10-4-2021 School Board Meeting

001foreign so um all right so um good evening it is seven o'clock and we'll call this meeting to order roll call will show that all five board members are present and so our both our student representatives are here um thank you um has this meaning been posted dr mitzik yes it has all right um i invite you to stand and please remove your hat as we recite the pledge of allegiance where is the flag give us a minute it might be an auditorium mm-hmm ryan are you projecting a flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you yeah sorry about that um communication you'd like to share dr mitzik yes

002our social media platforms include posts that highlight engaging experiences in our school on a regular basis and tonight i'd like to highlight one of those september 15th through october 15th is hispanic heritage month and in september spanish five and six students and theresa kushky alfonso's class at greendale high school wrote im sentences using positive descriptions of themselves they then told their partners the positive attributes they believed they had and could add to their list all of this was done in spanish by the way then they made posters which are now hanging in the hallways this is one of the ways that we are celebrating hispanic heritage month with our building spanish language it was also a positive way to help students believe in themselves the students thought it was a fun project and their posters

003turned out great we are celebrating hispanic heritage month in all of our schools our first ever outdoor pep rally at greendale high school was a success we had beautiful weather and may consider outdoor pep rallies going forward the greendale high school homecoming dance was also held outside at gobinski field and the venue was well reviewed by students 12 high school bands from the region competed in the marching band home show held on october 2nd at greendale high school and for the first time in many years the weather was stayed mostly dry the step up to better health walk and run on sunday october 17th is coming up this is an annual family event and it is one of our largest school fundraisers of the year all five schools are participating in our partnership with the

004greendale health department per board policy i have approved four high school out-of-state field trips for the 21-22 school year this includes the greendale high school marching band to national competition in indianapolis in november greendale high school choir and orchestra i believe it also involves 8th grade students who will be performing at the 100th anniversary of the lincoln memorial in washington dc in april the palms and the cheer teams have also been approved to travel to florida for national tours and competitions finally this week is school board appreciation week in the state of wisconsin and on behalf of the administration and staff i would like to thank you mary noelle kathy thor and joe for your commitment to serve the community and the students of greendale schools you have been faced with many difficult decisions balancing

005fiscal efficiency educational needs and student wellness we appreciate your unwavering focus on students and tonight administration has placed a tasty treat from our local business apples of eden at your table spot is a small token of gratitude thank you thank you for that all right continuing on with the agenda next time on the agenda is any comments from visitors so persons wishing to address the board are invited to the podium and asked to state their name and address for the record and limit their comments to one time per meeting as well as they limit their comments to three three minutes so we invite anyone with comments this evening to join good evening good evening alan bingenheimer oakwood lane in greendale tonight the board will review the school reopening safety plan that they put forward in

006august staff is now recommending extension of masking to grade six they're still supporting vaccination of children despite hundreds of articles transmitted to every one of you regarding the lack of efficacy for masks higher risk of death from an experimental vax and the disease i don't know if you still have checked but zero children in the suburbs have died in 19 months from covet how is this a risk i've previously submitted a resolution to both this board and the village board regarding gathering of data by the greendale health board no action has taken place so right now you have no valid data to base your judgment on so here's some questions though to ask the staff tonight from the board when reviewing the plan the staff report notes that there were close contact quarantines but only

007one actual covet case now this is consistent with many other school districts around the nation and in fact you already received an article about that months ago in other words we keep kids out for no reason now considering the wide latitude of defining a close contact not to mention the pseudo science uh does it even make sense to have this requirement i mean the covert or a cdc staffer even said six foot rule is arbitrary we have no data or is this just maybe a get out of school free card for the kids after all there's some that were smart enough to use orange soda to fake a positive pcr test being as elementary students have been masked how do their covid rates compare to the middle and high school please ask the staff how

008does greendale compare to joining districts in terms of asking cases in other words do you have any data and there's a six million participant data set which shows that masking is useless thank you any additional questions or comments from visitors this evening good evening hello my name is jennifer model i live on angle lane and my i have a student in the fifth grade at canterbury elementary i wasn't planning to say anything today but i would encourage you all to continue masking for the safety of our children my child has asthma i work at the medical college of wisconsin there is evidence from thousands hundreds and thousands of people about the safety of this vaccine i got my third dose today and nothing has happened to me so there's a lot of misinformation and i

009understand it's natural for people to have some fear but masking is the one thing we can do to protect our children who are too young to be vaccinated and i encourage you to continue doing that until these children and their families can make a decision masking is not that big a deal it it's an easy thing we can do to protect each other thank you for your time thank you any other comments from visitors this evening hello elaine unger 4815 sutton lane um as i stated in my email to you of august 12th i am opposed to mask mandates and um i have been watching recent school board meetings um and i've decided to come in and outline some other concerns that i have that i haven't seen addressed at any of the meetings so

010i'm wondering if you could consider the following not only is it unhealthy to breathe through a dirty mask all day but washing them in toxic scented laundry soap and fabric softeners and those types of things can cause headaches respiratory problems etc cloth masks can be made with unsafe fabric dyes and formaldehyde which can make children sick and cause flu-like symptoms and even cancer let me repeat that flu-like symptoms and we see kids in all kinds of cloth masks what are they made of you can just smell the fabric when you buy them new they smell funny hand sanitizers the bottles clearly state to keep them out of reach of children the fda website says this hand sanitizers are drugs hand sanitizers are regulated as over-the-counter non-prescription drugs by the fda if you use alcohol-based hand

011sanitizers read and follow the drug facts label particularly the warning section this is from the fda store hand sanitizers out of reach of pets and children and kids should not use it and kids should use it only with adult supervision i walked in the building and what did i see everywhere okay and these are the high school kids earlier at a previous meeting i believe it was mr mitchell who discussed a company called microbe-free wisconsin and i remember discussion about the disinfection of playground equipment and if that practice is being done if if desks and surfaces are being disinfected i i was a little concerned i looked up the product on microfreed wisconsin and couldn't find out what it was made of i emailed the company and they sent me the same brochure on their

012website so i did some digging and i found the safety data sheet which says that fresh start which is the product name under micro free solutions is made of alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride which is also used according to the environmental working group in clorox bleach hand sanitizers and lysol sprays all right thank you for your comments so please think about those safety product protocols all right any other comments this evening good evening good evening my name is night godly i'm a greendale resident and the parent of two greendale high school students and i'm speaking tonight as the vice president of page people advocating for greendale equity given the spate of recent incidents of racist and other discriminatory attacks in our community including on greendale students and the ongoing attempt by the state legislature to

013falsely label all discussion of race and equity as critical race theory and thus to shut it down page calls on the greendale board of education to affirm the centrality of equity and inclusion in all its endeavors and specifically to include it as central in your discussion of public policy priorities going forward from this evening's agenda item you must ensure that equity features centrally and by name as one of your top public policy priorities and as a demonstration of this commitment to equity as a primary public policy priority page further calls on you to urgently contact our state senator in your official capacity collectively and as individual board members to demand that he vote against senate bill 411 which would effectively ban all equity and sel programming in wisconsin schools over the past two and a

014half years greendale schools have made important steps towards a more equitable school environment while we're still at the beginning of this process one which of course also depends on the transformation of the wider community in society but one in which the schools can lead the way it is vital to not allow the gains made so far to be rolled back whether that occurs through external pressure community reluctance self-satisfaction or a failure to appreciate the continuing urgency of equity work and the need to elevate it to the highest level of institutional priorities you must move further towards centering equity in all you do and your policies should be shaped with the goal of ensuring the equity is also centered across the district equity work is not just central to ensuring our students receive a 21st century

015education it is also the only ethical path for educators in a society and in an educational system that still systematically discriminate against and disadvantage historically marginalized communities the fact that some in our community in our legislature in our media seek to demonize the honest study of how this society came to be so unjust and harmful is only further evidence that those who have historically held power and privilege are unwilling to face the reality of sharing that power and privilege with all americans their opposition to equity and inclusion and the harm to individuals and communities right here in greendale that they enable should persuade you to strengthen your efforts to teach our young people how they can help create a better and more equitable society for all thank you thank you any additional comments seeing no

016additional comments we'll continue on with the agenda any of the topics that are brought up during public comment this evening we will respond and react and debate and discuss and review them as we come upon the the agenda item so continuing on with the agenda next item on the agenda agenda m3 and 3.1 approval of the board meeting minutes and the budget hearing and annual meeting minutes of last month so any discussion or comments then look for a motion to approve both the regular board meeting minutes and our annual meeting minutes i move approval of the regular meeting minutes of september 13th as outlined in agenda item 3 and also approval of the budget hearing and annual meeting minutes from september 20th in agenda item 3.1 second there's been a motion a second to approve

017the regular board meeting minutes of september 13th as well as the budget hearing and annual meeting minutes of september 20th any further discussion call for a roll call vote yes yes yes yes and i'm yes motion carries continuing on the next item on the agenda is a recommendation for the park and rec committee replacement so we had a student who has moved out of the district and we are looking to appoint a new student representative so each year or every two years we appoint a student board member to the park and rec committee and this year we received a note regarding the new student that would be filling that role for the the student representative that moved out of the district so any discussion or comments the student's name is madeline shep thank you yeah

018thank you i would just comment that it sounds like madeline is a very busy person and we're grateful that she's willing to fill in with her busy schedule she looks over qualified for the job we always look for ways to get students involved so with paris and wes here the park and rec committee is another place where we also look for some student voice i didn't i wasn't aware that there was like a board position for the park and wreck um committee so could you just explain that a little bit more sure so our park and recreation department ms jackie schweitzer is a director she has a park and wreck committee that meets and we have one board member from our school board that is part of it there's representatives from the community that are

019part of it the village board has a representative that serves on it as well and then we also have one student board member who serves two years typically we did have our student move out of the district so this year we took someone from the class of 2023 who also interviewed for a the school board position to also be um to meet with ms schweitzer and be appointed to the parking rate committee there so so mr schweitzer uses the entire board um just to get some feedback and some reactions to what things are doing and to help guide the direction of the parking rack department any other questions that i'm looking for a motion to approve motion to approve the recommendation for park and rec committee replacement for a student representative as outlined in agenda

020item four second there's been a motion a second to approve the recommendation for the park and recreation committee representative for the students any further discussion then look for a world called vote yes yes yes yes and i am yes motion carries continuing on with the agenda we are here for the approval of policies so under agenda item five just pull up we are here for the second reading of a number of policies um that we reviewed our last board meeting and some of them were revised there's one that's been deleted and then i think in our last discussion we asked the administration at the end of this semester early part of next year to continue reviewing the policy number 453.3 so any other questions or comments this was discussed at the last board meeting no

021i just would add that i did raise some question to the to my fellow board members that we would hopefully look into a pandemic policy being separate from the communicable disease policy that we relied on during this global pandemic yeah and that's what i was trying to reference there when i said that we were going to relook at that after the at the end of this year at the end of the calendar year yes you have a moderate revision to the communicable diseases policy and at the november policy committee meeting we'll be looking at the potential for segregate segregating a policy specifically about pandemic response thank you all right any other discussion otherwise i call for a roll call vote or i'm sorry otherwise i call for a motion to approve i'll move to approve

022the second reading of the policies under agenda item five and that includes policy for 11.3 453.1 453.1 rule 453.2 rule and 453.3 there's been a motion in a second to approve the policies that outline an agenda item 5 any fur discussion and just as a point of information the approval for 4 5 3.2 would be a deletion correct okay yes yep all right any further questions or discussion can i call a roll call vote yes yes yes yes and i am yes motion carries next item on the agenda is the summer school report so this is an annual report where we hear um based on the previous uh our previous summer session so so the summer school principals um emily doe christel ponte carrie owensburn mark pollock's have written submitted a written report and it

023includes information on those who were the classes that were offered in the attendance as well as a recommendation for summer school dates for next summer in terms of the financial impact that is in here as well which summer school attendance impacts the fta fte on the people count date and this summer we had 77 um fte added which is an increase from 2020 that's good because we were definitely down in 2020 but we have not regained our 2019 levels but we did make significant rebound in terms of our fte levels so [Music] if the board has any questions i will be able to answer and jonathan may be able to answer some of the questions on financial impact so i think the important thing here is you'll see the breadth of programming that happens during

024the summer and the number of students that are taking classes here and and you'll see like i said the breadth of the programming that's occurring some of them are enrichment classes some of them are credit recovery classes so perhaps a high school student is looking to recover some credits due to poor performance during the academic year um in some places it's students that are taking credit um at the high school level so it opens up their calendar um i don't know if west or paris want to speak to anything where you know perhaps they maybe took a class during the summer and then were able to open up a class as you know as they entered the academic year that that they didn't have to take during the calendar year but took instead during the

025school year so any experience or any perspective that you or the students have from summer school so i personally didn't take any summer courses this year actually you did marching band is a summer course oh there we go the typical sky thank you marching band um i think it was kind of nice to have more of a normal season than we have in the past where we would rehearse more frequently and meet up with people and do what were there do what we came to do it has been a recovery year for the band i did notice that in previous years we did practice more intensely and getting that momentum to want to get better as a whole has been a lot more difficult just because of the pandemic however given the circumstances the resources

026and going through the pandemic for almost two years now there has been better adjustments and more normality to that the only other summer things i can recall though would be like my ap course assignments and i think those were pretty reasonable and even i wasn't sure about a class i was taking did not complete it in the summer and my teacher is very accommodating to make sure that i could still be successful with intercourse so yeah i'd like to hear a little bit more about pumpkin chucking or did you help with that i did so that was um something that we were approached by the gift of wings about so as you know we have the halloweens event and he he was scout was interested in trying to figure out if there was a way

027to kind of launch those pumpkins so that turned into a series of conversations around why don't we turn this into a great activity where the students of greendale could actually design the pumpkin chuckers uh and then actually have that being built and used to launch pumpkins so as a way to teach about the physics of launching pumpkins so we kind of wove in some stem activities into something kind of fun and then they started off by building miniature candy pumpkin chunkers uh and then they worked their way up to the real deal so very interesting very it was an engineering class yeah i was noticing um from 2019 to this past year it looks like fayette is a traditionally well attended summer school class because in looking at this chart um they actually increased their

028numbers since 2019 is that accurate that's correct and the one of the things that was an a limiting factor was attendance and so um but until 2019 in-person attendance five days a week was required to earn the credit and they could not miss more than three in-person credit classes and continue to receive credit and so that was a limiting factor for students who were involved in other summer camps or had travel on their agenda and this year last year it was fully virtual which allowed for more students to participate from wherever they were and this summer there was a combination of in-person and virtual activities and so that that has helped us to to increase the participation in fayette and to add to that i think what i was trying to reference earlier was that

029physical education is one of those classes that is required for graduation and often times to take it during the school year it it limits the number of classes that perhaps you might want to take so i i know that a number of our students like to take fayette during the summer so they can take that additional elective or they can continue that world language study or perhaps pick up one of the other project lead the way classes that maybe wouldn't fit into their academic calendar during the school year speaking on that topic does does a sporting event also does take care of some of that requirement right for your board policy for graduation requirements provides that the third semester of physical education can be met through a participation in a varsity sport okay and then

030as dr mitzik alluded to earlier the number of students that take summer class summer school impacts our overall budget it's a positive impact not only are those students counted then as we look at our overall student population and there's different factors based on the number of days and minutes that they actually take in the in the summer but it also is part of the calculation to say okay how many students are the schools in greendale serving so by having a breadth of summer school programs and having a large number of students participating in those programs it does have a positive impact on our overall budget as well as on the number on the amount that we received from the state i was curious about the freshman warm-up i noticed it didn't run this past summer

031is that something that will come back next year depending on interest and participation yes so that's actually something that there was a school group for that when i was about a freshman to sophomore year and as a sophomore i was leading freshman which i thought was kind of strange but that was an initiative taken from the student equity team when i was a freshman and then they wanted to implement it when i was a sophomore so in august like freshmen came in toured the school maybe did like some small activities with the high schoolers um and that was kind of like the first year kind of like the guinea pig gear like what went well what could we do better kind of thing um i think there was good publicity to the parents so the

032students if their students were interested in going or if their parents were concerned perhaps they didn't have any other sibling in the school the high schoolers facilitating that event could help them out and stuff like that that was also supposed to implement a big brother big sister program was sort of like a mentorship program for freshmen which never actually happened the pandemic kind of put a hold on that and now the student equity team is completely reorganized and that's not one of the main focuses so if something were like that to happen again that'd be something that the high school administration would have to implement or an interested student would have to create a mentorship program for that too thank you the other thing i think it's important to point out is that in the

033last several years we've run a summer trades institute not two years ago or last summer the the pandemic put a hold on that but i think that's a good highlight for our students who are interested in getting in the trades i think we partner with some of the local unions yeah we partner with 10 of the local trade unions and they spend a half day at each trade union in their training center learning about a apprenticeship pathway in each trade so i think that's a highlight that i think we should make sure that the community hears and understands that we do offer that during the summer so that students where that is a pathway for them they have that opportunity to explore not just one trade but as dr misik said multiple trades right there

034in their training centers all right any other questions otherwise this is an annual report that we hear and receive from the administration um yes i do have a question has there been any consideration of offering a bigger variety of summer courses just because i know like as you get older there's a little bit more flexibility with your schedule perhaps like the core classes you need like three social studies credits to graduate four for english however to get those credits sometimes you don't have to take a whole year course you can take semester-based electives and add them all up and i just thinking back would have maybe taken advantage if there was more courses available because then in the following years say like for example i took one semester of english throughout the summer then i

035would have another open space this year to take another course while still finishing up my english credit for something else yeah our other two courses that are offered for initial credit is what we refer to him as is health and economics the economics helps you meet the social studies requirement and health is required for graduation although lots of students take it in 8th grade but we could certainly consider other courses there's been some conversation about it and we'd need a certain number of students to be able to run the course but we could consider some yeah because like you said paris the whole idea is to perhaps openly open up uh the students academic year so that they can't um you know take other classes that that would free up their schedule we'd also have

036to just like you said look at semester offerings not year-long offerings because that would be difficult to manage a year-long offering in summer that's a good point all right well thank you very much and again i mentioned that the summer school offerings provide a variety of programming for our high school our middle school and our elementary school so thank you for continuing that one one more question as before we move on in that similar vein of variety you know is there opportunities maybe for additional partnerships where maybe we're not the ones that are directly offering it but other organizations are to try out some different things or provide some of that variety i don't know if you know there's been some conversations around personal finance for you know things like you know that are a

037little bit maybe not something that um would be a stand-alone course per se but allow them to kind of dive in and get a better handle on civics or personal finance so on and so forth as part of that offering in the summer so yeah we can certainly engage local community experts in order for it to have a financial impact it is required that it's taught by a certified teacher so we'd have to partner a certified teacher with a community member so even the summer trades institute there is a teacher assigned to that it's a school counselor and they're the the teacher and then the they take them basically to the trades but the counselor is the person of record and is there opportunity maybe two with the summer schedule to do something that might

038be even like an online type thing for that whereas now we have a little bit more expertise in that we do yes i will feed these back to the summer school team so that they can consider those ideas all right um thank you for the account that discussion uh next item on the agenda is uh the public policy priorities so this is a public policy priorities that we've put together um past couple of years and what we've typically done with them is we've approved them at the board level and then we are able to have our superintendent advocate for the school district so that we're not reacting to different topics or reacting to different items in the news that may pop up from time to time and i think when we talked about the wasb

039the wisconsin association school board the resolutions that are being submitted this fall we said let's take a look at our public policy priorities have the policy committee look at them and see that our public policy priorities are aligned with our strategic goals for the the district so kim is there anything that you'd like to share with yeah so um the intent is not to take a political or a party position but and to advocate [Music] for what will best serve our students in our community as a school district the policy committee took a look at some of the previous public policy priorities and reviewed what things may not have been achieved at this point and rolled those forward as well as considering some of the other areas that have been a point of discussion with

040the school board so um you can see that there's finance transparency and accountability talent development which is facing the staffing shortages that we've been talking about and health and wellness that talks about some of the opportunities for us to partner and using incentives at the state level to encourage those so that things like our mental health clinic might be funded by a grant or there may be some some seed money to launch some of those programs that we're considering within our strategic priorities the policy committee also took a look at the strategic plan priorities and cross-walked so almost everything on here is in some way addressed within addressing an issue within our strategic plan so i welcome any discussion and we will bring these back for approval at the october 25th meeting but if there's

041discussion about additions deletions or our revisions by opening it up so one thing um i was thinking about as i read through these and some of them i know are basically additions or continuations of previous policy or public policy priorities um and i know that in some cases verbatim you know they are the same which is totally fine because they're still a priority for us uh however when i was reading some of those that were even consistent with last year it brought up the question of do we want to should we organize these in a way that starts with why i feel like often it starts with kind of the what and then it sometimes gets to the why these are important and sometimes it doesn't it's almost like it's implied and i feel like

042if we really want to make our case for why this is important you know we should lead with why we think this is uh you know even like that first bullet it's almost backwards you know changing the reimbursement rate that's like the what we're asking you to do but why is that important um can that be the leader and then go to how and and what afterwards so that's in some cases a schematic you know somatics of like changing order of the sentences for the priority bullets in other cases maybe the y is missing where you know we all kind of understand maybe or we maybe we just assume we all understand and maybe that's also part of the problem uh because maybe that's not true across even ourselves much less when we hand this

043off to state legislators so i think it would be a worthy exercise to really spend a little bit of time and just think through okay why is it import important for example to simplify the report card um or why is it important to include a broader piece which actually if you read those next to each other it feels like they're counter-intuitive if you don't understand the why so those are some of my more holistic comments um around the public policy priorities aren't these organized though around public policy so public policy with regards to education almost always starts with finance you know it's a public it's a public policy at the state level that we're we're trying to align with and plug into so i think that i i obviously i'm the newest person on the

044board but i'm and i i don't disagree with you thor that we should be able to explain why but i think that they're organized just because in this order because when it comes to educational public policy um one of the first things on everybody's mind is financing how do you how are we going to finance public education and i'm not i'm not saying that at all what i'm saying is the individual bullets themselves the way that they're structured is what we're asking for and then sometimes it says why we're asking for it and other times it doesn't so that first bullet the why is the last sentence you know why is that why do we want uh the state to you know have at least 50 um that should be the first thing that means

045and and i'll push back just a little and say first we should know what we want and then we should be able to defend it so i so i agree it's kind of semantics i guess but should we lead with here's why we want it and then here's what we want or here's what we're advocating for and now here's our rationale i think well i guess there's schools of thought on both sides but a lot of the stuff i've seen for example on getting people to buy into what you're speaking about is that you end with the what after you've under helped them understand why it's important so you don't say we just need more money or we need you to do more here you say this is why we need your help and this

046is what you can do to help um simon sinek has made the you know famous book start with why in the golden circle i mean i just think employing some of that might be helpful when we're communicating across legislators um both at a local and state level so i think so let's make sure that we we have for all the bullets that we have a why and and like you said thor in some instances it's there and others it's not um and then the other thing is do we want to lead with the why or not um you know i i think so i a lot of change management books talk about you know explaining the why articulating the why making sure that people understand you know why is it important um to get their

047buy-in and understanding um before the the ask so like you said there are different ways of doing it and maybe i misunderst my understanding of this was we need to be clear on what we're looking for from a state public policy standpoint so correct if you know and so when you that's the purpose the purpose of this document is to to agree that these are the things that greendale school district is is interested in um backing and supporting and quote unquote fighting for um unless i'm misunderstanding that i i think that that's exactly it i think what we then do is we turn this into a one-page document or maybe a two-page document that we then can share with our state legislators we can share with the community that then says okay i think what

048i'm hearing from from thor is that as we share this documentation out with the community let's make sure it includes it's as inclusive it's inclusive like that so that we it stands alone it stands on its own yeah and my fear is that the reality is um [Music] between the conversations that kim is having you know it's not like these find their way onto the floor quickly and so then to be able to reference back to this one pager and still have that why unfortunately people may not call us back up and say hey kim remember when you talk to me about this this is coming so i just feel like having that right at their disposal so that they feel equipped to have a more meaningful conversation around why this is going to be

049beneficial to them their constituents is something that would be a added benefit versus just the here's what we're hoping you will do um you know so it's just an it's making it better it's good you know thinking about it from continuous improvement this is last year's fit on one page and i'd like to keep it if that works but if we needed to have a sub bullet that had the difference between the why and the what you know i i think that would actually be really powerful because now it eliminates the assumptions and it ensures that if we actually have this as a standalone leave behind uh because the person maybe couldn't meet with kim and so then you met with one of their aides and then you're trying to transition from whatever else it

050might be you're not losing the the why across that uh telephone game can i may redirect the conversation to take a look at what we have listed here are there things in here that um that that have changed or that we'd like to see in here or that we'd like to see taken out so i was um sorry i was looking at the health and wellness portion and actually a resident tonight mentioned this as well with all the work we're doing with equity and i guess i looked at that section as maybe that could be incorporated into there as well i don't see it anywhere else in any of the priorities but i i think it is a big focus of ours and i think we'd be remiss not to have it somewhere in our

051public policies so is there any is there is there something that you'd like to propose well i i mean going i don't have a specific okay and i wasn't i wasn't trying to put you on the spot i just wanted to make sure you know that that we understand i think in terms of if you were looking at the four categories health and wellness of our students um i i think that particular topic um would fit into that um just not certain um what you know i i'm i don't know i i guess it's just something that i feel is a strong focus of our district and i i don't know i guess i'm not really certain what i would say with that i can say that i testified in whitewater last year and one

052of the things that is important to understand too i think with these policies is you want them concise and to the point you only get a certain amount of time when you actually testify we do have the day at the capital obviously and any other opportunities but i i think i think having it you know very direct and to the point is really important uh but i just i wanted to throw out the notion of equity and kim i don't know if you have any thoughts on that i don't want to put you on the spot right now either but if that would be something that we could incorporate into our health and wellness priority in your strategic priorities you have two areas one is balanced challenging and equitable education so the idea of ensuring

053all students have access to high level standards and high expectations i don't know what how that translates into policy and the other area let me pull it up yeah and while you're looking it's when i get okay i'm going to talk a little out loud a little bit this doesn't change our strategic goals or our vision so so very clearly in a strategic plan we have what we want to focus on in the district and i think what we're trying to do is take that and now make make sure that what the state legislature is doing is in support of that so i think that's where we're trying to come up with okay how do we take what we're going to do here in greendale and um put it in a way that we can

054articulate to the madison the support that we're looking for from from them right and the other strategic priority you have is strengthen relationships with family and community to promote a sense of belonging mutual respect and safety for all families inclusive of all racial and ethnic identities so if there's something that you want me to take back a way that you want me to focus so that i can bring you a proposed language i'm looking for that direction any anyone else have any thoughts along those same lines i don't want to move off this topic right now yeah and i'm i'm noel and i went through each bullet point already pretty thoroughly with um dr midsix so that's why we're quiet we've already sort of vetted each one of these and talked about it exclusively and

055extensively i'm not coming up with anything on equity myself but it sounds like it's already written into the the strategic plan that kim just read i i would say it absolutely is there yeah it's is there something that we take from that document take from that vision and make it out you know external facing that says okay and now now that we're doing this here in greendale here's the support and the advoc here's what we want to advocate in madison for and that that that's where if any if any policies or legislation would surface um in the coming years is there a position that we would want to take based on our strategic priorities that's the purpose of the public priorities so it might not be in the public policy priorities and if something emerges

056where we think that legislation runs counter to our strategic priorities then we could step forward with that at that point or there could be a specific statement here on us taking a position and kathy i know that you are the legislative liaison so i don't know if you know of things in the pipeline or things that have been discussed that would be something that would need to be considered in the public policy priorities yeah i think i was just thinking outside the box a little bit here um i don't know of anything specific that i've seen um so you know again it's just it's a thought but i i think as you were saying that there is the overarching vision and mission right that that do address that topic so the one of the comments

057made in the beginning of our meeting was around the confusion between the word crt and the word equity yeah i don't know specifically necessarily how we'd want to fold that in but maybe if that's something that we're actually seeing as a as an actual uh concern with the state legislation you know is that and you know it's obviously all over our strategic plan everything else um and helping people understand what we're talking about when we're when we're talking about equity and making sure that all students there's a bill right now that's forward i think the 411 bill foreign is yeah well do we first have to wait to see if the bill passes before we can create public policy around it do you want to request local control yeah i mean to me i think

058that's the that would be the area that you could that would be the preemptive kind of reaction to that one of the and i don't know if this fits into the i mean in a similar vein but we have that section on transparency and accountability and really what i see that section saying is that we want to measure what matters more than you know simplifying or adding stuff to a report card it's like let's focus on actually what's focused on the things that matter and focus on impact for students and i think maybe if that's the case you know could that be an opportunity to say when we're thinking about this we want to make sure that we're looking at it from all you know from the you know from an equitable perspective or you

059know if you're thinking about you know that local control component i think across the board you know as a district we don't ever mind that that word being used and i think in across the state they're more or less in agreement i like dr mizik's idea of adding something about local control since we've already done so much work and the senate bill the last amendment was offered on september 22nd so anybody remembers their social studies it takes a while for a bill to become a law several several steps so it's hard to react to it until it's actually in place i think that's the whole pro the premise of these are basically saying right now there's not fifty percent you know the cost so we're we're uh advocating that 50 of the costs are covered

060or we're advocating for these things so these are just our you know where we're advocating they're not necessarily what is it's what we'd like it to be yeah i guess a couple of thoughts is that this becomes kind of an external facing document that that we can then share with with our superintendent who then can advocate for this so that we don't what i want to avoid is reacting to every bill that comes along and then us spending time at these board meetings debating those specific bills is that we've got a public policy that is broad enough that that kim can then have conversation with it nothing would preclude us as individual citizens from calling up and sharing our concerns one way or another with a specific board or with a specific legislative item so

061i think that that's very incorrect but only those on the sheet you would be able to lobby as a collective board correct so it's like he said yeah nothing would prevent us as individuals to say you know i'm joker pitto and this is my my personal opinion um or my personal reaction to that the proposed bill the other thing is we are a member of the wisconsin association of school boards so there are resolutions that we vote on every year that they uh again they they take a look at their legislative agenda and will advocate one way or another as these types of uh bills come up right one in in on that note um with the resolutions this year the i know the special ed one is is out there again as um there

062there is language already in our resolutions but um there's a group that brought another um piece of that forward this year so yeah i think like you said i think this is another area that we're seeing that in um in our resolution so i think that's important too so so let me try to summarize and i have two things i've heard and i think i have a version one is to maintain local control for curriculum decisions yes that's what i'm hearing and then the other is to consider disaggregated measures to ensure transparency on the impact of policies on various groups of students can you repeat that one yeah that was an eight plus uh summary you get it right back slower this is a lot of 50 words so i can simplify this at some

063point but attend to desegregated measures which basically means break out all data by demographic groups to ensure transparency of the impact of policies on different groups of students well said so that that second one i'm hearing would go under the transparency and accountability section and the local control for curriculum decisions i am not sure where that belongs but i can modify those transparencies because as a board we want to be accountable for the curriculum by the time madison figures out what they're doing and agrees to different things all right is that the direction i mean are those two things things that you want me to bring back in there and i can adjust the areas where um around the report card calculations as to the why because i can explain that to you right now

064but well in this the you know i don't i haven't read every word of this bill but there is this part about curriculum being transparent you know that's part of this bill that's been proposed is that the curriculum be posted that the school board posts the curriculum that's being used which most school districts do anyway but so that falls under transparency as well so i mean if people are worried about this bill it sounds like we're addressing it i'm sorry i cut you off kim what did you good okay i can also go back and adjust a couple y's and see what can fit on the page because i do think limiting it to a single page is best in terms of getting the attention of legislators when they're reviewing our the local interest in

065any decisions that they're making yeah and just for clarification again because i am you know new so you're you're the one taking this one-page document this one-page document will be posted on our website if legislation becomes proposed or there's an opportunity to provide feedback or there's a day at the capitol then one of you would do that typically your legislative liaison would represent the board's perspective using the guidance of the public policy priorities i also use it when i'm having conversations with legislators to say my board has said and here let me talk to you more about what i mean by that okay good thank you and kim maybe the way to get the y across is is the quad is the y tied to each of these categories and then the bullets become the

066what and what and how type thing fair right so that might be an easier way to do it we're not having every bullet have a little addendum it'll mostly look like this there might just be a little wordsmithing and then you can decide if you want to approve it that way or you want to take it back for another reading and just from past experience like from our day at the capitol in particular i i think this is a very valuable tool um you know to keep the focus on on specifics because it's very easy and you hear people constantly saying this is what i need this is what i need but when when we have these laid out and can have that conversation whether it's through kim or through us at the day at

067the capitol or even testifying i think it it really kind of sums it up in in in a nutshell and so i i definitely like the one page um i think more than that the message gets lost okay any other comments then otherwise we'll continue on with the agenda um yes please i don't want to get too off topic but i um i was talking to my sister about this yesterday so for the equity for students um i have a question less about like student demographics and more about skill and ability so i remember like sophomore year the board was trying to propose a curriculum in which the core classes for students would all be the same so basically eliminating honors courses and just keeping regular base courses for students and then the pandemic happened

068and throughout the pandemic there has been some teachers that have implemented honors extensions to their normal courses to allow students um regardless of ability or if they would normally be placed in a normal based class or an honors based class in the past to have the opportunity to get the honors on their transcript the thing that i'm a little confused about though is like i was in physics last year and my teacher proposed you can do honors if you do this extended assignment um the assignment might have had like a small video recap on what the task would be and then that student would have to go out of their way do their normal physics and then they would have to also do the honors physics and i think that personally just doesn't make sense

069because if a student has at an advanced or a higher ability to do something they should just be taught the more complex curriculum over being taught regular course school and on top of that trying to learn honors on their own plus i think equity also involves giving people the opportunities become successful if the students at a normal level and them trying to attain an advanced course might be more difficult or if a student is advanced and they're in a normal base class then they may not be getting those opportunities to achieve at a higher level because in order to attain that they would have to do more work than the normal student instead of just learning harder content if that makes sense you know two things and i'll share with you but we will also

070do an update on this in november when we have our conversation about um course editions and deletions one is it's not working like that this year everyone has the honors content and then your success on the honors the honors standards assessment determines whether or not you get credit and so you know that you can retest certain standards and honors in in physics classes and in science classes and so every student has to make an attempt at it and it's part of the embedded instructions so the instruction that's happening is honors instruction the assessment of the honors portion of the curriculum determines whether or not you get honors so in essence not everybody gets regular everybody gets access to honors and then your performance determines what your credit will be but we'll talk about that in

071a little bit and then there was another piece i want you said something about that i gotta come back to and i gotta remember what you said huh when i remember actually the equity something about no she was talk what did you say about equity is like setting all students up for success which is part of the instruct that putting it in the the instruction and making sure all students have access to that instruction so they're not denied access because um they didn't hit some gate to get access so we stopped keeping gates but we won't um that is four courses that have been revised and the the total curriculum so that'll come back in november so please keep those questions and then when um miss olson's here and mr lotus is here we can

072redress those if we need to make more modifications and paris just can i just are you summarizing saying that you don't i'm trying to summarize what you said so you you would say from a student's perspective that um honors work shouldn't necessarily just be more work it should be harder there we go that's what i was going to say it is harder um but it's also more yeah i mean it's more content from a doctoral program it's more content and so if the classes were separated there is more independent work that happens in the honors classes even when they're segregated so it's it's yeah um i'm sorry i i wanted to come back to the talk about this problem the agenda item yeah so you know we're not posted to talk about honors class and

073everything okay and like dr mitzik said we will bring this up um next month when we talk a little bit about how the curriculum is working so we'll get into more thorough deeper discussions um i'm gonna bring us back to the public policy that you were discussing um but hopefully you got a couple your questions answered and hopefully we'll we'll continue to have those conversations um at our november board meeting okay all right continuing on with the agenda then we are at um public not public policies but our regular board meeting policies and we're here for the first reading so our policy committee with uh mary and noel have been meeting and there are some edits that have been um there's actually one that we reviewed in addition to the public policy parties which was

074human growth and development and there are no changes recommended so just wanted to bring that forward because health curriculum is in review so making sure we're comfortable with this policy as they go to review human growth and development curriculum as part of the health curriculum is important but no revisions are recommended if the board wants to make revisions then we'd bring it back for a second reading otherwise we would just mark it as reviewed and i think it's always important to note when you're talking about the sensitive curriculum of human growth and development that our policy does allow for parents to preview the curriculum and to opt out of it if they so choose that's a good point any other comments or questions and as dr misik said this is one of the um curriculums

075that will be reviewed this year so it will follow this policy and uh we will bring this policy back for a second reading i don't think you need to if it's not being revised because you don't need to reapprove it okay so well i'll check on that if we do need to bring it back to a firm that there's no revisions we will do that that i was going to ask that because in the when we have the dates revise or revisit it um that we would want it to show that we reviewed it in october of 2021 because the last i think it was reviewed was 2017. yeah so it would read reviewed october 4th i believe but let me double check okay okay the procedures on that with wasv all right then continuing

076on next item on the agenda is the safety plan update um so we heard some some feedback this earlier this evening i think what we've done for the past 18 months or so is we've continued to assess the situation so so thank you kim and thank you to our public health department i think that's one of the things that we've tried to navigate through the situation as things have gotten better as things have kind of pulled back and gotten worse we've reacted and we've been able to navigate through that not just sitting still and saying well this is how we're going to do it for the next you know year the next semester or the next summer so i think that's been important that we have been able to reassess the situation and make modifications

077in response to what we're currently seeing so with that kim i'll share with you or i'll kind of open it up to you yeah there's there's multiple components of the health safety plan and i think we should focus our attention on the two aspects that are having the greatest impact on education and instruction and navigate what policies we want to have in place to keep kids in school ultimately there are some facts that i just want to review so that we remember what parameters are in place that are outside pre outside influences that we can't control so one of the things that state law statute 252 is specific to communicable diseases and state statute 252 gives full authority to the wisconsin department of health services for managing communicable diseases the local health department which is

078the greendale health department is responsible for implementing and following the procedures as determined by the state of wisconsin and i'm sharing this because quarantine is a specific directive in response to the presence of the communicable disease covid19 there is a set of quarantine requirements coming out of the department of health services and they're the ones who say what should be quarantined and that's a required quarantine the local health official is responsible for interpreting that and applying it locally and school officials according to 252 are responsible for complying with the public health officer and there are consequences for not doing so so that being said the current requirement from the department of health services is that anyone who is identified as a close contact needs to quarantine for ten days or seven days with a negative

079test on day six or seven the greendale health department following the dhs has identified what the definition of a close contact is and a close contact is someone within six feet of a positive case for 15 or more minutes on a day that can be modified with two things masks and vaccination so you change your definition of close contact if both the person with kovid and the person who doesn't have kovid are both wearing masks you can get closer and not be quarantined that is why masking at the elementary level has avoided a huge number of quarantines because we're capable of keeping students three feet apart we are not capable of keeping them six feet apart based on financial resources and the number of students in the classrooms et cetera so masking avoids the mandatory

080quarantine that is issued by the health department the other thing that changes it is vaccinations so if you're within six feet of a positive person for more than 15 minutes but you have already been vaccinated quarantine is not required by the health department and so what we discussed when we were looking at what we wanted to do to keep kids in school and prevent both transmission of covid and quarantines was to take mitigation strategies that avoided the implica the implementation of a quarantine issued by the health department right now one of the impacts of the decision that was made to mask student to require masks kindergarten through fifth grade is that since we modified our lunch procedures we have not had close context to positive cases at the elementary level but it's sixth grade the

081report reports that we had 45 quarantines but since the report we've had additional quarantines and now we're up we added an additional 31 quarantines at the sixth grade level and we are not seeing that in seven through 12 because students are vaccinated and so it reduces the number of close contacts and we're not seeing that k through five because students are required to mask and by having both the positive cases and the healthy students wearing masks we are not required to quarantine is there more to that we've only had three sixth grade cases but it's resulted in 76 quarantines yeah so i think there's a question about you know when you have a quarantine situation how many students does that impact so when we're looking at the elementary level prior to those modification to the

082lunch procedures we were talking about a handful of students that could be impacted and now with the modification to the lunch procedures we believe that that would be pretty rare that we would have the necessity to quarantine students at the elementary level for close contact at school because we've got the mitigation procedures tweaked in a way to reduce that versus at the sixth grade level based on the cases that we have we're averaging 25 students that are close contact and have to be quarantined for each case so one case is taking out basically a whole room full of students as close contacts and that would be greatly diminished if all students were wearing face coverings and we would be looking at a three foot radius and trying to identify versus six feet that they need

083to utilize now at the 7 through 12 level we're seeing a varied amount of vaccination rate but we will see it from about 50 percent up to 65 percent vaccinated of those students that are in the cohort that are identified as close contacts so obviously for that half to two-thirds of students that have already been vaccinated they get notification from a preventative standpoint to request that they were face covering until they would have an opportunity to get a negative test or until they would reach the end of that close contact period and that's just informational we do not follow up and mandate on that but we provide that opportunity for them so that leaves a third to half of students that are impacted at that 7 through 12 level and we've seen that that number

084is ranging from the 8 to 12 students that are unvaccinated that are then required to quarantine and those are students and families that had options to receive vaccination and for a number of reasons they've they've chosen not to do that but we are happy that in those situations that half to two-thirds of those students are able to avoid that quarantine i'm able to continue on at school so i in terms of rough numbers that's that's where we would be in those varied situations so one of the things that we're recommending that you heard is that we extend the face covering requirement to give students at the sixth grade level at least one layer of protection to not only reduce transmission but more importantly of keep them in school and avoid the number of quarantines that

085we've had so that they can attend per school in person and participate in in-person learning environments so that begs the question as we looked at the quarantines 196 students as was pointed out and as in the report 196 students were quarantined and during the isil based on their close contact status and during that time that this is the month of september one student has become coveted positive during the quarantine period and so question is why are you enforcing quarantines because it's state law so the way that we can influence that change and i have been working with the health department to determine if there's any other possibilities besides quarantine that would be authorized and approved by the wisconsin department of health services what we have learned is that a few states have recently passed a

086test to stay practice in which students can test daily during their quarantine period and if every day that they have a negative test that they can stay in school during that what would have been the quarantine period several states have implemented it based on statistics of this nature the health department said that our the wisconsin department of health services has not considered or adjusted the current quarantine practice and so with the support of the board i would be willing to request that the wisconsin department health services informal letter and in phone calls to wisconsin department health services consider an alternative to quarantining based on local data but the local school board does not have the authority to change quarantine practices that are by order of a public health official kim do we have the capacity

087to do that type of testing because if we're hearing that there's a 25 students or 45 or whatever well you can greatly reduce the number of students that you have to test by requiring masks in a typical contact trace at seven through 12th grade we are seeing 10 to 15 so that would be where we're at and we're not identifying any close contacts so provided masks remain in place that it would reduce the number of testing we have to do the wisconsin department of health services did provide for on-site school testing this year and we have partnered with hyatt pharmacy to test upon request and recently within the last month the rapid test has been become allowable by the wisconsin department of health services as results are there there's been hesitation on that because there's

088been false negatives on those antigen tests however the department of health services has recently said that health departments can accept a lab administered antigen test as proof of negative tests that they could bring in that they could return to school after that short quarantine period so is it the animation is the antibodies no no um i don't know what they mean it's pcr and antigen the antibodies test is totally different it's it's testing the presence but the antigen tests have had more false negatives than the pcr tests according to the department of health services um so there's three factors that would provide that to be a possibility in our state now where it wasn't before one is the antigen rapid tests are available two is they've authorized a partnership they've authorized the department health services

089is paying for schools to be able to engage in that program and our partnership with hyatt pharmacy allows us to do that and uh three what we're seeing after collecting a month of data um is that we're not seeing close contacts become positive during the quarantine period so yes there would be a capacity to do so however one of the the third thing that is a recommendation one of the things that's a recommendation on here is to increase our nursing services because our nurse is overwhelmed with management of quarantine periods and negative tests and return dates and things of that nature so her data collection and monitoring has been cumbersome so we've also talked with the health department about sharing a contact tracer that would be assigned to the schools that would be nursing staff

090so that would assist us in having the capacity to do so but we can't do so unless the department health services changes their order and just is the antigen test that's like 15 minutes or something i mean it's right when you see results can be read in 15 minutes we were having problems with the tests in the first couple of weeks of school because they were being sent out to lab and they were taking two to three days to come back on the dhs whereas other labs were able to get them back faster that's changed in the last two weeks because the rapid tests have been ordered and implemented based on changes to dhs acceptance of those results yeah and it's some just as a quick google search it looks like antigens are pre antibodies

091so there's antigens or molecules and then antibodies actually show up in your b cells but anyway i was going to ask about you know this public law how since the majority of school districts in the state are mask optional how are i is you know how are they going against this very serious public law it is the responsibility of the local health official to enforce it and there that is their obligation so our local health official i know that there's a capacity issue in some locations to be able to fully enforce and so there's just this is impossible just like the math mandate was pretty hard to enforce one is the i mean i can't speak to what other health departments are doing whatever you're saying here's what we know from the state statute and

092our local health officials are enforcing are and has anyone been fined that we know of yet for not following no i mean it's a fine i'm assuming assuming it's a fine and a potential um in the statute it says that if local health officials if local health authorities fail to enforce the communicable disease statutes and rules the department shall take charge and expenses that thus incurred shall be paid by the county or municipality has that happened yet no because they're overwhelmed but just one point though on that too that the mass component is not going against the law it would be going against quarantine guidelines that would be going against the law because currently correct not a law in the state of wisconsin that says you have to wear a mask no correct yeah so

093essentially we don't have the authority to override the health officials and say oh yep they required you to quarantine but come on into school but that's a really good point of clarification is that that is yeah that when we're no longer talking about requiring mass or not requiring mass we're talking about quarantining and that that directive is coming from the state and being implemented or executed by the directors of public officials of public health and that's here in greendale and that directive is coming from the direct from the official the public health official do the do the quarantine guidelines coming from the public health officials clarify which types of masks are safe and effective for miners nope so that's the guidance the the direction on contact tracing is where both of them wearing a mask

094then they can be closer so any any mask any face covering can be does say secure fitting yeah well well fitted that fits snug to the face it's going to be that would be the question that the health department would ask us if we were trying to check is this accurate are they wearing a well-fitted face covering i wonder if it says anything about formaldehyde in the mask or not well it's just i mean anybody who's been in the sky there's all types of masks the kids are coming in and most of them are not well fitted because kids masks are dropping down all over them no and i i think you know on that note my monthly meetings with the swsa um dr goodside and dr kari are very clear on the fact that

095there is a discrepancy with the types of masks people are wearing but that it is still a layer of protection even if it's loose fitting they basically have said that's just one of the layers that they strongly encourage at this point dr goodside has taken a stronger stance since the numbers have been going up so that that's just what i've been getting out of it um i will say that with the sixth grade i was concerned about that right from the start um you know i think the concern was that there was going to be intermingling of sixth seventh and eighth graders but um dr amidza can you kind of touch on that a little bit so the sixth graders um how how does that actually work at the middle school if the sixth grade

096is to be required to mask is that is that going to have any impact on the 7th and 8th grade during the school day there is no cross grade level cohorts of classes so students who are sixth graders have classes with other sixth graders throughout the day the only exception would be a student who is grade level accelerated in a subject and the lunch hours are separate as well the lunch hours are separate so there's a sixth grade lunch hour seventh grade lunch hour and eighth grade lunch hour and then what about the lunch hour i know that that was our um redesign for elementary and how does that would or how would that work or how would that impact potential number of quarantines for sixth grade yep as of right now there is um

097still a potential risk so we would have to reevaluate our lunch procedures to limit the time that they were unmasked at the tables to avoid quarantines further and then busting was the other one but everyone's required to wear masks because it's federal which i know was another comment that we got in some of our yep okay federal was the federal transit requirement was extended through at least february so the quarantine policy though is is tightly wound with mask wearing so you're i mean i would say mask wearing and vaccination status and vaccination says and you know another question that came through in a lot of resident emails um that i read was is there any is there any option for people to prove that they have natural immunity to the covet 19 virus versus vaccine

098immunity as of right now the health department and i don't know if this is this is part of the direction from dhs or if this is an interpretation locally but the anyone who has a positive lab administered test in the last 90 days is also um not quarantined positive co they've had covid in the last 90 days they survived it and they're living with it yeah in the last minute more than 10 days but less than 90 days ago oh and they have a registry of all of these cases that they follow correctly so the health department the health department does that's part of the time-consuming nature of the contact trace that our school nurse is supporting and question how much of our own administration minus the nurse how much time is being spent and

099resources being deflected towards um covid mitigation i easily spend half of my time related to covid mitigation so supporting the nurse directly programming communications i'd say half the time and what about other administration principals people services so my role specifically serves as leading the safety team and so that and in addition to supporting the school nurse i think it would be it's going to very administrate the administrator but julie could speak to what she's doing from an hr perspective supporting employees well and i think the building principles middle school high school and the amount of contact tracing that is involved there is time consuming i don't think it's 50 but it's a lot of hours to figure out which students were within close contact with those students so it's definitely pulling them away from instructional

100leadership and they're spending time doing the the close contact tracing the modifications at elementary have greatly reduced the contact tracing requirements of our elementary administrators better middle in high school do we have um i i guess i'm going to hop on the greendale dashboard but aren't the numbers down covered numbers down in greendale right now i thought i had heard that i guess my point to that would be so some of it's obviously taking away from the instructional piece and probably away from our mission and our vision and our academic goals that we have set for greendale it is definitely having a big impact there and then there's no way to um address the data that the the quarantine the quarantine we're doing doesn't seem to justify i agree with you and that's exciting i

101would appreciate the board's support in lobbying um at the state level to consider other strategies for close contacts test and one of the those that has been approved in other states has been test to stay so that that is something that it would look like instead of you quarantine for ten days you quarantine for seven and test negative on the sixth or seventh day you can return um [Music] some states have authorized that during the quarantine period you have to test daily for the first seven days of quarantine and a negative test allows you to go to school well you have my full support on that i just think the the data just doesn't seem to warrant the number quarantines were forcing yeah i think that's where we're challenged i think we've said at different

102previous board meetings it's important for students to be in school so i think that was an agreement that we all came to the consensus there and i think now we've heard from community members i think we're having this conversation now is we we need to find ways to reduce the number of quarantines where the students are outside of the school um that's kind of what i'm hearing at our last board meeting or a couple board meetings go we made changes or we asked the administration to make changes to the lunchroom period at the elementary level saying the whole one of the reasons why we decided to move forward with a masking policy is to reduce the number of quarantines so we addressed that and i think where i'm at is that at the 7th through

10312th grade level families have a choice to vaccinate or not to vaccinate and i think i would never advocate for a requirement but there are consequences when people make different choices and uh the consequences are related to quarantining um i would support you kim as others have said to move forward with a test to stay i think is how you refer to it so i think that's important to do that um you know we've looked at different things like i said we made changes to the lunchroom period i would be supportive of your recommendation at the sixth grade level because i think that is a way to close the gap for the number to reduce the number of outside quarantines so and our plan is based on this precedent of vaccine availability so the most

104the motion that passed on the 12th was was based on the fact that if the vaccine is available then masks can be optional and we just there was just an oversight when you lumped the middle schoolers because of their age so i agree with you too joe that the sixth graders if we're going to follow our motion with you know the intent of the motion was that if the vaccine's available then masks are optional and the vaccine is not available for sixth graders so they should have been in the same group that was masked that's where i'm at i mean i think sixth grade is when students turn 12 years old so you know every every day every week every month we're closer to more and more students turning 12 years old but i think

105what we've experienced these first month and like i said the beginning of the meeting it's important that we continue to evaluate where we're at and do we need to make tweaks do we need to make changes we're not far enough along in my opinion we're not far enough along in the school year where we've seen enough students turn 12 yet and to hear you know the classrooms of sixth graders out quarantining that doesn't adjust that for me i'm not providing a safe environment to those students to learn i'm not providing a in an educational environment that's conducive to learning so that's where i need to step back and say are there changes that we need to make and i would again be in support of extending that face covering requirement to sixth grade i i

106think we need to be consistent definitely consistent i hope that um will be consistent on the other end when the vaccine does become available for five to eleven if you'd like to set those conditions so that we can be responsive more quickly you can set those conditions in a motion tonight in which you could set the conditions that masks would for kindergarten through sixth grade would transition to recommended when the vaccine becomes available the elementary students have access to a vaccine and a number of them a significant percentage of them are fully vaccinated because if the vaccine becomes available tomorrow it's going to be five weeks right in a moment within a reasonable amount of time vaccinated right so if i could add um one of the things that i felt we were going to

107be revisiting when we came back to this was also just the impact on k through 12. in in in hearing i i just want to get some clarity here with 7 through 12 it sounds like a lot of the time for this quarantining is taking place at those grades as well and so i just want to i just want to get some clarification i guess you know and not miss the fact that maybe we should be extending it at this point to all grades if in fact if in fact we are seeing high numbers of students out of school because our number one goal here is to try to keep kids in school and so i'm can you kind of touch on the 7 through 12 component just so we're not missing them in this

108i mean 7th through 12th graders have a set of they're aware of a set of conditions and so they can avoid quarantine by they cannot choose to corn to vaccinate or they can choose to quarantine and that gives them choices in there so it becomes uh their choice so yes it's time consuming and labor intensive um to research and determine who is corn who needs to be quarantined but at the same time it's based on choices that that students have made it's not their choices or not are we seeing a large number of grades 7 to 12 being quarantined yeah every time we have a case we're looking at 10 to 15. close to a dozen that would be quarantined every time there's a case because you'd start to extrapolate out numbers that you're seeing

109at the middle school level if that can impact 25 to 30 students and 50 to 65 percent have been vaccinated then you can start to calculate how many so in in those cases it does create a challenge for those those families and those students that are impacted and then have to quarantine we will make testing available as quickly as we can through our program with hyatt on that sixth and seventh day after close contact so if they test negative that they can be cleared to come back to school on day eight but that that is the best that we can do in those situations if they're non-symptomatic and our recommendation is based on the decision and um reflection of the board in the policy in general so we're talking about impact i would be remiss

110to not say that federal and state health officials are advising that schools require masking k through 12. it is not a practice that has been widely enforced 7 through 12 in our area and so we are willing to take on the efforts to contact trace so that [Music] that choice remains with that those who have the choice to vaccinate can do that and i'll just you know this is my opinion i think it's important that we continue to offer those choices like i said there are consequences to your choices so i would i would you'll continue to for my opinion that's what i'd like us to see continue is seven to twelve if you're vaccinated that that's your choice and then based on those choices there may be consequences that that will impact you i

111think we can mitigate some of that by having dr mitzik reach out to the department of health and services to request that change and allow for tests to stay a test to stay program here in greendale schools well i'd say test to stay at it be an option at the state level so that our local health department has the ability to offer different enforcement and and while i i i'm understanding what you're saying joe i think where i have go back and forth is that yes they have a choice between the vaccine or quarantining but what about the child that's done the quarantine or done what they're supposed to do i mean you know and then they do they end up still being quarantined if they're if they're vaccinated they don't have corn no that's

112what i'm understanding so so if i'm as freshman or seventh through twelfth grade and i had i've been vaccinated and i'm in a close contact that close i do not have to quarantine you have no symptoms i have no symptoms i don't know if you have symptoms it doesn't matter if you're vaccinated or not or asked or not you should quarantine right right yeah that's why i'm saying no symptoms no symptoms so no symptoms scenario if i'm vaccinated regardless of my masking or face covering that i've implemented if i'm vaccinating i do not have to quarantine um unless you become symptomatic unless you have symptoms yeah you have to monitor for symptoms but you're not quarantined you said there are what ten about 10 of the students that are opting to wear masks correct is

113that is that uh that's a rough estimate paris and west can probably speak to what they're seeing it's a range yeah and i think the thing that's hard from a masking perspective is if i'm a close contact unless the other person is wearing a mask what i do or what my family has chosen to do is irrelevant correct mm-hmm so that that to me is a natural consequence of your choice yeah and like i said so you have the choice to be vaccinated we will try to make mitigate that by asking dr mitzik to request that change um i guess that's where i am at but i'll just go back to your choice can affect other people well and keep in mind though just for the sake of the discussion people who are vaccinated are

114still getting coveted u.s supreme court justice brett kavanaugh was vaccinated he just came down people who are wearing masks are still getting coveted i mean did i say vaccinated still getting covered so covet is is a mysterious moving target you know we can argue till the cows come home about what's you know i think there's people that are i'm just i'm just well there's people who are more afraid of the vaccine than they are of covin and there's people that are more afraid of covid than they are the vaccine and there's the option to mask and then and they both groups both groups think that science is is on their side so all we can do i think is we made a motion on august 12th and we made a decision that's in play now

115uh regarding based on the vaccine we said that if you have the option to vaccinate so then you also have the option to mask or not and i just hope that will be consistent i'm willing i'm willing to agree to joe that since sixth graders don't have the option to vaccinate that they should be wearing masks because that fits with our original motion but then when it does and i'll i'll make that motion later if we need to but it when the vaccine does become available then we need to be consistent and i agree kim gives some reasonable amount of time for the for the people who want to get vaccinated before the the elementary students are unmasked but that is a good compromise between these you know two two groups of people that we've

116heard from for the last two months um in and to build on what you said mary for me it's important to try to articulate what we see coming down the road and and to say that you know what we see some of the restrictions lifting when the vaccine is available for 5 through 12 year olds and when we see vaccination levels hitting 60 in greendale i mean that i think that kind of articulates our vision for where we are today and what we intend where we want to be going forward so that's so i think for me it's important from my perspective to have that conversation today so that we can say to the community here's where we are today uh i would be in support of making changes for sixth graders and then say

117and here's where i um i think the next change happens when we hit this criteria i guess that's where i am at and i want to make something very clear i understand people have choices and i don't judge them for their choices people can wear a mask they don't have to wear a mask they can get vaccinated they don't have to get vaccinated don't judge them for that i just want to make that really clear because i hope that didn't come across that that's what i was doing no i didn't i didn't get that impression um i'll start with the easiest motion before you say i i just want to make sure were you going to say something for her i i it looked like you were going to have a comment i was just

118interrupt i was just going to say when we make that motion i think we should also highlight that lunch uh component just because if that was our um you know presidential yeah well that's what happened last time in elementary school and so if we're gonna do something what are we doing to help mitigate the spread during lunch as much as possible for sixth graders so just want to make sure that that's you know something that we're bringing they've already been i mean i agree with you but they've already been without masks up until i think where i'm hearing that is that sixth grade lunch period let's make sure that we're not we're not implementing something and still leaving a 30-minute opportunity where all of our changes would be for naught because right and i would

119i would echo that because i know with the elementary we saw what happened when we had that gap in there and um and i i definitely i know there's going to probably be emotion on the table i can definitely live with the sixth grade at this point because i do think that was a missed scenario for us and and definitely should have been i just want to go back to the fact that i did initially motion for um k-12 and i still do feel strong that there is a benefit for all of our students and in hearing the staff the amount of time that's being spent on this whole quarantine thing i think that's time that is taken away from helping serve the needs of our students so um i i won't make the motion

120at this point but i just want to be clear that there are layers of protection that we can do and yes there are choices that people want to be able to make but that it it's important to understand that you know we we have other areas that we could also be mitigating i think so i just want to make that clear and i i'm same as kathy i can be satisfied with the sixth grade i too feel very strongly that we should really be going through twelfth grade but i think this is a compromise that we have to make at this time and i would like to see us if we're making a motion and i'm [Music] would like to see that if we do [Music] do look at uh how we're gonna look at

121kids it's by percentage of kids vaccinated and that's the entire student population k through 12 not just seven through twelve so that when we're going to take masks off the elementary it's going to be that they're vaccinated as well that we're not looking at 60 and it's 7 through 12 making sense yeah i guess what i'm looking at and we look at the recommendation from the report the second bullet point is that you know we we would end masking requirement because 5 for the k through 12 because that's the only place that we currently have i'm sorry right now we only have a masking requirement for k through 5. it sounds as if there's an agreement that we extended to k through 6. it sounds as if we would end that masking requirement once that

122population that k through 6 population hits 60 vaccination rates because then that is in line with where our seven through 12 classes are at they are about 50 to 65 percent and i think we'd be remiss not to be paying attention to what medical authorities are giving us as advice we we have had recommendations from children's hospital the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and so i don't want to just throw out the medical advice that we've been given because i i feel that needs to play into our decisions and and um i'd like to give us some thought because i know a lot of uh during this time period people have asked for you know when are you going to talk about this when are you going to talk about this and we went

123through the entire month of september and there were we we held off on discussion so i'm wondering if there's some parameters that we can give kim that says okay if it reaches this she can make this decision it should have been her decision to begin with um and then she can bring it to the next board meeting if i'm making do i make sense i'm looking at the second bullet point that says consider a set of conditions in which elementary mass requirements and when i say that it's it's k through six if we make that change uh would transition to become recommended and that we use vaccination axis and rates to set that threshold so that we are providing that feedback that direction to kim at this point in time and that we don't have

124to come back to another meeting or hold a special meeting or that we're just giving kim that we're making the decision today with the direction to kim that you know as outlined here and i can support what's here is that once vaccination rates for five through four students age five to eleven um read 60 then we would direct kim to um move from a recommendation i'm sorry move from a requirement to a recommendation and just as a clarification that's in line with what sue shepard told us when we made the original decision which was if vaccines are available and community spread is not through the roof those are the two things that they were most concerned with so that gets back to that same staying consistent and also point of clarification so currently the seventh

125through twelfth grader the vaccination rate is sixty percent in the student body i think we said between 50 and 65 is what we're seeing yeah okay so it's not the community it's a student body correct okay okay then i if we're ready i have a motion ready if we're if we're if unless there's any other discussion i motion that when the covet 19 vaccine becomes available for ages five through eleven grades k five through six that masking becomes recommended not required with a reasonable amount of time allowed for communication for families and also for families who want to vaccinate their children to become fully vaccinated and for a sixty percent vaccination rate to be obtained k five six that would include um i i guess we need a separate motion for the for the sixth

126graders right now but you i i think you can wrap that in what it is okay okay i was thinking it should just crap it in and yeah okay and that the mask requirement um be extended to sixth graders um starting do we need a tomorrow or how soon would you like that kim i think it would be difficult to enforce tomorrow okay so monday um the 12th monday october 12th effective monday october 12th is that i'm going to make that as soon as practical based on a building administrator okay within a reasonable amount of time okay all right i'll reread that i motion that when the covet vaccine becomes available for ages five through eleven grades k five through six that masking becomes recommended that masking goes becomes recommended not required with a reasonable

127amount of time allowed for communication for families who want to vaccinate their children to become fully vaccinated and for sixty percent a sixty percent vaccination rate to be obtained k5 through 6 and that the current safety guidelines extend the mask requirement through sixth grade uh again within a reasonable amount of time allowing for communication to parents staff and and students is there a second second all right there's been a motion in a second to extend the math requirements through grade six and then to establish a set of criteria in which that masking requirement for elementary students as well as sixth grade students transitioned from required to it after a vaccination is accessible and rates have reached 60 percent for our students 5 through 11. any further discussion um i'd like to just make a comment

128about uh please couple things um so you brought up the amount of masks being worn in the schools and i'd definitely say it's around ten percent in my classes it's around like high teens low twenties and there's usually one to two people wearing a mask and i just had a comment about the uh the test to stay in school program you had i definitely think it would be a good idea last last year i had to quarantine because my um my brother tested positive so i had to quarantine for four weeks and i definitely think introducing a program like that if that had been introduced last year when i had to quarantine for such a long period it would have definitely made the process a lot less frustrating and just it would be i think

129it would be beneficial for students because it would make it more easy for them to get in-person learning and i definitely think that would be a positive benefit for the school district thank you for sharing your story wes any other comments or questions i actually have a question for you so um you want there to be some input in plum i cannot speak some implementation over students that may have been a close content to still have access to in-person learning okay so the person like who would be able to instruct that so i think what we're saying is that we would partner with hyatt pharmacy for on-site in-person testing and it would be a test to stay program so students would come in they might they've been identified as a close contact typically they would

130have to quarantine but as an alternative they would still come to school they would be tested and if they receive a negative test within the 15 minutes or so they could then attend class they would continue to have that testing for the about seven days is that what we said camera yeah but to be clarified we don't have the authority to make that decision that would that would be what we're requesting the department of health services to consider so that we would have that flexibility okay and then if this was the alternative then would the um quarantine requirement requirements for those people that have been close contact but negative um change because right now isn't it like you can cut your quarantine time if you get a negative test on the seventh day or something

131like that yes it's it's cur you're correct so you quarantine for the full amount of time you can shorten that if you get a negative test and we're asking dr minsik to pursue and a third alternative to shorten it even further so that it's a test to stay program okay and then one last question with that um if this became a reality and those students that were close contact got a negative test you i think you mentioned something about how they have to continue to get those tests for the next week would there be um funding that's available the funding has been provided for the school year the the department of health services provided funding for testing in schools and we have signed up for that program we are currently testing close contacts for that

132day six or day seven but it it is part of a state program good question though and um one more question about this please that's to stay program if you tested negative your first few days and then towards like the latter half of your quarantine period where you should be quarantined but you're being tested and you do test positive would the people around you then be in close contact and yes to quarantine them based on current conditions and requirements through the department of health services yes because you would look back two days okay thank you all right so we still have a motion a second so any other fur discussion then i'm going to call for a roll call vote yes yes yes yes and i am yes motion carries thank you again for for

133the conversation and again as i started stated earlier kim thank you for helping us navigate through through that process don't we also need a motion for an extra nurse yes so that does not require a motion oh okay let's yeah let's give that so there's two things the third bullet part was partnering with the greendale health department for a second school nurse using esther funds and then the other thing i think we heard some feedback about requesting a change to the test to stay program yeah any other comments and any differing opinions about that test to stay program no i is it if except that i've got at least a you know 10 or 12 emails about antibodies so is there any way you can research the natural immunity and if people with i can

134include that in my question yeah i can somehow prove their natural immunity does that put them in the same status as someone who has vaccine immunity the question i have is will the test to stay add additional work already to what you guys are already doing that's why we're requesting to add a nurse because we anticipate so they're almost impacted is one nurse enough do you need more than i mean i'm still worried about the administrative staff that's been taxed with this i mean it sounds like you're going to continue to have to do pretty and i mean like nothing's changing as far as the contact ratio right yet well sixth grade it should change the the increase of the nursing staff would be the most important piece to us because we have one person

135right now who a lot of this information is running through and that that's becoming taxing we've tried to find strategies to minimize that just at a personal level but we know the volume of work is somewhere in the 50 to 65 hour per week range right now and so it's just not sustainable even while we hope that cases are declining right now and covet so i think this is this is the essential piece that we need to continue working on whether or not dhs would approve that flexibility in the testing programs either way we need that capacity right now and just as a point of information i mean not only is it increasing that you know our school nurse's time to dramatic hours but it also means that she's getting pulled away from the other

136duties that we were hoping that she would be able to do in her capacity so you know i think that they just want to echo that we see that we understand that and we know that it's not necessarily going to be um even when you add that person in there's more work to be done um from the school nursing side so yeah i think the school nurse you might need i think it might need more than one i mean you need someone to do all the regular nursing you know just the normal school nursing with all the students back in full force and then you probably need somebody just doing these these covered cases i i would imagine i mean so if it's possible to get more than one i would certainly be in favor

137of that we're analyzing the time spent and working with the health department to add okay and you don't need a motion you're just that's just we do not need a motion um it would be approved as part of the budget when we bring that forward without with the final approval next month okay or at the end of this month i'm sorry all right so kim have you received the direction that i have yes and i will follow up and work with the health department to i have contact information for the department of health services to let them know our request all right very good and thank you again for the conversation like i said i i think kim you've been able to navigate us as things have um have been flow a little bit throughout

138the this past 18 months every time we hope and think we've turned the corner there's a new variant so we're getting closer to returning to a new normal i i believe but i think this was a good conversation uh to have when i if i can just add to i i mean i think all of us most we care first and foremost about the safety of all of our students but we also care very deeply about keeping them in school and so hopefully with these extra steps that will help us round the corner a little bit very good all right thank you we're at the end of our agenda so any additional comments from visitors this evening and again as you know ms godley please state your name and address for the record good evening

139my name is heather godley and i live in the m section as a parent educator and community member i am extremely disappointed that this board values equity so little that it won't highlight it directly and clearly as a public policy priority an attempt to be proactive in ensuring that our schools aren't prohibited from addressing equity seeking to preserve local control isn't enough in this current climate assembly bill 411 was fast-tracked and passed the assembly 60 to 38 and if the district chooses to wait until this and other related bills are passed before taking a clear stand our our students and community will suffer representative witcher the the co-author of the bill passed by this by the senate or by the assembly and in front of the senate stated quote i have an addendum to my

140testimony that lists several of the different terms associated with critical race theory or words that are part of the praxis of this theory yes it's extensive he said and you can tell a lot of this was created in legal academia but i want you to note sorry i'm saying i would like you to note that he said quote the point of this legislation is to prohibit it from being taught in our government schools the terms and concepts that he would like to be banned from our schools include social emotional learning at the very top of his list diversity equity and inclusion culturally responsive teaching anti-racism anti-bias training conscious and unconscious bias cultural appropriation cultural competence diversity focused diversity training educational justice equitable equity examining systems hegemony implicit or explicit bias institutional bias internalized racism interrupting

141racism intersectionality land acknowledgement marginalized identity marginalized or minoritized or underrepresented communities microaggressions multiculturalism patriarchy racial justice and i'm skipping a lot of his words just to highlight some of how extensive and how damaging this would be for our students racial justice racial sensitivity training representation and inclusion restorative justice restorative practices social justice structural inequity systemic bias systemic racism unconscious bias white fragility white privilege white supremacy and the list as i said included more so i would ask individually i know you mentioned that during your your discussion that individually you could take some action on this i would like to really encourage all of you individually and to talk to our legislature especially our senator about this and revisit the need for really um highlighting equity in our policy proposal or our policy priorities thank you

142thank you all right uh seeing no additional comments we are adjourned and just note that our next board meeting is the fourth monday of october so on october 25th at 7 p.m we meet the fourth monday this month because of state requirements with the tax levy we are adjourned