with here and what we're looking for here is a solution for safety and we're asking the board to create a long-term plan that keeps us safe in accordance with the science so thank you again to the members of the board and everything tonight okay our next speaker is youssef meniere followed by mika quincy hi my name is yousef manier i'm a senior at walnut hills high school and i'm the president of young activist coalition first thing i want to do is focus on a few facts

138one black and brown students are disproportionately targeted and punished and criminalized by school resource officers two according to a memorandum of understanding that we received from cps from you the district has no control over the sr program and no oversight capabilities over the program they have no right to choose uh how many srs are in each school or what the sros do three almost all arrests that happened in cps schools were done by sros and almost all of these arrests were the criminalization of behavior that was previously handled by schools specifically sros have been given the role of handling petty fights and as a result criminalized children and childhood behavior that's evil i think it is interesting though that one of the speak-up speak out students mentioned that students don't really interact with the sros

139at all because past six months superintendent and the district have repeatedly told us that we must keep sros because they have such a great relationship with students so which is it do they or don't they have a great relationship with the sros i would like to add though that there is no evidence that better relationships with these sros will improve any of the disproportionate targeting of black and brown students because at the end of the day it is a systemic issue not an issue with any of these estrogens individually there is however evidence that sros enact racist violence against children i would like to add that our demands yc's demands in action removal of all sros and punitive discipline and replacing them with restorative justice practices thank you the next speaker is mika clincy followed

140by julie sellers thank you my name is mika clincy i am a walnut hills parent of two thank you for keeping your commitment to keep bonnie hill's virtual as necessitated by the new cdc guidelines which still have us in red the cdc announced today that highly contagious variants put us at risk of losing all recent gains in the battle against cove in 19 if we rush to reopen before mass vaccination the health and safety of our kids and families is not predicated on political expediency you made a deal with the governor behind closed doors based on a safety plan you knew was impossible to implement our most overcrowded high school and now you expect our kids our families and our teachers to pay the penalty not okay we've been in this pandemic for a year

141now and you haven't made any changes to mitigate overcrowding at walnut hills in order to allow students to safely return to facilities in the fall your experts just said that the ohio department of health recommends desks at least three feet apart but you told us a few weeks ago walnut hills could only be up to three feet apart nostril to nostril start slowly don't force your largest school into this experiment three weeks ago you agreed that three feet is not safe dr amin just confirmed this and apparently dr fauci did as well a loss of instructional time with teachers in favor of self-taught software school is not equitable any plan that gives five days of instructional time only to families who are willing to return to overcrowded schools at any cost is not equitable i

142received your survey today it's poorly worded and biased as if only families that want five days a week in school care about mental health please revise this survey with viable equitable options and allow students to respond as well we applaud your effort to get teachers vaccinated they are not yet fully immune and students and most of their family members have had no cell phone yet our last speaker the evening is cft president julie sellers good evening um i just wanted to say that um cft's always been about opening schools four days five days as long as the community spread was low which it still isn't low we're still red our numbers are still too high and that it is safe for teachers secretaries and students i do appreciate now the fact that employees have had

143their vaccines but currently not one student in our district has received a vaccine unless they're in a trial they many of their families have not received a vaccine many of their grandparents have not received a vaccine and they don't feel comfortable with their children returning attendance has been low since we've reopened schools i do think that we do need an option for some families to have five days if we can keep enough of the six feet of social distancing we can make sure that there are real options for the students who want to remain remote which right now we don't have that i have been begging since last spring that we have to have good options and i think it could have been worked out if we would have had the information and data from

144families i know it's been very difficult it keeps changing but i do not think that for you to make this changes for the fourth quarter is um fair to make students switch to schoology or cda for the whole fourth quarter and to expect that families would be okay with nothing no interactive instructions with a teacher i think that we can figure this out if we all came to the table i think there are options that we can do so that there are remote options for families that are interactive there was just recently a commission study that the new york times did on ventilations and i would like to request a report on every classroom they're saying the importance of being able to open windows as these numbers are going up again um i would like

145to see what is the ventilation and because many of our classes rooms are in classrooms without windows um the median age is lowering each week and this week this past week the median age of of people having covet is just 34 years old that's the median age so there are many teenagers who are getting this last week out of the seven days for the days we're seeing increases in the only days with decreases were over the weekend and so i think that we have to still be careful we have to still watch this and i hope that we can have some sort of quality information and thank you i believe that concludes the hearing of the public um so we're going to move forward and the first item on the board matters agenda is really

146an ex extended discussion about the health and safety update um we decided to extend it in order that we hear the hearing of the public first um so at this time i'd like to open up that discussion if people have questions want to get caught up or whatever uh deputy superintendent ahmad is here to address those questions so having said that we'll open the floor for questions or comments or any additional discussion mr marowski as promised um really i only only have one thing and i think we heard it tonight as well and we've probably you know been hearing it in some way shape or form for a year really which is the choice piece um which uh like a lot of our speakers tonight said i certainly um would throw my hat in the

147in the ring as being in favor of that but again i do think there is a large difference between choice and the specter of choice and i think um and it's through no fault perhaps of of ours but that we are offering the specter of choice and not real choice and and i don't see how it's equitable to say to communities of color you can stay home and use an ingenuity online curricula or um dda and so again and i know everyone on this board at some point or another has brought up you know working with rit department to crack that code but if we could offer whether it's streaming in-school remote option in school five days and the cda i mean that obviously is the the ideal and i certainly am supportive of that

148but the the i don't believe that the current choice is on authentic choice okay um go ahead and did you miss bolton did you have your hands up yes with okay go ahead thank you i'm gonna have uh questions as they arise but i do need the deputy to explain what is meant by that uh you have uh in person and you have cda and you have then schoology eulogy the attraction is that it's the same teacher you stay within that same feature of record but isn't that how would you be using schoology is that only assigning things through schoology is it no connection with the teacher besides the assignment perhaps you could explain what we may mean by the schoology absolutely we are currently in that model now so on mondays students have that

149direct connection with their teachers and then tuesday through friday it is student directed the assignments are posted on schoology along the same assignments that the in-class students are receiving as well so so there's not any interaction correct except in the assignment i mean it's just that it's it's just that it is particular to that school in particular to that teacher correct it's not actually in person uh instructional time but it's self-directed correct thank you and and repeat again just for clarification is that what the buildings are doing now each building has their own way of addressing it as a self-directed activity that's correct okay thank you all right um any additional questions miss bolton yes thank you um you know i had somebody say oh i counted this many public comment on this side versus

150this side i think what is really going to be helpful is to actually get the survey data which i hear that data is coming in quickly so that's great um because you can't make decisions just based on who happens to be able to come and call in and not doing dinner or in our house would be well past bedtime um so we need that we also i think the you know the thing that people agree is they say well the school board's not listening to me and it's because if we do this side if we make this decision this group thinks we're not listening so the moral the story is the way i sit i have close personal friends who say i need remote option and i may not be comfortable to her immunity and

151to them i say that's okay for you and then i have friends who say i am comfortable get my kids back five days i say okay good for you that's okay for you and so i think the win-win that we can create of this out of the situation through data is to provide that five-day option with a viable option for remote i think uh we don't have jres out and the superintendent said that he'll have some additional information on some technology that had been reviewed that i think changes the conversation you know i love the word interactive because that's very different than eulogy because i'll say you know for for those of us who are trying to deal with the two days on and two days off of the one day remote the two days

152off it's it's hard first of all you have to have somebody sitting there to help facilitate and the whole bit it's nowhere near the same as having somebody there to interact with the children um much more likely to get them to sit there and participate at the computer but i do believe strongly we have to provide choice and i think they have to be viable choice uh choices uh for both and i think having some um additional information for me on that remote um opportunity for that side of the choice that there is you know cda i think we've heard from plenty of our parents and families that's not the choice they're asking for they want this kind of interactive piece so i think that would be a great piece of follow-up and maybe assignments

153but to make sure that whatever has been looked into can be presented back to the board um for consideration thank you miss bowers i thank you president jones um deputy superintendent i might i just want some clarity on a couple of things remote option which is not streaming and we know that some schools individuals have decided to do what do we know a number of schools that are that are doing that 17 17 schools and that's just like maybe a computer is up and it's on and the student can see what's going on in the class but there's not a lot of interaction right there's a variety of ways okay that they're doing that remote option okay but it's only at 17 out of 65 correct okay next when you say surveyed what who was

154really surveyed in the district was it just walnut hills parents to their server was it all parents served about five days the entire district okay and then regarding cdc and the the idea that there's 13 or 16 ap classes at um cincinnati digital academy versus the 35 or so that they have at their school and i know that's only digital or virtual i mean um ingenuity or what have you the um the curriculum is being used there how is that being a rectified belt as an option for students even though there's not it's like half of that yes classes yes we have um custom a customized approach so what we put in place once we get the students master schedule we contact individual teachers to see if they are willing to do extended time to

155add that student to the course sometimes it's during the school day it can work or it's before or after so it's not a part of the ingenuity course we are customizing our approach for those individual schedules but we're only allowed to have 13. what where's that 13 numbers they're they're talking about the ingenuity curriculum okay we're going beyond yes we're going beyond the edge annuity curriculum and working directly with our teachers but it's individualized because it's based on the student's schedule and for those students let's say for just for example if that is an option for a student at walnut hills and they just and they decide to go to cda what are any student in the district at the festival of the city and taking ap courses are they able to what if they're

156not able to get an instructor for that course what happens to them for the rest of the school year that has not happened as a date okay we were able to accommodate every student who needed an ap course okay thank you okay thank you um miss bates followed by mr lindy yes i i think right now or today we're looking at short-term solutions we're not looking at the long-term solutions and the short-term solutions especially for walnut where we have our biggest physical crunch um and it sounds like the eulogy option is you know it's it's a good idea you know it's none of this is perfect but we're hearing with the third vaccination with j and j with studies being done on young people right now that there is a light at the end of

157the tunnel and perhaps by this time next year you know this we may be closer to a semblance of normal that's what i'm hearing we're all probably here right so i'm here to say that you know i'm really not in favor of putting millions of dollars into infrastructure that we're only going to use for another year actively i mean we may fall back on it and that but we really i know that we also have at least two properties uh that that that can be renovated uh the foundation of walnut picks up property when they can and i would also want the board to consider yes we'd love to have the perfect solution for the next year but we also have to look at the long-term solution of building out space so that we can

158accommodate you know the the children at walnut uh but and not limit opportunities i'm definitely not in favor of closing opportunities for kids who are capable of being successful at walmart but i'm not i really think we need to look at the long-term solutions and how much it's going to cost to expand facilities renovate facilities so we can accommodate all who want to go there thank you mr lindy uh thanks president jones i i wanted to start by saying just where i am personally on this uh as somebody who's been trying to understand the presentations we've received in the science and the news and the father of kid kid two kids only one is in cps once in preschool um personally i'd like to see us get back five days i just want to be

159clear on where i am and that comes from the science also from watching the experience of other schools in hamilton county and seeing what they're doing uh i do think for me i'm not willing to give up yet on the idea that there'll be a virtual option that is stronger than the school of gps um and it would allow i think a thoughtful option for parents who have some health concern that would keep them out of being in their five days i also think what dr mussman said although he didn't answer directly the question i asked i thought that what he said was was um thoughtful uh that this is such a personal choice that parents should have have real choices in front of them i do agree with that all of that leads me

160to three things that i wanted to ask about or share with the administration um i think thing one i appreciate i think member bowers bringing this up uh because i wasn't sure if the survey went to all families or just walnut families i appreciate that clarification um but on that survey point can you just talk a little bit about um when we get the results back i'm assuming we're going to get information on what parents want in person versus virtual and how are we going to know that what we have as a representative uh krista can you come up and please share your process so we'll share all those details we can share response rates are you confident that we'll have a representative picture so we did a i'll call it a new thing it's

161new for me we did paper so in addition to email we're also offering a paper survey and we're hoping to get higher response rates okay can we link can we is there a way to link um like who responded so we can see just not just a number but we can know you know whatever percent of that school or school okay can we look at white versus black respondents can we look at low income versus middle income it's not connected to our power school and we did not ask for specific names okay so we probably will not be able to break it out beyond title one schools but we could we could see response right by school but that alone i think is a great step forward and i just want to acknowledge that yep

162absolutely um i think the other topic i wanted to bring up i think this board member messer was was referencing um well i am i am of the opinion i'm not sure if other board members will agree with me or not that we should we should ask for some kind of public working group on this technology piece um that would include both people from inside our administration and also some folks from outside um the reason i'm saying this is i feel like this topic has come up so many times and and i i don't want to um call into question i think the genuine good faith effort that members of the administration jeremy superintendent others have made to try to figure this out um and i'm also not convinced that we have done everything that

163we can um and and part of the the picture i have in my head that i wanted to float to this group is you know what if there were some group of key people within cbs certainly jeremy um i'm assuming others too uh also some folks from the outside uh who might um i'm imagining what if there were someone from cincinnati bell for example uh what if there were people who have access to philanthropic resources so if the real issue is it just costs too much we could also explore creative paths to finding that funding but i just think that so much of what will make or break this plan is whether or not there is a really strong virtual option for people um and i think if we had some group like that that

164had to report to this body on a regular basis over the next couple of weeks or months it might create more um i think transparency and also understanding in the public for what we can and can't accomplish um i'm i'm rounding third and coming for home for our board president and i appreciate the time um the last thing i wanted to bring up was about communications i just i've gotten a lot of feedback from parents about i think frustrations with our communication as a district i've really tried to ask questions to understand what the concerns are about because i know we communicate all the time i'm a parent i get a bunch of robocalls you know i know the superintendent is holding down know that there are um efforts at every single board meeting to

165go back over what the what the decision-making criteria have been and all those things and as i listened and asked questions i think what i learned was when we change the way we make a decision about whether we have kids in person or not even if it's for really really really good i think we just need to create additional opportunities for parents to engage on those things and so what i'm imagining is you know what if schools had a principal-led town hall with parents where parents could not just receive information actually ask follow-up questions um and get real responses from the leaders of their buildings on why we're doing what the things that we're doing i just think that um one it's a good test for us to make sure that like our rationale is

166clear enough that a principal could take it and run a town hall on it and then second i think that if parents have those kinds of opportunities to engage and really feel like their questions are getting heard i have to believe it would it would build a lot of goodwill um so those were my pieces um i'll just close by saying i think this request that we have a clear plan by the 15th of march for what school is going to look like next year uh is very reasonable thank you i i would like to offer my thoughts although my thoughts are pretty jumbled right now so i'm going to do the best i can to kind of sort out i get a sense that we that there's a that we're always talking about recreating

167things or re-talking things or rethinking things that we've done all year i do not feel that there is a perfect solution i do not and so like while i appreciate the comment mr lindy had a suggestion about looking at the long term the um technology piece i guess that's what you're talking about you know i see that as a long-term uh issue that we could talk about for infrastructure development which is more long-term the one thing that i think is more short-term for us is um the one thing that i have heard consistently over this year and we've heard it in all the forms we've had all the other eval uh um surveys the town halls email text message is that parents want choice there is there are no perfect choices and somebody also said

168there's always going to be a risk of covet of somebody catching cover i don't want to see that happen i want the risk to be zero but the reality of it is we can't shift we have to make a decision and hold firm to the decision whatever that is to me the option that gives us that is parental choice now having said that my comfort level is keep things right as they are expectation we go back five days in the fall that's my comfort level but given that i think to honor and recognize parental choice i would be willing to consider that i don't know that i'm ready to decide that today because i'd like to see the survey data i'd like to see the data and i'd like to get the answers to the

169questions about the barrier so for me i'd be hesitant to to even make a decision about that um the options for remote again it is what do we do short term and what do we do long term short term it may not be the most ideal but it is an option and we just have to go i don't think we can change that you know if schools are in fact having successful what they're doing and that's what they should do however i do want to add that um if if we do decide that students go back i'm wondering what would be the practicality in them going back four days with one being deep cleaning and that so i'm asking a question where are we in the whole deep cleaning piece because initially we had talked

170about one day being for deep cleaning sarah please correct me if i'm wrong but we have protocols in place to be able to go five days a week and get the cleaning done and get the deep cleaning okay so um that that's my thought about kind of where we are right now go ahead miss bolton thank you uh i appreciate it i appreciate everybody's comments uh a couple things um i think that the the community probably needs to know we have over 60 schools and we have pka we have pk6 we have k6 we have k8 we have 712s uh we have three through eight and whatever so the reality is one size does not necessarily fit all and one or two decisions actually can fill our schools based upon uh if we concentrate on

171the younger students what's emerging for me right now is what was first mentioned back in august which was more the hybrid piece and the hybrid piece we kind of put aside largely because of the cost of the transportation to multiple sites and god knows where else was part of that problem where the hybrid i think was the lower grades versus the upper grades and and and so i i have very few reservations about the lower grades going back for a fuller week i think there are reservations that i would have about high schools if it's a high school that could not do this based upon the space so in my brain it's the hybrid there's parts of that hybrid that's kind of emerging but besides that i want to speak to this technology piece this

172would be the sixth month that we have talked about why can't we do something technologically and the administration has told us at least four times why we can't do it whether it was financial whether it was a broadband with whatever it was there were reasons and we um love to have jeremy come back and explain that to us i i'm gonna disagree with with melanie on one thing and that is um i think regardless of where we are with covid part of that new cps is that we're going to have to be able to deliver authentic digital remote as well as in-person at every site at the beginning of the next school year i they're just we're just going to have to do it because it's going to be an expectation but to melanie's point

173do you want to invest some money now when indeed it's going to be a huge thing to do next time so i those are some the hybrid piece and absolutely a completely digital parallel full site uh delivery system uh next year and i think that you know it would have been great to have that but people were forgetting that we had to also figure out who didn't have instruments who didn't have wi-fi who needed meals who needed to keep doing the health check i mean people kind of start at these levels that they don't really comprehend where we were almost a year ago and especially from an equity standpoint so i'm getting tired of people finding all the things we've done wrong without doing any of the asset measurement of what we've done right but

174i'm um i think that you would find a difference among our high schools capacity to meet more than the blended and i think blended has made sense as best it can but i i don't think that the schoology piece unless there's some sort of interaction with the teacher is going to be seen by our fa our families is an authentic uh effort but i'm i'm i'm anxious to hear things and we have to decide stuff next week and we have more stuff that we can find out about but um what's emerging for me is that i'm being comfortable and i'm comfortable as carolyn has mentioned about four one instead of five or one four and it's not about cleaning but it's about if you're going to have a classroom as a teacher and you have

175some of your kids that are on remote and and you know this as a as an instructor and you have some of your kids in that same class that are in person there has to be a day that they're somehow together it's it's a it's a creature of the classroom instruction so i would be using it not for cleaning because i think you're right we've advanced enough and there's a lot of stuff about surface cleanliness that was important a few you know months ago but it's less important now i i could see that one four and i'd always wanted to either be a monday or a friday or something that would join people together but i'm i'm moving in the direction of having more in person but that the hybrids there and then this humongous

176amount of money we're going to need to spend an effort on next year too okay i would just like to add that in the survey we do um have that option on there the four days a week too so we will be able to report out what our families are saying for the four day a week model thank you thank you um mr marowski and then mr messer thank you so much i just have three quick points uh the first is i don't want ben's uh comments to get drowned out i think um you know this is something that would have to happen beginning yesterday and i think it can happen maybe by next week i don't know if it comes in the form of an assignment or what but um i'm happy for ben

177to make it or anybody but i think we have to rely on some outside help to do this because we are never going to at least again to echo ms bolton and i don't know enough about it to talk about the bridge or what jeremy knows but we've been told repeatedly we can't do authentic choice um and i will i will repeat i'm blue in the face the choice we're offering is not a real choice so we need to offer that real choice and then i am totally comfortable we can move this ship ahead but we're not going to be able to do it by ourselves so i just want to make sure that mr lindy's point does not get dropped second miss bauer's question and this is ice goes back a while but i

178wanted to just double triple check with the deputy superintendent and i could be totally wrong which would be fantastic but i feel like you all were talking about maybe two different surveys because this you were asking about the one that the ink isn't even dry on the one that just went out and i i thought that one just went to walnut hills high school i wasn't under the impression the survey went to the entire district that's my incorporate was about the entire no i know that yeah right and i didn't know is so there was a survey that went out to everybody like recently yes krista that's great good then i'm wrong so they may hit tomorrow so some got some schools distributed today some will distribute and kids take home in their backpack starting

179home tomorrow okay but walnut because they're all remote so they're the ones that go okay but it'll be everybody that would explain got it and staff too okay tomorrow great um awesome so that clears out good i'm so i'm glad i ended up asking great i'm glad i'm wrong um and then lastly when it comes to communication and um uh you know i'm not a communication uh expert but it does seem to me that when we talk about these surveys and how we do it with paper send them with kids or whatever and trying to reach everybody it seems to me that whenever we want to tell people what to do we're good at it we text them or we call them so i'm just curious you know maybe maybe we should think about doing

180that when we want to know what they think because i feel like we communicate two different ways we want to tell people something and when we want their feedback and the former tends to be more precise in its delivery and so i would just encourage us to maybe consider using the same techniques we use to tell people things to garner their feedback thank you mr messer yeah i i the one thing i was going to address was you know the question on the four to five days you know i i think calling a day for deep cleaning i mean in theory it sounds good um i think if we have a viable interactive option you know that i think we just have to figure that out then the hope is that perhaps the classes are

181interacting all week and you know i think we could figure it out to make sure that the the buildings are clean you know when they break at 2 30. um i mean i think to some degree there's deep cleaning every day as far as i understand already um but i would just say that you know the good news is it's going to be included in that parent survey to get that feedback because i think what we do right now is we either base it on what we heard in public comment or we hear things in email and i can come up with this opinion i really am desperately uh awaiting that that data i think it's gonna be fascinating by building my community and so you know i just appreciate that that's coming and thank

182you to krista for sending that out and we'll have that data for you on march 8th march 8th correct thank you i i just want to be clear because i think somehow i it was my comment that maybe that was misunderstood but i wasn't speaking against the suggestion that mr lindy had i i was probably saying it more in support of us looking at what we can do short term versus long term and if that means we have to create something in the short term to look at it as a long term concern i would be okay with that but again you know again thinking in terms of financial implications as part of our future vision for cps it's it's we have to think about the reality of the cost too and not that it's

183not practical or feasible or whatever but it needs to be built into that whole uh um plan that will that we worked out that that's why i was saying that but but melanie's point about short-term long-term i think there are some things that we can do short term and i think we're probably closer in agreeing to what might be afl what we might do short term than we are long term but anyway the consensus that i hear from the group is that we want to see the data right am i am i right about that we want to see the data um what else there was something else the variant the report on the variant and anything else there was some discussion about the different options and you said it best but i can't repeat

184it because what's emerging for me is more of a hybrid uh where it's possible that the pk through eight might be doing much more in person hybrid by grade level yeah by grade level and that there might be some high schools that could be doing it too based upon their physical face but even more particularly based upon their programming uh because it's the programming that's in hindi is hindering us as well as the staffing okay don't yeah don't take it any farther than that i think that's clear enough i also heard that we very clearly talked about uh the values that we have around communication the importance of that of the importance of parental choice and that we literally have heard that all year and so i think it's worthy of us saying that that's

185you know we do value that it comes in all forms um and we we hear it and we read it and we do um accept it so um so next to our next board meeting we will we can address these things um deputy superintendent yes i have here um more feedback from our rit department and possibly looking at a public working group i have a principal town hall as a strategy to improve communication along with an analysis of the survey data answering the questions around variants short-term and long-term options please consider the hybrid for different grade levels and improve communication that was good mr lindy hold on thanks president jones i think um what what uh deputy superintendent of lamont shared was very helpful i just want to go back and make sure i'm following

186a couple things um so one was on the um on the idea of this technology working group i heard you mention it but what's the next thing that happens there i will follow up with our chief of i.t jeremy when he would return to consider putting together a public working group uh to help problem solve around our infrastructure and possible streaming options because i'm hearing that it's the long-term goal what can we look to do to improve uh a remote option and it appears that streaming is the best option yeah i'll just i'll just say two things on that one is um you know i think member bolton was bringing this up to that this has we've been talking about this for months but i really agree i think that some of the things that

187haven't come up yet which i hope would be a part of jeremy's thinking here is you know what would it cost for us to do this how long would it take if we had that money tomorrow um and so it's less of like why can't we do it but more like what would it take um and could we create a path to do that and i think i think i would just share the way i heard you play that back uh debbie superintendent was that jeremy will decide whether or not we should have this working group i think if he comes back and if first of all i mischaracterized what you said tell me um second if that is right and he comes back and says i don't think we should do it uh i

188think we should talk about that you know because i feel real i feel very strongly that we should do it um so much so that i'm tempted to push for like some kind of resolution or something tonight um not not just because i think we need help um and i wanna i wanna marshal that help um but again you know i may be over dialed on something i shouldn't worry about because it's all going to work right and i wanted to ask you what you thought about that um i do recall um and i don't know the date that uh jeremy did a presentation for the board with the timeline possible cost the number of years so i know he had that presentation done before so i will ask him to go back and and

189maybe send that out to the entire board um and then where are we today um because that was a few months back as far as um base based on this discussion being in board matters i have it as a consideration and not an assignment thank you thank you okay mr besser yeah i think the only thing that i would add to the list is um i think as we're thinking about making the decision on the 10th or whatever the other date was or the canada's first year 15th was the other day um i think also we have to prioritize and making a declaration on what our plans are for august um i think it's very clear you know if we're not gonna offer a five day in person for the fall we need to declare

190it if we are and people don't want our remote option everybody deserves to know kind of what they're signing up for right now so they can find an option you know if if they are not satisfied with that but i think we have to give our public something they can respond to um sooner versus later for august so if we could do this together i think sooner the better for everyone okay with the intention of trying to provide an option that we keep every family and hopefully attract some of those that we've lost okay um miss bolton and i i want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak but we really do need to move on so if you you have a comment just to clarify just kind of to piggyback on

191this answer and i'll take just when when we do come up with a date saying or when we do come up with a determination that this is what we're doing next year let's please have a dovetail with the magnet school lottery because people are in the lottery there are wait lists for parochial schools they're going to have to make a decision so when you know we can't ask people to accept into the magnet schools when we haven't decided on what we're doing next year so let's coordinate that thank you okay miss bolton one last show yeah to reiterate my idea about forum one was not one was not a cleaning it was an instructional uh effort uh but the other the other piece is i think the superintendent told us in her presentation tonight that

192that is what mr messer is saying that at that time we're talking also about next year and we're going to be very transparent about that so that's all part of the new cps or what have you so you're right the families need to know now and obviously treasurer and everybody needs to know because of the budget okay great all right so i think um deputy superintendent you have what you need from us yes i do thank you thank you all right so um we're going to move on with our next one next president um board matters and that's the growth plan yes and i can i can make this very very short you'll be so happy uh there's a draft that i'm passing around the table and it's what i asked or what i mentioned

193that we that we have as you know it's it's a budget finance and growth committee that is going to sign that from the strategic plan and here are a few pages that try to capture this where we are historically regarding our growth plans that we've agreed to ones that we've talked about ones that need to be addressed and so i will just give this to um board members to review we'll be talking about growth plan in in our special public uh meeting of uh finance uh i guess it's next week but this will cover some planned uh where we were when coveted hit what we were thinking about as being a part of our expansion program it goes back to even the fmp and how long that took the fmp plus and then something mr

194moroski and i were very committed to was the kind of reordering of some of these neighborhood boundaries for our neighborhood schools you can't have a neighborhood school that's not if you divide the neighborhoods up so that's part of it as well as some of the buildings that we still have available to us and i think that this might be of interest to you to review thank you miss bolton i think i think it it i think it's a great document summary i think we sometimes just like we said people sometimes forget all the good things that we've done that this reminds us that we were already working on a lot of these things so this is helpful thank you and and then the the only other addition to that is there'll be a this little

195page of what we've called the hemisphere as it once was in cps and then we've since then in the last two years been talking about that meridian plan and what that might mean so here's the justification and use the context in the history thank you okay mr messer next next board matters item discussion regarding uh collaboration with city council yeah this was uh a follow-up i had a nice conversation with councilwoman kearney uh jan michelle lemon kearney who happens also be a neighbor but we were chatting about some of the calls that she had been getting about cps and then there were questions about kind of some of our somebody raised questions about our snow days and then you know i was trying to make the case to one of the constituents that you know

196yes your sidewalks might be clear but i happen to be in over the rhine and uh right after one of the snow days it was three days after the major snow and most of the sidewalks going between rothenberg and the north side of the neighborhood looked as if the snow had just fallen it was an awareness of that's a prohibiting uh factor for some of our kids just to get to their school building they're not being dropped off uh by a parent or grandparent or caregiver many of them are walking so anyway we talked about several things and it just triggered me to think about when i joined the board there was at least a um i'd heard that there was a collaboration set of meetings and then it turned less into collaboration that we

197just kind of got actually in this room and just talked about the uh abatement and then we had another meeting i think there which is about the abatement agreement but we didn't get to some of the other things that i think really could be um you know really worthwhile so i just wanted to bring that to the board to see if that's something people would be supportive of and maybe carolyn could connect um with the appropriate committee at city hall to find some mutually beneficial topics that we could work on together part of which might play well into our expansion and growth plan just just to kind of add to what you're saying though [Music] most of you are at least yeah i think most of us remember when we had the aces group and

198that's the that's the form that we use and i believe it wasn't with all of council it was with the educational committee and um it it it there was for a long time i believe and uh that there was a great deal of value in that because these kinds of items it was agenda and we would meet quarterly similarly to the way we met with that similarly to the way we meet with preschool promise broad scope issues things like that catch up figure out how we partner together then it got diluted however and i i don't remember exactly what happened but i would say uh where we left it at the time when we decided not to do it is that we could revisit it at a time that either entity thought that it would

199be beneficial so if if the group if we want to do that we can certainly have a conversation about revisiting that model and we could tweak it and make it a viable uh sort of collaboration for us if that's what folks want to do go ahead and then miss down yeah the um the aces i couldn't think of the name but that that stopped right before i joined the board so was it the whole board that with their education committee or was it one of our committees met with their member i don't remember do you list bolton it was uh the whole board could attend and the thing that uh and and it was noticed as a board meeting and there was rotation as to who chaired that's right and then my recollection too is

200that it all blew up when we were faced with the new uh agreement that we had to go forward with on tax abatement because uh uh their their view of history was significantly different than ours and um the other the other piece i think it's a good thing to do again i'm a little worried about it being an election year that we do it in uh but i think it's i think it was a good thing when it when it was well done maybe go ahead miss power yes i just because i wasn't here when aces was um and play what does aces stand for oh my gosh this baits yeah yes this space do you remember what what it's good for alliance community alliance community education something okay it's not like right trauma and

201i would just i would just say uh for my piece i said this publicly back then so say it again i mean it felt more photo hoppy than anything and so mr messer's appointed like an authentic working group of our two bodies i think is way overdue and an awesome idea but the the last incarnation in addition to being an extremely unfortunate acronym for anybody who understands anything about education um uh was just it was a photo op uh so it didn't really feel like we got anything done but miss bolton's correct it blew up what they yeah i i think so i think having an authentic group's good idea i think it maybe it would be appropriate mr messer to do an assignment we could work on it and we can get feedback from

202this group and talk to them interact with them and see if we can't um pull something together so if you make an assignment at that time okay next item mr marowski thank you president jones this was on a nintendo while ago y'all may remember we had had like a five six hour meeting and so i said you know what we'll talk about it another time and i kept forgetting to play back on the agenda so i apologize i think this too like miss bolton's and mr messers can be quick um you will recall that um 7540.04 policy is acceptable internet usage standards and it came up in policy committee and we felt that it belonged as a full board discussion in fact i think this was before policy committee was mr lindy and miss bolton

203that's how long ago this was and um since uh our facebook page and twitter page if youtube page etc are by law a public forum or a public ephora i don't know if that's right but it sounds smart um we cannot limit comment nor would we ever think to um but there are cases since we are a school district which means there are a lot of students and children looking at our sites presumably um we thought that it might be worthwhile to look at what it would feel like to put in say not violating board policy 2255 equity 2256 anti-racism not using um curse words things like this so again not limiting speech so people can still come and tell us we're terrible if they want that's fine um but they can't tell us we're

204blank playing playing terrible and other things so that's what that's what this means um i thought it was important um as chair last year and again is this year that it was a kind of a bigger discussion um but also uh to just make it very public and transparent now for the second time in public session this is not about censorship this is about ensuring that we're you know abiding by the policies of the district to be kind even when we're telling you know somebody we disagree or don't even maybe like them um so i don't know if anyone has any feedback if not i will refer this to policy as an assignment now to us to look at this next time okay thank you is that mr hoing is that a good coach okay

205thank you all right anyone having kudos yes yes i learned something that i did not know so many of kudos i don't know if you all knew it if you knew it then you're better than me uh frederick douglass school i wrote a note frederick douglas school one of our neighborhood schools of course in walnut hills has been the a school for eons they were around before they were in our district and we sort of assumed them i think maybe in the 20s or something or 30s but they have been a member of the national network for education renewal nner for the past five years and has been celebrated nationally as a model school for university school partnerships um it was kind of top of mind too we had a principal pipeline meeting i know

206their principal has done a lot since they've been there and they've been doing a whole lot of work and equity racism etc so i just wanted to call that out um i didn't know that and so i wanted to highlight him and say kudos to frederick douglas school thank you any other kudos mr lindy thanks president jones this was just for the presentation tonight that shared some of the um numbers around academic impact of our current learning model i didn't know some of these things before i saw it and i just wanted to say i found it very compelling and very well done and i want to say thank you thank you any other kudos okay retirements miss bates yes i have one retirement uh to commemorate and that is from our civil service personnel

207crystal hinton and we wish uh miss hinton the best in her retirement thank her for her service to her children to our children and uh congratulations thank you deputy superintendent you have a report yes i do the super superintendent report is submitted for your approval with one change in recommendation number three which relates to the extension of family's first coronavirus response act or ffcra i am requesting that the leave benefit be extended to all employee groups not just cft with that change the superintendent report is submitted for your approval thank you miss hamad do i have a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation is there a second second thank you any discussion this will be a revised recommendation that's for the revised i'm sorry yes for the revised recommendation revised before thank you mrs bates

208aye ms bolton hi this is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master aye mr murowski president jones yes do i have a motion to approve the report of the transfer the revised treasurer's report second okay any uh discussion ms wagner please call the bro mrs bates aye ms bolton hi this is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr morosky president jones yes thank you any inquiries and updates i'll start board calendar um this is the time that we need to develop the board calendar for next year um so last year it was this was actually an assignment but and i can make an assignment but if we i'm just saying that as an update if uh if the same people want to do it you could just volunteer right now and save us the

209time thank you that was we made it mr messer's home so so so assigned i i would only ask that we make sure and then mr lindy can help us with this we want to make sure that we're sensitive to the holidays and religious holidays and all the holidays to celebrate our diversity okay great any other inquiries and updates mr lindy yeah i have two but i'm happy to wait till after ms bolton goes you have to wait what i said i'm happy that mr bolden had her hand up i wanted to wait till melanie was back i'm happy to wait and um and she has her okay my inquiry and hope is that as long as you're talking about the board calendar that the request from the administration that we look at and review

210the proposed calendar committee's uh presentation proposal that we table that temporarily until we can really have a better understanding of what next year in the following year might look like it won't make any sense to create a new cps if we are in this old cps calendar and i think the cft contract makes it a contractual thing but not necessarily puts a date on when it must be uh adopted and if the committee the calendar committee comes out with a recommendation and if the superintendent has a different one then it does follow the board but regardless the board has to approve the calendar and i don't think we're ready to do that yet okay so that sounds like an assignment yes so you might want to make that again thank you okay anything i'm happy

211to go then that's fine um so i have two things i think one was and if this was shared earlier i won't apologize i just want to make sure i got it down correctly but there's a lot of i think good and important discussion tonight about what learning models look like next um around a potential uh return to more in-person learning also some good questions about next year i just wanted to get clear for myself and for the public um do we know when we're going to make decisions on what particular topics i i believe that the way i understood when i heard from the superintendent was that we have march 10th and march 15th preferably march 10 just because of the timing of spring break and all that movement just to give parents time

212to prepare yeah so it would be ideal if we could uh make that decision no later than march 10. okay and that decision would be about whether to bring kids back to more increased learning in person this year that i think what i understood and correct me if i'm wrong it would be short term and long short term and long term short term and long term what are we going to do right now and then what is the plan for next year that's what i believe that i heard yes great okay thank you yeah my second one is um there have been uh just a you know we've just come up in the hearing of the public but there have been a series of reports about a set of comments that my colleague melanie is

213alleged to have made at a local establishment a couple weekends ago and i wanted to share with you all that for my part two things feel like they're true here um the first is they're just some outstanding questions about what exactly was said and what the context was that i genuinely don't know the answer to the second thing i wanted to share is that the allegations feel serious to me and do call into question i think what some of our values are as a board so the reason i put this under inquiry is i have just questions um which is do we have a process we use to investigate potential breaches and values by a board member and if we don't have that process could we create one the reason why i'm asking is i

214think having a process like this is important because the public should see the full board aligning our actions to our values i think it's one of the ways we build trust and i wanted to share i did review our current bylaws and i didn't see anything that felt like it was quite what i was looking for and so i wanted to ask do we have a process like that if we don't could we create one miss bolton do you want to take a shot i'm not sure how uh how extensive uh the the concerns are but there is a process within uh board of policy uh and bylaws that's clearly stated and it has something to do with uh breaches if you will of board or federal or state rules and regulations uh doesn't deal

215with necessarily freedom of speech or us defining particular values but there is a process and perhaps we you know uh whoever would want to look at that i i think they can look at that and and i know mr lindy i think has probably looked at it by now um but uh that's where the process takes place if i can respond to that ms bolton i think that the part i saw required somebody to file a complaint um and the re and the reason i don't feel quite comfortable doing that yet is i feel like they're just a lot of things we don't know um it's it's so that is that is that the one you're thinking yeah i think it's 0 1 1 8 or something like that and there's specific steps and those

216would be the steps that you would take if indeed whatever is alleged rose to that level so there's a it's a clear process that is outlined in our in the in the bylaws which we've adopted is is that separate from the uh one um that's fairly recent i would say within the past two years or so about uh addressing a person one-on-one the same thing is this is this it it's the same it's the same one yeah if somebody wouldn't mind sending that my way i would appreciate i'm curious if it's the one i saw or a different one if you don't mind phyllis one of the ladies will be happy to send it to you to reference it for you yeah that's fine yeah okay thank you okay anything else and updates okay um

217assignments assignments now i know we had assignments okay mine was the uh the calendar piece going back to the administration saying we're not prepared to do that and um see if the superintendent has some other option or can we at least delay it okay all right and then i believe mr messer i believe that the assignment that i had asked did you want to make that assignment to me you did is it the board's will yes and that that was um that president jones reached out to the appropriate person at council to coordinate at least the start of a conversation to get us working together okay got it thank you mr morosky um just to formalize my assignment to myself uh policy committee will take up the acceptable use social media policy at our next

218committee meeting okay great anything else okay having no other business before so i declare the meeting adjourn [Music]