001all right i just got the message that's been a live stream yep okay so i'd like to uh call the special meeting of the uh brookfield board of education for uh february 14th to order um please join me in rising for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of america and to the republicans to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay um so first of all um happy valentine's day to everybody um i am hoping that we don't go a long long time this evening because i am sure that people would like to spend some time with their significant others this evening um but thank you for making the time uh the board has had a very busy calendar uh late
002last week we did our budget presentation we have we're meeting with the nbc tomorrow night to uh review the furniture for the new school and we have our regular board of education meeting on wednesday so it's one of those moments in the year where there's a lot of meetings for all of us so um the uh and for the people members of the public and there are a number who joined the zoom call and uh and there's a number who i am sure are listening on the youth youtube live stream uh thank you for joining uh uh the the legislature uh the senate passed the extension of the governor's orders to the february 28th this afternoon which we uh eric now you're good at pause it pause it pause zoom but didn't pause youtube so
003keep going okay there you go yep um so we're in a position where the board needs to make some decisions we chose to do this meeting by zoom this evening because there was another meeting just before this and it was just logistically challenging to get all the board members physically together in one place so so i may i made the command decision to make this a zoom call there is no public comment on this evening's meeting um so those of you who've joined the the zoom call you will note that you are muted and your video is off that's on purpose and and one of the things we have to decide as a board tonight is are we going to go through a process of a formal public comment process or do we have enough
004information already to uh to make the decisions that we need to make as a board so that's actually one of the decision processes we have to get through this evening i will say though to my fellow board members i've been answering an awful lot of emails i counted them up just before this meeting since uh the the governor first made his announcement i've received 84 emails in the last uh week and uh and uh and uh i spent the super bowl responding to emails last night so um so the uh we've gotten a lot of public input i know you all had a chance to read through those and there's some good and very useful uh input so um eric mike is pinging me saying he's uh he's locked out so if you could just
005find him and i'll give him this yeah mike i just got your email and i took care of you thanks man appreciate it um so tonight we're working through our process of what what are we going to do to make whatever decisions or uh and we have to ask ourselves very fundamental questions like you know do we have enough information are we clear enough with what's going on in the state uh do we need public com a public comment session uh or do we have enough information to make a decision that we might need to make and move on this evening i mean that's the fundamental question that we're going to be facing so what i thought we would we could do is dr brill's pulled together some very basic information some of the statistics
006some of what's going on at the state what is he hearing and most importantly what is the advice we're getting from our health advisors and uh and i thought that what i could do is turn it over to dr burrell and let him walk through this presentation uh and at the end of that we i think we as a board have some decisions we need to make on how to move forward so with if everybody is okay with that um then i'll turn it over to dr barrow okay all right a gorilla floor is yours sir thanks bob eric can you share the screen please with the slides we're gonna have eric run this uh tonight for us so obviously we're here to consider uh the mask wearing policy uh based upon everything that bob
007just said is uh the introduction in terms of the governor's announcement last week for the extension of the uh mask wearing uh until the 28th of february and then leaving it up to the local districts for march first so eric if you could go to the next slide i want to give a little brief uh status update of exactly where we're at so the the legislative actions that have occurred thus far it's really important for everybody to understand this to kind of just level set last week as we said the governor recommended that mask wearing in schools be a local decision and as most people are aware his legislative executive orders end uh i believe it's midnight tomorrow february 15th he asked for an extension of two weeks and after that everything moved forward as
008a local decision regarding masks and the department of public health actually um endorsed uh his announcement last week and endorsed that position the commissioner of the department of public health was on and spoke at the press conference last week then on thursday which was february 10th the house voted to extend those executive orders uh for the two weeks literally two more weeks to the 28th and we just found out this afternoon probably within the last hour and a half that the senate also agreed to that to extending those executive orders so we now have the legislature the governor and the department of public health um basically saying to us the mask mandate is is essentially ending uh officially on march first that's basically what this means here one thing that's important for everybody to understand
009that the transportation the public transportation mandate um that deputized the cdc to mandate that transportation still uh consider mask wearing and have mass wearing that also applies to school buses that is still in effect because that is federal that is not actually a state mandate so that's still in effect as far as we know obviously if there's any changes we would let folks know all right next slide eric all right it's important as we consider moving to um local decision making in terms of mask optional if we go in that direction and again that's for the board's consideration i have a few slides just to go through before we discuss is that right now we've been awaiting department of public health guidance uh in regard to if we don't have masks in school as a
010mandate for all and it's optional what does that mean for mitigation and as as you know in talking with our medical advisor with our public health director some of the key mitigation factors still remain and so those are things like obviously one of the things they all recommend is vaccination as a matter of fact our town has almost an 85 vaccination rate if you're ill stay home if your child is ill keep your child home hygiene and hand washing things we're very familiar with keeping paying attention to ventilation distancing and cohorting where possible and of course quarantine protocols uh applying for when you've been ill and you've isolated and then might be feeling better when you come back and timing all that out so right now in the absence of absence of that direction as
011we figure things out over the next two weeks we would want to pay attention to update w-1 that was sent out a while back which talks about all those things and we could always resend that to families and so forth um one thing that's a couple of points that i want to make is that superintendents are hearing coming out of the state department of ed in kind of out of the department of public health that the the csde and dph might not be recommending anything for us so that's why it's important to think about what are our uh mitigation protocols that have been effective for us and what has worked and and what do we do on the local level and getting that local advice because we may not get any more state advice going
012forward we may get some again we don't know um the other piece to that is the department of public health doesn't plan on establishing as far as i know or my colleagues know any metrics where it may mean we have to ramp up mitigation or continue pulling away from mitigation efforts and getting even more back to normal so um those are those are things we need to be aware of the indicators that i understand that the dph will look at and the commissioner has talked about is vaccination rates and hospitalization rate indicators nothing further than that we think that the you've heard a lot about positivity rate we've all heard about that over the last year and a half um we don't believe that that is going to be an indicator any longer and then
013like i said other protocols uh may terminate as we progress through this we really we're getting into a place where it's positive we should be excited about this and energize that we're even having this conversation right now um one thing as we start to consider mask versus no mask and optional is that through this whole process and to bob's point about the 80 plus emails we received um what i really appreciate about all of them is the points were made but they were respectful and kind and people really sharing their stories um about what their kids are going through and on either side of the issue so again it truly is a positive time and we need to take that take heed to that so please next slider so some of the metrics that that
014we all hear about and know about are uh case trends um across the state we hear the national ones but i want to focus on the next couple of charts state trends in brookfield our vaccination rate in brookfield broken down by age range and then specifically i think the most important one is what are the infection rates in the schools for our staff and students and similarly what are the quarantine rates it's really important you're going to see some really positive trends across all of those metrics so we're going to put those slides up so we go to the state one eric the next one please all right so you can see um the number of confirmed cases and probable coveted cases uh in the state if you think back to the end of last
015winter beginning of last april things were getting much better and then you have this large spike as you progress through the years this large spike in january you can see there and this precipitous drop if we go right to the next slide eric it's important to see the match of the state um brookfield mirrors that and you can see the confirmed versus total cases uh here at the end of january and then the first two weeks in february and you can see we've really dropped down quite a bit again we're in a very nice position here so these dynamics are the same as the state next layer this is an important one we've highlighted the the right hand column of the chart this is the actual brookfield vaccination rate we have a weekly report from
016ed advance our local um resk and they share with us by age each week the vaccination status so it's an interesting chart for people to take a look at it's not one that we publish regularly but we do have that information and it's there for you if you're interested so that's where we were as of the 10th next slide to me i have the next two slides especially this slide is a simple line graph you can see on the yellowish orange line that is our student um actual covid cases at the beginning of january down through last friday i think we're down to 13 across the district and zero for staff that's the dark blue line you see there for infections so again that precipitous drop-off we're a very good place and then the next
017slide is uh i thought it'd be of interest to folks uh that is our quarantine counts and it's a it's a similar trend you can say and remember quarantine is uh students and families sharing with us that their child um tested positive and then quarantining their child from an out of school trans uh uh infection that is uh in school we are no longer uh doing contact tracing so if you're not doing contact tracing in school then you're not gonna have close contacts and you're not gonna have those quarantine so that's just something this is really out of school quarantines that we're actually tracking at this point are out of school infections and then subsequent quarantines in close context all right next slide all right so so here here it goes so the governor department
018of public health our metrics all trending positively our health director dr sullivan saying it is time to eliminate the mass requirement and he is in alignment with what the department of public health talked about in the press conference last week with the governor which is through the extension for the next couple of weeks and being ready for march 1. so let's let's let's pause here i'm going to read this out loud so we all orb this one and the and dr garcia's recommendations so he says last week revealed 26 reported cases down from 53 the week before now those numbers from the prior chart they're always a little fluid so but they're very consistent with what he said the case rate at 33.2 is a little higher than i had hoped for but the third
019week of decline i think we can reasonably assume that we can recommend eliminating mass requirement in schools when any executive order from the state expires case rate down from 59.8 the week before these numbers are adjusted for town size positivity rate was 11.7 percent based on 825 tests reported as was said i based my recommendation on the assumption that the numbers will continue to decline state standards for removal from the red zone for schools uh formerly used to determine when to go to remote if you remember is 25 cases right so last week was 26 this week we're down to 15. so um let's all hope that trend continues as would be very difficult to turn back school officials should be aware that the federal order for mass wearing under the prep act remains in
020effect on public transportation including school buses in addition my recommendation still stands as to all other mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate the spread of sars kobe 2 virus um so and those are the ones dr bruhl let you out in your earlier chart yes so this has been an evolving discussion with our public health uh director i mean two weeks ago he was much more cautious last week when he sent us his views it was a mezza this last thing which we received i believe on thursday or friday um was was more firm and and he's evolving as we're learning uh more about what's going on on cases so i think that's important to just kind of absorb that the the second page is the recommendation from our pediatric um physician advisor and just
021for everybody we have two advisors to the district one is a public health director right who's work of thinking about the general public health and the second is actually a local pediatrician who actually sees patients and um and is dealing with just kids so here he writes this is dr garcia i think it is prudent to recommend mass optional policy starting march first based on the following facts and i like that he did this off of facts um a one a sharp downward trajectory in daily new cases infection rate positivity rate in connecticut including fairfield county two a high vaccination rate for the state um which is you know 80 basically 85 and up um i'm a little disappointed that brookfield's on a little below the average of the state but it is what it
022is clinically at the front lines i have personally seen less than five percent positivity rate in my brookfield office in the last three weeks um i do propose the following in addition in addition to the recommendation to optimize safety of everybody one parent should continue to act responsible responsibly to keep their children home if they're sick and or are noted to have coveted symptoms two individuals who test positive will still have to follow the quarantine recommendations three everyone should be treated with respect regardless of whether they choose to wear a mask or not one of my biggest personal worries is if we let it go there'll be a lot of student peer pressure right and we have to spend time you know talking to students and faculty and other people in the that will be
023in the schools about you know having um respect and care for those who choose to wear a mask and those who choose not to wear a mask um and uh because it's a ch it would be a choice and then fourth the decision may be reversed at any time if there's a spike um and so there's always a risk in this sort of thing that you know you try and do all the right things and then you know you have a new variant shows up or some other influence shows up or all of a sudden everyone takes it as an opportunity to go party and everyone's starting to get sick again right so um so we have to be careful as i guess the message from dr garcia so um but both health advisors have
024said we've reached a point where we could do this if we choose to so dr burl back to you yes thank you thanks bob i appreciate you taking the time to to walk us through this well i just think i think it's important we all said we all said that we were going to listen to our advisors right that was important to us yes i wanted to take the time and say you know the decisions this board is going to make is about is about health in our schools and safety in our schools and we want to make sure that our health advisors had a big voice in that and neither of them sadly neither of them were in town tonight so and we felt an urgency to have this meeting so we decided to
025go with a written input from them instead of having them appear in person and that was very that was very good of them to actually reduce it to writing for us as well so that's greatly appreciated all of their hard work um so eric if you could go to the next slide so one of the things that's just important as a reminder kind of the center of the board as we near the end of framing up the conversation tonight so we really we've got the executive order extension only for two more weeks that is passed by the senate in the house as well as recommended by the governor supported by department of public health our health advisor and our medical advisor who is a pediatrician a little bit about pro more about process i think
026is important as a reminder for the board the board adopted the opening plan and those first two highlighted bullets really um taught this is from our opening plan is the the mask section and it talks a about in there the board's um ultimate goal would be to have the kids not wearing this and and when the time is right to revisit this and giving that consideration um to make it optional under the appropriate circumstances and here we are arriving at those appropriate circumstances now uh the third bullet just references the cdc order on the mask wearing on on bus mandate so i just wanted to again it was just the center of things it's not to go through and read it word for word and then the next slide eric if you could go to
027that just another piece um is to remind everyone that about a a little more than a year ago a year and a half ago or so the board per the state department's mandate we were all um strongly recommended and or mandated i forget if it was a man they started mixing our words and i apologize we've got so much of this over the last two years but the uh for every district have a facebook a and so uh working with connecticut association's boards of education like we do in our board attorney this board adopted a face mask policy the very latin the policies linked in this presentation which will be posted after the meeting the very last line in the policy talks about the board having the right to interpret the provisions of the policy
028and to modify modify excuse me any or all matters contained in the policy at any time subject to applicable law of course that means that that implies executive orders so really what we i'd like to board to consider is is have a discussion tonight not only about where we're at with the data and comfort level and any questions you might have uh or thoughts or ideas or suggestions but really consider a suspension of the mass policy given uh everything that's occurred over the last few days and i believe that is the last uh can you go to the next slide yeah and that's it so really it's time to have the board have the discussion okay why don't you uh take us off the presentation so we can see the screen again so um [Music]
029all right so we um hold on a second i'm just um i'm just i might my screen has been uh um going crazy on admitting people um so so guys i think first order of business and it's a process question i would ask everybody is when you make a decision this is a decision of high import to parents and to families and to our district so the first question i had in coming here and i wanted to get everybody's input is are we prepared to make a decision tonight yes no um or do we need more information and i just let me expand on that we have the legislature's actions i was really worried we weren't going to have the senate's action by the time we had this meeting but we know what the legislature's
030done we've seen no input from either the dph on things that we need to do or not do or from the state department of education on things we need to do or not do uh john i think you told me that none of the superintendents are expecting much so right but that's that's often something we were we would wait for we have some written public input but we haven't actually run a any sort of public forum or survey or anything like that so we have a goodly amount of input and i'll just remind us all we got a lot of input last summer too both on both sides of the discussion so um so we've uh we have received a lot of input um and we've stated publicly that we when we had the opportunity
031and it was the right time our goal was to not have kids wear masks if we could um it was all about safety so i guess the question i will ask each of you is do you think we have enough information to proceed with a decision tonight or do we need to go do uh collect any other inputs and if so what so let me kind of open it up to the floor and see what anybody has to say on that joey do you want to go here sure i'll go first um so yes i'm prepared to make a decision tonight and i don't feel that i need further information as well oh sorry rosa yeah i'm pumped well i have enough info too go ahead yep same i have enough info sharon mike oh
032i'm sorry same same as joey wrote and amy sharon sharon is trying to get off mute i think [Laughter] debbie how about you i have a i feel like we have enough information but i do have questions um about just different protocol and and implications um should we vote to remove the mask mandate but that you know could be a separate meeting or could be part of this meeting but well let's let's come back to that so let's log that let me see what sharon has to say and then we'll go back to you you know let you ask your questions so sharon am i am i good can you hear me yeah i can hear you enough okay um i feel that i could make a decision tonight okay good as as kind of
033as do i by the way i'm just so that's unanimous that we all feel like we can make a decision tonight um debbie why don't you go ahead and pose your question and uh maybe we ought to talk about that for a little bit and just for everybody i have uh assuming that we well i'm gonna come back to the decision process why don't you go ahead and ask your questions and uh i emailed um john over the weekend to ask if we had received any input from the teachers union um you know we've heard a lot from parents and we've taken that to heart and you know there's a lot to think about but i think in addition to students we have to think about our staff as well so um john i don't
034know if you want to share what you shared with me sure dev uh thanks for bringing that up so um it's not it i would have put it in the powerpoint but it was not my survey to share but uh mr petrino the president of the bea brookfield education association which is the teachers collective bargaining group has approximately 240 members uh put a survey out of uh basically asking you know are you you know where where are you at with moving forward in terms of mask optional or you know your comfort level with keeping mass on and extending uh you know mask wearing for all for for a little longer and it literally of the 140 of 240 members that responded to the survey was 50 50. it was right down the middle um which
035both mr petrina and i um uh anticipated would be the case just based on anecdotal feedback and kind of everywhere you're at in any community it seems to be right down the middle do some people have a little they're a little more anxious about things and others are ready to to take that mask off but that that was the response on that uh so so my question coming off that is you know if if 50 of the teachers would opt for a continuation of mask wearing um are there any implications in terms of our liability you know do if teachers are feeling unsafe or uncomfortable is that you know what's our responsibility there um and similarly you know i that carries into the area of families too so if if masks are optional and up
036to you know the choices made by families whose responsibility is it to make sure a child whose family wants them to wear a mask actually wears it um and again what is our liability what what is our responsibility in those cases yeah i think debbie i think there's two distinct questions there so let's start with the the first one um one we have it's important for everybody to realize we have two we have two weeks from from tomorrow essentially going forward uh to getting information from the department of public health or state department of education or in the case you're asking about liability um to double check with insurance or whatever the case may be but we we are insured through perma and um there's all kinds of communicable diseases and lots of lots of
037um issues out there that are potential risks for for any organization such as ours um so while that question in all the different in various conversations that i've been involved involved in has not come up um it's certainly something that i will i could certainly bring forward to attorney murphy um and talk to mr post about and checking with our insurance company on that that's something i can do i can't answer that off the top of my head tonight uh the other when uh can you just refresh me on the other one you're asking about mask wearing the students wearing masks well yeah i mean i feel like there could be a lot of um you know sort of an added layer of complicating factors for teachers in classrooms when some kids are wearing masks
038some aren't some parents feel strongly that their kids should maybe they have other health you know risk factors maybe somebody at home has health risk factors so you know what what's our responsibility for making sure those children wear their masks and are you know that are the teachers supposed to report to the parents you know those kinds of things sure well i think one of the one of the things we need to consider you need to know is actually we have an administrative council meeting tomorrow morning where this topic is on the agenda so again we have two weeks to work with this uh should the policy be suspended this evening going forward and and must be optional um so that gives us some time it gives us an off ramp uh to figure these
039some of these details out the things i can tell you that i know are our principals and our teachers would do at each of the schools and we'll again talk about this in detail and if we handle it each building appropriate to the culture of that particular building and obviously to develop developmental level deb for your question there is there are many things that that i think every parent who's watching right now uh know that if they call or write a note to the teacher especially the younger ones i get the feeling you're asking about the younger ones probably more than the older students that is there are lots of things that teachers know about a particular child based on a conversation or a no a meeting with a parent that they handle day in
040and day out and uh i don't want to be cavalier and just put that on our teachers uh in a conversation tonight in in my response but it's important to know that i mean we have climate teams we have developmental guidance opportunities we have social workers we can do uh mini lessons and videos with the students to talk about all of these kinds of things but also for the mom or the dad that contacts the teacher about their little johnny and his need to uh make sure he's wearing a mask or the parents desire to have that child wear a mask um uh you could bet our teachers will be paying very close attention to that doing the best they can um but we can't guarantee anything will the mass slip down past the nose
041right now does the mask slip down past the nose will the child pull it off to yell scream and have a good old time when they happen to hug their friend i mean we we just you know this is human nature and human beings being together in a classroom all day long so i i don't want to sit here and guarantee things either but we will be very very cognizant of that and like i said it's already on our agenda for our meeting tomorrow to talk about it's one of the first items uh as we consider a possible off ramp to uh mandatory mask wearing for everyone you know it's it's interesting john just listening to your talk one of the best letters we received um at least that i really uh tuned into was
042a parent who's talked a little bit about how they were talking to their child right it was a little bit on the older side um that when they're with a teacher who's wearing a mask you should put your mask on right and you know be respectful right if you're with an administrator if you're with a fellow student and you're in close proximity and they're wearing a mask be respectful right um and i think one of the the interesting questions is how can we use our uh all the uh social emotional stuff that we've been building up on caring for each other right to reinforce the what's good what's respectful behavior maybe you don't have to wear a mask all the time but have one in your pocket if you have to go meet with somebody
043and they and they feel like they should be wearing a mask and it may not be that i was thinking about what you were asking it may not be that a teacher could go tell everyone in the class has to wear a mask that's not what the deal here is but uh but i man i think we have an opportunity to reinforce that we're all in this together in a positive way and yes you don't have to you know masks would be optional if that's the decision we take but um but understand there are people who feel that they should wear a mask and and just how do you behave in those environments is a great discussion for students and bob that's exactly thanks for reinforcing that for me that's exactly what i was talking
044about when we you know the the principals talk and lead discussions with our climate teams and what that could look like in communicating that to the students absolutely um so i think that kind of goes a little bit with what debbie's asking which is i think you were asking really is is a teacher going to be responsible for policing masking and i think in the end parents are going to have to make sure their children know what they have to do but the especially the younger kids the teachers can be big help there so um but i think that's a discussion yet to be had so yeah i think that's a good point okay did you have other questions debbie or was that kind of the core of it i just well i was curious
045about even the current protocol when because i think i think now if students test positive their home for five days and then i is it still the true that when they come back they have to wear a mask until day 10. so deb i actually have update y1 prepared ready to be edited based on the results of tonight's meeting so we can send it out right after the meeting to parents and inform everybody as to what's what's going on staff too inform them what's going on um one of the pieces in there is like i said at the top of the presentation in the absence of direction from the department of health update w1 that has all the information on exactly what you're talking about that we want to have in there which would be
046at this point and again this is why we need this two-week off-ramp frankly is the um exactly what you said so someone test positive and they're they're out for five days they're feeling good for day six symptom free ready to come back at this time the recommendation is that they come back from our health folks is that they come back wearing a mask through day 10. now we're i'll say it right here publicly one of the things we're very aware of is that maybe you know problematic and we have to think that through and this is why we need two weeks because you're you're giving your medical information if you come if you weren't wearing a mask and then you come back wearing a mask for five days so that could be problematic so we're
047cognizant of that and again we're trying to ready ourselves you know on the off-ramp here to figure if we go on the off-ramp to figure that out okay yeah though i mean those were really my concerns is all these other implications that like you said we have two weeks to work on those things so so john kind of building on one of the questions that we asked she you you've talked to the eager union um have you gotten any had any discussions or inputs from any of the other uh union groups that we uh uh do and you know work with uh well in particular the nurses yeah i can tell you i'm working with mrs laforge who's our nurse coordinator she's been all the nurses have been tremendous and certainly you've you folks have
048heard from anna a little bit throughout the last two years um they're ready like dr sullivan and dr garcia to follow the the dph's uh advice and move forward uh and and have that off-ramp for um suspending the policy and moving to masks optional in terms of the other unions i have let all of the union heads uh pera's custodians et cetera know that we have this meeting tonight and certainly we're welcome to tune in so they were aware of what was going on and haven't been any major concerns expressed at all okay thank you let me ask if anybody else has any other questions for dr burrell this evening uh point no i don't have a question um i just have like a a comment but you go ahead mike and i'll go after
049you uh well when we passed this policy and we had we talked with dr dan murphy about liability uh he was pretty he was pretty uh specific on what our liability personally or privately would be as a board member had we gone ahead and for some reason passed no we're not wearing mass anyway in the beginning and and i asked him i was like so when will we not be liable and he said when the executive orders pass i thought that was pretty pretty clear that once the executive orders are gone that you know liability goes with that too i think there's a board liability i think that's true right the question i think that could be viewed broader on liability of what kind of insurance liability do you have and health liability do you
050have that if you're not wearing masks and yeah district suit for communicable disease would be that's got to be a first yeah that would be a really difficult one i think considering transmission schools are really low well that would be the other thing right mike you have to prove that you caught it in school versus somewhere else otherwise it doesn't seem like it's it's a high speed in schools in general uh i actually would like to make comment you know like bob read a lot of those emails i know a lot of parents are here and i just want to say i i appreciate your time in making those emails and a lot of you have been saying the same things you were saying in the summer and we i believe as we aboard we
051we take all of it seriously and uh and we very much appreciate the input the stories about the children are they're they're not easy to read uh some of the comments from uh the children testimonial document i read that was that wasn't easy to read so um but i i do appreciate the the sharing and um thank you again rosa yeah so um and i guess this kind of will end in a question for dr brill maybe but um so we're a policy making entity right so our our role should be to create these informed district level policies and ensure that they're being followed so um you know i think this is a public health decision and i don't think anything like that should ever lie in the court of public opinion so even my
052own personal opinion like the personal opinions of others in this town i don't think that that should be a factor that affects our decision making i do believe parents have the ability to choose what's best for their children but i don't think anybody has the right to increase the risk to another family member so when these two ideals are in conflict i think are what's should be informing our decision are the opinions of our state and local health officials which they have made it clear that they're comfortable in moving forward with removing masks and so therefore i am comfortable with that as well but what leads me to another question is and this was a year ago we were asking dr sullivan you know what are the metrics that gets us to removing mass like
053do you have these benchmarks that we should be reaching for so that we understand when it's safe to remove mass and so now we're at this position we never got that but now we're in this position where we will um where this mandate is going away what are the benchmarks i know dr garcia suggested that this decision may be reversed and he would recommend it be reversed should cases spike well how many cases like what are we talking about so i would urge you know dr brill or maybe this board to have some idea of what that means and i know other districts have done that they've already you know voted to remove the mass mandate but they had very clear metrics as to when they would feel comfortable doing that or when they would
054reinstitute it um so i think that's that's really where my opinion lies and i don't know if dr sullivan or dr garcia have given any input on that but i'll tell you what i uh i forwarded that note i think it was cheshire the one that we all saw that they had very specific steps uh dr burl knows the superintendent there and uh and said they have a very active uh health uh um health district with lots of people helping which is which helped them do that i would love to kind of build on that experience if we can but what i didn't share with everybody is almost all the other chairs of boards in this kind of chat room that we go through all were like man you got that boy i'd love to
055have some standards like that too and including me because we don't have that yet and so i think we ought to spend some time working on that i think it's a great idea it is a great idea and that again when governor lamont made his announcement early last week he said the dph would be in touch with guidance and now we're hearing we're going to get no guidance and i'm being very serious when i say this and i think one of the districts that was very public about their specific metrics talked about positivity rate as one of their specific metrics positivity rate um our own department of public health commissioner said is probably no longer going to be a metric that that is used um for a lot of reasons around test uh reliability and
056validity of getting the reported positive cases so um i don't know you know what those metrics necessarily will be um they're leaving it to the local um of course we'll continue to ask for it rosa and it makes it perfectly reasonable what you're asking for but um again in absence of that right now the focus on mitigation you know uh paying attention to our cases our specific cases in the schools with our students and staff and if we stay on top of that in a weekly fashion we'll know if things are spiking or not and then make a decision accordingly the other thing we can't ignore about is the you know negative effects of wearing masks we have lots of emails showing that so these methods have to take a lot into account not just
057these positivity like it's already been scrapped as far as it's a full picture and this is something that we're going to have to get more elaboration on but you know you have it's not just the you know this metric and throw a mask on we have to consider the effects of mass squaring on children especially young women well i hope once we go down this path i mean we're coming off that very steep tail end of a curve i'm hoping that um we don't it wouldn't take a big step for us to go re-institute masks i'm just going to say right once once kids are out of the habit of doing the math it's hard to go re-instantly so we ought to know that's fine and you know somewhat related to that though is um
058you know should should anything change you know i would also encourage us to you know authorize our superintendent to make those kinds of decisions rather than reconvening in a manner like this either in any direction any kind of changes regarding our code protocols you know now our state level mandates have changed so we have less sort of structure from above and so i think now would be sort of like a good time to um and i position understood you know make those decisions more quickly and more effectively i would agree with that i would agree with that and we could always put a caveat in rosa to that um board authorizes me in whatever capacity and then you know as soon as possible come to a board meeting to have a discussion about it so
059it isn't you know left to me to be um this one person deciding these very serious uh decisions and bring it back to the board for consideration absolutely well let me expand on that a little bit right because i'm not sure everybody who's listening in understands how the business is done we have a policy right that we approved right so that's actually a couple of policies but we have a policies that uh that's used are used to govern the town we went through a whole process of approving those policies stay very explicitly because i went back and looked at them it didn't give any power to the superintendent to turn on or off the policies they are our policies as a board and we of course have the right to waive our own policies and
060but um and turning them back on therefore would fall into our bailiwick in the short run i think we ought to be giving authority to the superintendent to act with kind of our blessing after the fact if if something emergency happens um and you had to do something um the in the long run though and debbie i think this is for your committee a little bit we may want to go look at editing those policies and imbuing the superintendent with the authority instead of having it be a board level policy and we could do you know if we make the motion the right way tonight we can buy ourselves time to do that in a normal course you know through between now and the summer say um but i'm thinking with the the smart thing
061to do would be to um actually have that policy tuned so that the turning on or off of mask requirements isn't something has to come to the board every time um and i'm hoping we don't ever turn it back on again between us guys but it's uh um but i think that's something we ought to look at so um the uh okay any other discussion points i'm just thinking who hasn't asked questions amy anything from you you're good i am i'm good especially the input coming from dr sullivan who i feel trends very conservative and has trended very conservative over this whole pandemic that carries a lot of weight for me aaron anything any questions from you before we go to the next step joey did i'm not sure if you had a chance to
062ask questions did you have any no no questions okay cool well let me just kind of do a quick straw poll and then i can put a motion is everyone ready to go uh move to uh to to wave the policy on masking or is anybody against that that's here on the call sounding like everybody's gonna for it okay did i read that right i just wanna see if i can read the room a lot of head nodding okay all right so i sent out a copy of this motion earlier i hope you all had a chance to look at it um i'm going to go ahead and read it john you have it so you you know i'm i will read it and then you can put it into the minutes and for the
063uh for the people listening in you know we've had i've had our council help draft this so that it carries the weight of what we do as a board with our own policies so um and gives i think some of the optionality we just talked about so if you guys are okay i'll make the motion somebody else can choose to second it and then we can vote um i move that consistent with the provisions of the brookfield board of education policy 9314 and effective on march 1 that brookfield board of education policies 4118.237.4218.237 and 5141.8 shall be suspended until the board takes further action on any of said enumerated policies or for the balance of the 2021-2022 school year whichever comes first for the purpose of making mask wearing within the schools or at school-sponsored
064activities optional in response to the statewide elimination of mass mandates masks shall not be required to be worn by individuals on school grounds or board-sponsored activities unless otherwise required by law regulation or by other legislative or executive order and further subject to requirements imposed by third parties related to brookfield school activities occurring off school grounds masks shall be still required to be worn on school transportation consistent with federal regulations furthermore the board hereby authorizes the superintendent of schools to act on its behalf to reinstate brookfield board of education policies 4118.237.4218.237 [Music] and 5141.8 in whole or in part in the event that a change in circumstances that would warrant such concerns or consideration and or upon recommendation from the board's medical and health advisors subject to final board action so second we'll move in a
065second just a general comment what the motion as long as it is suspends our policy on mass wearing let's be very simple that's what it does it most of the rest of the words are around either clarity or what happens if we have a spike right and [Music] and it imbues dr barrill with the ability to reinstate if it is warranted and dr brill i think our guidance to you would be let's go figure out and start documenting how high that bar is right before we go jump over it and i think we have that discussion already it also caveats that if the state does something or the federal government does something that would require us to reinstitute mass that we would have to comply with it because we will comply with uh with state
066and federal regulations um so and we've been pretty consistent with that as a board so it's a general description the core of i don't want the core of it to be missed the motion here moved and seconded is to waive the mask uh policies so any discussion okay hearing none all in favor of the motion please show your hands okay so we are unanimous thank you um so the uh any further discussion because that's the last of our business uh for tonight um uh dr burrill will leave it in your able hands to go work with the rest of the administration on the clarity of you know how some of these things will work right and if you need our help putting pressure on the csce or the dph we'll help um you know that's
067a problem i would ask you also to keep the pressure on the ciac because i think they govern more than we do what happens in sports and i know there will be people who want to know what's going to happen in sports and we need the ciac to speak up and they'll they should be moving knowing them they're going to want to move quickly because the senate just voted today so this is all we're probably yeah with the other boards of ed or school districts that are making decisions this evening are the the first because this just happened a couple hours ago right um yeah we're moving pretty fast here guys and uh and then uh also how we'll keep with the kindness compassion respect all the things that we want our our family and
068the schools to be living with so uh so with that thank you everybody all right so i know this has been a stressful for all of us stressful for the parents stressful the kids i think we're moving into a new face so with the support of our health advisors which i think is really important so thank you all and with unless there's any uh issue the meeting this evening is adjourned thank you good night everyone thank you