Center Jt Unified School District Board Meeting 10/19/2020

001i'd like to call the meeting to order at [Music] announcement of items could be discussed in closed session we didn't have any action items in closed session um and then also if you have any comments for the board and you're on live stream let's fill those if you can fill those out now because it takes time for some of the comments to get to us so we're going to do that indicate what your subject is and what if it's a business item or consent agenda item things like that so send your messages in early for technology purposes so we have to make sure that we get your questions before we get to that item so um because if your question gives to the item after we've discussed it we won't be reopening the item to

002discuss um flag salute let's just have james would you lead us in the flag [Music] indivisible all right that brings us the agenda item of adopting the agenda do we have a motion to adopt the agenda we have a motion by mr bruno do we have a second okay we have a second by mrs pope do we have any discussion on the item any public input on the item not seeing or hearing any discussion that we can you can generally consent this right scott even though there's only four years all right so general consent on adopting the agenda all right so that brings us to organization reports first one cuta mrs mason hi good evening and everybody out there everybody in the district watching tonight's board meeting well thank you vanessa literally every teacher is

003probably tuning in right now so i wanted to thank the school board for having to speak tonight um earlier this week i shared the certificated staff concerns with the board in an email and i've gotten several emails and reply from board members but to sum it up roughly eighty percent of our members prefer a january fourth or later return to on-campus instruction in the hybrid model this allows time for all the tech that craig and craig has ordered to actually arrive in the warehouse because everything enforces the back order get disbursed to the site and for trainings to occur and all other preparations needed to provide a safe environment for students and staff to safely return to campus and then i'm guessing you may have received many many emails from our staff certificated staff members

004and that was the result of a general membership meeting that was held last week and they asked what can we do to let the lord know our concerns what we would like to see for our return to campus and so i said email them they have a district email did you know that and they didn't know that so i'm sure you've gotten many many emails so um if you had any questions about them i'd be happy to answer about the email specifically or the information that was shared in the survey okay and then last month at the cuta we had a special meeting where we were able to recommend the two candidates for the schoolwork position and cta heller voting last week and we recommended delray pope and nancy anderson on the november election ticket

005as a cta recommendation thank you very much any other questions [Music] apparently there you go thank you cuta for the endorsement all right absolutely it brings us to cse in a second good evening um we've been meeting virtually with our chapter meetings for several months now and it seems to be working out really well and i kind of hopingly continue that method even after we all come back in person because it uh it allows us to be able to talk to more people that are you know because of all of our schedules it's kind of hard to get all classified together at 4 30 in the afternoon so it's been kind of nice to be able to to have a change that works well for everybody this morning we began voting on the health and

006welfare benefit agreement we reached with the district the voting window will close on saturday october 31st and i would like to take this time to wish mr wilson and his family the very best as they begin a new adventure thank you for your years of service on the school board it has been a pleasure to work with you many classified employees are concerned about the details and decisions leading to the returning to in-person instruction we did not do a survey asking folks to choose the date they feel is reasonable to return to in-person instruction over the past several months we have shared the results of our many surveys and the concerns that were expressed we have encouraged employees to reach out to the board and express their concerns we appreciate that the voices of all

007employees are heard and considered as the decisions are made and plans are finalized while we know that whatever decision is reached may not please everyone we trust that the decision addresses the needs of the students and families while ensuring the safety of our employees thank you thank you thank you and thank you for your well wishes i love working with you guys so trust me listen just a clarification i think when you had asked or someone had asked previously mrs mason said is there any public questions we did receive a couple from the public okay i'm not sure if that's in order to have the public but or it does relate i believe to item c so possibly would you like us to read that as public comment i yeah let's let's do that i'm

008not going to see that way those people still get to make their comments and we're moving on target too [Music] all right that brings us to committee updates facility update craig decent all right getting about that sound today um just a few things to report um for the full day kindergarten that's coming up um here and actually hopefully we're going to start in november um you've got three contracts in front of you tonight okay one of them is for the greatest maximum price for the lease leaseback contract which is with the contractor you have the dsa inspector and the testing inspector contracts so if those get approved tonight we plan on breaking ground november first and then how far we continue past that it also depends on your decision that you made kind of with

009opening um hope and supporting schools back out and then the other thing that we're working on right now with the kindergarten project is the flexible furniture we've got two bids for the 21st century furniture that's going to go into those some classrooms so we're kind of zeroing in on getting ready for when the buildings are there that we can fill them up with good stuff the cte applications we met with the architect our first meeting with the architect was today and we started talking about conceptual design so we'll be able to share with you share with you that information down the road and then november 11th we'll be applying for our funding for that project and then with our new school up in sierra vista we did turn in our cd application for approval of

010the space that we are planning on using to be approved as a school site cd1 a cdd some jobs that they do is they approve every school site with a lot of different things that they look at they did have a few questions so we're responding to those questions and we're hoping for ce approval later this week or next week because after that we'll start working on the land acquisition and we're hoping to bring the land acquisition agreement to you in november and purchase that property and then finally um the company architect is going to be bringing a conceptual design to you and sharing it with you in november so that's basically all i have unless you have any questions but i did bring you a draft conceptual design take a look at just in

011case you have any questions when they present what the ten thousand thirty of that school site's gonna look like questions doesn't look like thank you craig all right thank you thank you reports presentations mr jordan williams uniform complaint quarterly reporting so i'm here to report there were no williams complaints this quarter and that concludes the shortest agenda i'm sorry we're all right thank you um now that brings us to the agenda item that are comments from the audience regarding items not on the agenda do we have any carol and or and are there any in the audience this evening okay not seeing any here okay so this is the only one that is actually titled public comments it says uh it is from karen i am disappointed that a board member who doesn't believe in

012wearing masks and refuses to follow the policy of the school site by not wearing one has such a strong vote in determining the safety of students staff okay well that's why we're the united states we have differing opinions so board and superintendent reports mrs anderson i would just like to rein write thank you to csca and cuta for endorsing me um and don't worry as well and hopefully we'll be off to a good year and get all these problems ironed out working together on it yeah um dory i would like to reiterate thank you cse and thank you once again to cuta for the endorsements um it really means a lot and i appreciate it and let's wish yourself luck uh mr burton um i just wanted to say that over the past few days

013i have received a lot of emails primarily from teachers i've been contacted by some some parents and i just absolutely love it and encourage any community member staff member whatever if you have something on your mind let us know the better informed we are the better informed decisions we can make and please let's continue the engagement and mr so mr wilson i'm not sure what you're going to say here so i might reserve like two minutes of my time over after you if you're okay with that um but i just want to take the opportunity to thank staff this has been a very unique and trying year and i don't like the collective sometimes just thanking everyone but i like to thank staff because so many people are doing so many unique things for the

014benefit of our community and our students and our staff but i did want to call out a couple it was funny to dawned on me yesterday as i was leaving it's five o'clock and i looked over at center high school and i saw some parks and or some vehicles in the parking lot and i won't say all their names but i want to acknowledge the coaches that have been out working for the last few months that are doing conditioning with our students for those students they approached myself and mr ferguson and said hey could we do this it meant the guidelines the permits we had some very strenuous guidelines we said to do that and i just want to acknowledge and thank them for doing that because i think it's a great outlet for our

015students that want to do and have physical activity and along those same lines i know our another activity that's happening is we're working on our play and so i want to acknowledge and appreciate the staff member that's pushing forward with that and having that available for our students i to me it just as mr bruno pointed out there's a lot of emails that we receive and some are our form emails but a lot of them are heartfelt in the beginning and at the end and as i read through those it just reminded me of what a great place we are working in and we get to be a part of and with that i think it's important out of all this we will only become stronger together and we will continue to do what is

016best for for the students and with that i also want to add i recognize that we're going through difficult times with the decision that the board will be considering tonight there's a lot in our world that seems to be upside down for us as individuals as a collective group and with the holidays approaching two i think that adds one more layer so i think his staff is all of us really being aware of how we can support our families our students and each other during this time that it could be extremely difficult for people so with that i will leave that and turn it back to mr wilson well i don't have much except to say thank you um too many say uh thank you to say to everybody individually um obviously i've been around

017here a long time um never planned on moving some different things happen so i just wanted to say thank you obviously i take a lot of memories i went to high school here i will miss a lot of people but other than that i wish all of you well i've got an adventure i've never planned on taking but if i got to take it i'm going to make the most fun i can with it so [Music] i just want to say thank you i wish you well i obviously hope this district much success so thank you and just briefly mr wilson to reclaim a couple minutes i just want to thank you you know i met you gosh 12 years ago as you entered the board we were going through a pretty tumultuous time as

018a school board as a district and you came on and one of the things that i've always admired about you is is the decorum and the way that you run these meetings and really kind of keep that order i've always appreciated that and and want to thank you for for that plus we've over the years had quite a lot of conversations around school business and other business um and i know i will miss having those conversations but i wish you and your family great luck success and um if i ever go to florida maybe i'll try and swing by and although it might be out of order typically just so the community knows when a president of our board ends his or her term we always award them with a gavel to commemorate the year

019that he or she spent as the board president so since i might have known you might have been leaving we did uh go ahead and get a gavel made up for you even though you you are about two months shy but uh just acknowledging that mr wilson for his uh 20 20 years president so we'll present that to you and wish you and your family great success and happiness thank you very much that brings us to the consent agenda do we have emotion on the consent by mrs anderson do you have any discussion by the board on this any audience participation anything on the computer all right we have a motion we have a second no discussion do we have general consent [Applause] looks like we do all right that brings us to business items

020business item a architect selection award and contract we have a motion on business item name emotion we have emotional babies support do we have a second we have a second but mr bruno we have a new discussion on this item only that this this item will allow us as mr diesel said during this facilities report that we this would allow us to select nocturne lewis as the architect firm that we would use to construct the two career technical education facilities that we'll be putting in here in the next bit of time any other board comments have any audience comments on the item anything virtually all right so we have a motion and second to accept the staff recommendation um do we have general consent on this item okay general consent on item a that brings

021us business item b guaranteed maximum price for the leastly spec contract we have a motion on this side we have a motion by mr bruno do we have a second a second have a second by mrs pope do we have any board of discussion any staff will put on this just that this would have this is the guaranteed maximum price essentially budget type for this project so we would seek your approval okay do we have any audience comments on the item anything everything okay we uh we have a motion a second do we have general consent all right so that brings us to item c item c is plan two hybrid update and return to campus state i'm sure we'll have some comments on this but first um do we have a motion i'll bring

022you to the floor uh mrs anderson let's bring it to florida do we have a second second have a second by mr bruno go right ahead mr jordan all right good evening we're going to talk about our hybrid plan 2. i left one of these blue cover handouts in front of you there and this is the slideshow that's going to go uh mr graham is going to put on the uh the screen again okay we tried to develop a secret code so i could tell him when to uh slides and i'm just going to say so we really we started working on this and this game comes out of our playbook about a week after the school year ended last year way back by by june we had completed our first look at the playbook

023our first plans and i think it's important to know that this is a moving part the the information the guidance that we're getting from the state and the county level is coming out sporadically so we had a whole plan put together uh by july at the very end of june first week of july the state came out with new guidance sb98 changed everything so we're back to the drawings again um then as we're going along uh guidance keeps changing so this is really the third the third reincarnation idea for incarnation of this uh plan and you're gonna see even though this was printed a week ago there's gonna be some slight changes even since then because the guidance has changed again we got new guidance from the california department of ed on our engagement process

024just last week that's going to change some of the ways that we we do things and if you notice even today the center for disease control came out with new guidance for what it means to be in close proximity to this around somebody else so that then they tweaked some things for us as well things continue to change us having said that i want to commend all of the admin the teachers that classified will work tirelessly on this literally all summer long there were no vacations this year uh and since then um i know we're all kind of emailing texting in the middle of the night it's going back and forth this is on everyone's mind and they're to be commended for their hard work and efforts towards this endeavor all right having said that

025we're going to move on uh reset all right first page so for those in tv land that first page is a link to uh that playbook where which a lot of what you see tonight is going to be out of that playbook so if you go to the second get elementary in person perfect all right so starting out here's how this would look at the elementary level in terms of the hybrid program the hybrid is an option for parents uh to send their students to school as well as a distance learning option full-time business learning option so this is the first one we're going to look at here is the elementary in-person model so that is on campus five days a week students would attend families who chose this those students would attend monday through

026friday this will be all students tk through 6 and be placed in a morning or afternoon group although we're still looking at our efforts coming in from the survey there may be a possibility at least at some sites where a morning is is enough to do the in person and the afternoon would be all distance learned um the numbers are coming in and as they come in there's more and more families choosing distance learning where all efforts in that plan are going to be to assign family members so that they're in the same grouping whether it's morning or afternoon so that they're not having a crossover transportation wise each group is going to attend approximately two and a half hours per school day with a primary focus on english language arts and math from an

027academic perspective that's going to be the main focus facilities are going to be disinfected between the morning and afternoon sessions and then in addition to that two and a half hours they would have students will complete independent work outside of the school day those little boxes off to the side of that little table explains the additional number of minutes the combination of the in-person time and those additional minutes of independent time are the minimum that we have to have to show engagement for the state level so we think we have to have both of those each day are you ready to move on to slide three i believe thank you eugene so now we are on the profile i think that's purple whatever color that is uh elementary distance learning this is for families that

028chose the full-time distance learning uh not wanting their students on campus so we again we are adjusting this slightly this will be different than it is now uh slightly uh families that have opted into this um may be required to have a new teacher and that is because the number of students of wanting the distance learning uh is is overwhelming there's a lot of a lot of families that want that and since they want that we have to to move some teachers over to be those distance learning teachers specifically it's too much of an ask for our teachers to do both a full-time distance learning kid and an in-person kid that is an incredible amount of prep time what we're found is that no matter how long you've been in a classroom as a teacher

029it is like learning everything all over again all the new software platforms the hardware uh even grading going through google classroom is different even the simplest thing is attendance is completely different now for this year only uh so that we can uh claim that the attendance they gave it's not called ada for this year but our engagement and it's taking i'm talking to high school teachers it's taking another hour half a week to compile it because it's a completely different formula it's not just in your seat or not anymore it's a compilation you see online with your with your class as well as a time equivalent of an assignment that you've got for that day that has to be clearly delayed from that date to be able to prove to the auditors that they were

030engaged that day all right so distance learning students would attend class online monday through friday there would also be a 60-minute online office hours with teachers uh per day and that would be for one-on-one or small group assistance there would be at least 30 minutes of intervention time that we are our rotation uh tier two uh those kind of things in small group or individual sessions in addition to the whole class live instruction in the office hours so that's an additional support for kids and then offline independent study work will be assigned by the teacher according to the grade levels you'll see again on the table to the right uh the additional minutes and we are currently putting together a new job description for that distance learning teacher to clearly delineate what the expectations are

031for that right now it's an hour online those that is going to increase it's going to be more than one hour online right now preliminarily we're looking at two to two and a half hours of online with this with the student to get more interaction with it with the family it's starting to clarify and i don't know uh would it be helpful to hold our questions or comments or would it be worth because on the on the elementary perspective can you can you elaborate a little bit on the idea that the hour is the hour like i have to sit in front of the computer for one whole hour for elementary or can the teachers break that time up so we know attention spans are short fit attention fans are short and developed so it

032doesn't mean you're going to be online two straight hours at a time it may be a 15 20 minute little instructional thing here then have a kid who at least kind of work then come back on and a half hour it's going to be broken down it's not realistic that the kid's going to be on for two hours you know two hours straight at the third level that's that's just not realistic is that yeah okay um related question regarding the independent work time um if we increase the amount of online instruction time would we be decreasing the amount of your independent work time yes okay correct so that it will start to resemble the in person correct thank you correct there are minimum number of minutes at each grade level that are required so k2

033it's 100 excuse me k is 180 uh one two uh you're looking at 230 and then it goes 240 from that point on up minimum minutes we're ready to go to the next slide i have a question for you mike okay mr jordan um and it just when you said it it just made me think that with staff so you had said some are going to be going to distance learning one of the things like and and when we went and met with the school in florida it was total parent choice like if you wanted to be in the classroom you were in the classroom if you want to do distance learning it was distance learning from the classroom like the students should be able to see in the classroom so but the way you

034said it sounds like we're gonna have two different sets of teachers is that the plan to have two different sets of teachers are we gonna do the same thing where if the student wants to be at home but watch the teacher on the camera they can but if they want to i mean what's the sounds like a lot of extra staff to do that the way you said it so there won't be extra staff that you'd have to hire because you've got right now we're going to see a slide here pretty quick about 35 of our elementary kids are going to stay complete distance learning so those that are those class sizes pull down when those kids are pulled out and those teachers are pulled out as well and that's why you might have a

035different teacher what you're talking about is synchronous learning we do right now we don't have that at the elementary we are going to have that when i can go to the high school we are going to have that option yes we are also using that option with some of our cohorts like the one here at broadcasting we should be on the middle school in personnel moving on to rivals so again there is a distance learning full-time option and an on-campus five days a week option uh again even though this is printed a week ago we are looking at the numbers that are approaching 50 or about 45 of kids at the middle school want to do this full-time distance learning uh it's not 100 confirmed yet but we're looking at the possibility where we can

036do the in person in the morning and then all the distance learning in the afternoon so it's going to be a little bit different than here based on what our server results are coming back is this the av schedule are you oh we're not doing that you said it's morning and afternoon correct so yeah we would be on an adb in that yes sit but it's a six period day instead of the eight from before so students would attend class again monday through friday uh students we split into a morning and after we would shift and in this case again we're preliminary looking at the possibility that we could just do all distance learning in the morning excuse me reverse that all in person learning in the morning and all distance learning in the afternoon

037i think i just did a willy wonka there morning and afternoon sessions will be approximately three hours we're looking about really about two and a half to three is what a session would be and then there'd be a break between uh students would be attending three classes per day on the aav schedule and there we'll have a link to that uh there'd also be one hour of independent work a week so we're looking at 20 minutes per class that you're in for those three periods for that day and then facilities would be disinfected obviously question all the disinfecting work in between it seems to me the teachers are going to be busy preparing for in between you know work who's going to be doing that so we've got down down to where there's a sanitizer

038that i believe it's one to two minutes it'll dry correctly if i'm wrong mr decent it won't dry but it will actually it will kill the or eliminate the virus so they're so the idea is the teacher would just go down remember there's only going to have half requirements so you're going to have somewhere around 12 to 15 uh just spray down the desk between between class periods and then it would kill them and i said drive my apologies kill the children for the virus excuse me and then the full-time distance learning uh families that shows that that would be full-time again they would attend class online monday through friday uh they're expected to participate live online independent work for a total of at least 240 minutes so they would be taking their classes just

039from home as they are now thank you all right so moving on to center high uh this is where things are going to be uh slightly slightly different considerably different so center high school will be on their continue on their av schedule now the difference at the high school level is learning so a kid who chose to be in class would go to their normal a day or b days of before periods the kid who was on distance learning would be just videoing in linking into that class and watching the instruction live and we have it set up so there will be some questions and answer times for those students as well within that class period so the class periods are approximately 90 minutes um students will be split into what we're calling a blue

040and a gold which is just so we can we can split the kids in half and create enough social distancing uh they're going to go on a rotating schedule i'll explain that in just a minute uh one group will attend in person uh on campus while the other who participates online from home so again we can't have all those kids together at the same time there's too many and possibly good in social distance so half will stay home so the blue they get blue like an a day they'll come on eight eight kids will be videoing in on that day and they'll flip off the next day the b kids will show up and the eight bits will be videoing into those same classes the distance learning kids will be videoing in the whole time

041and i'll show you that rotation you have to switch that every three weeks to make sure that everybody gets in in person to an a uh schedule um so at minimum they're gonna have two days per week following a two week rotation two days on campus minimum so that goes one way three next week two and then flip flop so the rotation and i don't know how in depth you won't be going because basically at the end of that third week you have to flip flop so that everybody gets to go to their eight-day everybody what about lunch periods so we're going to be split into two lunches right now as of this morning and it's actually wasn't even from the slide it had come out a week ago we're at 48 percent of our

042students at center highway are going to stay in distance learning so when you split that into two now you're down to half you split that into two lunges now you're down basically to a quarter so you're we have enough room on campus to maintain social distancing during the lunch period that is the only site that will have lunch on campus everyone else is grab-and-go or calling it basically you good and i've already talked about the green and i think that's green if they opted out they can do the full-time distance learning that's not a problem again they'll be synchronously going in seeing the classes live now if a family opts for distance learning or offspring person are they allowed to change their mind later if circumstances for them to personally change it it would be

043helpful if they stuck to it but obviously we can't judge what's going to happen and things are going to come up we're going to have some flexibility and having said that we've got to make sure we maintain the social business in the class so it may take us a few days to get it worked out and make sure that we don't overload class so for example if we had 100 kids all of a sudden want to come back and they're all freshmen all of a sudden our freshman classes are going to have too many different social medias does that make sense yes what about when kids are put under quarantine and all of a sudden they have to stay at home and go back to learning at home so they at the high school level

044they would just go online like the full-time business learning kids because that's synchronous they're going to see the same thing we came up with there wants to be 15 different scenarios teachers quarantined students are you know kids quarantined but not everyone there are so many different variables that happen and it changes between elementary middle and high school on how it's going to work honestly because of the synchronous part of this it's going to be a little bit easier if a student is out of quarantine and actually because yep because it's going to be i hate to say that and that's every teacher's worst fear is that it's going to be a revolving door but that's going to happen i think we have to just accept to an extent that's going to happen it's going to

045be a little more difficult when a teacher is out of quarantine and that's going to create some issues but we do have protocols [Music] they will have a duty-free lunch yes without students in the room yes correct yes worked on that this morning all right okay we okay okay so again this was as of a week ago we sent this survey out or that the the holiday the uh october break um and we're still we're almost there but we don't have all parent surveys back so again i came into the admin they've been reaching out and making the phone calls and the staff the class fights and getting everybody's uh results in so that we have accurate numbers we can't do any plan until we have everybody's choice of whether they want to go distance

046or whether they want to go in person so this even though again it was a few days ago this is printed it is it's changed a little bit excuse me may make a comment or a question yes or comment so it was stated on social media that why doesn't the school district just take the families that don't respond and place them in a distance learning or be the in-class instruction well one we want to make sure everybody has the choice they need for child care for transportation for their their own uh personal belief whether they want their kids come back in person or not and we want to make sure unfortunately sometimes we don't have everybody's accurate information phone numbers and so forth so we want to make sure everybody has their their options i

047thank you for that because it was also stated that the district actually doesn't read any of the surveys or the information that we sent to the parents so i'm i i'm glad you said that because i know that you do or we do so um thank you for first i i can tell you this this data is a deep deep dive for administrators because this is how you build your master schedule and how you build your rosters for classes we have to know even a five percent difference can we can totally throw everything on thank you so we're [Music] 37.9 the red color is the number that have decided to do full-time business learning 62.1 are saying that they would like to come back full time now this was for the first kids you'll see

048up on the top it says first student with all students in the family included the percentage drops to about 35. so on the survey there's families have multiple kids i'm only showing you the slider and have like six different slides just for elementary when we compile all those results together first kids second get third get fourth kid sometimes fifth grade it comes to right around thirty five percent want to stay home uh distance learning full time and while he's going to that to the other piece will be is somebody saying wait a minute do we have that many students in this great span or this we had parents who very happily filled it out twice the same or multiple times the same which is great but we also have people changing their minds so they

049might have picked something on october 12th when it first came out but then by october 16th maybe something and so they changed so the principles are actually going through that sorting it by individual like mr verno oh we have three from him well one day it was this so we're trying to keep it as the most accurate so you will see in some of these the numbers seem higher than we might have enrollment that's because some people made multiple inputs that we're sorting through all right so we're here at ryles uh we're just shy of 45 uh wanting to stay home uh not wanting to stay home that didn't come all right distance learning uh doing full-time distance level and uh 55.3 uh coming back full time we go to the high school this number

050as of this morning i got an update on this this morning it is now a little over 48 of the high school students are going to stay full-time business learning so that number's increased since this slide again we're reaching out and we're getting everybody's input because it makes a difference in terms of what the class rosters look like so we're almost at half at the high school or excuse me at center high school in the next slice of the fall the other high school and again there were right about 48 again at mccall in that school makes you wonder how many of those just don't want to come back to school at all and would stay that way even if we insisted they come back out there that just don't want to come back to

051a building it is interesting that there are there are some kids who perhaps struggle a little bit on in person that are thriving and vice versa obviously uh going on results please so going on to the staff results we also at the same time uh sent out a survey to our staff uh asking are they classified in certificate are they planning on to come back if they uh if we go into in person where they're gonna be in contact with people and so we got almost 10 of the staff are going to go through what's called the interactive process with mr grimes in the personnel office they're saying either they have underlying conditions or a spouse or somebody who lives in a house having underlying conditions and they're looking into their options is there a

052way i can take leave we've had a couple retirements recently um we have a couple people are saying they're going to retire they're going in person because they have underlying conditions or there's some other things so 10 correct me if i'm wrong mr grimes is about 40 employees that's a significant number and that's a significant number especially we have to replace those people before we go back into the in person that's hard teachers are hard to find right now uh they're they're not at abundance and especially special ed you're working with uh maxim and some other agencies that are job placement agencies and they can't even find candidates it's very difficult my [Music] that's not 10 saying hey we're going to leave of those are looking at retiring and other options but most of them

053are requesting some kind of opportunity to do this so just i don't know if people can hear that at home so really what mr grimes is adding the idea that some of the the number the 42 44 whatever it is some of them are actually just requests for distance learning it might not be a interactive process medical reason but they receive that [Music] we also we our staff has turned over and become younger over the last few years we seem to be having a clogged baby boom uh we're having a number of staff going out on maternity leave at this time as well so we're we're trying to get this but it's people we need to replace um so that we have teachers and classes can i address mr grimes for a second mr grimes

054there are these teachers that wish to distance learn or distance teach if we're not able to fill that will um they then retire we will show them what their options are there are different types of needs available some specifically to this building and others uh [Music] however perhaps to what you're asking as well there's no guarantee that we can promise everyone who has requested a distance teaching position there's no way we can guarantee each of them will have that opportunity we're working with the union right now and the negotiations to set up with that criteria and those priorities are based on the laws and the directors we've been here for the health department in california and and we'll go in that word and accommodate as many as we can uh making sure that we maintain

055the integrity of our programs here in the district as far as proper credentials class sizes and the ten percent that is mostly certificated mostly but there are a number of classified as well and mostly classified um your phone to the is our isph realm a lot of our other classifieds are already back working you know our custodians food service office staff a lot of them live here and working for a long time but the issues have been more at home or online at this point thank you thank you i apologize i'll put my back to the camera i'm not an actor on purpose guiding considerations good thank you all right so these are the things that we're we're trying to think of when coming into uh to dates to come back so sacramento county has

056cleared our return to in-person instruction with specific guidelines by sacramento county public health and the california department of public health so we've gone out of the purple tier uh now that we're in that tier we are clear to open again uh doesn't mean we have to open right now this date but eventually we've got to come back as part of centerville 98 our funding will continue as long as for distance learning as long as we are told by the county we have to uh remain in distance learning now they've said no parameters for how long you have between the time that you're cleared to go and you actually have to come back uh elementary school's first trimester ends on november 6th the secondary school trimester excuse me semester ends on december 18 so right before

057that the winter break we want to make sure that families have at least two weeks or more notification prior to a return date so that they get child care online transportation whatever they need to do um please thank you we want to make sure we have uh sufficient personal protective equipment uh and sanitation inventory at each school site so that everyone sees students staff and that's everything uh and mr diese has done a fantastic job it's been working since the summer there's masks face shields gowns uh sanitizer bottles they've got a backpack sanitizer thing for that custodian and there's just there's all kinds of ppe that and to clarify we have that stuff correct correct yes what was your question i'm sorry we have those materials to be mentioned it's not that we need to

058get them we have an abundance right now which is great and then obviously we need to have nutrition and transportation services make sure they're prepared with as few minor adjustments as possible what is still happening what needs to happen i'm sorry what is needs to happen right now uh before we get open we need a health tech at every site uh we're required to have isolation rooms for any students or staff who have symptoms we need at least four preferably five health techs we have been advertising for that i only have two applicants although they're great applicants but these are people that are going to man the isolation room so when a kid has they're at school and also they start having symptoms or a fever we need to isolate them until they're picked up

059from their by their parents what's the requirement for their license they'll be in rn no no we haven't we have an rn obviously fantastic if they were our lbn or a cna or whatever cd okay but that is not a requirement for the job um are they full time positions these are right now four hour a day positions it's possible to go to six hours we need at least four again five because we know those people are going to be exposed the most because they're going to be dealing with kids with symptoms most not just coping but the flu and everything else that goes through schools this is true right now i have two applicants i'm going to interview those two tomorrow but that means i'm still short too i need to find two more

060so that's an open uh job out there right now i'm also working with maxim which is a uh staffing agency but they can't find anybody either these are these people are short supply what's the pay skills are we giving them enough i don't know i'm sorry i hope the posting put on is in your email miss uh anderson so i'm happy to show you tomorrow the posting came out and it was reposted again yesterday i believe this what the posting is in your email for sure uh we we reposted it again so i know an email went up to all all staff as well as yeah i'm struggling has there been anything said or have you gotten any reports from the health department there's a certain disease i'll call it that the kids are getting

061that's connected with coping that affects the burns they were worried about that with the elementary kids and then there's a second disease i heard about last night that started last year and the doctors are worried about it coming back this year that's associated with another bacterial infection that affects the muscles of kids and the one mom said her daughter was two and she was jumping on the bed and then all of a sudden her legs went out from under she was paralyzed it was that fast so there's a couple of different things out there that these kids could pass around and they just don't know where they're coming from so as far as county health addressing that with us or california public health i have not received any direction on those i've heard news reports

062of that as well but that's something they we're in contact with county public health all the time i mean i want to communicate it almost seems like every other day at least i'm getting a message or we're in a meeting so that would be something that we will hear about if it starts circulating our community interesting [Music] did you repeat that like on the microphone i couldn't 20 65 an hour now yeah between 15 to 20 an hour oh between 15 and 20 an hour look online now the hiring of replacement teachers so for those in the interactive process we want to make sure that we have teachers uh you know credentialed teachers in place before we come back otherwise we're going to start with a lot of subs and that not that subs aren't

063good subs are fantastic but we want a credential teacher for a smooth start uh to when we come back it is crucial that we have a smooth start when we bring kids back on campus [Music] finalizing all family results we still have a few out we've been working diligently again i commend that the sites the admin are classified on the sites that they've just been lost they're busting it out they're getting all kinds of contacts with these families and make sure everything's get their choice set and known then with this information we've got to adjust the classes and the schedules based on those survey results so as you can see even since a few days knowing this was printed some of the things like at the middle school potentially they'll injure they're going to shift

064a little bit because of the numbers coming back the numbers are different than they were when we originally did this survey back in july some people have changed their oh a lot of people change their minds one way or the other um and then finally we need to finalize our nau with our cota with our teachers we have a process we're going through right now with a number of meetings uh we're getting there but we have some things that we need to work out here and we'll do it in place so having said that we came up with three potential return dates so originally we talked about november 9th being the earliest possible date we could come back that would be 12 distance learning days from from today there would be 24 in-person school days

065to winter break second one is november 30th there's 21 distance learning days between tomorrow and that date and again remember there's no school for that thanksgiving break then 15 in person school days to winter break can you give us the dates of those breaks the thanksgiving break is november 23rd through the 27th and then the winter break i believe starts on december 19th saturday december january 3rd to january and then the third option is january 5th january 4th is the monday that's a teacher work day coming back on january 5th that would be there'd be 36 distance learning days between tomorrow and the end of the semester or for the high school level and we'd be split semester at the trimester level there's one correction that we didn't talk about and that's the special ed

066kids that some of them have been brought back i understand and there may be others that need to be brought back or i don't know what's been addressed as far as that goes so we did start uh thank you miss anderson for pointing out we did start bringing back cohorts we started with three classes of students one at each level elementary middle and high we have plans to start increasing that and also increasing our services to our el students our foster youth and our homeless students because that was specifically called out within that so those are all in in the mix and if we have a date tonight when we turn we'll start mixing that up it also depends on the agreement with art with our our teachers right now we are doing a voluntary

067with three people we appreciate who volunteered to be back some of those classes we got most of the kids back couple classes we only got two or three that wanted to come back at this point but we will look at that so looking at those uh some specialized populations so we're just going to like set them up in one classroom somewhere well these are typically we're starting with the self-contained rooms so they're already in a classroom so i might have 15 students that are specific to me are mainstream students students who might be on an iep would be a part of the quote regular classroom when we would return with that platform okay so mr jordan yes looks like you've gone through all your points in the last point of this was board discussion and

068directions i guess the question i really have for you is since say everything is changing daily everything is fluid what really are we voting on if everything's changing on a daily basis i certainly have an opinion on everything so if that is it are you asking for my opinion on me yeah i mean because you know like i i wouldn't come up with example but you know it's if you say we have option a b and c and if we just but this is what's happened since march if we look at the page it says whether or not we're cleared by the county we haven't done anything on our own since march 14th and we've only taken direction from the county so the question is we're only taking direction from the county what really are

069we voting on yeah so the consideration that you guys would vote on tonight would be when do we want to return this hybrid model based on all the information that you guys have received from our plan to any other feedback or input so what we're looking for is guidance on an actual date because unfortunately to your point things seem to keep changing we need a date that we can say we want to work towards that date so we can make sure that everything is in place we can get the staff there's a lot to do within that but having a name would be very helpful now saying that in the world we've come to live in you could pick date x and we drop back into the purple tier and that date's going to be

070pushed pushed out so that's so realistically if things conditions remain the same we're looking for that date from you guys on that well i'll start the word discussion then miss anderson before we do that just the point of clarity i i mr wilson i'm gonna put you on the spot i'm hoping you can do some of the comments we've received tonight when when a board meets in public and they receive public comment that comment is usually comments not an interactive question can you address that as far as like testifying because i don't want people to think if they ask a question the board may or may not be able to answer the question we might just address that so i think i think with a lot i think you're allowed to address somebody that asked

071a question i just think in the modern day where people are so rude with each other most people say don't say anything because it ends up breaking down i have the opinion that if you don't answer somebody that they think they're just you're just ignoring them so i will usually try to address them in a respectful way but i think there are just so many people that haven't so a lot of boards take positions that oh you can't interact with them of course they're not around anti-aliasing we've got everybody here to the genderized meeting so we can have interaction with our constituents that's what the whole american system is about is representing your constituents so i think some people put that out there because they don't want a meeting breaking down into an argument but

072i i have the opinion that if you if you don't answer people they feel ignored and like the whole process bypassed them so i'd rather have a respectful discussion but um you know so um i guess i think the hardest thing about this tonight though is probably you know if i'm a parent and i want my kid back on date x we could maybe we agree and say date x but if everything's fluids so it sounds to me like we want to set a goal that even if we set that goal because we want staff to be able to prepare to come back that doesn't mean we're coming back on that date so we're not really voting on a date we're voting to like get everybody prepped and rolling because we could say november 9th

073we could say may 14th but if we don't have the clearance we're not going back to school so yeah so i think this is more about can we give clarity to staff rather than are we actually voting on a date to come back and if i'm wrong on that i want you to tell me i'm wrong on that because you know i don't [Music] i don't think we're going to set a date and come back on a date because we're going to wait on the county correct so i think what you're asking is is basically the same thing we're asking for we we would want direction action from you to say if everything is is golden everything's in line we want school to start back on this day so so direction is probably better but

074but i think for both staff and parents who are watching that that needs to be made clear because let's say we said we're coming back on thanksgiving and i use that so hopefully people realize that's not the day but we're coming back on thanksgiving day and everybody gets ready for thanksgiving day and then we end up not coming back until december 18th or until january 5th to january third 20th it's not that there was anything dishonest in our process we're not giving people the wrong impression on something we're trying to give guidance but that guidance is not binding is that a correct way to portray what we're voting on so everybody has a clear understanding yes sir okay if there are a lot of importance to this can we get staff can on technology come

075in on time everything's on backboard you know are is the county going to continue to keep us in them out of the purple tier there are definitely moving parts to this i just think it's important for people to know that beforehand because whatever the expectation is the expectation is they voted this is the day we're coming back and it doesn't happen and people don't have the understanding there can be a lot of unhappy people and thank you for clarifying that because that is a 100 accurate statement we look based on the direction we will do everything we can in our power however there sometimes are things outside of our control that we've received over the last eight months that have put us in different positions absolutely correct well january 1st gets here and we're in

076a full-fledged emergency nowhere we put anybody in the hospitals and you know obviously it's not going to happen correct so we're hoping under the best circumstances we'll be able to start back up but we have to have something for people to plan on and we have to have something to tell them look we're not going to try and get there before this date you're free to do what you need to do until then and until then this is what our schedule is going to be like right we need some kind of plan to go by and kill them agree 100 and i appreciate mr wilson you throwing that in because the reality we've been living in lately the reality could be it could change but if the voice direction is x then we will do

077everything in our power and if it's outside our control we'll communicate but it wouldn't be because we're doing something mischievous or wrong [Music] that's true so i think that we were at the point of discussion before i interrupted you mr anderson was there anything that you i interrupted you when you were going to ask at home i was just going to say that after the discussions that i've had with parents as well as many many teachers and i started out responding to every email i got from teachers and it quickly overwhelmed me to where i just couldn't get back to all of them hopefully i'll still be able to respond to them um i have been convinced that we should put it off until january uh for the safety of the kids i know my

078own grandson was scared to death of the virus when he was first sent home and he would run over and shut the door he just didn't want that virus in the house and if one kid was quarantined in his classroom or if he heard that somebody had the virus or god forbid somebody passed away he would be traumatized for life and these little ones they can't handle it they just there's too much information out there the televisions and stuff they're going 24 hours a day with it they just finally unplug the tv um we've got to do whatever we can do to protect them they have every one of them has you know different circumstances that we don't know grandparents living with them or parents with immune problems or siblings with immune problems teachers that

079have issues and we don't there's not enough subs out there to cover it i you bring them in back to school finally they get to go back to school they're all excited and what are you doing two weeks later you say sorry you're going home again you just some of these kids can't adjust like that i just don't see that we have any other choice but to put it off until then it's my thing and i appreciate all the information that the teachers and um csva members in a lot of cases have given us it helps us to make decisions to know that information and how it affects them on a day-to-day level i always appreciate the input anyone else we do have a few public comments i don't know if the lord wants to

080reserve their comment or i just want to make sure i get some comments and statements on mr jordan since you're there um we can continue with that please um one of the comments that i've been hearing a lot about is but it's why is it taking us so long to open our degree and the document that you gave us this evening you did address a lot of those issues but can you remove your mouse it's really hard i'm sorry do you want me to repeat what i just said if you could okay thank you thank you miss kelly um mr jordan i have had a lot of comments about why have we just taken so long to reopen since we started working this in march a lot of people don't understand why we're still not

081open when districts around us have even adjoining an antelope if you could please explain to the public why we have not reopened it i think for the biggest factor is the change in guidance to give an example we need to get the first california department of ed guidance until uh january 29th for the sb that came out we're a month away from school at that point we've already developed our first whole playbook was ready to go now we have to go back and change it again the next guidance that came out uh off of that senate bill was july 20. so we got pushed back even further now we're looking again what is the new guidance now we've got to readjust again our next uh guidance came out uh august 10th our school year's already

082started by then uh we're looking at that guidance and this guidance to be honest has been interviews i'm not trying to these are hard times for everybody some of it is good some of it is is uh not so good um there is no silver bowl there's no template out there but we need guidance to make sure that we're following uh the new attendance policy so that we continue to receive funding uh we need to follow the guidance so that we're meeting all this the health and safety guidelines that is continuing to change uh again i mentioned earlier the last guys from cde that changed everything again came out last week that that changed how we're going to be doing attendance and everything else again so it continues to change uh as we go through

083now the schools that are open now they've been they've been in the tier where they could have opened a long time ago it took them a long time also to get to the point where we are we've really only been allowed to to reopen for like a week and a half the 13th i believe it was in october it was the first potential date and you don't know until that day when you're going to get the guidance to be able to or the clearance story so we've been working tirelessly behind the scenes uh and again things keep changing and we keep adjusting adjusting adjusting adjusting adjusting you'll notice that some of our surrounding district san juan twin rivers have already picked january it's for a reason because of these moving parts these moving guidance that

084we've done we right now also you can't just turn the light switch on it doesn't work that way and everybody comes back as we talked about earlier we've got health techs that we're trying to find but we don't have even applicants we're going to have teachers we're going to have to replace in some crucial departments i'm looking at a special ed department on one of my sites i mean these three people that's significant we've got to find those people in order to come back we've had some retirements that were kind of unexpected in the last couple of weeks uh last couple months we're trying to find people to replace those so staffing it takes time it takes time to get applicants it takes time to get them clear it takes time to get it drained

085up get them back in unfortunately these things do they take a lot of time in the meantime doing all these things and building these plans we're still running the school and the school is running in a totally completely different way than it's ever run in the history of schools teachers again are having to learn all new hardware all new software i hear repeatedly from teachers i'm working way more hours now than i ever did before if this virus would go away i would bet teachers would much rather be in class because to be honest it's not as hard and i don't mean that it's an easy job but it is a very difficult job they're doing now and the rate of emails that they're getting is doubling and triple from families you need help you

086need help i don't understand this can you answer that you can answer this and i know teachers that are working on weekends and answering these emails because they didn't have time during the work day absolutely mr jordan let me help you out a little bit because i'm a parent that asked that question i'm looking at schools around us that are open i know what you're saying about why are we talking about the ninth or the thirtieth or the fifth but i don't think that addresses like if i'm a parent asking that question so really it doesn't lie with us at all the governor has set out color-coded counties and they decide the color codes the governor puts out a directive that then the california department of health feeds down to the counties and the counties

087are following the governor's lead so it's it's not in our hands at all if we're simply following the county guidelines this is something that's coming from one person in sacramento this is not where we get to make the decision so yuba or sutter county has been cleared from up top they're moving forward before we're moving forward not because we're dragging our feet correct but that's what's coming down from on high so the short answer to anybody out there if they ask that it's no it's not a law the local decision making process has been bypassed by sacramento that i mean so i mean i appreciate your answer but i'm just thinking for the people they're answering that they're like you've never answered but it's not it's not a decision we're making we're not making the

088decision to not come back the county will be a director from sacramento is making that decision for us that is correct it may be a misunderstood question i yeah apologize thank you it's probably then a duel because you you are correct because i know a lot of parents are just like come on when are you gonna get my kid back in school right it's a little bit more i mean i'd like to say hey next week but i know it's a little bit more complicated than that so i've heard a couple of those questions myself it was october 13th at exactly three o'clock p.m when the health order came out and we didn't know what it was going to be until that time that schools in sac county can reopen and if you go back

089and look at we sent our surveys out before that in anticipation that that could happen so we were already anticipating uh but we want to make sure that we send that survey out as close to the time we're actually going as possible because you know people are we've had people change their minds even in lots of two weeks uh what they want to do as more information comes out it's a hard decision for families i've i've read some heart-wrenching emails from our staff who are really torn you've got people with pre-existing conditions at home they don't want to bring this home to them and they're torn on what to do the reason why i ask the question is because there is another school within antelope that has started school um right and that's why i

090asked the question because they are living in zapper and they do reside in sacramento county but they're opened and we're not so that's why i was asking mr jordan to give moved out of the tier a long time ago and even the whole tier thing has changed and i would also state that there are still classifying districts that aren't open yet and they've been cleared forever if not several weeks months i would go on and say but anyway um the other question for you mr jordan is um somebody asked me about the ppe and safety protocols for special education can you just give a little highlights on that please are there going to be different protocols for for special education students in regards to that yes so we we have we've made sure that there

091are there's an abundance of ppe and again that's mass facial we understand that in some situations that the six feet of social distancing is not possible so for example we have some special ed students at all middle high an elementary toilet you can't maintain six feet of social distance with that so we've got gloves goggles masks uh face shields gowns we've got all of that stuff and because we recognize you in some of our uh somewhere special ed students so for students with ieps excuse me um there is going to be a need to be closer than succeed we still want to make sure everybody is as safe as it could possibly be um i think that's going to be a really difficult population to deal with it's it is challenging us um we did

092mention that we do have coal hearts coming back and we will continue to have some cohorts coming back is that true yes um is there going to be a soft opening for some students that need to come back that have the extra meat or extra that need extra support other than the special education students so we're looking at the specialty population our homeless population we're looking at our el population as well uh all three to have some some smaller cohorts there are there there is legislation we can actually it's up to 16 uh persons including teachers and students to come back for those types of of uh interventions we also have some one-on-one counseling going on there's some emergency counseling really where we can do one-on-one when it's a critical situation and we've had a

093few of those we're also doing one-on-one and have been for over a month of idp testing one-on-one we have both in-person iep 101 as well as instead of a virtual testing room where the psychologist is in another location but the student is there and they're taking the test with a camera on the computer and so on but when we have a soft opening for those students as opposed to just putting them in a forward i'm not sure what you mean by socks are you suggesting that possibly some students would come back with their teachers earlier than others i think help me um and i'm not sure on the soft opening term but i think what i think what you're saying is would they come back like maybe half the class or something like that or

094possible yeah so so for example i would just say we depended upon our mou and what we have our volunteering and stuff like that but that could be a possibility as we get more cohorts coming yes couldn't be sort of for example here will somehow riley's mrs price just has her class um they've been back for the last two weeks now almost two weeks um and so then her class of her age and they're working with her kids and she's also doing synchronous with the families who just won't come from we have the same lyricist spots down with that i'm spindle one more question that's okay um how will he handle contract tracing and who's going to handle that so mr brian's went to a contact tracing uh training he is going to be leading

095up to all the contact tracing in terms of how that goes in with the assistance of our nursing staff our health tech staff and then we are also in constant contact with the county department of health when so mr grimes has taken the lead on the contract racing organizing it through the personnel department in conjunction with our health staff and then from that he went through a johns hopkins uh contact tracing certification i believe it's called and then tomorrow even from there there's another course through it's a local sacramento county public health is putting on on contact racing and making the connections with our local health department so those are both there he's our expert and then we'll share them share it a little bit has anybody brought up maybe the school sites doing testing

096uh so testing for students has not been considered by us some districts have talked about that we do have the ability for our staff to be surveillance tested once every 60 days for free of charge to them and then if there is a situation that testing is needed then maybe there is for lack of an award and outbreak we have some classes uh there's a mobile sacramento county club that has a mobile unit that they would send out with staff to actually do testing on site if need be but as far as the individual testing of students prior to coming back that has not been considered by us anywhere not many days one district i've heard in this county is talking about it if you do go back to the purple and you're in the

097hybrid model it would be close or real or stay open so the the current county order is you would stay open and you would quarantine uh according to their protocols so that may be individuals maybe in class maybe a cohort i may i think though the question is if a school is open while they're in the red and the school opens and if the district or if that county goes back to purple that purple status that school can remain open if it chooses if if it chose to go back to distance when they would not have to but they because the status within the county changes to a higher level you don't have to go back and shut down immediately you could stay open thank you my next question is from mr diesel hi mr

098diesel um there are some curtains about the current ventilation in our schools could you express if we are going to update those ventilation systems or what are we going to do to uh we're replacing filters and we have been holding off as long as possible because they're not scheduled to be changed yet but we're upgrading our filters to merv 10 filters um and the type of filter you can put into an hvac system is based on recommendations for the system so if you put like let's say you know everyone wants a we're 13 filtered or they want to put in a hepa filter it can't pull and some of the units can't pull enough air through to run them so then they would break down so we are putting the highest merv filter that we

099can in every single unit my my maintenance department actually started this week and they will have everything completed in the next two weeks with complete new air filters we're also opening up the um the outside air controls to 100 to bring in to turn the air over faster we're getting ready to do a screen replacement program so that they can open windows while the weather's still good without the dreaded mosquitoes coming in and we also have purchased hepa pair sweepers for the nurses room and the isolation rooms um to provide an additional amount of filtering that you know can't be done in every single classroom thank you very much one more question mr jason when we do come back in hybrid november december january whatever date is chosen um but we still have the emergency

100drills that we currently are using um right now we've been meeting with our safety committees still but we have decided that while students are not on staff we're not gonna obviously have fire drills for the staff we're hoping i'm going to be checking with the local fire departments on what the what they want to do with this but we're hoping not to do the drills in the short time with the students that the students are here until we move back into uh in two phases phase three phase one phase one but we'll have to wait and see what the what the direction is from the fire department thank you so much thank you mr jordan i appreciate your time the only other thing i have to say is as mr jordan repeated or said earlier

101between november 9th and december 18th is 24 days of instruction so um just keep that in mind if you decide to open up in in november 9th there's only actually 24 days of school is that correct yes january 9th and december 18th before people want to break um so we've got to take that into consideration as well we aren't choosing to date because do we want to disrupt our lives or our students lives with going to school taking a break going to school taking a break that's that's a lot of disruption for the students and the families and our staff thank you in the family gatherings and thank you questions uh i have quite a few comments here okay um so we mentioned that we received a lot of emails on this topic um i

102i want to reassure everyone i read every single one of those emails at least once most of them two three four five times some of them were incredibly moving we received some comments from the teachers union and i read every one of those comments there were comments suggesting that we opened later there were comments suggested we opened sooner i felt every single point of view was useful to to learn from just to summarize things for the public um the people that were arguing that we should open sooner are concerned about things like equity issues the mental health of students i've heard um people concerned about who's now on years of athletic eligibility essentially because you only get to be young once um also got an email from a teacher who's participating in one of the

103cohorts and saying that their students are thriving and things are going really well the the people that are suggesting if we start later um one of the main points is we're opening up and then veterans day and then thanksgiving and then christmas and so just as students are starting to get reacquainted with being in the classroom they're taking a break and another break and there's going to be instructional time lost with each of those breaks as you have to re-establish the classroom routines especially with new routines being in place and that's especially challenging when you have the very young kids such as the pre-k or the middle and high school students where they have to do it every single classes multiple times a day and that results that's that would result in a significant amount

104of time lost also uh they are concerned about if we have to quarantine teachers students whatever how that's going to disrupt students lives and that they are arguing that our current distance learning actually provides better stability for them one of the other big concerns is with thanksgiving and christmas a lot of families are going to go against recommendations and have large family gatherings travel you know and there's a very real list of a spike in infections other points that they made other districts in our area are looking towards january to start a high percentage of our students which i believe is district-wide somewhere around 40 plus percent are preferring distance learning uh that doesn't that's the ones that are saying that they want to come in aren't necessarily saying that that's their first choice that

105we reopen but that if we are going to be open that's what they'll choose roughly 80 of the teachers are saying they prefer to wait until january there's concern about students or staff members not taking the recommended precautions when they're outside of school therefore increasing the risk of them bringing something in and exposing others there's the potential of having to shuffle kids to other teachers as you mentioned in your presentation students that are choosing distance learning may lose the problem with her teacher and i've seen concern about that both from the teacher and the student and the parent perspective where that's a concern of theirs some parents say they feel like they're going to be locked into a choice once they make it they're not sure how much flexibility they're going to have if they

106decide that that's not working out for them districts in placer county have had to quarantine teachers and students since reopening and that's a real concern what really affected me the most though in these emails were the stories of teachers and students and spouses and other family members who were high risk that this could put in danger i i saw an email from a teacher who said she's in tears because she can't afford to go on leave but her husband's at high risk so she feels like she's having to choose between paying her bills or risking her husband's life another email said some teachers are talking about quarantining themselves from their spouses long term another email was discussing that teaching is not a profession where you expect to be putting your life on the line like

107police and firefighters in the military do but they feel that that's what they're being asked to do another email the teacher mentioned having some severe health complications and being a single parent and this puts her child at risk of essentially becoming an orphan another email described losing five people close to them to this disease including two family members these are real fears the the teachers that were emailing us aren't looking for vacation in fact many of them described they're putting in more hours than usual right now from the tone of their emails it was obvious that these are people that care deeply about their students many of them were talking about how much they missed interacting with their students one teacher was upset about not being able to hug a crying student or high-five a

108celebrating student these aren't teachers who are looking for an easy way out these are teachers who are feeling torn many of them are afraid to return but saying that they will because they want to do what's best for their students when we have 80 of our teachers speaking up about an issue i think we need to listen i know we had two from earlier that we said we'd put on part c he seemed pertinent okay and while kelly kelly comes up just to thank mr jordan for taking the lead on this and doing that thank you mike thank you so much mr carter good evening um obviously i'm not here tonight to talk about this i'm here for the purpose but i'm really glad i'm here um because i do have a very unique perspective

109on this i work for the california department of public health very intimately involved in the code response just spent the last two days reading all of the county's equity metric reports which is now a part of the metrics that they have to meet in order to move from tier to tier so i'm really familiar with what's going on and i just want to clarify that it is not coming from one person it's coming from thousands of scientific experts doctors public health employees scientists doctors data scientists who are analyzing this data on a daily and by hourly basis to come up with what they feel are the best recommendations that they can come up with in order to protect everyone and believe me mental health is at the top of their list so understanding that yes

110the need to get back to some sort of normalcy is definitely taken into consideration so i wanted to just kind of put that out there um next i wanted to talk about the 41 states that are showing significant increases in hospitalizations i see events that are becoming scarce um the school the states that where the schools have opened i know people have said oh children don't get it well children do get it but we pulled them out of school before it can become ridiculously bad and so those numbers were skewed to begin with that's probably more opinion on my part than scientific information but i believe that is the scientific consensus that yes children do get it maybe not as high of a rate showing symptoms but they do get it and the evidence has

111shown in the states where the schools have reopened that there's been a sharp uptake in the number of children who have the disease and immediately following that there's a sharp uptake in the number of older citizens who also get the disease so they are taking it home and they are spreading it to their families so this is very real we are in a worse situation now than we were in march it is not going to get better in the winter so the idea of opening up in november is frightening at best on the other hand i do understand parents are like my kid is going crazy they need that interaction i can't educate them and do a work at home i'm not able to go to work i can't feed my kids i mean there

112are real issues around not bringing kids back to school and i understand that and i am thrilled to hear mr diesen's plans for all of the ppe and the air filtering and all that i know he's going to take the precautions that are necessary oh one more thing i wanted to say about the tears so the reason if anyone out there is still not clear on why we can't move faster when a county moves into the tier that can allow schools to reopen there's still a waiting period where they have to maintain those steady statistics that that data in order to say okay yes now the schools can begin to reopen and so it's a very long slow process because we want to make sure that we don't end up having that spike again that

113we've had before so there's that um and the main thing i wanted to talk about was something that mr bronze was talking about as far as not being able to guarantee teachers their option and explaining to them the leads that are available to them the teachers the faculty and staff in this educational community are equal citizens they are not lesser or servants they are equal citizens in educating this community you've afforded the option of making a decision for the parents and students who want to return their students to school and that same decision should be given to all of the teachers and staff without the risk of them losing their job or having to take leave that upsets me if i was on that side of the table i would go on about it for

114days but you heard from me today thank you thank you kelly stay there for a second please um that was a that was a good segway thank you for bringing that up so um i understand what you're saying about cases my concern with so much fear going around is that in march there's been this great baby switch so in march it was we need 15 days to flatten the curve because we're going to crush our health care system without 15 days to flatten the curve that has now been switched to we've got to prevent anybody and everybody from getting it so i think there needs to be a separation between in march when they thought there was going to be a 10 death rate because that's what the death rate was in italy to people

115getting it you know i i see all this politicization going on like the united states has more cases yeah we're doing more testing than everybody so so the scientific studies i've read because i see a lot of people say that they're like science okay this is a science item france has done a context study germany has done a contact study iceland because they don't have the same constitutional protections we do they've probably got the best contact study out there i don't know anybody who says kids don't get it they say kids don't die from it unless they're in a risk group and they say that then part of the reason why we flattened the curve because early on they say elementary school kids don't get it but we gotta prevent them from taking it home

116and giving it to grandma and grandpa and telling grandma and grandpa unanimously and if there's another study i'd be happy to look at it if you tell me about it but germany france iceland all said kids don't die from it unless they're in a risk group and they don't pass it to grandma and grandpa so um you know when when i look at it our case is up yeah but when you test for the case you're gonna get a case when this started we were measuring the death percentage and now we've kind of gone into this huxley and thing and i would encourage everybody to be re-braving the world and then the brave new world revisited into this we're going to protect everybody from everything and nobody's going to get it that's not a realistic

117goal and so when you look at we went from 15 days to flatten the curve to we're going to shut off socialization i think that's what a lot of people are looking at and so you know i don't know if you know of any other contact studies other than those three that show a different conclusion but every contact the those are the only three i know of so if there's 18 of them out there then that means i don't know about 15 of them but you know i and that's a concern to me because you know when we were in march none of us thought we'd be here in may in may we're like that time summer's over we'll all there's no way we're not going back to school in the fall right and so

118i'm sure people are sitting here like if we put it back to january 5th it'll be solved by that with the fear that's out there that people are sewing when we get to january 5th there's still going to be people like i still can't go back so what i would like to see is more scientific information put out there so people feel better if you're in a risk a group it makes sense why you're concerned about it but you know if you're a if you're a single mom with a seven-year-old with a kid who's not in in a risk group we shouldn't be instilling that moment with fear about putting you back in school i mean at least not according to this there should definitely be precautions and there should be an understanding that this

119is a high risk activity to return your seven-year-old child into a classroom with however many other children is definitely going to be high risk no matter what when you look at it but the risk versus reward if that child is abd or needs special ed services or is just basically can't can't learn at home in the home environment or the parents can't now now can't go to work and put food on the table then obviously the child needs to go back to school but to say oh it's perfectly safe is absolutely irresponsible it is not perfectly safe and that's the bottom line there's been data on a daily basis coming from all the states across the country that show that when the kids go back to school the numbers go up not just with the

120kids and yes kids are dying and not necessarily in high risk groups kids are dying kids are giving you this inflammatory disease and dying a very painful suffering death they're taking it home not just to their grandparents not just a high-risk people but to everybody they're taking it home and they're spreading it just like people who work at the so which study shows that because the three studies i know of deny that okay so i don't know what studies they are i see the data that comes across my desk which has been pulled from numerous different data sources but i also watched you know the news and the governor's reports and the all of the reports coming across the country that show that the numbers go up two weeks after the schools are reopening so

121it is happening i don't think that that's like a forgive a a you know predetermined outcome i think that the precautions that we're taking are what are going to prevent the spread and it's going to make it so that we can return so in con in to to talk about what we were talking about how it went from 15 days to slow the curve to now we don't want anybody to get it well people are still getting it people are still dying a lot of people were still dying if you look at the numbers up until just recently we had almost 200 people a day dying just in this state from coven so to say that we're trying to prevent everybody from getting in is just ridiculous we know that's not possible experts know that's

122not possible what is possible though is to try and minimize it so that our icu units can handle these patients and possibly not let them all die so no it hasn't gone from a switch of vape or whatever let's use the baby switch whatever it was you said it hasn't gone from that it's gradually gotten more detailed information and so it's become more understood it's become more detailed as far as what can we do to stop what are our positivity rates how many people in a hundred thousand are coming up positive and yes we're testing more people so we're going to get more cases but that positivity rate gives us a different perspective that tells us how many of the people being tested are having them that's why the science and everything is changing is

123because we have more data and if you say there's not enough science then i strongly encourage you to go to code19.ca.gov and look because there's lots of science it's updated every single day people in my office are the ones involved with providing that data to the governor is not the government making the decisions autonomously he is listening to the experts and making decisions that will help everybody so that's all i can see everybody state level uh reports saying that um let's see where it was state number reports that's publicly available later on child proven 19 cases in the united states the american academy of pediatrics and the children's hospital association are collaborating to collect and share all publicly available data from the states on childcover 19 cases and the number that they report is 10.9

124of all cases and states reporting cases by age over 741 000 children have tested positive for coca-19 and that doesn't count the asymptomatic ones who have not been tested so yeah pretty significant so how many of those kids it was supposed to kill us all and it's not well my understanding when it began before we get too far off into the bushes on this they were bringing it to flatten the curb they were bringing it down so that they could stop up on all the supplies and hospital rooms and stuff that we would need to be able to deal with that would have wired everything out and they've gotten to that point now if you look at what's going on back on the east coast it's built up again and it's starting to get bigger

125numbers than it was in the beginning and coming this way not only that but i heard recently that there's a man overseas somewhere in bloomsburg that has gotten a second form of coping and there's also [Music] there was one other thing he got a second form of covenant and then in china i'm sorry can we do a sidebar on this because it's already imported came there are about 26 or eight public comments that you might want to hear before anything sorry misspoke but are you are you ready for that sorry okay sure okay this one is from jason barinsky our children currently attend wilson c riles we plan to continue with distance learning because it is the safest option for our family but we have some comments concerns that we would like addressed one based

126on what we read in the plan our kids will possibly be getting all new teachers because we choose to continue with distance learning to us it seems very disruptive to switch all the teachers in the middle of the school year we have children with special needs and my wife is in constant contact with the teachers to get accommodations and such having to rebuild those teacher and parent teacher relationships is going to add stress to what already is a less than ideal and stressful education experience what is the district and wilson c rile staff going to do to help this transition be as smooth as possible number two we also don't understand why you are looking at putting students and staff back in the classroom when covet is spiking again and most experts expect the numbers

127to increase even more in the winter even though we are choosing distance learning we are concerned of the impact that a coded outbreak at the center unified schools will have on the community we hope that the school district is making decisions based on science and not politics what is the district going to do if there is a major outbreak will all students go back to distance learning from a cjusd teacher please consider setting a return to school date of no earlier than january 5th consistent student education as well as providing a safe and healthy educational environment for cjusd students teachers and families must be the main priorities as we deal with coven 19. returning to school in january has the following benefits support of families and faculty almost 50 percent of our families have elected

128to stay in the current distance learning model 80 of the cjus teachers support a return date of january 5th 2021 or later distance learning has been a time-consuming challenge for all stakeholders a later return under the hybrid model gives teachers and families more time to prepare for completely new routines another change so close to the end of the semester is disruptive and difficult for students and teachers it would be better to start fresh at the semester by waiting we provide consistency to our students and teachers some districts in our area have already returned and within the first week had groups of students and teachers test positive several districts in our area have already voted to stay in the distance learning model until january additionally please consider these negative effects there is no guarantee that the

129hybrid model will provide a better education for students to students it's not the same quality of education that existed pre-coping many teachers are concerned and anxious about their personal health and the health of the their immediate and extended families this added stress is already taking its toll on teachers the progress of this pandemic could be much worse over the next few months cases are soaring uncontrollably nationwide and experts predict a spike in cases over the holidays rushing to return to school during the cold and flu season and during the time students and families are traveling for the holidays is not a good idea the district has gone has done a lot of work to create a plan to address safety and protection through mass and distancing but does not have the capability to update ventilation

130or provide proven testing to students and staff this prevents a completely safe return please above all prioritize the safety of our students and teachers in considering this option a return of no earlier than january 5th provides the consistency we need and a better chance at safely returning from jessica katzen i am an elementary teacher in the center joint district i just want to take a moment to consider this question what's the rush i feel this reopening is happening too prematurely as scientists and leaders have said we are entering the most challenging months of this virus flu season every year sorry every year i have the sniffles cough sneeze etc when the season changes along with countless staff students and families we will all be removed from the classroom every time this happens if it is

131a cold and not covered when can we return to in-person learning what about when kiddos have these symptoms how are parents supposed to take care of them when they have their jobs to attend to these are questions our district has not answered to yet do i miss in-person interactions with my students yes do i want to teach as i was trained to in the classroom yes but at the same time is november and flu season the best time to do this when the rest of the sacramento school districts have decided to start later in the year why do we need to reopen months before i think later in the year seems more reasonable and so does the majority of the teachers in center unified usb when surveyed most said a january and beyond start date

132is what they would choose let's have the colder months behind us and be able to safely return to in-person learning so i leave you with my first question what is the rush thank you and then this one is from karen i am disappointed until at least january this one is from angelina hughes if the mou is not signed or if the teachers union does not agree to the november 9th start date what are the alternatives or is there another plan for instruction [Music] and also again from angelina hughes does a student who signed up for hybrid in-person learning have the option to distance learn until after the winter break all right so just so people don't think we're ignoring them the district will follow up with you to answer your specific question um and i

133do have one that was thanking you guys you'd like to hear that one or would you like me to forward that to you guys um i appreciate all the attention and time that the board and all the admin have placed into listening to the concerns of the community and answering all our questions it shows that you have the stakeholder's best interest in mine thank you and again that one came much later but that was from angelina hughes and i still have more coming in so are they on this item i i'd say go through all of them [Music] all right uh angelina hughes said what are other sac county schools doing about reopening their schools and then she said there are only 24 days of instruction between the estimated november 9th start date and the

134hybrid plan until winter break thanksgiving break is in the middle of these instruction days which usually means that people will be gathering the family and friends outside of their household this increases the risk of our students staff and community of becoming exposed to the virus again with only 24 instructional days in my case with both my children in high school it is only about 12 in class days i'm hoping that we can hold off the start of the hybrid learning model until after the winter break this one is from naisha harris knott i saw on the news this morning that if a person has coven 19 and is asus a systematic it only takes up to 15 minutes for another person can catch coco 19. we are still in red in california i believe that

135we should not return until we are yellow and past flu season all right this one is from latoya jenkins hello my name is latoya jenkins and i will love to be involved in helping get the kids back in school also i would like to bring a physical dance group to all of the schools this one is from gabriela hughes she's a student as a student i feel that starting the hybrid learning in january january would be a better and safer transition for the following reasons one changing of class routines would be easier two it would give more time for the teachers to prepare for the transition three i feel that the risk of catching covet will be lower in the new year thank you for your time again from latoya jenkins will the teachers change

136in the cohort program from leia edwards what will happen to classified employees if we return at a later date in january like transportation will we continue to work on site before january and this one is from tanisha j why is it that when questions or concerns are posed to the board via comment section during the meetings there is no follow-up for resolution if there is no immediate answer or response and she refers to the last meeting where there were concerns that were brought up about distance learning and camera use this is just one example but isn't the first time i have noticed this during meetings unfortunately the lack of follow-up to things that are brought up by parents etc make the board slash district appear as though there is no concern from monica will there

137be a parent choice for am or pm selection for on campus at riles aubry drenin said why can we not come back to school early there are students having trouble learning online and they do better in learning in an in an in-school environment [Music] and from ron j moses the high school does not sound right if that's the case do the middle school and elementary the same from taylor uh it looks like taylor is a student in the district it's regarding blue slash gold how are students being assigned to blue and gold groups from kim baoni why has mcclellan not been addressed in the presentation uh from barbara if a teacher has requested to remain on distance learning who will be in the classroom with the students on campus from stephanie tempe november 6th or

138november 9th date for return i just want to point out at the elementary level that going back november 6th or 9th as i've been told means that the week prior teachers will be setting up their classrooms completing report cards and still teaching online that is a lot to do in that time span especially when many of us are already working many more than our contracted hours from macon in my opinion twin rivers got it right january 19th let us allow families to get through the holidays and have the gatherings we know they will have then give a few weeks before we put the kids back in the classrooms in case kovic pops up at a higher rate due to those gatherings this one is from [Music] uh angelina looks like she is also a student

139what is the exact licensing what exact licensing does a health care professional need how are you going to determine students online get the same type of education as those in class subjects of concern science and math and from monica my two children 11th grade and 7th grade are struggling and ask every day to return to campus we will take whatever we can get and are ready to return november 9th they understand the importance of following social distancing rules and wear masks in order to keep and wearing mass in order to keep campus open thank you this one is from lori it's understandable that there are some families who are afraid or hesitant to return to campus but they have the option to continue distance learning those who make the choice to return to school should

140have that option to return as soon as they can they should be afforded the choice on their situation just like those who choose to stay home one should not interfere with the other or influence when the options are available to either group so i have some new ones that have come in okay from lori okay the health official is fear-mongering the people of our community people need to be considerate to try and not get others sick but that is for any disease just like the flu which kills people every year but why is it okay for adults to go to work why is it okay for daycares to operate but schools cannot why can governor newsom's winery continue to operate if this is such a deadly disease which our children cannot be in school to

141get a full education if these actions and companies can continue to function then there is a double standard or what they personally feel is okay when it benefits them and what they feel is not this one is from hayden harris as a student at center high school i feel absolutely terrified that people on the board don't see covet as severe as it is i've chosen to stay with distance learning but i am now worried about friends and teachers becoming infected sending children to school and saying they have less risk does not mean that there is no risk also i take issue with the high school expecting students still participating in online learning to still get the same information and learn in class when it will be geared towards in class students i will now be

142expected to sit in front of my computer for way longer and with homework i am spending upwards of eight hours all ideas i have heard only leads me to believe students won't be completely safe and stress levels will be way higher another one from latoya i think the school district for trying so hard to return kids back to school we should just wait until after the break i feel if the kids do go back to school we should teach kids for 15 to 30 minutes about coven 19. my kids miss their friends and teachers i have a child who is suffering from mental issues we can have a program for kids who are suffering from that and from hayden harris i feel as though you haven't heard student opinions why haven't you pulled actual students

143to see how we would like to learn on line or not [Music] moses i want to go back to school i miss my friends i understand to wear a mask and i will show by example please allow us back this is not fair i missed my sixth grade [Music] those people that have questions yeah so what we'll do is we'll either respond directly to the emails or someone that put in earlier the idea of like frequently asked questions that we can also put those questions in and then put an answer next to it that anyone go to they're saying sometimes going through the playbook is difficult so i'll work on that tomorrow morning to see if we can get these aggregated and put out and share wonderful thank you very much all right so i

144think we've had lots of discussion do we have a motion [Music] i would like to motion january 5th or after and i will second that motion okay um just want to make sure because of the way that motion is in order are we are we looking for something if it's safe to come back or are we just looking for is it january 5th assuming it's safe to come back then correct and i would want to make sure that or after is we would like it to be a specific date january 5th and with the caveat mr wilson that you said obviously situations could change all right would you take that as a friendly amendment with the caveat of it being cleared and safe that is a friendly amendment all right and your second still stands

145all right we have a motion and we have a second to assuming that uh conditions are safe and clear that it will be uh january 5th or after is that stated correctly yes all right any other comments on that are we ready for a vote okay all right we have a vote um do we have unanimous consent yes all right that is your canvas all right now that brings us to item d governing board vacancy candidate interviews um we only have two this time uh so it should not take as much time as the last meeting um um can we take a like three minute break this is uh anderson sure wait wait um if she if she's not back by the time i'm done take a little break so we have two candidates who

146i think are pretty well known to the board so i think that would make it all that much more harder because i think we like you both so why why couldn't one of you be mean so we shouldn't want to do that um so anyway it appears that we need a small break so um we're going to take just a couple minutes a hiatus and then we'll get back to newton [Music] okay so we're gonna ask some questions and we're gonna just so it's not always the same format we're gonna start with howard we're gonna ask howard question one and then we're gonna ask kelly question one and then kelly you're gonna go first for question two so each question we're gonna review first the order we got asked first we have seven questions um

147so howard if you'll come up and then nancy are you asking the first question if you want to okay okay what you see is the basic purpose of the public schools what is the role of the board of trustees in this moment of that purpose can you hear me i heard you yes thank you again so basic purpose of public schools would be to ensure that children's diverse potentials are fully realized and prepared to live a productive life through rigorous academic instruction and becoming good citizens learning to obey social and legal rules within our society and the role the board of trustees where that would be to be responsible for developing improving the districts mission and strategic goals and objectives and establishing policies relating to the district's programs and services and on a good citizen

148now that i like point out i'm very happy to see some of some of that here in this auditorium tonight over the stage and to the right of the stage i think that's extremely important as it relates to teaching our children in our school systems on how to be a good citizen and to make them fully aware through such facets such as these banners to instill that uh upon them thank you okay do you want me to repeat the question no so the basic purpose of public schools um obviously we need to educate our students but there's so much more that goes on at school that feeds into whether or not we're able to educate students that we really have a very complex and complicated role as educators making sure that the environment they can

149they come to is safe a safe could mean any number of different things it could mean that whoever a predator in their life is not there that they have a safe place to talk about their feelings that it's safe from violence but it's safe from bullying and abuse all kinds of things that feed into whether or not the environment is safe but we do need to create a safe environment so that students can succeed in what they feel passionate about not just about math reading history those things are all fabulous but building passion into that and building a desire to educate to learn is really the crux of what a school needs to do and it also is a place where we provide opportunities to build their moral fiber to be creative to share their

150ideas and to develop their self-worth how they feel about themselves and knowing where their place is in the world so it's pretty complicated but an education involves a lot of things thank you um and then mr you take a question too kelly this is for you can you hear me i was going to take my mascot too actually i'll try not to get too close to the mic what is your highest priority to accomplish as a board member the last time i was asked this question i said was to keep the district solvent let me explain why i say that if the district isn't solvent we don't have a district and we can't educate the students so the number one priority in my eyes is to make sure that we are making wise fiscal decisions

151wise hiring decisions that we're managing our budget and managing the funding and that we're advocating for funding and that we're using the funding wisely to best support our students family and community so for me the most important thing as a board member is to watch that budget would you like me to repeat the question though uh yes please okay what is your highest priority to accomplish as a board member so the highest rat i would like to ensure is the physical responsibility of the board having been a member of this community for the last 31 years since 1989 and learning of history prior to that this board in this district has been known for its physical responsibility which my understanding has made it rated one of the best districts in the state as it relates

152to how we deal with our funding our financing how we spend our money what we spend it on et cetera and so forth so there are you know lots of educational issues that face center and each must be resolved in order of priority i think musical responsibility is at the top of the list along with the actual education of our children of course and the security of those children when they are within the realm of our responsibility at our facilities uh so it's essential that we make sure that we have the finite finite revenues allocated to the district and make sure that they are sufficient to meet our needs and be sustainable and i would strive to ensure that would be my one of my highest priorities [Applause] thank you um so howard as trustee

153what would you see is your primary purpose and how would you fulfill that world so my primary purpose i believe would be to maintain the highest levels and standards and rigorous learning goals for the children in a safe environment as i spoke up a moment ago and ensuring that the children receive the highest education by having really high expectations from them research over the last quarter century has consistently supported that one of the keys to closing the achievement gap of students advantage and us advancing students and for raising overall achievement is to ensure that that there is always going to be high rigorous academic achievement having high expectations of that the best way to develop high achievement is to collaborate how to help the school environment combat negativism defeatism and resistance and having a solution

154orientated no blank professional environment that involves the efforts of students faculty staff parents and the community thank you so as a trustee what do you see as your primary purpose and how would you fulfill that purpose so the primary purpose in my eyes of what a school board member does is to work together with the other board members to ensure that the district is being properly run that we're meeting the community's needs that we're meeting the students needs the staff and faculty the faculty's needs making sure that things are being run above board physically responsible reviewing the safety that we're reviewing everything that crosses our desk that really is critical to have those extra eyes looking at everything and making sure that things are getting done the role of the board is to supervise the

155superintendent but we also are representatives of the community and that's in order to represent the community we have to know what the community wants and we have to take a very ethical approach to how we do that job making sure that we are doing the best possible job we can to review everything read everything listen to what people have to say and just ensuring that things are being done not only legally physically responsibly but just morally ethically that things are going well we're the extra set of eyes that the superintendent needs thank you five cents advice mr bruno what would you do if you believed administrators had not provided you with accurate and complete information for making a decision first of all congratulations mr bruno [Laughter] so if if i'm requesting information from an administrator

156it's going to come through the superintendent um i would never go directly to another administrator and ask them for information i might as a board member say we would like to see a report but that report would be would be routed through the proper channels and it would come to the now if i thought there was something inaccurate about it then i would definitely discuss that with the superintendent because he is the one that would need to then discuss it down the line to the administrator who provided the information so for me it's really a matter of the chain of command if information doesn't seem right i'm definitely going to question it but who will i question i'm not going to i'm not going to go to a kindergarten teacher and say how come your

157third grade your your children aren't learning their abcs i'm not going to do that i'm going to go to the superintendent who's going to go to the principal who's going to go to the teacher who's then going to report back up so you just have to follow that proper shade of command we can't be poking our noses into every little bit piece of what's going on operationally in the district that's not the purpose of questions thank you howard would you like your question repeated uh yes what would you do if you believed administrators had not provided you with accurate and complete information for making a decision first i would make sure i took a systematic approach to the issue and determined what i would need to evaluate and consider making sure that i was aware

158of any policy procedure guidelines for precedence that existed as related to the information that was providing me and the decision uh if a decision was made that decision was in fact made now we determine if it would be necessary to include the office of the superintendent of the district and try to not check that information if possible if the information was data driven i would attempt to go to the source and compare and verify that information for my my own information to be able to address the issue and if the issue decision had already been made i would attempt to ensure it comply with all appropriate rules laws and regulations at a district county and state level thank you mrs anderson how does an effective school board ensure opportunities for parents and community members to

159express their diverse range of views to inform board deliberations on important policy issues well first and foremost i think that he would have to be it's necessary and required to be open and transparent uh in order to address such issues and to also to ensure that things that we do as a district uh as it relates to transparency are being conducted so that there aren't any issues such as live streaming this board meeting as an example one of the things i noticed this evening is the participation from parents and staff that were piped through through carroll to the board that is not something i've seen in the past i think so that that's something that kind of opens us up to being able to better communicate with our community uh with our students with our

160faculty and staff and of course our students so other things like you would do would be to visit schools attend open houses and attend the various advisory committees that take place and then to lost my lost my place uh an example of some additional things that we could think about in the future would be um having a platform perhaps that would be connected to our website that would allow things like blogging ask questions or or some kind of a social media medium that we would control internally that where we could get information share information provide information to our students faculty parents and community okay thank you thank you [Music] yes how does an effective school board ensure opportunities for parents and community members to express their diverse range of views to inform board deliberations on

161important policy issues so how do we ensure that we're getting community input it's a really tough question um i mean there's a number of ways that we can do it how do we do it though really it's important and mrs pope you've demonstrated this over and over it's just really important to get out there and talk to people and i know [Music] probably cutting cutting myself off at the feet here but i know i'm not the best about getting out and talking to people on a one-on-one basis but i am committed to doing that um more i mean i've attended football games and worked this back bar and gone to plays and supported music events and gone to the top ten dinners and you know a variety of things that i tend to migrate to

162but i think it's really more important to get out to the schools when the parents are going to be there for open house and make sure that you make yourself available to talk to people and listen to people it's really important that they feel comfortable coming to you i loved what mr bruno said about you know gosh let's keep this open dialogue going this is fabulous i'm so glad that we got all this information we need to build that more with our parents and families as well and um i guess the only way to do that is to just get out there and talk to people and make sure that they know you're available and that you're listening and that you are not just listening but you're responding it's nothing worse than filing a complaint

163or making a suggestion and nobody even responds you know it's like oh why did i hold it so if people are going to provide information it's really imperative for us to respond to that information in a constructing a an organized manner i know that when i was the president it was my responsibility to respond to community you know requests and i think that that's a really good policy to follow that we're keeping one standard response and that we're not giving mixed messages or all over the board so sometimes it feels like people are not responding when in actuality what we're doing is we're ensuring that our response is is collaborative collaborative and and accurate before responding so yeah listen put yourself out there and make sure you respond thank you thank you let me do

164this and you can hear me please summarize the strengths you bring as a board as a member of the board okay um so i didn't spend eight years on the board here and enjoyed every minute of it and i think i contributed a lot to this district as well as learned a lot from the district in addition to that i have 11 years of experience working in education as an administrative assistant i worked with the maintenance and operations department i worked with the finance department i worked with the student services department all three completely different environments within the district uh and so in a really well-rounded experience in what goes on in various departments and offices and within the district and i come from the family of educators i love to teach myself i've taken

165many opportunities to teach classes in computers when i've had a chance to teach to my peers at work my grandmother was the first teacher in the state of arizona and my father was a teacher my sister's a teacher and we are just a very strong fan strong believers in education as a whole in addition to that i come with a new perspective and that is from public health where i've learned so many things not just about public health but about procedures and data and collaboration and just how to really work well as a team how to analyze data and use it in your decision making and bottom line is is that i really take the job seriously and i analyze everything i've always obviously always read at least the board packet if not further research

166beyond that to make sure that i'm understanding what the decisions are that we're needing to make um and then as i just mentioned in addition to that i will make a commitment right here now that i will get out and talk to the community talk to parents and students and families and bring that into my decision making as a board member that's two thank you shall i repeat the question should i repeat this yes summarize the strengths you bring as a member of the court um so i think in terms of efforts and adjectives honesty dependency partiality dedication and i could go on and on and on i think all of them are key to being an effective board member and i believe i have all those traits uh which i if you are or

167a strength that you're inquiring about i have a passion and deep interest in the mission of the district uh strong stewardship to others and the ability to understand uh the budget um on a personal more personally my moment with the district over the years has been uh if you see the banner behind me the susquehanna centennial i was a member of that committee and that 1858 uh i was actively involved in verifying that was the actual date of the year that this district was established um i didn't vote for that banner though you know we had like six or eight or ten they were all great and this one's great i love this one but uh i didn't vote for that one [Music] since 2000 2008 i became involved in promoting uh measure n a

168five hundred thousand dollar uh school bond that was passed by this community and i've been active on that uh was asked by this just clarification i think that was 500 million right 500 you're talking about the school bond authorization because 500.000 [Music] which is hopefully going to take us with school construction in this district hopefully through the next next 30 years so i've been involved on that um committee pretty much since the committee was i was asked to participate at the first grouping first the first set of terms of people that are participating on that committee uh last year i was voted by the committee to be the vice chair and also besides the susquehanna centennial and the boc i was also for a period of time up to about i'm not sure when you

169might remember better than i but uh was one of two of the community members that was part of the i.t advisory committee and so that's been my that's been my personal involvement and those i believe are some of the strengths that i would bring to this board thank you um we have one question mr bruno do you want me to take it or do you want to take it i'll go ahead okay so um identify a recent board decision that you felt strongly about and tell us how you would balance the community concerns with state and federal law student concerns staff concerns how on a controversial issue how would you balance all funding you should bring up that question we have this thing i'm going through right now called covant you might have heard of

170that man the discussion this evening by this board is a perfect example of such such decision making that has to take place and my my position is to do what is best for the children do what's best for the staff and the community it was interesting to hear this evening the discussion around when to return in fact i had the opportunity to spoke speak briefly with superintendent lair about you know a little bit about you know some of the plans going forward and looking at what this district has done in relationship to other districts uh and i've been keeping abreast trying to keep abreast of that and different keeping up on current news is not necessarily that everything should fit into to one one box one square box it um i think that the the

171the current path that this district is taking i was especially uh very interested in the surveys that were conducted i think that was a great approach to find out how you know your your teachers your students your staff and feel about moving forward and which direction they would like they feel that they need to go and to taking that all accountable in your decision-making process so with that said i think it's extremely important to balance communities and the students and the faculty and at the same time adhering to state local federal laws as as well as any board of education regulations so as it relates to my personal beliefs i think that what should i inspire would take places is that this board is a body should work together in determining what is best for

172the district based on the information that you're receiving from from staff and i think then you folks are doing a really good job that's fine thank you kelly sure so identify a recent board decision you felt strongly about and describe how you would balance community concerns state and federal law staff consideration student news so if there's like a controversial just how would you balance all of those points of views deal with it so it seems redundant to talk about code again but really that is first and foremost in everyone's mind and it's definitely controversial and it's definitely extremely important and you know i'd love to say we need to do what's best for the students and community and faculty but it's really not very clear what's best of what they want we get complete polar

173opposite you know opinions why are we open yet my child needs to go to school it's way too soon we need to open now it's just here it's people are dying i mean it's just the coin just flips back and forth and back and forth so how do you how do you analyze them um and i'm like howard i'm sorry i don't know how it's less thing but as howard said the the surveys were fabulous the input from the teachers thank you for providing you know a means for the board to hear from the teachers and all of that information is critical and even with all that information it still can get heated it still could be you know polarizing people not agreeing on what's the right thing because a point where you have to

174absorb all the information that you possibly can and make a decision based on that and then once the board makes a decision as a board then it's all for all for one it's not one for all it's all for one you know whatever the board decision is then we are all behind that decision 100 up to that point you really have to just do your research do your your debate make your points [Music] get your opinion in there and really just thrash it all out i mean sometimes putting an opinion out there is what gets your opinion changed because it opens the door to constructive and healthy conversation which is what happens in these board meetings is healthy constructive conversations so in addition to all the data and and your own opinions and your own

175um feelings about what is right and what is wrong you do have to work together as a board and make those decisions and then stand by those decisions [Music] we're very lucky to have such strong candidates for as many positions as we have all right so we've asked all the questions um is there any discussion yes it's gonna be a hard choice i think it's a hard choice it truly it truly is a hard choice both of you have experienced both of you have experience in different ways one of the things that and if i'm out of order tell me scott i don't think i'm out of order i thought both of you gave great response to question five just my own personal bias one of the things i think is important earlier in the

176meeting i called kelly back on purpose because one of the things that either one of you said that a part of really being effective i think is showing other people respect i know both of you believe that so i'm not saying either but the reason why earlier i pulled kelly back was to demonstrate that you know kelly and i have always gotten along we served on the same board we didn't always agree but we always treated people with respect i think if that had been in any other forum when especially on an emotional issue like this they degenerating the shouting matches name calling things like that so i think on my way out the door i wanted to take a chance regardless of which one of you gets picked i really believe that's why this

177board and this staff and the school district has worked the way that it has even when i haven't agreed with somebody you know and i jokingly always pick mrs woods or or whatever i've always tried to treat everybody with respect now the truth is we get along we sit next to each other at the football games we probably don't disagree that much other than when we're ribbing each other but but the point is that that's i won't be here so i guess it won't be my problem but that's kind of the legacy that that i would that i want i did that on purpose to illustrate because i really think that that has been the strength of us as a team not just this board but the teachers cuta csea we have made a deliberate

178effort to treat each other with respect now does that mean sometimes i don't like marie a little bit more because she brings me coca-cola chocolate cake well that's a different discussion but i so i i only bring that not to take us astray but regardless of who gets picked and you know there's another seat coming back i would love when i'm away to know that regardless of who's making what choices that that respect for everybody is still dead and so i i'll take one thing out of order but before i can declare it out order it'll be out of my mouth so i do love all of you um and i will miss you so with that do we have any more discussion on this or um any motion i have a comment to make

179when i received the packets i looked them over and actually the comment that i made in superintendent was not only do we have two candidates who are both legally qualified we have two candidates who are well qualified and after having interviewed you guys vatican has not changed you guys are both really well qualified and whichever one of you doesn't get chosen please apply for the upcoming vacancy i would welcome working with either one of you i don't know what he said yeah exactly come back to the next meeting please all right do we have a motion on the floor i know we don't have mushroom does anybody want to make it motion i will make a look okay again please there's another seat next month but i do motion for kelly kelly okay we have

180a motion for kelly kelly do we have a second a second we have a second by mrs anderson all right and i will do this the same way we did it last time unless you don't want to last time we took multiple can i say something with that sure that doesn't reflect anything on you howard please come back to the next position so i really don't came back it's really a tough decision um okay um do we have another emotion all right so what we did last time we took multiple motions and i will do the unusual thing i think howard at least deserves emotion so i will make the motion that we also consider howard is there a second sure i'll second that okay so we have the motion in a second all right

181so we have two motions on the floor we'll vote on them in order first motion that was made was for kelly kelly um any discussion on kelly kelly specifically or do we just want to go is it the pleasure of the board to just simply vote on it or do you want to discuss it okay so yeah somebody wants to discuss it is there any discipline so there's not all right so um mrs anderson there is a motion and a second to uh confirm kelly kelly to take this spot hi okay mrs anderson is i'm mrs pope all right it's pope design mr bruno hi mr bruno's eye so i guess i will do the same thing that i did the last time i see the writing on the wall so unanimous it is but

182um howard i think congratulations to kelly kelly but howard i i think you've heard enough from this board tonight that you will be well served coming back next month and i do not believe i'm out of order saying that i think we all know the service to your district your service to the district got to go over it a little bit a lot of it was behind the scenes but i think through this process you've proved to the people here that you would be the leading candidate for next month so thank you for your time and your effort and do not go away yes we won't let it okay i didn't have anybody left me up against um all right so future meeting dates regular meeting is wednesday november 18th 2020 at 6 pm uh

183here are there any suggested agenda items so there is the item on there for the governing board so we would have the oh you guys made a determination but we would vote on the resolution then it points her to that position that's right okay so keep that in mind we'll go back to that so um do we have a motion on so we already have the motion to make the person just going and see kelly kelly but i guess we need to go through a paperwork thing of putting it in the actual resolution all right i figured we'd do that at once but maybe not so do we have a motion to um a point in the resolution kevin kelly yes on motion we have a motion by mrs poe do we have a second

184and we have a second by mrs anderson i believe we've discussed this but just in case any discussion do we have unanimous consent yes all right so we're done with that so any suggested agenda items for the november 18th meeting not hearing any we don't have any reason for continuation of closed session do we have a motion to adjourn we have a motion by mr bruno do we have a second no second we have a second by mrs anderson do we have unanimous consent yes yes [Music] i just realized this past night that 97