001um given the public discussion or the public participation at our last meeting um we brought um to review the um policies mentioned where the um visits to school um maybe not at the at our regular meeting but definitely at the city-wide pto meeting there was some discussion about that so just like to review that and um also we have the essential visitor form just to look over and review if you haven't seen that um that's the i guess that would be considered a regulation not not a policy but just for us to kind of know what's going on um and then the emergency suspension of um policy during pandemic and discussion and update regarding um the certified non-certified uh coven vaccinations for for staff so um kevin with that i will turn it over to
002you okay thank you give me one second i will see if i can't figure out how to share the screen here so as part of the agenda as you just heard um one some of the things that came up in our citywide pto meeting on monday evening in addition to just previous meetings where we developed our covert response policies there's a kind of provision at the end of all the policies this opportunity for the board to repeal on the policies at at the appropriate time i mean so it was suggested in those policies uh that the policies would expire the covet policies would expire um at the end of the 2021 school year um that was extended just kind of given the timeline and time when we came back in school uh we thought now
003would be kind of an appropriate time to review kind of where we are as a district so in terms of a repeal this would be the opportunity for the board um to repeal the policies um you know from from our from our collection of policies from our policy guidebook i mean we kind of go back to the status quo if you will of those four policies these two are available for review this evening and as rachel mentioned previously policy 1250 visits to schools um and policy six one one four point eight one and that's the emergency suspension of policies during the pandemic um so just kind of staying and keeping in order here i will open up the visits to schools see if there's anything specifically that the board might have an interest in discussing
004reviewing etc currently right now um visits the schools are limited to what we had deemed as non-essential i'm sorry essential essential staff or visit or visitors and so there's essential visitors right now or folks who are um could be supporting school operations and so for example um i think one that i think many of our parents can identify with and that's um the folks coming in to take pictures for kids whether it's for schools at 9 12 at the high school or you know in our k5 or 6 8 for picture day so i believe during the 1920 school year when a pandemic first hit you know no one no one was allowed when we first came back started mixing up my school years of 2021 school year at the beginning because we were not
005even back in school and even when we came back in hybrid we were hesitant to allow folks in the building just kind of a better understanding of how covert has spread and that diseases spread we've relaxed those rules a little bit obviously there are essential employees that need to enter our buildings just in terms of contracted services and so those certainly those folks have certainly been deemed essential um but but but the policy has been relaxed even more um this school year this school year and so as way of our essential visitor form we've had groups like boys and girl scouts come to support support provide extracurricular activity support and particularly in our k5 schools across the district we've had uh mentoring and tutoring programs um those those programs were allowed to enter the schools
006and work with students and again given the governor's order as long as they demonstrated evidence um a vaccination status to be in our schools they were also allowed to come in to work with us students if not they continue to work with our students remotely just just some examples uh for the committee and for the for the community to better understand i think some of the questions that are on the table now is if number one should this be relaxed even more um and or two um does a policy still need to be in place and i think those are some questions certainly that we heard come on the evening of citywide pto i mean i think the question that sits with the with the committee this evening so i'll stop there and leave it
007up for loop it up for questions and discussion so are we still under any executive orders from the governor for our restrictions in schools yes i mean certainly masking is uh part of those restrictions i'm just asking because i think that would drive our decision i'm sure so masking are certainly part of those uh restrictions uh vaccinations are certainly part of those restrictions to star catholic absolutely two major ones in terms of building availability i think that varies from district to district building availability in terms of access varies from district to district right that's my understanding as well so and i know you know the the policy says to the greatest extent possible parents and staff are encouraged to arrange you know electronic means to conduct conferences and meetings um which some parents you know
008favor and others feel you know there's there's something missing there there's a connection you know missing there's you know they can't really see um the classroom or you know seeing their counselor in person so um so you have you have a mixed bag i think of of feelings about about you know having virtual conferences and virtual open house um things like that um and then i but i also think it's hard to have you know since our elementary kids are still not um vaccinated that vaccination is not available for them they are still quite vulnerable um and so i mean we can't really have a policy you know that varies from level to level i wouldn't think i i i i am the idea of well dependent on the policy i mean if we released
009the policy all together i would have probably the most concern about k5 um just given the quarantine cases that we have had um have i would say that the majority of them come from the community um we are learning that because the mitigation strategies that we have in place we are not spreading covet within the schools but it's coming into the community and then we quarantine from there um and so given our parent involvement at the k5 level and knowing that those doors are open um for everyone i would be very concerned about our most vulnerable grade level um you know and particularly in that respect and you know i and when i say involvement you know our families whether they're walking their kids to school every day whether they're dropping off lunch um you
010know whether they forgot lunch whether they want to go in and speak to the teacher in the morning i think these are all the experiences that we enjoyed prior to the pandemic that i i'd be concerned about right now just kind of given where we are with the vaccination and it's not it's not even available at the k5 level yet right hopefully soon i did want to ask him you know how you um translate or interpret the last sentence that these temporary restrictions shall remain in effect for the duration of last school year or until repealed by the board so is that something we should change if if we would want this to be extended throughout the school year right i i think you know part of what is your struggle here is that um
011i sometimes think you know particularly in the pandemic situation that we're now where everything is so unexpected and it's changing so quickly um you're trying to kind of create the road map with the sands constantly shifting under you and so you know my recommendation has always been um over time that um you know if you want to do regulations or guidelines that are easily kind of put in place taken apart that's far preferable to having to go through the the required machination of passing a policy repealing a policy so that's kind of my first overarching and thought and as i'm listening to you speak i can kind of hear it revealed exactly there because as you're talking i'm thinking gee you know the governor is now about to change his guidance on um children and
012quarantining and and that will be any day now and that's something that's very different than what we had 10 days ago um so that said i think you know as a policy this is a i consider policies to be forever written in stone and am not always comfortable with their automatic expiration um because i do think that probably the pro proper legal way to do it is to say until affirmatively repealed or to say nothing and to have the board make a motion to affirmatively repeal so sometimes you know when you put that automatic expiration i think there is an argument to be made that you're going to have something slip out of being um protocol and and past policy maybe inadvertently to some members of your board who aren't thinking about you know the
013expiration of timeline so um kind of as an overarching legal matter i would always advise either to stick with regulations or if you're going to do a policy like this to leave it you know in place set in stone forever or until such time as you decide to vote to remove it um so that last that's a long way of saying rachel that last sentence makes me a little bit uncomfortable not you know it's not it's not like it's illegal but i think it creates some obstacles that you don't necessarily want to have to deal with and confusion yeah for me it's confusing for sure um for sure and this was this was the cave recommendation last year you know they they um they they gave a ton of recommendations you know when the world
014shut down in march of 2020 all of our policies were affected right um so to to cover ourselves they you know they recommended you know the four four coveted policies that we adopted um so with that last sentence is this is this should you know do you recommend any action be to be taken on this well i would i would recommend that you strike out that last sentence because it doesn't contain whichever sooner or whichever's later so i'm not really sure when that policy it's in effect for the duration or until it's repealed so at the end of 2021 did it expire or i think it's vague um and you often will see you know whichever is earlier whichever is later or something like that some kind of a marker so i would recommend probably
015that you strike that out even just the paragraph above about symptom screening i don't even think we're doing that now with symptom screening people that come um the one other thing that i do want to say though is that that's okay to the extent that if there are executive orders that issue those orders will always control whether this policy is controversial to it or not the executive order is always going to control regardless and you don't really need to go back and amend to comply with an executive order because you don't really by the time you do it it'll be expired again so yeah yeah but i don't believe that there is um you know an executive order to to set to visitors to school visitors no i don't believe there is either so it's
016just this it's just our policy yep so um but i consider taking that last sentence out or or writing whichever's later you know language that says or until repo repealed by the school board whichever should be later or whichever should be first i don't know what you prefer yeah i think yeah or until repealed by the school board yep is that what i'm hearing or just strike the whole thing i think i heard yep either one and then and kim to your point this is really not although the screening um after after this week well something that will be introduced but i i don't know if this makes sense because this is going to continue to change and i don't know if it makes sense for policy um to your point that you made earlier
017so let's strike that out as well any thoughts from committee members no okay and would we need to um approve this with the strikeouts yes yep because it's a change to the content of the policy okay which is why it's kim's recommendations to make it as broad as possible so we have to keep doing this right right or make it a regulation that supports an underlying policy then you can theoretically you can work with the superintendent to change them or tweak them however you choose without bringing it back around because it's an implementing regulation i don't want to repeal the whole thing though and because then that looks that would appear that we're saying all buildings are open right yeah the other thing you could do honestly is you could um approve these changes which
018really kind of make it a little bit more generic and then if you feel that as time goes on you want something in writing that says you know something that you're talking about either you know more detailed access to building or something you could put that together as a regulation that sits behind this policy right and then you can change it and tweak it however you want to and as often as you want to mm-hmm okay um are committee members okay with that i do i need a motion to um bring this to the full board as as presented yes i think i'll make a motion thank you kate thank you kathy all in favor aye aye okay could we just review then the essential visitor form i you know i kind of viewed that
019as the regulation that's set by the superintendent right so just [Music] and one of the one of the issues is it's uh you know it's um i think there's confusion about what's acceptable and what's not and just to make sure that you know there's there's a level playing field for for whatever or whoever wants to come and have a pto meeting or or an event what have you right and i i think the events vary from event to event and the pto meetings um rachel you might recall you know i had acc citywide pto to submit something on behalf of all the ptos um and i i did speak with speak with them again last monday but requests have come in from individual schools and well in the meantime but i i feel like just
020kind of given how we've what we've learned again about the pandemic we can do this safely because these meetings occur after school when school is over and you know the principal can hold these in spaces where there's you know plenty of installation and staff and i'm sorry families and the principal um can meet and make sure everyone is safe so we have approved these as these requests have come in and what is the the proper avenue for like a pto say um do they go through the principle first and then the principal submits it to you or right so the it's it's easiest and this is why i was recommending um and not this meeting but i believe the october meeting that citywide pto doing it on behalf of all of them so that we
021don't have to continue to get different requests because just it just makes it easy for everyone um and then we can just you know make the principles aware that it's okay and just give them the check um so but what they would do is it would be the pto themselves and they would submit it um to this address right here and that's to deb stanton [Music] on behalf of the assistant superintendent's office it will come to me um in absence of assistant superintendent i sign off and then you know we continue to keep it moving so folks can have the access that they need and then you know custodial staff and whoever is made aware so folks folks have access to the building great thank you okay any questions from committee members as to the
022form have a quick question please um mr wilson i just want to clarify that um obviously for the ptos to have one group handing it to you all at once is great would this be the process for every person who's who's submitting the essential visitors form you know even on like a just a single visit um no so if it's so let's just say i want to speak to my child's principal and i wanted to visit and you know it was a very important meeting for an example it felt like it was necessary to meet in person that request would go directly to the principal um the principals you know are more than capable of setting up meetings to ensure everyone's safety the majority of their meetings take place outside and the majority of those
023meetings take place remotely if for some reason it rises to the level where it's necessary to be in person um you know we've had some situations but that has happened but the majority but the majority of the cases have been the meetings that have been revolved have been remote it just just as an example we know how formal as an example our iep meetings are for students and families the majority of those meetings have been held remotely and you know since there are some cases where they might have to be in person and we've made exceptions in in those cases so whether it's a you know iep meeting individual education plan meeting or a meeting that just rises to the level that requires people to be in person our i would by by policy our
024principals have have that authority um if it's a really big deal they'll give my office a call um but if it's bigger groups then that that definitely requires a call and they've in those instances we definitely would be encouraged people uh to fill out the form if this is a reoccurring visit um you know that that that kind of situation okay thanks for clarifying yeah thank you any other questions or comments thoughts okay great thank you i just wanted to you know the chance for the committee to see that form absolutely absolutely and then the that was the form the last item is the emergency suspension of policies during the pandemic at the time um this was very necessary i believe when these policies were passed the boards um were the meetings uh were not
025happening in the beginning if they were they were not happening consistently they certainly were not happening in person you know there was significant latitude on how many days of school would actually occur there was there's a rigorous comprehensive bidding process that has to take place typically um where in the pandemic you may want your superintendent to be authorized to make decisions without going through that process and so the emergency suspension of policies allowed and authorize your superintendent to make those moves without going through those processes so we thought it would be appropriate to make sure this was available for review this evening and see if it's still necessary so that's what this is about just make this bigger so you can right and with or without this policy i think i've said this before but
026um you know the the changes in learning models would have always been you know the decision of the superintendent you know i saw this as a way to interject you know the board in that decision-making process when it says you know that it the decisions would be made in consultation with the board um but you know with or without it the the you know the superintendent had had the power to make those decisions um and so my feeling is that this this could be repealed i don't know what that process is that's why you know i put i i requested that beyond the agenda so we could you know talk about what that process looks like um and so i i think it's it's time to retire this um but i will open the floor
027for for your thoughts comments questions can you hear me yes go ahead i agree i think it's time to repeal it i have no objection to it either to to you know to some setting it um this also has the that clause right at the bottom kevin it says or am i mistaken no oh yeah there it is it will remain in fact for the duration of the 2021 school year or until repealed by the board well it doesn't matter what it says if we're going to repeal the whole thing right right so kim how do we do that how do you repeal it yeah i think you would probably make a you would make a motion to the you bring it to the full board and you would make a motion simply that to
028repeal policy number one six one one four point eight one okay and you'd have a discussion and your group would recommend the reasons why and then you'd have to vote okay so i will ask for um a motion to recommend that this be repealed motion to kathy was that sorry yes oh catherine thank you sorry and i can quicken it for her second did it by kathy all in favor aye okeydoke right thank you and so the last one is a discussion update regarding certified and non-certified required uh vaccinations i i know kim has um shared some of these expectations a couple of times at the board meeting at least the last time at the board meeting but we thought it was necessary to speak to this in policy number one speak to why we
029don't think it should live in policy but to just remind the board and the committee right now um what's required of us per the executive order sure so um let me start with why i'm not sure it should live in policy and and we can walk through kind of what we have it's really a protocol and the executive order and it's implementing regulations advise us to establish protocols for how we're going to handle compliance with the executive order so that's exactly what we did in crafting our protocols and again i think to my earlier comment um the more that you embed these in granite the more difficult it is for you to tweak them in keeping with changes to the executive order or any of the instructions about how to comply or even how to
030tweak those rules to accommodate the best interests of our employees and and so and we have done actually all of those things since the time the executive order came in so that's why i think um it really is a protocol by whoever it is in our organization that administers these um vaccination rules and and compliance with the executive order um and you know right now that's come out of my office so um the protocols are without regard or distinguishing between certified or non-certified staff it's everybody and if anything if there are any groups to be distinguished it's really those who are employees and employees means every single person across the district who works for us or who volunteers for us in some cases and the only group kind of outside of that are employees that
031come to us through vendors so the vendors piece is the easiest one to deal with we have had an outreach to as many of the vendors as we could think of the obvious ones are people like the bus drivers and what the order required us to do or the implementing rules required us to do was for to us to ask those vendors to certify to us or to affirm that they are in compliance with the executive order so super easy i wrote the letter i attached everything you know all the rules and everything to it sent it out to um some of our temporary staffing agencies the bus companies um people in sodexo and simply said please affirm for us that anybody that you are sending to the danbury public schools is in compliance with
032the executive order and they have all done that i think save one i'm still waiting on one um so those are the easy folks um those people who are in our organization um and those number about 2 000 i think we did 19 something about 2 000 are all on a master sheet and um we did a couple of things to enroll them basically one is we opened up the tyler technologies portal the employee portal and we got everyone who collects a paycheck from us to set up their own individual page in their portal and eventually we're going to use that for things like payroll stubs insurance benefits information all that kind of stuff that our employees can access in that one portal but we also used it to everyone complete a form to document
033for us at that moment what their vaccination status was and what we needed to do prior to september 27th was anybody that worked for us prior to september 27th either need to produce needed to produce to us proof of full vaccination status which is two weeks after your second dose or your terminal dose and um they needed to either produce affirmative evidence of that in the form of a vaccine card or in the alternative they needed to have a request for an exemption from showing us proof of vaccination status and the exemptions at that time were three-fold one was a health care related exemption signed by a healthcare professional who validated that the employee could not get the vaccine for medical reasons we saw that with some people who were severely immunocompromised or who were
034going through chemo who needed to wait to get that vaccination the second category was religious exemptions and i got a lot of those for some things that i just never thought of um so we got many of those and the third was the what i kind of snarkily called the just because exemption um it was kind of a third category or other and it was for those people who simply refused for whatever reason personal liberty or any other reason to get the vaccine and show the status that was prior to september 27th and we collected all of those we didn't have a whole lot of exemption requests we had a lot of others and we were in the process of whittling down what started as about 600 people down to a couple hundred those people
035who did not prove provide proof of vaccine status needed to engage in weekly testing and um there's a couple of guidelines that came out under the regulations one was that um it was not required that the district pay for it didn't kind of come out and say that but what it said was the employee must submit proof of a negative test and secondly that that test must be taken within 72 hours of reporting to work for the week um so we set that protocol up and originally you might remember we had um a testing window we picked wednesday as our day zero so wednesday was the day that people were going to report to work and we went back 72 hours so day one was tuesday day two was monday day three was sunday and
036we picked wednesdays um in order to pick a day when we did not have a heavy strain with subs um or as heavy of a strain and it would also afford everyone one weekend day in order to be tested we went through the first three weeks or so with that model and then as the list of folks who were being tested continues to decline it's now about 140 and i felt comfortable at that point of opening up the testing window to either your day zero was tuesday or your day zero was wednesday if your day zero is tuesday you have to test saturday sunday or monday submit results um by monday at four or if you wanted to test them during the original scheme you could also do that as well the reason why that
037was significant and that was one of the places where it was nice to have the latitude to tweak without going through any other more official process was that we had a lot of people who wanted to engage in the saliva test and there's very very few places that do that and they do it on thursdays and saturdays primarily so that took kind of the remaining folks that were really concerned about the testing window and it gave them that extra day that saturday to be able to go ahead and go through the process what we set up in order to be able to monitor everyone was a google form system tyler did not have the capacity to do that which was kind of one of our frustrations with the system but we set up a google
038form basically and so folks complete the google form and they put their name their location the date that they took the test um the date that the results came back and just whether it was positive negative or negative or inconclusive we asked them to verify the validity to swear the validity and then to upload the test results all of that comes into a google doc and the beauty of that is it formats into an excel sheet and we can just look down the list and see if we have missing test results we compare it to a master sheet to see if anybody has not communicated with us what we've done now is anyone who does not have test results by the deadline so it's four o'clock on either monday or tuesday who does not have
039test results by the deadline they are placed for the next day on an administrative leave without pay um pending testing we had a lot of people who didn't go to test um and and mind you you can also do a rapid test so you can you know you can do a quick turnaround test anyone that forgot um didn't want to go those folks received notice and there's a series of emails that go out like gee we haven't heard from you yet um gee we still haven't heard from you and now tomorrow you're going to be on an administrative leave with with no test results those people can cure by providing a test result within 72 hours in order to go back the next day but right now we've got a team in my office that
040from four until about 7 30 at night are just reviewing to make sure they've got everybody's information in um and then they post absences into aesop send out an email to admin council reminding them to check their daily reports in their buildings because they may have some vacancies that need to be filled with subs um we've really gotten that list down the place where we're still seeing kind of persistent problems are with elp and we're really working with those people we've got a couple in school lunch but it's mostly the elp folks that we continue to kind of shepherd through um and i will tell you our administrative our administrators were great um sodexo was has been excellent they are literally for those folks having trouble either remembering or getting to a test or getting
041the results submitted they're really hand-holding and walking them through it so that the system's running pretty well now um the only change to that system that will likely happen now is um the executive order says or the regulations say paid testing results from a test provider are not a reason to suspend this you know you can still come to work pending test results they say if if it's a test result delay that's no in fault of the employee sorry you can't come to work um so one of the things that i negotiated um just this week with aaron daley with the teachers is that and i think we'll roll it out across the district is for those folks um where they can establish that you know for whatever reason the test facility was swamped they
042lost the test whatever it is we would allow them to put a sick day in rather than have an unpaid day out they can't come to work for sure um but they have they would have a basically a paid day while they waited for that test result to come in i was asked as of last friday all districts were asked by the state department to submit data which we did it asked how many of our folks certified and non-certified how many are vaccinated how many are partially vaccinated and how many are in a testing protocol so we submitted that data on friday i haven't seen any collation of the data across the districts but um i think i reported to you all that our vaccination rate is really high it's in the it's in the
043low 90s um percentile so we're really really comfortable with that um an email went out today from cathy o'dowd to all hands because we were starting to get some inquiries about the booster and would we be running clinics for the booster um we're not running clinics for the booster so she put out an email today that i worked with her on that points people back to their primary care doctors who now are getting shots they have some supplies in their primary care doctors offices or to other providers there are a series of no cost test centers that are no cost by designation of the state where people can go to get the boosters and to get testing so we've been kind of pushing that information out to people as well so they would have it
044the other thing i learned from kathy today is that i think that the attention on boosters in the health department is going to be a little bit um waylaid because they are really going to focus on the elementary kid clinics now um so they are now that the approval has been made for the vaccine they're going to really work on making sure um i know cara prenti is working on making sure they get the doses and that they're made available to our families so they're going to really focus on running the student clinics now so we'll continue from you know from my office working with kathy to try to point people in the direction of where they can get a booster um and where they can get testing so it's a lot of information that's
045why i think it doesn't live in policy so much because it just changes literally it changes in reaction to the governor's order it changes the reaction to just the health care system and the health department and it also changes you know there was there was a lot of really loud people with the saliva testing and that was really what motivated the opening of the window a little bit more when we were comfortable we could monitor it all so i think we're running really smoothly now the trick now is just to keep people complying with the testing by that four o'clock window so that we're not chasing people down at nine o'clock at night or you know that's the other piece we're just trying to keep a handle on that's great thank you kim i had
046no idea there was a saliva test yeah yeah there's a saliva test you spit in a tube um i know one just anecdotally because i know my son had one where you um you ordered the kit the test tube came to your house and then you got on a zoom meeting with a nurse and the nurse watched you spit in the tube and then you put the top on and you twisted it and blue dye went into it and you put it in a box and you fedex it back and they had the results overnight um yeah there's a lab out of brantford that's doing them now and you know for people who don't i mean don't want to have things stuck up there as it's been great i i'm hoping it'll be a little
047more widespread and i think there's also an inside of your cheek one as well now the only thing we can't take are the home tests because they can't verify that you're the one who took it yeah yeah great any um anything from committee members on this no okay great thank you so much you're welcome um so with that is there anything more kevin that you asked so so just a reminder for the committee this seems like ages ago uh we partnered with with cape um during the beginning of the 2021 school year to fold in our policies in the in in the platform uh so it's managed a little bit more efficiently for our families the majority of our policies have been updated and they are indeed reflected um in the new platform on the
048website however there are policies that were approved um and during the 19 to 18 19 and 19 20 school year that are not reflected there so we we just have a little bit of scrubbing left to do just to make sure they're all updated um and actually in in the platform um i i believe there's only maybe a handful less than 10 but i think more than five policies that are still outstanding so we just want to confirm that with cape um and then you know we have a a number of policies that have been uh whether it be required recommended or you know recommended slash something a policies board should consider um you know it's been a while since we've revisited those policies um you know given these last 18 months so it will
049be an opportunity to number one i can kind of give the board an update on um if the cape policies on our website have all actually all been updated so i can provide that verification at our next meeting um and then um just kind of share it as per the audit uh from cape some time ago um just kind of where we are in that audit process um and just kind of you know catch catch the committee up of you know where we were you know prior to the audit and kind of the gains we've made and you know kind of like with what's kind of outstanding um you might recall rachel uh you know the majority of our required policies those boxes were checked um however we did have you know a couple policies
050that are recommended that the board really should consider um you know one of them you know my favorite one is on the board you know being able to participate participate in meetings remotely um you know those are the kind of policies that were recommended um and you know certainly boys had the options but they were not required so there's a lot a lot of those type of policies that are out there i think that the board might want to consider moving forward so no no um required did i hear that correctly there are no additional required right right so when we had that audit done the required policies you know we placed we placed up at the front of that process so if there are any outstanding policies that are still required that we haven't
051done i'll make sure that's made available for the committee for our next meeting okay great which is on november 30th because our annual meeting is on december 1st that is correct does anybody know when new board members will be sworn in because i thought it was around that time start it was january i think it's earlier because we have our no it's in the summer december yeah right because you do your board elections right officer elections at that december meeting first yep december 1st before you let anybody eat anything [Laughter] anyway okay so um is there if there's nothing else i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved moved by kathy a second second kate all in favor hi hi hi thank you all thank you