001on september 22nd uh 2021 um mr gensky please call the roll here ms allen here mr white chairman thank you 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 right [Music] uh dr solo is there any public comment i guess at the email since there's no one present in the room no not uh with respect to our policy meeting okay oh yes okay um so first up is nondiscrimination 41 18.11 slash 42 this is required due to a change in the law as an equal opportunity employer which we're required to be for good i guess they have added this one paragraph here that race is inclusive of that that crates historically associated with
002race including but not limited to hair texture protective hairstyles protects the hair cells includes but not limited to wigs head wraps and hairstyles individual braids cornrows lock twist band two afros and afro puffs you know basically you can't um discriminate against individuals who wear these various hairstyles or head wraps um which is another an issue for us but um that's the only change in this policy and again it's required by save off okay so so the 42 this is all one policy yes oh i have no comments i have no comment either okay first uh yeah this is for our first reading oh well promotion to move to a first reading yes so i'll move that policy 4118.11 slash 4218.21 nondiscrimination to the full board for is unanimous of those presents all right so the
003next reading um is gonna sound familiar to you uh this is our title ix and if you recall there were substantial changes to the law there was a lot of conversation about changing this after the new administration we've had a lot of professional development on this frankly it's it's so sophisticated i would really want to try and work closely with our attorney the first time we go through this it it just sounds it's the process sounds a lot like litigation so none of that really changed from the last time we looked at this no and we already had a first reading and then it was kind of put on pause so that's why this is a second reading of this policy this this policy is the legal update so like the last policy you know
004we really don't have a choice but to adopt the language in this policy it reflects that the update in the law the space so uh federal law was updated in this case federal law yep and so i guess that's sort of a dumb question well okay this is kyle knight so we are bound right federal law and the state at the radical level okay yeah so any school district that receives federal funding you know or state funding is required so it's really tied to it yeah and i i think it's you know beyond that i think this even encompasses private schools although i don't really you know trouble myself with that enough things to worry about but um the [Music] situation here i think i mentioned last year is you know basically if there's a
005complaint both parties get notified there's like a an interview process uh both parties get all the evidence to those there's like a rebuttal process there's an investigator who's separate from a decision maker who's separate from uh somebody who oversees the process uh it's in a lot of ways i think it was written for a college campus sort of environment or beyond and not for you know fourth grade right but unfortunately that's that i mean i think that's where the the the law is uh is they're looking at uh does this need to be refined because i think unfortunately it discourages kids and families from coming forth with complaints now if we're aware of a situation even though the family doesn't want us to pursue it we still are required to pursue it in most cases
006for sexual harassment so just out of curiosity why because the family does not want to be subjected to this process basically and yes all the information going back and forth yeah when we can't we can't force them to cooperate but right right you know we can't no we're just wondering so so does title nine kick in when it whatever happened does not rise to the level of a criminal activity no it can be a criminal activity activity and a title ix violation but a title ix violation can fall short of criminal activity gotcha so that's why there's an entire process built in to this so that right reaches a quarter never charges brought right you can still sort of have a recourse yeah yeah just like a fight a fist fight could be a violation
007of law as well as a violation of school policy same with you know sexual harassment mr white hello hello sir we uh just went through the first policy which is verbatim uh by law we have to make an inclusion into our discrimination policy but this is title nine we discussed this a little bit last year and uh you know after consultation with our attorney he said just move forward with it okay there very well may be uh a change at some point because the office of civil rights is continuing to review this but he said as of right now he should just uh move it forward we're just going on state law yeah federal level so the first we already had first reading last year so this is the second reading so you guys would
008be moving it forward to the board for a second reading we'll review it at the next meeting and so as many problems that we have with it many of them were not changed they were pretty much left everything's the same everything's the same and you know we still are whether or not you adopt this we're obligated to follow it because it's the law yeah you know but you know i think it's important 37 pages well there's a lot of there's a lot of you know breaks in here but when i upload it but it's it's still quite you know what's that a lot yeah it really outlines the complaint process the investigation process like i was saying before you can't attend there's a a very detailed almost litigation like court of law style investigation that
009goes into this where you know we'll interview uh witnesses and others anybody associated with the situation then we have to provide all the information to both parties they can you know bring in somebody to rebut the information it's much different than a typical school-based investigation sounds a lot like it and so title ix supersedes any sort of internal investigation uh regulations that we may have had before you have to follow this now because it's the law yeah now i'm trying i'm going off the memory here i thought part of the reason why you were slow on a little bit was because like state and federal law were conflicted no in some way they weren't conflicting the um issue was that the with the change in administration and there's still talk that this will be revisited
010um although it hasn't been yet the ocr will make a change to this because you know unfortunately it is a situation where you know my belief is i can't i don't have data to support it but when you read through it it's prohibitive for people to bring complaints forward if they've been different you know at least children i mean i don't know at the college level that i would imagine so but i think at the k-12 level it can be prohibited because it's so open some of the details so at this point if anyone had a problem like let's say something occurred in cheshire where they're subject to title let's say a teacher subject to title ix well actually according to this it was a student on student situation as well it was also title
011nine situation yeah right yeah so if anything like that happened the only the only remedy then is through federal court after we have after the school system has followed what's in this law you've got a you know complaint probably by the plane etiquette commission human rights or uh ocr in the office of civil rights so there's not probably the way to go so okay all right well yeah have you ever had in the school system a situation where something one of these situations rose and it did end up getting escalated past the public schools like ocr or whatever sure okay yeah i mean so it's not like when you say escalated beyond like they were not satisfied with the resolution here and went beyond it as compared to a criminal proceeding which could already be
012happening but that's like a parallel track yes exactly right yeah and and so yeah we have that for both you know perpetrators and where you know a certain party may not be satisfied and then okay and then you know really what those two bodies will more than not do is come in and validate that the process was followed correctly not so much the outcome usually okay okay so there could be state level authorities that disagree with your conclusion but they don't overwrite you because you follow the process yeah usually it's this process uh has it happened where they have where you've been overwritten by somebody okay yeah i can't recall the timeline no no that's fine yeah it doesn't happen like every week these are three here you know maybe but your process and your
013end result are pretty good now if it had been overturned once generally speaking yeah the results that call if something you know okay thank you yeah and so the the instances you talked about have have they been subject to this law yet no no so sorry it's really sort of right yeah cause last year i mean last year they kicked in and then you know we just would covet yeah when people sit six feet apart they usually don't have a lot of issues you know right i mean not that it can't happen but you know when you had a reduced number of students in the building particularly in the high school level you know it just it lowered the likelihood of something to grow yeah it certainly could wow okay let's hope that continues um
014well uh well how about this um uh can i have a uh a motion to move policy four thousand dot uh oh okay students hot online that's a different one right the certified and non-certified yes yes okay so then um so i guess we'll do that in one motion um well there are technically two separate ones so uh so a motion uh to move uh policy number four thousand dot one um to a second reading session foreign to the full board for a second reading okay second all right is there any other is there any discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor is unanimous thank you all right so the last item you know this is not something that's a policy we're necessarily looking to move for a reading or whatever but i
015think it's just a maybe more of a timely conversation we um you know pre-code actually this just goes back pre-copied that we had looked at a civility code a possible district civility policy and basically what this is is a something that in our community our school community we can point to to say that as a community we've kind of adopted these standards for the court and we ask that people follow them this is not written of law or anything crazy like that but you know to promote a positive treasured public school climate respecting courtesy and language these are the things that we um you know just would like to adhere to unacceptable behaviors that prohibit maybe not prohibited but hinder power yeah interfere with it [Music] so this type of what is this supposed to
016be intended as a policy or it could be some have a administrative procedure yes some have adopted it as a policy um you know i think it's something that maybe you know there were times i can't remember what it was but remember when we we had something a couple years ago where we talked about that do we have the whole board like um make a resolution toward this now we're not a town council remember we talked about i forget what it was yeah but i think i kind of see this being like social media or something you know i just wanted to throw this out there for you to see like i can pull together other districts that have policies like this if you think it's worth our time to take a look at in
017my mind you know when we adopt a policy that suggests that we're going to adhere to certain rules of decorum i could foresee a situation where i receive an email that's not following the rules of decorum they shared one with these guys that was incredibly colorful before the meeting wasn't directed at me but um one of our staff members it was like way out of line and i get quite a few i could send you one probably tomorrow if i wanted to um and that that's i mean the vast majority of the people deal with are even the people that are very upset are very appropriate follow this code and i get it you know they're talking about their children's education there's nothing more important i understand that but there's certainly a threshold that people
018can not just step over but two-foot jump over and in those instances say you know i want to remind you we we have an expectation for stability here to do business i just want to you know make sure that you really you're way out of bounds on this one you know let's let's regroup when you think we can stay within these confines kind of thing so those expectations of civility that we may offer operate under now are are not codified in any way it's more like social graces we would just behave like yeah but i mean i i don't think i ever would have thought we would need something formal like yeah a few years ago even a few years ago but we do so i i don't know that it should be a policy
019per se but i am yeah it certainly seems like we should start like communicating that this is what our expectations are i if there's a sense like even a curiosity here amongst g3 what i can do is start to look at what some other districts done if anything and come back and take a look at it you know that's why i didn't put on as any sort of reading or anything it's just topical discussion and you know when i first put it out there i know tim had shared with me i really don't want to inhibit um you know free speech so that in in context i was thinking of board meetings yeah i wasn't thinking about you know parents talking to staff and i i firmly believe that the way an elected official gets
020treated is different than the way the staff person should be treated right i mean that is their job they're trying to do a good job i think all of us on the board are trying to do a good job as well but we have a direct reporting line with voters sure they don't i mean as a parent but i still i view elected officials just having uh uh being able to take a little bit uh yeah more heat than a staff person should be then should be leveled a staff person who's trying to do your job yeah and i think in both cases though there's a level of human civility that needs to be so if somebody's you know dropping profanity directed at you or threatening you in a meeting as a public official that's
021out of bounds yeah i mean certainly out of bounds for your fourth grade teacher tip you know but um i think we try and remember remind people that hey you know there's an expectation of stability particularly when you deal with our staff that we'd like to adhere to because that expectation of stability exists for us as well for our staff to our community at the very least the thing the thing that went through my mind that the list i don't know if you could scroll through it up this part here yeah up there so let's see um displays of displays of temper wait unaccepted interference uh i can i can see myself sitting in a board meeting and someone getting visibly upset but it's still being yeah bordering like a higher threshold there yes then
022i would with a teacher who's in a one-on-one with a parent in the classroom i just think that's a much for me that's a much lower threshold yeah a dad my size displaying temper you know pounding a desk in a parent conference if your standard second grade teacher is not that's out of bounds for me but i don't think we had a meeting at that point you know but in the board meeting the the meeting the meeting that we had there was probably one there was one outburst that i thought was over the top some of them was like there's passion yeah and to have that passion flow out a little bit more at a board meeting i think it's okay what happened with governor totally unacceptable of course yeah but in our board meeting
023there were there were people who were getting upset yeah and but i it went a little bit too far but there was some there that i would say meets the threshold but i didn't feel like it was really too far yeah and so we you know in our role is you know you guys public officials we can determine at that point i think these are just reminders for us and we have the authority in that environment to be able to say you know what i i can see where the rooms get a little hot for us to really be productive yeah i think we're going to need to take a 15 minute recess yeah this is probably good for everybody to go outside catch some air right we have those tools come back yeah you
024know teacher i think this kind of helps them and administrators you know some of our meetings and things to be able to say all right we're we're reaching too far here we need to and they do sometimes and they've done that we've had to do that um no i thought i think it was very much a difference if you're the yeah the second grade teacher in a one-on-one and you start pounding the desk and you you know physically you could be sitting here with the parents sitting there and it's really the parent is really like trying to be even necessarily trying to be like have a temper or something yeah i could see that being a very different situation where you have a large group sure and i thought tony did a good job at
025a recent meeting where he basically said look and the discussion we're moving on yeah it was getting it was getting a little bit needed um this that's where my cause that's where my hesitancy comes from i think it would that make sense i totally get this within the school setting with staff the thing is just like it just breaks my heart that society is even in this situation right right before we're having this discussion right you know somebody i know you're so just uh you know hold civil discourse and such reverence to think that you know that can't be accomplished without somebody being coached on how to have this course is almost astonishing and but you know what i think what we've seen is you know a lot of people are toasted at this point
026between social media the media the you know the events of the last 18 months the world um just people are feeling a little bit fried and so you don't always get their best self when uh we're dealing with them on issues that are sensitive and so you know i what i hear is like a curiosity enough on your part to go out and say what are other people doing what are they saying let's talk about it doesn't mean you have to do what other people say but let's check it out and we'll come back and talk about it yeah yeah for me it'd definitely be more of a curiosity i i don't feel comfortable that this should be applied to a public board meeting and why it's all about interacting with schools well i don't
027think it was entirely clear no it's not and that's what you know we can look at and that's what i i'm gonna get the feedback you know i hear you guys because you know we're we're gonna be you know like i think it's something that we had said during our our um virtual meetings that the the one thing that is sort of strange about a virtual meeting is that you don't get that feedback from the public and for over a year we never really had that and then we sort of you know that you get what you wish for sometimes and finally when we were back in in uh in person well you know we got that right we got that at our last meeting and probably going forward for a little while anyway and
028so but you know that's again that's we're elected now you know fortunate catherine has had the brunt of that probably the most uh over the last several years but you know what i said the whole thing people should be able to speak their minds and state their opinions and yes people are going to get passionate but to me there is nothing that says that elected officials have to sit there and take personal sure nature no behavior yeah but the thing is the line and i don't i wasn't reading this as being um applicable to our board meetings at all i thought we were just talking about ways to try to make the school school climate more yeah more civil and to give teachers and administrators it's something to hold on to be able to feel
029like they got you know some support for saying say listen you know we you know we can't continue we love you but this is [Music] but i do have to say i don't think it's i don't think it's right for people to think that just because they've voted for someone that they can you know treat them with disrespect or sure and that kind of thing but that's a whole right um again people have been so pent up and you know luckily a lot of the correspondence almost all the correspondence that the board has received as far as like has been very cordial and i mean um but nothing too extreme that i have seen maybe there's been some i haven't seen before there are strong opinions right yes generally right generally that it feels like
030someone could be restricted by something like this even if they want to spout off because it's you know you said it's my kid and you know damn it i'm gonna yeah because it's my kid you know and so there's that that level of passion right now and you know i'm concerned that just because you know someone had a bad day and they just want to you know type off something that somehow if we had something like this an effect it could affect the parent negatively in some way and so i wasn't sure yeah there's not a ton of recourse here i mean yeah in you know i think it's like this part like if we had put if we had if we go through this and streamline in some way is this something that ends
031up being in the the pack of forms that that the parent signs off on at the beginning of the year i'd like to see what other people are doing too i think that's probably a place that's appropriate for it but um you know there is there is legal recourse for us with parents who are perpetually over the line you had to do that where you don't listen unfortunately given your behavior in the last several meetings you will meet with one person only from our staff like all communication goes through this individual you know and if they're gonna meet we usually have two people of our staff meeting with you know the individual at that point it's like there are steps that we've taken historically to address that i think this is just a good reminder
032that we can say you know remember we do try and conduct ourselves in this manner and again it is a two-way street you know it's not like our staff are all spock and have no emotion or whatever you know if they're stepping on another for us there's a professional code of conduct that we have to adhere to that's different but you know it's also a good reminder for for us too but for all people that are engaging with each other passions can run high let's try and keep the kids at the front of us and act socially to be a good example exactly right so let's let's say it progresses we want to do something do you run this by floyd or his firm at some point yeah the reason i ask is specifically there
033was a if i recall correctly and it was in the past year it was a high school girl who didn't make her change squad you know the one i'm talking about she did something on some like instant snapchat snapchat once i don't know off of school grounds on her own time she got suspended or expelled by the schools went to the u.s supreme court it got overturned right and she's already graduated high school anyway yeah but they're my only point is we're getting into forms of communication and just to be careful about that if we do end up doing something with this yeah yeah i mean like they said i don't think we you know we wouldn't be disciplining somebody for violating you know what we have agreed upon our social norms basically um yeah
034but we we would certainly use use it to remind people of these are our social norms we'd appreciate if you respect these you know we may have to end this meeting if we can't you know respect these sharing things through you know social media or whatever that's got its own set of bullying harassment and all those other things that we follow and adhere to the law i think this is just what we consider guidance which is why i didn't put forth the policy or anything but let's try and learn a little bit more we'll talk about it and determine if it's appropriate to adopt as guidance as a policy as nothing um just we'll look at it yeah i mean there's a lot of stuff in here that uh makes me uncomfortable sure so well
035i also hear you saying too that you know this there's a different expectation we all have for engagement at a board level meeting versus uh you know more intimate school-based meetings and that's good for me to hear too so that we can you know when we look at these things we can kind of tease that out yeah well i mean i'm just yeah again then well it even concerns me about you know uh parent to uh central office communication or parent-to-teacher communication even if that gets a little heated you know how does this sort of interfere you know interact with that so yeah i guess there's a lot of to be considered here yeah because i'm like i'm just like reading the the first paragraph destructive threatens right and then there's something about uh you
036know cows but i'm assuming central i'm guessing central office probably gets a lot of maybe not a lot but maybe a couple a week emails like that right yeah it happens so i mean and most of the time you know because we're professionals and we're there no grounded yeah we will just let it roll off our back yeah there are times when it has to be addressed like yeah i appreciate it if you don't direct your conversation you know you're telling me like that you know most people are like you're right it was over like other people are yeah rise the level of curiosity i guess yeah i don't want to burn too much time on this tonight but like we can come back let us do some work it was good preliminary conversation we'll
037do some research and maybe come back to you and say hey maybe it's you know like this this one yeah like this this time a lot like what we were talking about what do you think yeah so i mean yeah research in the application of how this is being applied you know yeah okay all right so that was our last about forbidden uh seeing that there is nothing else on the agenda um i will be injured all in favor all right all right we are adjourned at um