001would please rise and say the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flood of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all are we good with that you good kirk you'll have audio i'm working video oh okay all right thank you um we'll uh proceed i need a motion uh for the adoption of the agenda and consent agenda is the order of business with identification of items taken off the consent agenda for discussion or separate action person second all in favor say yes yes yes uh by the way am i okay with the quorum all right uh we're going to move now to consider the approval of the consent agenda as adopted approve the minutes of july 20th 2021 board
002of education meeting approved financial report for the period of july 1 2021 through july 31st 2021 and approved bills for the period of july 1 2021 through july 31st 2021 in the amount of 2 million 279 and 94 cents now we're going to move on to the election to fill the board vacancy uh in dan do you want to start us off yes just had a community member had asked earlier why the school board or what's the what's the mechanism that the school board gets to appoint and vote for a new member and just so that everybody's aware the that is set in state statute and then board policy falls after the state statute so if somebody is no longer able or resigns the board has the obligation to elect a new member if the
003board is unable to elect a new member within 60 days the board president can appoint a new member then that person is up for re-election in the next election cycle just as an fyi all right thank you dan so i believe all the candidates are here this evening i had asked the board members that if they had any questions for the candidates or if any of the candidates have anything more they'd like to add thank you very much for presenting at the community in the hall i think we had just really nice information exchange there your resumes were wonderful we really appreciate having a slate of candidates like this it's it's uh it's good it's good for us it's good for our community but if the board members if anyone has a question to address
004the candidates please please do so questions like like i said last week to them you know after they shared with us why they want to be on the board it's really going to be tough you know it's a hard decision i've been thinking about it all week so good luck to each one of you uh and we're okay with just our quorum and and doing the work of the quorum so two of our members are not here uh so at this time what will happen is board members uh you have your ballot only mark one person write your name on the ballot the ballots are then handed to katrina she will read the ballots as well as a board member's name uh this is a roll call vote so proceed with that [Music] oh really
005well just the last couple okay kathy turner has um voted for ceremony janelle bone aaron martel sally eisley erin martell and bob travis all right uh well aaron uh congratulations thank you to all the other uh candidates um we really appreciate your application aaron if you could come forward at this time sally will administer the oath of office and you can be seated right away who have been elected to the office of school board who have been elected to the office of school board but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof but have not yet entered on the duties thereof i swear that i will support the constitution of the united states i swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of wisconsin and the
006constitution of the state of wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability i will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god well congratulations here thank you all right tony we just elected aaron okay are you okay with that i just got my vote okay all right uh uh item seven board and district leadership uh strategic planning update dan yes so this is uh just the the first part of the strategic planning update uh is about our mitigation strategies and uh the plan moving forward uh for this school year and in with those aspects involved but then they'll be closely followed by dina who will uh dinavidrecki who will be talking about all the
007work that's been done over the course of the summer preparing for all the kids coming back and the teaching and learning and our focus on student achievement this upcoming school year so that that's the uh that's the fun part of the presentation so let's see if this thing is working all right so our goals are to protect the health and wellness of our staff and students and families to keep schools open for students and learning and to return to normal operations as much as possible so we have a comprehensive approach to this and that approach includes a lot of the mitigation strategies that were incorporated last year and last year we had a successful school year with most of our students in our classrooms every single day our summer school was successful as well with
008our students in class every single day with the option of masking and the and some mitigation strategies that were a little less than during the course of the year and so looking at our summer school experience looking at our current data our local data we are moving forward with this approach right now a caveat to all of this of course includes that any kind of mandate that comes to us of course we will follow through with that mandate and also that as conditions change here hopefully they're changing for the better the entire school year and it'll be a wonderful year then we'll be pulling back on some of these strategies however if conditions change and worsen then we would be adding back in some of the more strict strategies so as of right now we
009will continue with our cleaning protocols that we instated last year that were very successful focusing on simple things like hand washing for children and adults too in every situation our ventilation system our hvac systems are running at a very high level exchanging as much air as they possibly can without burning out the units physical distancing and cohorting we will be physically distancing students inside and inside spaces to the degree possible and cohorting them as well so cohorting means uh groups of two students who may be at a table together they will also in the elementary they will also be lunch buddies you know during their their luncheon in the indoor times um of course kids we we change those those table groups up and everything during the course of the year that's just an example
010of cohorting it's keeping a small group of kids who might be in closer contact with each other together and not exposing a lot of people to a lot of other people we're encouraging facial coverings but it is uh not mandatory we're encouraging vaccination in fact we had a vaccination clinic here this summer it was simply for those who wanted the vaccination they were able to come in and get that through our partners at uh in our local healthcare uh we had we'll have readily available and we'll have readily available testing parents who would like their children tested for covid we'll have that option here that is still in the works to state program and so all the details of that are still forthcoming i don't know that that's going to be available day one but
011it will be available during the course of the school year okay again that is something that if a parent wants their student tested they can ask the school district to do that and our school nurses would follow through on that process one of our biggest we think anyway mitigation strategies that has been very helpful is our partnership with our families and parents in just keeping kids home when they're sick and making sure that we're following through on that and checking that their symptoms are gone and the fever is gone before anybody is back at school those kinds of things are really important and people did a great job of that last year and i think that was a a big plus why plymouth was able to stay in person and and learning uh longer than
012other school districts right around us there will be quarantining uh public health is is operating the quarantining uh this year and so if you are if you test positive there will be a quarantine if you're a close contact there will be not our school nurses available keep in touch and make sure that we're not seeing any kind of spread in those in those classes again the cdc says vaccination is currently the leading cause our leading public health prevention strategy and we will continue to promote those opportunities for eligible students and staff facial coverings are recommended but optional for all students and staff they're highly encouraged for unvaccinated individuals parents who would like their students to be uh to to be matt to wear a face facial covering our teachers will work with sorry thank you
013our teachers will work with you and make sure that that takes place in the in the classroom and uh those that choose not to um that is that would currently that would be their choice uh they're also highly encouraged for unvaccinated individuals and they are required on all school buses because it's a federal mandate again i mentioned about the uh kobe testing that we have available um i mentioned all of this earlier and again it is a student it's not a student it is a parent driven choice okay if they would like their students tested even if a student is complaining of a fever and has all the symptoms and everything else the school district will contact you probably the school nurse and they'll ask you would you like your student tested and at that
014point that would be your decision i keep thinking switches again keeping kids home when they're ill is super important and the more that we can do that and work together that way that would be wonderful we are recommending that students and staff will stay home until symptoms improve and uh those with fever greater than 100 vomiting diarrhea the the things that you see there um the key covet indicators we're asking that the families keep those kids home until they're fever-free for 24 hours and people were very they were very good about this last year and very helpful and and i think that was a big factor in us being able to mitigate these uh cases quarantine uh we carefully track all the positive covid cases in this in the uh of our students and we
015will monitor the health of those students in those buildings public health again will be isolating covet positive individuals and household members for quarantines of 14 days close contacts that public health identifies will be quarantining for 10 days the exception would be vaccinated individuals do not need to quarantine as long as they don't have symptoms again this is an evolving situation and uh we're start this would be our starting plan but this is of course dependent on how things are progressing if there is school transmission verified we would move towards increased mitigation strategies my hope would be that we would have decreasing cases and decreasing and no transmission in which case we can pull back on mitigation strategies so watch our website for updates and parents just make sure if you can check at registration making
016sure that your skyward email and everything is is correct that's very helpful because then those messages that are coming out to you are connecting with the right people so those are the strategies for right now today and again it is an evolving situation any questions for dan dan i have a question um if uh with school transmission um that'll be site-by-site basis or will that be if we see a whole lot going on it's gonna be throughout the whole district what's the plan there well the primary focus will be student to student transmission in a class or in a cohort group or a small like students that we know are together or work together for long enough if there's transmission that's going to be school-based transmission okay if there's just widespread transmission going all over
017the place that would be a different story sure um and again it for us we are looking at this by sight because you could there might be three kids in elementary school who are are positive but if for example one student is a fifth grader and has no contact with a second grader who has covet also and then a first grader and none of the three of them have any contact with each other that really isn't school-based transmission and last year we saw in our school district it was or 99 not school based transmission and so hopefully that continues but uh we uh we need to be vigilant about that okay i would just one make one other point though that i failed to mention when i was going through about the quarantining if your
018student is quarantined to home uh we will be uh getting your we will have synchronous options for your student with their home teacher okay i forget failed to mention that before um and so that will be very similar to last year but unlike last year it won't be for somebody who's just ill it's going to be for cause for covet positive students and students who are quarantined by public health okay otherwise you you know if you got a little cold or something and runny nose and you're good in a couple days it's just like being sick in a normal year then you can come back so dan back on the quarantine with the vaccination are you saying that if they're if they don't have symptoms and have the vaccine then they don't have to quarantine
019but if they do have symptoms with the vaccination they do have to quarantine correct yeah they would if they have a vaccination and they do have symptoms and they were a close contact then they would have to quarantine okay the public health will be the ones that are making those determinations about who should and shouldn't quentin and so we would just kind of follow through with that and we're alerted and then we get our teachers to you know a classroom teacher knows and so this student will be out for 10 or 14 days and so then we just get going on connecting with them okay and then what will determine what's if it gets worse is that going to be statewide county-wide is it going to be school specific how are you going to determine
020what is worse uh if we go down if we go down that road yeah don't want to exactly if we do public health has now given us um a school district information specific so when they're printing out you'll you'll see it in the newspaper and things where it's like county-wide public health is also giving us district-wide weekly updates on total numbers of cases so as of right now the most recent one was cases out of 100 000 within our school district so of course we don't have a hundred thousand people within our school district so you have to do a little math but when you finish it up it's somewhere in the neighborhood of six to seven people currently within our just full i mean anybody here in the district boundaries six to seven people
021within the district are currently positive for cobit so we'll look at those numbers they will not break it out by school-age children which i've asked for just because it's too identifiable and they don't want to get it that small so you know some increase of you know a major increase related to that would be something that we then would look at our local data and see if we're seeing it reflected in our schools okay that's helpful thank you any other questions for dan as far as the vaccination for teachers and faculty or are you making that mandatory at this point or no no okay but we do stand at about 70 of our staff is currently vaccinated it's actually over that now by their choice thank you all right well thanks dan that's uh that's
022a great start um are you gonna throw that no i'm not doing it don't be throwing our equipment uh legislative no then we go to dinners which is academic sorry academic excellence pillar dina so tonight i'm going to share some of the work but really the great work that's been happening throughout the summer and i'm going to focus more on larger groups that have been working teachers all the time work with their co-worker their peers in smaller groups and individually but just some really great things have been happening throughout the summer that i wanted to share and show you what's been happening um here's a quote at the edge of chaos is innovation and that you know coming off of a year and a half of of chaos it's been really inspiring to see the
023innovation that's been happening this summer teachers i am just impressed with how energetic they've been in being back here getting ready using what they've learned in the past year and a half whether it be technology wise or new strategies but i can't tell you that there hasn't been a day this summer of work where i haven't seen or talked to or emailed or virtually conferenced with teachers who want to be working and want to get back to what they love to do so some different things that have been happening and this literally happened the day or two days after school was out was the high school met with an expert on black scheduling and that was something that due to covid and with our mitigation strategies to reduce the cohorting and all that good stuff
024we went towards the black scheduling we met with parents we had student feedback and we were able to take that information share it with this expert so he could focus in on areas that we really wanted to improve upon and grow and then the nice thing is then teachers had those resources all summer to be able to plan and to prepare the entire high school staff participated in that so that was just a great day that they were able to gain a lot of knowledge and then use that for the remainder of the summer to prepare for the coming school year in our okay now this is gonna slow down on me um see it's gonna go forward um in math kindergarten through eighth grade we've had quite a few different things happening the beginning
025of the summer we started with a two-day intervention training which is with our bridges program and with that it's sort of a it's an add-on to the program and what it allows us to do is take students who might be struggling in specific areas and it provides us with better supports so that we can help those kids and narrow in on those focused areas that they might be struggling in and as well help us with our professional development of staff because we can follow that data and see okay lots of kids are struggling maybe with decimals that do we need to beef up our our professional development in those areas so that is something that that's helping us to improve upon and we had well over 30 of our math teachers k through 8 participate
026in that so that was another great two days of training that then even today we had a professional training that we had about 20 of our teachers in at horizon but it was all k-8 district-wide and we had teachers who were sitting down that were specifically working on that interventions training information but then the other teachers were just sharing how they set up for the year some of our new teachers were involved in that and just getting units planned and sharing those resources to just get us off on a really good start we have math leaders k-8 as well and they started meeting i think it was last april on a regular basis they have our first two months of our professional development days planned out so supporting teachers that once we roll out our
027different testing that they'll work with the teachers to look at those test results again providing them different supports and what are our next steps and if we have areas of weakness what do we need to do if we have areas that we're really strong in maybe those are some teachers that we want to help other people grow and develop as well so again it's been just really inspirational to see that happening especially after the year that we had social studies prior to covid the middle school had done quite a bit of research into a different social studies program our materials were starting to fall apart so it was time to look at something different so they had done quite a bit of research into different resources and due to covid we sort of put the
028brakes on that just because we wanted to make sure we had our spending and resources done in a fiscally responsible manner so we were able to then at the end of the year go ahead with that and the all of the social studies teachers at riverview met we looked at our scope and sequence and that is all of the topics that we teach and the different standards that go along with that and we really focused in on a vertical alignment and so in schools what a vertical alignment means is that we're looking at fifth grade through eighth grade what are we teaching um and are we building the knowledge of that content because sometimes you'll have topics that will be taught or covered more than once or the standards show up more than once so
029we wanted to make sure that a student that is having some specific topic taught in fifth grade that when it's covered in eighth grade that it's a higher level and at a you know greater depth of knowledge the really entertaining part of this process and this resource is that it really focuses in on our reading strategies one area that consistently our data has shown is that we need to improve our teaching of reading informational text with our students so that would be like a non-fiction book or a manual or you know a textbook we're always very well versed when it comes to our fictional type of reading but when it comes to the informational text it's an area we need to improve upon because it's a different type of reading and different skills and strategies
030are required to do so so with that this resource really focuses in on teaching those strategies as you are teaching social studies so it sort of it combines those two areas which just makes it more of a natural process versus teaching informational text and just reading now you're teaching it as you're learning about your social studies content science we have been working the last few years with our elementary school and we're moving up to the middle school and they've been working with one of our science coaches and doing just that vertical alignment looking at where things are but that is really you know very well established so working on it just enhancing those lessons making them come alive a little bit more they're focusing on phenomenons to just pull the kids in and engage them
031a little bit to start the conversation and create the foundation of that content to move forward i had a book study this summer i put it out there to the entire staff and thought oh i truly bought five books to start with and thought oh i'll feel bad if no one takes them and we had well over 20 teachers and representing elementary middle and high school we met a few different times throughout the summer and there were just really great conversations about how we teach reading you know whether it's a whole more of the upper levels but when you teach like a whole class novel versus small groups and how do you do that effectively some of our major takeaways were that need to do that vertical alignment especially like middle school through high school
032looking at skills versus strategies like your skills are your big picture so maybe that's interpreting text versus the strategy of how do you interpret text because our goal is to produce readers and that we want to make sure when it comes to those higher levels that we're producing really high um functioning readers who are be able to engage and analysize the readings that they're doing we also found the need for some shared language because what one person might say is synthesis at one level at a different level they might have a different interpretation or a little bit of a different twist to it so looking at that so we have some of those smooth building and truly build on that vertical alignment as we move along reading training today we had reading training quite a
033few district teachers met at horizon again and went through and just started prepping lessons but sharing strategies and tips on how to roll out successful reading programs and it involves some of our new teachers but it was really refreshing to see how many of our veteran teachers participated because they want to help but also learn and grow because any time you're in a training you walk away with more information and improving your own skill set writing 7th and 8th grade at riverview the last year they did a pilot with the program and now they are implementing a program that really again will help to provide some consistency one of the really key factors that we liked about this resource that they were looking at is that it provided a lot of great teacher training videos
034as well as student student videos that if like they were if they didn't quite get a concept a teacher could provide them with some extra resources that would help walk them through that as well so again just a great resource and it also integrates it into those other subject areas so it's not just writing standing alone but it's maybe when we're answering a science question how do we write an effective manner to have you know a really high quality response and last but not least our new teacher orientation started this week we have approximately 20 new teachers and they have been meeting giving them definitely time in their classrooms but yesterday or like i said today we had quite a few trainings that they were participating in but they're well on their way to getting
035ready for the new school year and we have a great group of new people and we're excited to have them join our our plymouth family so that is what i have do you have any questions at all i mean this is truly just an extremely small amount of what work has been done throughout the summer so i'm curious with the 20 new teachers and going into the school year how do you do you buddy them up with a veteran teacher or what would you yeah definitely this year is sort of interesting because it's probably a more veteran group of new teachers they're new to our district but not necessarily new to teaching but they have a mentor that they work with and you know like our goal is throughout the professional development we introduce them
036to a lot of the different people that are here to support them but yeah they have a mentor within their building any other questions well thank you sounds like a lot of great preparation uh that moves us to uh wait education update are you on uh is that you did we jump ahead we jumped in we actually missed the legislative update oh okay go back to it if you like yeah we should yep okay i kind of wondered yeah so we're gonna go back point of order here uh to the legislative update dan yes uh were scheduled originally to have a meeting uh yesterday with our legislators that ended up not being able to happen and so just as an update we are still continuing to advocate with our legislators to make sure that they
037have a per pupil increase which is our operating budget not this year they held the district and well the entire state to a zero dollar increase well a zero dollar nothing for schools for their per pupil limit which means that we don't have any additional funds that are for ongoing operation types of things like our salaries and again students uh are you know the number one part of our business and so therefore people are our number one expenditure about eighty percent of our budget is teachers people yeah with our staff so the operational part of our budget is the most important part um and so currently because we're receiving cova dollars which are supposed to be one time or few time expenses they held us to zero so we're continuing to advocate for those types
038of expenditures and increasing the limit so that we can kind of keep up with inflation with the major part of our budget which is human resources so that is my report and are they forthright i mean is that the reason there's a zero update is because of the covet dollars is that what they say or uh yes i've spoken to all of our legislators personally and um advocating for this even prior to when the legislation happened right and i think there was confusion about the difference between one-time expenditures and operational expenditures but then i don't think it was politically wise for them to make a change at that point or suggest a change so it's just something that we are working on ongoing okay all right good thanks steve um finance buildings and grounds uh
039that's my update i'm on that committee along with sally and we had a meeting just this week and discussed just the progress of where we are with all the programs summer is a great time for our maintenance staff to really go after the buildings and make lots of fixes i don't remember what richard said but it was thousands of tickets that they have requested upon them and as much as they can they work with the funds that we have available and do their best to keep our facilities in tip-top shape and they execute that very well year after year after year we do have some bigger projects that relate to the really the wind down of our building campaign there are some warranty items that dan and richard they work with our contractors to make
040sure the roof doesn't leak where they put in the hvac unit and some other things so those little warranty items will go on for a while now but they are starting to wrap those up uh in in addition to that uh some other notable achievements outside of our building referendum uh items that we chose to tackle if you go outside here the tennis courts are beautiful they were resurfaced and painted and whatever the else they do at tennis i've never been a tennis player so but they look awesome so uh go out there i know our our students love it i believe girls have already been on it and it's a wonderful upgrade in addition to that uh riverview the auditorium is getting a new roof as we speak i believe yeah and it's going
041to be ready soon for school so that's on track there's also a cart path that's now completed between the high school and horizon correct and that's a paved path allow people to navigate through that area for football games for emergency vehicles and just travel back and forth between the schools so a nice upgrade as well to to the facilities in addition to that we discuss future projects the the administration puts together a list of items within their buildings areas that we need improvement those those items are discussed by the committee one of the things sally brought forward is that we should add discussion around sustainability particularly she brought up solar but sustainability in general when we look at what we're doing and where we're spending our dollars we should always be thinking about are these
042dollars being spent as sustainable as possible that's in our long-run best interest as a school system so we will add sustainability to our discussions in future meetings and always keep that top of mind and that is the report of the facilities moving on uh we are now at the point of public participation and at this point um the individuals that have signed katrina you can call the individuals forward right we'll have them come to the podium to speak um stay here in maine before you speak we will time uh the presentations uh just in the interest of expediency uh it will be a five minute uh allowment of time for you to speak to the board uh we're here to listen uh not to debate or dialogue with you but to hear to listen to
043what you have to say board members if you have a question of the information that was brought forth we can ask that question of of the individual but we're not here to directly answer a question of uh from your presentation we're here to absorb and and consider what you have to say having said that sounds good board members i've been where you you where you are seating sitting right now i've also been the last 15 years prior to the pandemic i've been attending classes at uw sheboygan as an auditor which means i've taken all the classes i've bought the books i've taken the tests i've done everything except take finals i've had i've had copies of them so i could go through them see how i've done everything but the the main gest was i
044enjoy the learning and one thing that i've seen in 15 years is that our children are undereducated badly so and the worst part is too many of them don't care they really don't care and when i talked i got to know the professors quite well in 15 years they know me quite well because i've been in some of their classes i've had things like eight semesters of art eight semesters of us history world history at least four semesters five semesters of poli-sci philosophy sociology and all that that type of thing so i heard them i've had discussions with them even one of the deans got to know me because he had a business background i had a business background we converse regularly it got to the point where when i would talk to the professors
045and the dean about the education they started out by saying well they're just kids coming out of high school they really have a lot to learn the last three to four years that no longer was the thing the thing that they talked about most was these kids are unprepared and ironically in 2012 the university of wisconsin madison published an article in the paper that we one third of the students now i don't know if that was a freshman class or the university in its entirety one-third of the class they said shouldn't even be here and that's that's been been brought forward many times so what i was concerned about was two weeks ago i think it was that i saw in the plymouth review there were two things that was brought up in one of
046your meetings one of them was a controversy about a cap and i'm thinking considering the status of where we are in the world 37th in the in the fields of science mathematics reading and understanding 37th in the world is terrible and you're debating whether or not to wear a cap in school that's a no-brainer keep the cap off you're in a formal setting how do you expect to be growing up and learning if you're not if you're not treating it as though this is your job this is your function you have got to learn because the real world is out there just a little ways away next thing that i saw was lowering the grade 8 and 92.5 i'm thinking it used to be 93. now we're down in 92.5 i graduated from north high
047and sheboygan in 1961. since that time the state of wisconsin has lowered the standards four times lowering the standards mind you and i look at that 92.5 as lowering another standard i'm saying we should be taking that standard and raising it 95 to 100 is maybe an a and then go down from there we need intelligent kids we need intelligent everybody the world is changing rapidly technologically speaking we've got to do more than what we're doing the only things that we because we cannot discuss them but because i've been away from this for a while considering the light of what's going on in in our country today i would like to know from somebody at some time in the very near future what is what are the discussions about critical race theory transgender black lives
048matter global warming that just about covers a whole bunch of things i've got my own opinions i've done my own research that was another thing when i was going to the university i did research for the students when they had their papers to do i did research i did the whole nine yards well thank you for your time thank you [Applause] good evening again as i stated last week during my interview parents lack confidence confidence in their school boards we have blindly trusted that the decisions being made by this board and administration are in the best interest of our children but if there's one thing the last 18 months has taught us it's that we as parents need to stand up and fight for what's best for our kids while i'm thankful we are starting
049the year with masks optional i find the mitigation strategies to be unnecessary and only serve as a constant reminder to these kids that they should be afraid you claim these mandates and rules are imposed you are imposing on our children are in everyone's best interest yet you take little accountability for them by saying you are following guidelines why do you continue to follow their guidelines and support the ideology that kids are to be treated like they are a public health threat when it has been proven time and again that they are not the effects these practices are having on our kids physically and emotionally are far worse than this virus and we have yet to see the long-term effects that they may have after 18 months of this crap we are right back where we
050started which poses these questions to me if masks work why aren't they working if the vaccine works why isn't it working have you ever heard of quarantining healthy people have you ever gone to the doctor demanding you be tested for something without symptoms do you really think the new normal should be forcing people into isolation breathing in their own waste treating everyone like they're sick and living in constant fear if this is really about health why aren't we hearing about the things we can do to keep us healthy instead of getting answered to those questions an environment is being created where people feel empowered to empower to shame others for personal medical decisions and your mitigation strategies are facilitating that our president bob travis has stated to me that if more people would put our
051children first they would use the best tool we currently have against the virus and get vaccinated so we can get back to normal if the virus does roar back through our community because people continue to resist getting vaccinated or failed to practice any sort of mitigation behavior then we will need to allow our administrators the ability to do what they can to keep our students safe and schools open being accused of not putting children first because of a personal medical decision is insulting to me then to shame the community for resisting something that is experimental and has thousands of reports of death and serious injury is not only arrogant but goes against the district policy definition of bullying to make a statement like that after the information i have provided says to me he either
052never looked at it or feels he knows better either way these are our kids it is our right as their parents to decide what is best the burden you are putting on them with constant visual reminders and phrases like recommended but optional or highly encouraged is bordering on harassment if you're dedicated to providing a safe place for these kids to learn and committed to creating a better relationship with the community i implore you to reassess your current plan as it stands today and not push any further mandates on our children also i'll be running for the school board in april [Applause] next up ryan jose good evening boy i don't interview you guys one bit so i just want to say thank you first of all as the board and as a member and four
053children in the school district for allowing us to be mask optional it was very devastating for our children last year without getting too personal it won't happen again if mass become an issue or mandatory we're preparing to leave um i know for a fact that i'm not alone um i know that it's a comforting feeling for some people to wear cloth masks over their face for the last 15 years of my life i worked for plymouth ambulance and orange cross ambulance service and mass are considered a restraint with the state of wisconsin actually had a call and get doctor approval to put him on so public health as of late is completely upside down to where it was been through the h1n1 pandemic been through a bowl of pandemic i don't know what's what we're
054afraid of cdc's website this morning 99 survival rate for coba 19. what are we doing seriously people what are you afraid of what are we afraid of this is not going to be the worst illness you're going to face it's not going to be the last history repeats itself common sense is your approach and i like what you've done with your your plan there i think it's great but there is far worse things challenging our youth right now than coba 19. and i urge and beg you to keep your eyes on the prize if people want to wear a mask then wear a mask people want to get the vaccine let them get the vaccine but i'm going to have a really hard time if you force my kids to wear masks again we're going
055to have a very difficult time and we are preparing for that on many levels and many people so please let us have our freedom that you just swore an oath did with all the constitution and that is our freedom mass mandates are borderline evil in my opinion you cannot force people to put a covering over their face i've done it i've done the research i've treated patients that had to have it it's stupid and you need to not focus on something that has a very low mature mortality rate i'm more concerned about my son asking why there's a female dressed like a boy in his class that's a pandemic in my opinion so i just wanted to say my peace i don't i respect every one of you i appreciate what you're doing you're in
056a tough spot but it's time to let go of everybody just needs to stand up enough with the kobit bs it's done it's it's not going to go away until we say this because it's nothing but fear-mongering [Music] i know for a fact i've been through pandemics before at a medical level and this is nowhere near a pandemic folks thank you kelly johnson hi there my name is kelly johnson and my husband matthew and i have two children iris 13 and ezra 11. we're lifelong residents of plymouth having attended elementary middle and high school here one of the key reasons we chose to stay in plymouth and raise our family here is because of the great schools beautiful landscape and the strong sense of community i'm here to urge the school district to require that
057all students staff and anyone else who enters our district buildings wear a mask in order to protect the health and wellness of everyone in this community the health and safety of all students should be the district's number one priority and being proactive to help prevent an outbreak of covet is necessary we don't want to end up in the same position as many school districts in the south where school has recently started with no mass requirements and then school promptly closed within a few weeks due to large covert outbreaks medical experts including the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics agree that masks should be worn by all individuals in schools in order to keep our children as safe as possible during this next covid wave the delta variant is twice as contagious as we have
058been dealing with and impacting younger children more as they can't be vaxxed why not start off the school year with masks and then hopefully relax the rules if we aren't seeing a high rate of transmission in our community which by the way is high right now rather than doing the opposite and basically waiting for our children to get sick and potentially hospitalized or worse before doing something to stop the spread i'll never understand how you think that not protecting our children is the right thing to do for those who are anti-mask and or anti-vaccines no one is taking away your or your children's freedom rather they're protecting the common good in our community those who say that it's their right to choose whether to wear a mask or not or not are missing a key
059tenant of living in a community we take care of and look out for one another can you honestly tell me that you don't care if my child if you give my child a potentially deadly virus are you that selfish that you would purposely do something that could knowingly harm your community members i believe your argument is full of holes particularly when you think of things like the smoking regulations that were put into place about 10 to 12 years when smoking inside businesses yes even those owned by private individuals such as restaurants and bars was outlawed in wisconsin if your whole it's my right argument holds true then that law should be repealed and people should be able to smoke in any business anywhere they'd like including schools putting the rest of us in the path
060of deadly secondhand smoke are you protesting that law additionally wouldn't it be my right to drive on the wrong side of the road or run red lights no it's not my right to do those things because they put others in danger you see masking works best when everyone wears them just like traffic laws work best when everyone follows them and by the way folks who don't get citations or other fines we have rules and laws to ensure the life liberty and pursuit of happiness for all notice the order here life is lifted listed first then liberty you can't have any liberties or freedoms if you don't have life so please stop talking about your rights when they infringe upon my and my family's health and safety and you anti-vaxxers out there i'd love to know
061if you and or your children are vast against other deadly viruses that we've encountered over the last hundreds of years such as smallpox which by the way is is considered eradicated you want to know why because of vaccines polio measles mumps rubella varicella etc vaccine save lives medical professionals save lives which is why we depend on them to care for our children from pre-birth to death we trust medical professionals to care for our children when it comes to things like an ear infection stomach bugs broken bones or maybe a hernia or diabetes or worse cancer if we trust them to care for our children in their time of need in any other case why are we not trusting them now when we need them most to fight a deadly pandemic that's killed 622 000 people
062in the u.s since last year alone while it's too early to tell how devastating this delta variant might be many hospitals are already seeing an uptake of pediatric patients doesn't that concern you do you want your child or my child to be in the hospital can you honestly say you don't care i've made it clear how i stand on masking at schools but i also realize this is a very contentious issue given i'm a reasonable person a negotiation is a key part of success in any business i'd like to propose we meet in the middle given that children 12 plus are eligible for the vaccine and those of us with children 11 under don't have the freedom to choose to vaccinate our kids because there isn't one available let's require masks for sixth grade and
063under where there is no other line of defense against this virus than masking and distancing for those 12 plus masking can be optional since the vax is available to those individuals it's the very least we can do to protect our children and provide a safe in-person learning environment let me leave you with this thought the values of democracy include individual rights and duties the core pillar of our government is the need to defend the lives of citizens against enemies and this includes covet 19. so if you're really as patriotic as many of you like to think then get a vaccine and wear a mask because you should be thinking of it as your duty and that's what we should be teaching our children how to be good decent human beings who care for one another
064and are willing to make small sacrifices like wearing a cloth covering over their nose and mouth in public spaces for the greater good let's step up come together and be good humans to help keep everyone safe and healthy i'm sorry i'm sorry please everyone has the right to speak if they've signed up let them speak and let everyone be heard is there anyone else that has signed up controlling that that's it all right so no uh technically you were supposed to sign up ahead of time um i did announce that before the meeting um i'm just gonna say very quickly that there are a lot of people here that don't do vaccines and they don't believe in vaccines because they have immune systems that fight diseases so we should trust the science that the coven
065vaccine does not work we all know that ma'am i thank you but next time all right uh if the board has no questions or does anyone have a question for anyone who spoke i don't have any questions but i want to thank you for coming and this is one part of being on the board that is very uncomfortable for me that we do are not allowed to engage in a conversation that part i'm not comfortable with and i'm sorry for that but thank you for both sides coming and hearing both you know both of your sides you're welcome to come to all of our meetings the monday before this tuesday the week before is where we do a lot more discussion than we actually do here at this meeting it's always open you're welcome to
066come anytime thank you sally janelle i wanted to say thank you all for coming also i was elected to the board in june and to fill a vacancy so i started getting into the weeds of a lot of my background situations and as sally mentioned it's hard to not be able to respond to everyone i wanted to let you all know that if you go to the home webpage of the school district look at the school district it has all of our email addresses so if you have any concerns and you weren't able to speak please send us a message that's another easy way for you each to catch all of us and to share your thoughts thank you too thank you anyone else uh well afterwards absolutely uh so janelle really pointed out uh
067if you can you can email us um and okay all right uh sorry that's uh that was my reaction um or you can just reach out to me if you want to call me i'll be glad to meet with you one on one what you have to understand is there are state laws that legislate how we can talk to people and so if three of us gather to meet with you it's a walking quorum and that violates state law i know from your perspective you may think wow these guys have a lot of rules we do it's crazy and when you get on the board you realize for the first time that there are a way there are ways that government operates and it is surprising how it can be seemingly restrictive but there are
068reasons for why they they have created the rules that we try to follow so we're not trying to shut people out we're tr not trying to not have a conversation we're trying to follow the rules that we have been assigned to operate under so please you can call me you can i know you don't have email but you could email me or any other board member and i'll be glad to have a dialogue with you and answer your questions the administration is also available if if you have questions if you want to read our curriculum if you want to look at certain things the administration is here you can come into the school you can sit down and you can read the curriculum our schools are public schools they're open to you so uh i
069hope that answers your [Music] questions call the district office jury and ask them for the phone number yeah yeah yes yeah it'll the other thing is when somebody emails the entire school board which is good and fine each one of us will not respond we will let bob speak on our behalf and then bob will let us know also how he responded back to you because you don't need seven emails coming back to you i mean how long does it take to usually get a response because hopefully within 24 hours i haven't gotten a response okay yeah um there are a lot of emails i'll just let you know i'm doing my best all right my name is okay amanda i will look for your email and i'll be glad to respond to that all
070right um we have gotten off our agenda a little bit here and i i want to reiterate what sally said we really appreciate the input but we do have to move on here with our agenda at this point we move on to board liaison reports and that would be sally eisley community ad community there is a lot going on in community yet if you haven't looked at their website please do they have a lot coming up this fall they also have opened up hall walking and track walking beginning in november that i know was a big disappointment when covet hit last year because after school these hallways are busy with people walking the hallways so you're welcome to come back there's new water classes and of course the fitness center that we have available and
071the other class is coming out i have notes and they're not with me tonight they're at home but anyway classes that we've had in the past doing for community yet they're back in up and running again so take a look at community ed's website great thank you sally foundation that's my responsibility the foundation we did meet we are in the midst of planning the fundraiser for the mini grant program that will occur over homecoming so look for more information about that as the foundation goes we are looking for contributions items to put in the silent auction if you've been to these events before you know the drill we will have an online silent auction in which you can bid on items all of that money goes to the mini grant programs which when we talk
072about contributions to our district you will find and hear about the great things our staff members bring forward and we fund up to five hundred dollars toward enhancing the learning opportunities and uh really trying to make the education programs more exciting so it's a great cause foundation is doing great work and we could use your support moving on family resource center dan steinert is not here he took ill so i'm not sure anyone else has a report from family resource all i can say is it's a great organization so please support them if you will moving on to personnel dan yes we have a number of personnel it's obviously the getting close to the end or the beginning of the school year so we've got a lot of people here uh we'll take the the
073ones that require action which is a through f as one group and then we'll do the staff after that so starting out the board will consider the resignation of don randle ell teacher for the school district effective at the end of the 2021 school year don has been with the district for 14 years the board will consider the approval of a 100 contract for maddie brown another plymouth alumni to be a second grade teacher at fairview elementary school for the 21-22 school year madeleine received her bachelor's degree from concordia university this will be madeleine's sixth year of teaching the board will consider the approval of 100 contract for christian volbrecht another plymouth alumni to be the uh excuse me that's his cousin mark no that's right sorry we have mark he's christian is from falls
074so a little worried about that now uh christian balbreck to be the physical education teacher at riverview middle school for the 21 22 school year christian received his bachelor's degree from the university of wisconsin oshkosh this will be christian's ninth year of teaching the board will consider the approval of 100 contract for matthew bertram to be the assistant principal at riverview middle school for the 21 22 school year matthew received his bachelor's degree from the university of wisconsin stevens point and his master's degree from concordia this will be matthew's 13th year of uh in education the board will consider a 50 contract for angela hintz to be a fourth grade 4k teacher at horizon elementary for the 21-22 school year angela received her bachelor's degree from the university of wisconsin milwaukee this will be angela's
075seventh year of teaching the board will consider 100 percent contract for christy skrwonsky i have trouble even though i'm from pulaski to be a business education teacher at plymouth high school for the 21-22 school year christie received her bachelor's degree from carroll university and her master's degree from the university of wisconsin-whitewater this will be christie's fourth year of teaching and as i mentioned before we do have a pretty veteran group of quote unquote new teachers coming in and that's kind of an example of it so we just need action to accept all of those so we need a motion in a second on these contracts second motion and second all in favor say yes yes opposed all right we have new teachers okay and then we have support staff support staff go ahead the sports
076app requires no action so i do this is just informational amy donner special education aide at fairview elementary school has submitted her resignation amy's been with the district for five years heather garcianski a special education aide at fairview elementary school has submitted her resignation heather has been with the district for four years stephanie carbaugh special education aid at fairview elementary school has submitted her resignation stephanie has been with the district for one year hope retzloff special education aid at fairview elementary has submitted her resignation hope has been with the district for two years andrea gerlach special education aid at riverview middle school has submitted her resignation andrea has been with the district for five years harley kinney special education aide at plymouth high school has submitted her resignation harley has been with the district for
077one year janet chapman cook server at riverview middle school has submitted her resignation janet has been with the district for one year i wish them all well in their next steps that's right thanks dan uh items for the consent agenda on to the president's report uh well so i'm i'm somewhat disappointed that the room cleared out because this was my opportunity to at least speak about what we're facing and what we're facing is a new year a new school year and without a doubt there is this lingering question of kovid in the background i can't deny it's there we can't we can't hide from it it's there it's in the press we see and hear about it all the time what i know though is that everyone in this room our entire staff we all
078want it to go away and we all want the very best for our kids and what we want for our kids is an environment that they can learn and thrive in and that's what we need to give them more than anything else they should be looking at what we're doing with the adversity that we're facing and we need to teach them how people of a view of opposing viewpoints can have a dialogue and can consider and can consult and eventually compromise on achieving a common goal and that common goal is one thing it's the only reason we're all in here is we want the next generation jerry we want the next generation to be better than our generation right that's what we're looking for the only way that happens is we as a community cooperate
079we work together and if we want to give our children a lesson we should show them how how we can work together even when we're standing on opposite sides of the fence and that's my report superintendent report go ahead dan thank you so the student and staff accomplishments are always a fun thing to to look at and i think dina's presentation earlier was spot on with the amount of work that our staff puts in not just our team we kind of highlighted the the work of the teaching staff there in in their trainings but our aides and our custodial staff and just as an example our custodial staff at the high school has a very limited time because we run a ton of kids through here in summer school to get this place the high
080school up and ship shape and running again every year and they do a fantastic job and they are they're they're working really hard all over the school and all over the district and then of course the teaching staff looking forward to having all those kids in their classrooms again next year and excited for having them reach higher levels of achievement every single year that's really what drives us and that's what makes everybody excited for the for the coming year and that's why they come in on their own time for the most part all summer long learning and growing to prepare for the kids coming in so it's just kudos to all of the people that work so hard to put together you know a wonderful learning environment environment for the kids uh just an example
081of that just recently we had three students uh jacob ashworth kyle krauss and alex ottie they presented nationwide about and i forgot my glasses on a panel about uh cte which is career and technical education those of you who might be newer to the district this district is has been focused in that area for a long time now and we've been a leader in our county and in the state really in career and technical education and so some of those kids matriculate all the way through and those three boys in particular presented for a nationwide symposium about how cte leads to great success for university students and um they're really excellent examples of that you know engineer engineer engineer and super high achieving uh kids and so i attended the symposium um it was during
082a lunch hour and it it was amazing with these young men and how they represented um our district and our community they are very very well versed but it was great because they spoke of the great relationships we have with our different corporations and how we work together with those corporations and the clubs that we have like our robotics clubs and how those all impacted them and really prepared them for the journey that they're on so it was it was pretty impressive and those three boys also were state champs and robotics just fyi so um pretty big honor for the for those for those kids just an example of kids that we work with and we get them when they're little little and they go all the way through and we have a ton of
083kids every year attending high level colleges going to ltc and achieving and being super successful so that's our goal for every single kid to achieve and be their personal best and upcoming events so you can hear everything has started here in in the high school uh we've got uh tennis today is today too yeah tennis today on the new courts of course yes it's away oh okay tennis is away dang it uh swim on thursday swimming me football on friday and every single team will be in action next week so school has begun it's uh august only but a lot of teams have been in action for quite some time and kids have been working hard and so it's wonderful to see oh when we have new girls golf they already had their first meet
084yes i did admit that one because it's brand new in my brain i forgot that one yes so they've already had a meet so congratulations so we've got a lot of great things going on a lot of very very successful kids teachers and staff are working very hard for this coming school year and those extracurriculars which are one of our pillars are fully underway so fantastic here we go all right so i will entertain a motion to adjourn motion in a second all in favor say yes yes this meeting