4/7/2021 Board of Education Meeting

001caitlin's in do we have a clicker microphone microphone here i go okay there i am again i would like to call the april 7th meeting of the chico board of education to order and um if we could have the flag salute please flags over there i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and i'd like to announce that member dalby has joined us by zoom caitlin is the volume good for you everything sounds good here how am i on your end great i don't know what to do thank you good evening next is announcements does anyone have an announcement this evening we do have some announcements we have a student here from

002pleasant valley high school who'd like to celebrate one of the accomplishments at pleasant valley and however introduce yourself just a reminder to speakers to please leave your mask on the volume is picked up pretty easily on the microphone so welcome all right hi my name is naina shaelish and i'm a junior at pleasant valley and i would just like to briefly touch on the progress that we've made in the equity alliance and also the pv saga so for the equity alliance we've kind of just started with having conversations and although we're in our first steps i think that it's going to be a great way to empower students and i'm really really happy that we've actually implemented this into the school i know that there's tons of students that are really excited to see the

003changes that we're going to make also as for the pv saga it's also been a really great outlet for students to voice their opinions and express how they feel and we came up with our first issue a little bit ago and we're on our second issue and it's just one of those things that's going to be really great for our students because i think that just giving students a voice in general is what's really important to make our school more inclusive and help adults and everybody around campus really recognize what everyone's going through especially during times like covet so yeah i think that there's great things that are going to come from both of these things thank you thank you and i did email the board the link to see the saga they did a

004fabulous job for their first edition so congratulations yes we missed it for years it was i waited for it to be placed on my desk in a afternoon presentation of the saga great um okay any other announcements i have one more announcement we're really excited that this week this friday we're going to be hosting a chico pv football series in addition to the other sports that are currently competing we know people have been waiting a long time to see our student athletes out and about and we're we're already fielding quite a few inquiries about the the safety guidelines for this friday and we just want to remind the public that we do need to abide by the california department of public health and butte county public health guidelines which include a voucher system each participant

005including coaches will receive four vouchers and they'll need to come in family unit household um they'll be socially distanced in the bleachers and we're really excited about the opportunity for all our student athletes not just football as of right now and this will be described as discussed later we have multiple sports competing some seasons have already completed and we just appreciate the support from the from the community and from the school board yes we are getting really good coverage in local news media on the results of our competitions i really appreciate that any further announcements okay um our next uh item is item number three the consent calendar these are items that are routine in nature and can generally be moved in one motion but if anyone would like to pull an item from the

006consent calendar for further discussion please indicate now that also includes a member of the public if you would like to have a a consent calendar item pulled for further discussion now would be a time to indicate that so business services consent calendar members your pleasure dr kaiser i'd like to move the approval of the consent calendar is there a second second thank you mr tennis i'd like to get a quick point of clarification um would it be appropriate for me to recuse myself due to 3.1.4 approval of the well at nord yeah okay yeah you're good mind no further comments okay remember since this is our first vote of the night we'll be doing it by individual member indicating their vote uh member dalby let's go first with you caitlin dolby i thank you dr

007kaiser mr tennis tennis eye lando i robinson i passes five zero thank you members okay item number four is our discussion um action calendar and i'd like to begin excuse me begin with a couple of clarifications so that we're all on the same page as to how we are proceeding and why we got here our discussion um action calendar tonight represents an item for because the center of disease controls changed social distancing guidelines back on the 19th of march prior to february 3rd when the board last acted there had been many changes throughout the months preceding that board vote on february 3rd the board voted to remain with the am pm model that it had been in since october with some modifications through the end of the year but on march 19th the cdc changed

008guidelines for k-12 to three feet for student desks and six feet for teachers march 22nd in consultation with the superintendent i made a decision to place the item on the april 7th board meeting agenda because without placing it on an agenda board members could not discuss amongst themselves anything related to that latest decision so in order to protect us and honor the the brown act for public discussion and action only by an elected board i decided to put the item on the april 7th meeting agenda to discuss and have a presentation and answer questions an administration was asked at that time to do both student and parent surveys and collect other information as deemed necessary by the superintendent and other administration including site principals the cota surveyed teachers and provided results and comments to board

009members csea surveyed classified staff and provided results and comments to the board and community tonight there is a presentation by staff responding to the many questions raised by the board and others during this time the board should fully engage with the presenters because if a vote to reconsider is not made and passed after public input there will be no further board discussion and the matter will remain settled for this school year the process for reconsideration or reconsidering a previous decision at a later date past that meeting which was february 3rd requires a unique steps or requires unique steps because this decisions once fully discussed and decided are meant to be final and we use um in our proceedings the rosenberg's rules of order only a member on the prevailing side of the february 3rd vote

010may make a motion to suspend the rules and consider a reconsideration motion it must receive a second and a two-thirds majority vote if the motion to suspend passes then the item is back on the floor and any member may make a motion as though it were before the body for the first time any member yes a point of clarification yes sir um so am i given that i was on the nose i think i was on the nose side of that um am i able to make a motion to reconsider the february 3rd decision uh if you made a motion to reconsider according to our guidelines you would be declared out of order if a motion to reconsider is made and on the floor you may second it but you may not make the motion

011to reconsider am i allowed to make comments during any point in this on this item if if there's not a motion made will i have any opportunity to speak on this matter our opportunity for comment will be during the presentation if a motion to reconsider is not successfully passed there is no discussion it's on page six of our rules that i did forward to you um but that that would be the case discussion has to be after a successful motion to put something on the floor and if that has not occurred there is no discussion but you may you may question whoops any of the things brought before us tonight during the presentation it's all open for further class clarification so that you have a full scope understanding of exactly what we're facing in uh

012getting us to the end of the school year that's the purpose of the presentation so ask away thank you you're welcome okay members um the um the item will now be turned over to jay marchand assistant superintendent educational services mr marchant thank you president robinson as mr robinson stated before we wanted to go over our presentation with the new facts that came forward with the new cdc cdc guidelines and the california public department of health guidelines and we will be giving that presentation tonight i just want to make sure everybody understands that we are giving basically considerations not pros or con but considerations for the board to think about tonight and if you have any questions on those considerations that we'll be moving forward please ask them and myself or one of my directors some

013will respond to the questions okay all right again on march 19th the cdc and then the college department of public health changed the language we changed it from four foot to three foot to make the consideration the general consideration says three foot distance distancing sorry go back one three foot distancing for students and and then staff desks at least six feet away um from the students maintaining a minimum of three feet between student chairs is strongly recommended general considerations that we're going to be going over tonight i'll be going over some of the general considerations and then mr sullivan the director of elementary will be going over the elementary considerations and mr john shepard the director of secondary will be going over the secondary considerations to think about general considerations for all settings three-foot distancing

014for all students six-foot distancing for all adults transportation adjusting routes in a number and a number of drivers other things to consider is nutrition services lunch delivery and supervision because right now um we do not have students out for lunch and so we would need to consider what that would look like custodial cleaning cycles revert to pre-coded one-time daily schedule right now where our custodians go and the elementary's in between the am and pm and then after school programs cards need one month to start so what cards asked us it said they would need to go out and recruit if we changed our child care supervision or after school programs to after school right now they do it during the school they would need to do recruiting they believe that they would need about a

015month to hire the the proper people for that other things increase of in-person instruction time we've gone that would change from am pm to full day social emotional support would be more available all day for students versus am pm scheduling of students is another consideration to think about and that'll be part of the elementary and secondary's presentation student academic supports tutorials extended day et cetera to address learning loss and credit recovery and potentially need to hire additional staff including paraprofessional staffs yes mr tennis um talk about um paraprofessional staff what is what is that that would be more on the classified side we probably most likely would have to hire more supervision campus supervisors yard duty aides to help us with supervision to make sure everybody's following the guidelines possible more aids for the classrooms

016right now they're being pulled for workday supervision and other type of programs and so we would need to take a look at what we would need to add to make sure that we can go back full time i see that social emotional support is one of the goals has there been discussion about hiring additional counseling staff yes on our last board meeting when we went over the escrow dollars the federal dollars of state dollars the board approved for us to add another half-time counselor on every elementary school we've also have grant money to hire another half-time wellness counselor on every high school and we have some more consideration in the budget um for you guys to look at tonight about adding more counseling supports at the secondary level so a half time would be theoretically

017ones one one counselor at every elementary right now they have a half time so about secondary um did you say secondary or high school um secondary right now every um junior high in high school have the regular counseling which goes to the 400 to one but we started about a year year and a half two years ago wellness counselors we added a half time for every first we started with the high schools then we now last year we added a half time for every junior high now we're going to add so everybody can have a full time on their campus so be one person it wouldn't be one person for wellness they can develop wellness centers thank you all right mr marchand i'm going to check it with board member dolby to make sure that

018she's able to hear the presentation and that that she has her volume on so we can hear her if she wants to jump in will that work for you member dolby yeah thank you thank you um yeah all right at this time i'm going to ask mr sullivan um to come up to the mic and go over elementary considerations good evening uh so some of the considerations are pretty elementary focused that we've been talking about if the board were to choose to come back full time this year if every student came back full time we really wouldn't have to change any classes there'd be very minimal change minimal disruption if we kind of the second bullet if we talk about having options for families to stay online or kind of go with zoom-based options or

019some of those kinds of things that's where some changes and student changes would have to happen to accommodate that and it it sounds simple but it's a little complex i'll give you one example of what that may look like if you think of a teacher right now that has a morning in person class an afternoon zoom class so maybe they have 15 students in the morning and 10 students on zoom with them in the afternoon if all 10 of those zoom students wanted to stay on zoom we would have to take those 15 students potentially that are with that teacher in person and find another teacher for them to match up with or vice versa we would have to take those 10 zoom based students and find another option with zoom or oak bridge for

020those 10 to stay in that in that um in the online situation for them also so questions yes please oh cathy you want dr kaiser you want to go ahead thank you we had a uh one estimate back in february but then i saw some figures today or yesterday so what is our estimate about the number of students at each level elementary and secondary that would have to undergo a change in class and or teacher we asked the principals to actually call and touch base either they did or staff did and kind of walk through the possibilities because it's really a hard there's a lot of what-if questions yeah so they tried to walk through kind of the what-if possibilities with families so they called almost a thousand folks between all the 12 elementary schools

021and there were about a hundred answers that were very definitive like we do not want to come back we've got family health reasons etc etc they were very desiring to stay online the other about another 300 and some were non-responsive or didn't kind of connect with them or indicated they would rather not not real definitively but pretty neutral or not the other ones were interested in coming back so about half were interested so to answer a question kathy at least a hundred would get changed and potentially up to a 485 which was kind of the number that we didn't hear back from or were not wanting to change and and it might even kind of um this is that what if kind of thing with it also so it might even go a little bit

022more than that depending on how many other students were in that class if we had to change a teacher to a zoom-based class also and that is the same logic for the secondary i thought they had i think secondary is a little different situation i think they're more kind of you know i'll let mr shepard share that though yeah thank you so secondary is a little different in that if we locked people into the schedule they're in now right or not the schedule the delivery method they're in now so if they're online they'd stay online if they're in person they would stay in person if we lock them in we have approximately sections that are 35 students or higher and that's significant in that at three foot spacing when those two when the a and

023the b students come together into one section that's higher than 35 there's a potential for those for there to be too many students in some of the classrooms the average classrooms that we have in the district so those students would then need to be rescheduled and there's a potential for them to be rescheduled in six periods uh thanks okay i have a couple of questions about the elementary slide in mind um so if all students return in person no class changes will be necessary correct um this entails combining the pm groups in the am groups right are we in any danger of maxing out class sizes when we do that their class sizes would be bigger certainly but we could fit within the distance and we've i've gone around to talk to all the principals

024we've actually taken a couple classes and measured with a three foot distancing in place and either there's a couple classes where they may have a trouble fitting and we talked about if that were to come to pass we would have to maybe add hire another teacher for that site because they have another classroom but there's like i think two classes that we've had some questions about whether they could all fit right now i'm sorry one point of privilege real fast can is anyway for the audio folks i'm getting an echo here and it's a little hard to hear what the speakers are saying sorry maybe am i too close that might actually might be a little better thank you um my concern is that um i i have heard from some uh teachers and i'm

025sure you have too that uh combining two these two separate groups and the pm cohorts they might have very different uh skill levels or personalities as a class is going to be a lot of it's going to be effectively a fourth first day of school in a lot of ways and then having to establish a classroom culture with uh in blending these two groups is going to take away a lot of otherwise of times that would otherwise otherwise be used for instruction have you heard these concerns and is it something that you're at all worried about i i i've heard them i think anytime you have a significant class change like what you're referencing it is a restart and it is kind of a re-um connection of the students in that class and kind of

026a re-establishment of all those kinds of things and so if we have 485 students who or families who have who have said they would like to stay online then it's unlikely there won't really be any be no class changes right because the only way we get the no class changes if everyone comes back correct okay so mr lando an example of would that be let's just say there's three third grade classes on one site all three of them have students in am in person let's say 15 15 and 15. and then they have 10 12 and 13 each online one of those teachers most likely would have to go online full and then that teachers 15 that come in person would most likely have to move to those other two teachers classes yeah so odds

027are that unless we simply axe the online option for anybody we are going to see some students moving moving teachers yes only other way if we could find teachers this late in the school year to hire to teach online model this late in the school year that would be the only other option that we we would have and again that's a rough example of i just that's if you're asking if those 485 we were going to have to find full we'd have to move teachers into teaching full-time i hear you i just i see this the first bullet here it's of all students return person no class changes but yeah i don't want to make sure everyone knows reality of this is that that happening the odds of that happening are very slim and there

028probably will be some class changes regardless correct we once again we've had families that were very desiring to stay online and they shared that with us mr tennis so for clarification mr sullivan um you wrote in a note to us there could be between 100 and 485 teacher changes for the elementary school class changes for students yeah class changes for students yeah yeah meaning those students would change teachers yes so um how many total elementary students are there in the system deliver five thousand five thousand five thousand uh-huh so we could have as few as a hundred class changes correct but then for the balance of all those students they would not be displaced in this in this way correct if they agree to come back like that yes thank you mr sullivan yes um

029in uh input that i've had from um elementary and secondary both but but especially elementary the impact of combining just a few kids with another cohort of kids that they were not with earlier in the year is significant and i repeatedly got input that it is such a significant significant culture change and a a re-education of how that class is to function who gets along with whom how to pull out your small groups by accommodating need levels even though the teacher may have some previous experience with the students because they had them in either am or pm that once you put the cohort together the dynamics change significantly i mean this was not a a minimal impact i also heard from um she is a speech and speech and language specialist in the district who

030indicated that [Music] to reschedule of the time and place for assisting the students that are right now having assistance from a speech and language therapist to get help with their language skills so that they can access the curriculum that that vulnerable population of student is particularly susceptible to being negatively impacted by that kind of a change and goes into great detail about the amount of time and trust that is built up with these very vulnerable children that are struggling with those types of disabilities in order to stay up with their class cohorts [Music] do you see this i'm not going to ask you that question because it's impossible i think to know if in two to three weeks can you make it better so that the period of time left before the end of the

031school year evens out and how do you account for that loss in that two to three weeks when we only have seven left that's i'm editorializing rather than asking a question so i'll shut up and i do think um each student is so unique with how they react to change and i do think some would flow with it pretty smoothly i think others it would be really difficult for also they really are very unique with how they react to some of those kinds of situational changes mr tennis i want to confirm one one thing it but it sounds like with respect to the number of students who could be experiencing a teacher change we might be talking about two percent of our student population if i take 100 divided by five thousand i think wouldn't

032want to do some bad math that's two percent that's not a very big representation of our of our student body and on the elementary level if i may editorialize rather than ask a question for just one moment thank you so a third bullet down one of the considerations elementary principles been talking about is just what recesses would look like and how do we schedule and kind of look at our space and how do we use it efficiently effectively so that we can maintain distancing and another big issue that really we've been talking about is teacher supervision expectations before and after school with student supervision and one of the areas for a lot of discussion that came up was us like having lots of students on campus before school if you watch a typical elementary school

033you will see students starting to arrive at 7 15 7 30 potentially and typically they are kind of um supervised in a designated area or two and we depending on you know some of the circumstances of a distancing things we may not be able to do that in our current format or how we've done it be pre-covered before so we'd probably have to do something different with kind of admitting onto campus before school and make some adjustments there so that we could have um students all coming on at the same time potentially going into classrooms we talked about a lot of different possibilities but we couldn't do things where typically you would see a lot of students go in the cafeteria and be there together with maybe 200 students in the cafeteria we couldn't do

034things like that before school and meet the social distancing requirements we'd have to adjust to kind of as far as supervision before school uh same kind of situations with lunch spaces and protocols you know what a lunch room looks like if you've never watched a lunch room during the school day you see a lot of students filtering through and you see a lot of students that are much closer typically than three feet pre-covered kinds of things so we would have to do some significant adjustments and nutrition services has been very helpful and given us some good ideas on what we could do to kind of meet those requirements and even kind of spacing out lunch on the campus and looking at other opportunities there to move forward with something like that if we wanted to

035also and last one as mr marchant mentioned we would certainly have to be doing some additional hiring of staff to supervise if we are spreading students out during lunch time we're going to have more space to kind of supervise and cover for it also so we want to start hiring process sooner than later and make sure we could have enough people to supervise all those students as they're kind of spread throughout the campus and as well yes sorry madame uh madam president i wanna just ruminating on what you said a bit ago i want to get clarification on your a concern i think that maybe you have about making this change is that it'll be difficult for some children to adapt to a larger cohort or a different cohort of children with dead is that

036in essence what you said yes what percent of the elementary school parents because we did not survey elementary school students did we no okay what percent of the elementary school parents want to return to full-time in person i am going to look at mr karis and see if he i do not remember that exact percentage i'll tell my head but i think mr keras might john can you pull that up so we can share the survey results with you here about 76.4 percent it was there were definitely a lot of interest from elementary parents and that was a one-third parents responding elementary so i that's combined it's it's a few slides down from that okay so more than three quarters of those surveyed want their kid back in full time so i i just the

037ones responding that's incorrect the ones that responded i think i said that actually one third of those surveyed oh say sorry you're right you're right okay of those who responded thank you um i would make the point that i think that parents are extremely frazzled right now and i think that a you know for for me you know we don't know conclusively but i i'd say a huge chunk of the the people who did not participate would elect to send their child to full-time in-person school if given the opportunity and i just know that from having been in touch with many many stressed out families who weren't able to to to participate in this survey for those reasons but i mean i'm sure that we're living in an imperfect world and there are going to

038be some children who would have difficulty similar to what you're describing and but please i i was pulling off of the data presented by and she said that i could use her name it's our speech and language specialist callie vernell it was what she i believe you got a copy of her her letter as well yeah so it's me pulling from her information not don't use me as the source i'm i'm not the right specialist but even in that case we're talking about a sliver of our elementary student population that's your interpretation dr kaiser yeah yeah i remind all of us that we are have a legal as well as ethical responsibility to groups that require additional services but i was going to ask you ted and there is some kind of a sound thing

039because we all kind of had a little bit where you weren't real clear i don't mean what you said but i mean hearing um so when you said if you've been in elementary cafeteria yeah it's like somebody stirred up a pot of ants they're all over the place good description throwing food in the garbage can just so they can get out to recess quicker so what would be have to be the time framework of having food presented and somebody watching the kids and how many spaces what we started talking with nutrition services was doing more of a grab-and-go kind of option where a class may walk down to the cafeteria they would have kind of sack lunch style things lined up for them nutrition services could kind of verify just walking through very quickly and

040then students would go to different parts of the campus because we can't fit 300 students in a cafeteria 250 students in a cafeteria like is happening typically so we would be using parts of the campus and kind of adding we've looked at adding additional seating space in some of those kinds of things but students during lunch time instead of sitting in a couple small confined eight spaces would be spread kind of throughout campus different places where we hopefully be comfortable for them but also that's where we need to add some supervision and then also yeah so you would have to have a lot more campus supervision in that context yeah what's the anticipation of the time framework of how long that like with lunch speaking of students and bringing them back in the classroom would

041last vincent cyril yeah online if we want to events do you want to talk along those lines yeah good please at least i was told he was online right while we're waiting for inside dr carson i think um i don't think we need longer time periods for lunch i think nutrition services was comfortable kind of adjusting so if that more of a grab-and-go kind of thing it they can get through quicker and pick up lunch i think there's vince yeah sorry about that go ahead vince we go ahead we repeat the question again it kind of breaks up and i heard part of it repeat it for me one more time please so the query was as we look at you know having to keep the number of kids getting food at one time and

042then going to separate areas to eat and coming back what would be the estimated time framework that would be consumed by quote unquote feeding them lunch and some school support is feeding them breakfast too right right and and i think that in in the last couple of weeks working with ed services that we've come up with um lots of different options for how we can get them through as far as coming in classroom groups and having more of a controlled flow to it and still being able to get that done in the amount of time that's allocated for lunch it would just take a little bit more planning and coordination but i think in the timeline we have time to get that done well i thought we saw some estimates about start times and finish

043times but what you mean like at 7 30 you could get them all fed breakfast and then at 8 10 they'd be in class yes wow thank you vince yes i'm sorry and then at lunchtime the same thing is is they would be able to come down through and pick up their meals and then head to designated areas to eat thank you vince you're welcome uh let's see we asked i asked of uh classified personnel mr cole about hiring of more uh classified lunch supervision personnel it was hard to interpret the note from him maybe somebody may have spoken in person are we sad mr cole i believe this fill those positions he's outside at the door they're going to go get him right now ah okay as we're going out to grab him president

044robinson would you like me to go through the secondary considerations yes go ahead so we talked about the first bullet and we do have some administrators here after we're finished with some general and elementary and secondary considerations to also provide some information we'll get to the slides in a second and as we said there are approximately 115 sections and we did remove from this this number some of these sections that are already considered are usually oversized for example our band sections they have waivers for those sections to be larger so we did reduce the total number of sections for the aggregate total here as director sullivan explained we do need to be thinking about how we're going to socially distance our our students within confined spaces obviously with the weather getting better you know it's

045not quite as much of a concern knowing that if if it is raining and they are inside they need to still be six feet away well while eating their breakfast or lunch it's not a three foot separation we are trying to wrap our mind around ensuring that the communication between students and their teachers continues in some situations and if they are back in in person and they would they obviously would be seeing their teacher every day so there's some as as assistant superintendent marchand explained we're not providing pros and cons we're just trying to provide considerations we are getting into the testing season uh we have multiple assessments we've already started with some of our standardized testing we have advanced placement testing starting we have international baccalaureate testing starting and then we have cumulative testing

046starting so we're getting into that season so we need to be considering pacing if we were to move students back into into the classrooms and and the scheduling for for student curriculum and then as you can see here at the bottom if any of the requests for changes become available we'd have to consider individually how we would address those if the mandate was not that you stay in the current model you're in so mr sullivan do you want to introduce david cole is here i think president robinson to answer questions uh david let me ask my question again uh as we're looking at um how to manage um the lunch cohorts as as they you know classroom in classroom out um kind of thing where we may have students in in a number of different

047locations it seems as though we would need more lunch and and campus supervisor type positions do you feel that that we have an adequate number on our current eligibility lists to that are available that we could accommodate hiring um additional positions well i think there's a couple of issues there um we certainly could start uh further uh recruitments for eligibility list for our school agencies i'm sorry we could certainly um increase the number of recruitments for uh school aides but we've been talking with the union regarding specifically that issue in terms of lunch before and after school some of the additional cafeteria breaks and things and there's been discussions about increasing the hours of the employees that are currently working on a per site basis and working with the union to say if we have

048an ip a structural para that they have time that we extend their times as well to cover those periods thank you okay any other questions of mr cole mr tennis i want to make an observation i can barely hear what people are saying from the podium out there and i don't think it's anyone's fault i liked the old policy for this where we could hear people and that was when we did not have speakers wear a mask when they were at the podium there so i i i just want to throw that out there um is there anything we can do with the sound quality on volume at this at the speaker's podium because it is difficult to hear mr cola i do actually have a question for you um i had a social engagement

049you could say with a a high level representative of the cuta bargaining team recently and that person made a point to me that that the cuta has basically followed the lead of the school board and everything that has transpired over the last year and as far as i know that's correct and there's been you know i guess what we would call labor peace between the direction of the school board and the cuta can you confirm that i think actually jim hanlon would probably be the best person he had he deals directly with cta or more with csea okay yes i would definitely confirm that um if more much of the school year only about 12 percent of the school districts in california have been open and we've been in that 12 percent and i attribute

050that directly to our relationship with both unions it was never a conversation about whether or not they would agree to open it was how do we open in and what are the issues we need to deal with in order to open so [Music] from my perspective they've been a full partner in opening the schools for am pm when most of the schools in the state have been closed or online online only um this person who i won't name they didn't say that i couldn't but um they represented to me during this conversation and said i could quote them to say that similarly if we decide to go back full time in person right now this spring that there would be labor peace in that context and that there would not be any pushback um from

051the from the union i hope i'm not misrepresenting that person but basically they would follow the lead in the direction of the board yeah as i said we've negotiated um with them in good faith and and they in return have negotiated in good faith we in fact have mousse for online am pm and in full full day person so we have those um ready to go depending on the board's decisions since fall we had those in place before we opened on october 19th so um we went through those mlus fairly quickly and reached agreement so you know and from that perspective with both unions we have agreements in place no matter what decision the board makes so would you characterize it as a green light to go back to full time in person mr hanlon

052um i would say that we have a we have agreements with with both unions depend no regardless of what decision the board makes to go yes i uh we approved all of those mousse at the last board meeting and i remember specifically mr moretti making a statement at one of the meetings when that a similar question was asked and he said that the position of cuta is that the board decides and cuta will implement to our best the best of their abilities just as mr hanlon said they take direction from the board miss yes i'm just wondering if mr moretti is with us and if he has anything to add to that i i'd just like to repeat what jim said back in the summer we knew that there were three choices we were looking

053at and and we recognized the authorities more to decide which learning model we're in and we negotiated the factors that need to be decided for any of those three models i'm sorry might have been back spasms tom thank you um i actually wanted to take this conversation uh back um to what jay was talking about a moment ago i hope that's all right um but just you mentioned uh something about uh 115 sections let me back up one slide um all right thank you very much um i was wondering about when you're saying we lock in everybody in the model they're in now does that include students who are not in one of the kind of traditional models i'm thinking of one student who's taking five classes online and then comes on site for just

054one course they would still just come on it'd still be in the exact same situation exactly okay thank you very much yes dr kaiser i'd like to move to go to full time in the start of the fall semester 2021. dr kaiser i don't believe that is part of the agendized item and it is on the board's agenda for the next meeting okay i'm hesitant to approve that as being in order since um you know the brand act requires full disclosure of our anticipated actions um so i'm i'm sorry but my my decision would be to rule it out of order ms dalby did you have a point i i just called a point of order um we're not in a you did not ask for motions right we are not at the point where

055we would be asking for motion since we have yet to have any public input on this informational item what i'd like to do is move through to the next part of the component and continue to allow our board members to ask questions mr tennis i don't know if there's some later moment when i should ask this question or or yes state this concern about the presentation but um i don't hear a lot of differentiation between junior high and high school when talking about the um you know the possibility of going back full time now i'm aware that there's a lot of high school students who have responded to our survey i see you caitlin we'll we'll bring you in next um i feel that it's highly detrimental for the junior high students to remain out

056of full-time in-person school um can you are you treating those equally you know in your analysis are you are you assuming that the situation for junior high students is identical to that of high schoolers when it comes to the prospect of you know and how their schedules will be affected there are certainly nuances for each level uh when we've been creating these these are suggesting these considerations we are grouping through 6 through 12 because of the basic scheduling and the the format of the day there are also staffing considerations that are 6 12 so we when we're looking at the the entirety um for for general um considerations and then um trying to disaggregate those by grade level we can certainly i can certainly answer questions related to the specific to middle school or specific

057to secondary but when we're looking at it through a staffing lens and a scheduling lens and a social emotional support lens we do group them 6 12. and we do have administrators from elementary junior high and high school here to answer questions from the board that are very specific to those individual grade levels as well so ms dalby you're next um yeah so on that last slide um i kind of thought maybe it was going to be asked and maybe this was clarified verbally but it's talking about sections um where students there's more students than there can be fit in the classroom do we have an estimate on the number of actual students who would have schedule or roster changes either at the middle and high school level or just generally in secondary i just

058want to reinforce these are approximations but if we were to do the math you know 35 times 115 those students could have each of the students in those sections could have up to six schedule changes based on the complexity of their schedule their pathway it would just depend specifically on the on the student's schedule also mr shepard i just want to make sure we understand that 115 that we're looking at possibly at 35 or larger that does not include on bringing any of our online students back on the campus that are full online correct correct unlike the elementary where we're telling parents they could come back into the classrooms because we have space for them that is not at the same level for secondary dr kaiser in response to the query about the distinctions between

059our middle schools sixth through eighth and our high schools we have a number of students who are accelerated in the middle school area correct they are taking classes that are more advanced so i think that as you noted this is way way more complex than saying okay here's a fifth grade class a student might be let's say seventh or eighth grade in english but seventh in english but eighth grade in math and maybe even stepping further ahead than that so that's part of the ap they can take ap in uh in middle school classes and and so this becomes it makes it far far more complex we just can't because to deny a student who's put all this time into an accelerated course that they couldn't stay in it because quote unquote they're the wrong

060grade that would be a severe loss the pathway consideration would definitely have the most impact on on the scheduling what pathway each student was on but again under considerations if the classes sizes at the am pm or at a certain lower size kids would not have to change schedules correct okay i just want to make sure that's understood okay we ready to move on to we have administration here to um i'm sorry member dalby has another question uh yeah that that last statement just prompted a real quick question um uh just can i clarify um at the elementary level though that um there's a significant number of the kids who are online that need to stay online who would likely have a teacher change and so therefore for the last 33 days of school depending

061on when this would take effect they would be in a new online class environment with a new teacher that's true that is a possibility yes and i would say a majority of them possibly would have a different online teacher yes and how many how many is that again i'm sorry it could be anywhere like we talked about between 100 and 495. uh we had a solid hundred say that they would stay online and between 300 but 300 and 395 are saying that they would prefer online or did not respond to multiple phone calls from our schools so then the with the parent survey at the elementary level there was a really large portion that didn't respond to the survey so if we were to talk in the number of total number of parents who the

062survey was sent to um what was the percent of what's the percent breakdown um at that point because you guys said you gave us a number um you're in my video um you gave a number that was uh like 70 i don't have the number in front of me of parents that they wanted to go back to full-time but um that's not really accurate um if if there was a large portion who actually didn't um respond to the survey at all so i guess i was just kind of um curious if we saw those numbers um broken down like that the total number of parents the survey went to and then the percentage of the total number of parents to survey went to um for a breakdown and what percentage didn't i saw the number

063of what percentage didn't respond just to have a clear picture of where parents are at we had a math teacher who had emailed their concern about how the the numbers are being displayed so if we have 5 000 students and we had 38 percent of the fam families do this survey and then 78 of those families wanted to come back that would be 1480 of our families saying that they want to come back in person out of the people that were surveyed i just found um remember dobby i just found the recap of that survey and it said 33 of the parents responded that were sent surveys for elementary 38.7 percent responded parent survey results elementary participation 38.7 percent yeah that's what i was okay referencing the 38 if i may did that help but

064yes mr lando so i think just to make sure i'm understanding uh what ms dalby is saying correctly if we look at the entire and again one of our uh pb matthew just broke this down very succinctly in an email of the elementary parents the whole breakdown is 61 didn't respond 29.6 would like to go back to full day instruction and 7.7 would like to stay in the modeler inn and 1.4 said they had no preference so the overwhelming majority simply didn't respond uh but 29.6 responded in the affirmative that they would like to go back full time yeah no of the entire population that is really unfair i mean the reason that they didn't if i may continue with this line of reasoning um uh respond is because you had i mean you know

065you can't lump them all together i i they're not they're not identical situations obviously but you know you have to go track down your student id number or student id numbers if you have multiple children parents are afraid they're frazzled they're stressed okay the school system is not there for them we are not providing the education and the you know the hours of care that we used to and that our society has evolved to uh expect and and have and so um i look at this huge uh pie piece uh of the people among the people who did participate you've got 76.4 percent want to go back to look at the people who didn't respond um and jump through those hoops which we have got a lot of survey fatigue i think over the last

066year too because there's been a lot of these surveys given out when i look at that board member lando and others i see a bunch of at their wits end frazzled parents in uh families that are incredibly stressed out and need the services that only we can provide and we're being paid untold tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to provide those services and we're not doing it that's what i see when i look at this non-participation rate if i may um [Applause] yeah please no applause mr lando i just want to caution uh anyone from extrapolating from incomplete data we have the data we have to ascribe motives to people who didn't answer survey questions either way is an easy way for us to allow our own biases and wishes to come into play

067let's play let's use the data we've got and and not try and make guesses about why people did or didn't respond um i would add uh that we all got um many many many emails throughout the last number of months about where parents are and and and a number especially this last week from students and um i i see a representation of all of the issues that we have before us and all of the things that we have under consideration we're all represented in the input that we are getting from our community on a very broad based input platform and so i i too as mr lando indicates and not going to speculate about what the people wanted that didn't respond to the survey okay we have mr sullivan here to introduce his uh his

068principles so we have mr weaver from mcmanus and we have mrs fuentes from parkview just in case there's any questions you guys might have kind of from a principal perspective view so they are here to answer questions for you good evening i'm heather sue fuentes principal at parkfield good evening i'm chris weaver from mcmanus do you have any questions yes principal weaver um i had uh again indications from some of your not yours specifically but elementary support personnel that the smaller class sizes and the ability to easily schedule the supports for the smaller class sizes was actually providing some good outcomes for students that were significantly below grade level when we started back in october and that they were seeing [Music] you know good outcomes for brimming bringing these students up to grade level and

069i'm going to attribute a lot of it to the smaller class size because those of us in education know that the smaller the class size the better performance of the students it's just the way it works and in california unfortunately they don't fund for those small class sizes but the am pm has given us a window into the benefits of smaller class sizes do you what is your perspective on the impact of smaller class sizes on students that may be achieving below grade level i most certainly think small class sizes are ideal for students in addition to the regular classroom time we have over 25 tutoring groups at even smaller levels taking place and so we are seeing growth there's definitely some achievement gaps but we are seeing some promising growth dr kaiser okay i

070wasn't sure all right so um one of the aspects of this is you know we said that we were looking at advantages and challenges so between the two of you you both have very different programs i had an interesting discussion with mine the other day about trees making oxygen and for a second grader you know that's um yeah all right um so what do you see as the challenges that you would have if you were going to be back together and again it would be for six weeks is that seven weeks okay that doesn't count testing though so anyway you both run very good interesting programs what do you see as your challenges so currently i'm working out some recess schedules some aid schedules lunch schedules and so the complexities um are real and as

071far as you know safety goes that's our number one concern so we just want to make sure that the decisions we're making are supporting safety and they're not expedient and i would just add we've we've lived a complex year this year so i think we've been problem solvers i mean our educators i commend them for the work they've done i was reflecting on how they've persevered through things too it's one of the only professions that physically has changed through the course of this so i think that the challenges of change like you mentioned from one program to another is always a change for students parents staff but i think that we've proven that anything that comes our way we're able to do in our ability to provide the safety we were able to make that

072happen as needed for our students board member dolby did you have your hand up i did um you you kind of touched on my question for the most part um but my i was i'm curious and um concerned about um something that was brought up in our in our public comment emails about um visiting the current intervention programs um at the elementary level that are in place now um so i'm wondering what the um on-site leadership perspective is of losing that intervention time if we were to change our instructional day model again at this point in the year yeah so in the event if we change instructional models our tutoring services will no longer take place before school or during or in the middle of am pm it'll take place after school and certainly the

073number of groups will decrease thank you uh any other question yet okay mr shepherd do you want to proceed thank you we have principal mckay from bidwell here i'm sorry can i back up for the elementary uh folks all right apologize for taking my time i i thought mr tennis was waiting to say something and i want to give him the opportunity to do that um i just want to double check and i'm not uh i think this was answered earlier but will there be a longer amount of time needed for testing if we in the am pm model versus the full day instructional model like we need more days um no because they give us the model of the instruction the minutes per test so we've kind of our testing schedule would remain the

074same amount of minutes that's what i thought thank you very much okay mr shepard okay we have principal mckay from bidwell junior high school and he'll be followed by mr williams from chico high school good evening board members and district administration um my name is david mckim the principal of bidwell junior high school and i don't have a significant amount of information to add that's different than what we've heard already tonight so rather than belabor other points happy to answer any questions from a junior high school perspective and i would like to go on record if i make just one opinion that i'm working with my colleagues pedro and jessica at chico junior march and their teams has been as good as you can ask for during these challenging times i can speak for bidwell

075our staff has been can-do go-getter student-centered from day one and i really appreciate them i want to thank them publicly and while i don't work as closely with marcin chico junior staff i'm sure that pedro and jessica would say the same thing so just appreciate the teachers and the support staff registrars classified custodial everybody for pitching in on behalf of our kids during this difficult season does anybody have any questions for a junior high from a junior high point of view dr dr kaiser do you intend on re-asking your what to do with the advancing students well yeah that was i was gonna i mean the issue is like advantages and disadvantages so we just heard the drop in the tutoring groups uh i've had contacts from students and from parents really being concerned about

076their students who are in more advanced classes losing that option so i'm i would ask that question in junior high the way we have it structured i don't think that you would have a significant impact there for students taking advanced classes one of the main ways that students advance in junior high is through math and we capitalize on the oak bridge program for students to accelerate in math and they would be able to do that whether we went back full day or not does oak bridge oak bridge uses edge annuity doesn't it yes sir which is not a very popular uh learning tool is that not correct well it depends on who you ask sir uh the the kids i'm thinking of that are wanting to accelerate in math it works for them but i

077i definitely feeled in my share of concerns from parents as well but but not from those accelerating students mr lando yeah thank you hi hello um first of all thank you um as someone who's on a middle school campus all the time man um it's rough out there right now so thank you so much for everything you're doing um i think mr trump brought up a really important point which is that junior high students are developmentally different from high school students in a lot of ways and they kind of need to be eked out do you see a lot of differences um or is anything you see that we haven't addressed in terms of how the needs either emotionally mentally academically socially for your kids or different than what we've discussed in terms of overall

078secondary or the high school it's a great question and i definitely appreciate the consideration for the uniqueness that is the junior high school age kind of hybrid elementary and in high school all in one compact energetic little body and they certainly are unique to me the most heartbreaking aspect of this situation is are the students who have to be online and under the current models that we're discussing would stay online um regardless they struggle disproportionately and the parents with whom i speak that have the most heartbreaking situations are ones that are forced really to stay online and so i think at the junior high age in particular where they are still dependent on their parents but increasingly drawn towards their peers just not being on campus is really a hard hard thing for them and

079it's just not the same tuning in through zoom although we have experienced uh doubling or more in our clubs that uh we're now with the loosening restrictions able to begin to meet in person a little bit observing all guidelines of course in between the cohorts and that's something that would change or would continue if we went all day again we're doing that right now with am pm also considerations they're very hands-on and so with the 400 students on campus i can't guarantee that there's a ton of social distancing going on during the unstructured times although we try and so it would definitely be a challenge with 800 students on campus with having all that energy there thank you thank you it's kind of maybe unfortunate for you that i'm that this idea that this question

080is occurring to me while you are at the podium but um i guess you could say i have an agenda so i'm going to go ahead and ask my question to you sir um how do these miracle worker schools all around chico pull it off how is it that these guys out in durham and you know out of the countryside and in our surrounding areas managed to get everybody in there to to have in-person school right now and only chico is left here with this this hybrid model i feel like that's a rhetorical question as i have not been on any of those campuses and i'm not familiar with those logistics the intent behind my responses are to provide a factual operational perspective of what would what we would look like in a return to

081all day without trying to lean one way or the other or imply one thing or another so i'm trying to just give you the facts making an interpretation about schools that i don't know about i don't think that would be responsible on my part respectfully sir any other questions for mr mckay mr shepherd okay we're going to turn things over to uh doug williams dave yeah thank you from chico high school hello board and community and district employees i'm mr williams of principal chico high school i'd like to echo what my colleagues have stated already before me that i really appreciate the teamwork not only of the teachers but the paraprofessionals the all the people on campus janitors coaches food personnel uh people been through a lot of changes this year and i've really risen

082to the top i'd like to give a shout out to my colleagues at pv and also at fairview because we're still continuing our work with moving forward with sports with ap courses i just got some good news about a couple students who are accepted into the scholarship program at stanford and so life has been moving on for a lot of our students even though they have been struggling with a very difficult year but successes are out there and are happening and there are struggles out there so i just want to say thank you to everybody for for kind of running a race that is difficult but continuing to put an effort so at this time do you have any questions of me dr kaiser so uh doug i wanted to say that i have really

083really appreciated the efforts that your staff have made around the emotional support support and mental health for the students at your school and for your staff you've gone through some extremely traumatic times and i haven't heard anything but very positive comments about the zoom meeting you had for that so it's never easy when it happens but i think you guys have made a heroic response i do have to say that when it's pick up and drop off time quite a few students uh don't have their mask on outside the gates and and so i don't know that we've even discussed the option of whether students would be leaving campus for lunch you know i haven't even heard that brought up so i don't know the plan would be to continue with pre-coveted bell schedules which

084would um include students leaving campus at lunch before lunch so would you like to know the number of seconds that they go before their maths come off having a senior in high school i can only imagine yeah so i i do think that um everyone [Music] everyone in our in our town basically has to make a personal decision on how they're going to deal with um requirements that are put forth whether in buildings parking lots or schools uh i am very proud of our students and our staff i will i will tell you that when they walk in the gates they're masked if they're not we have extra masks for them and i think if you ask the teachers because they're the eyes and ears of the school on a minute by minute basis that

085the kids are very receptive in the rooms i don't i don't i don't i haven't had one issue with a student being sent to the office or having a campus supervisor called to a room to have a discussion with a kid about why they need a mask on so even though i know our students don't like it and it's uncomfortable for them or they may be feeling it's time to stop they have not showed that time a type of disrespect to the program that we're running so that and that's 2 000 high school students so i don't i don't say that lightly and you're not on friday night um yeah i i think the best team will win mr lando thank you um i was really heartened to hear your comment about the uh students

086in the stanford scholarship program i know that a worry for many families has been what uh the last two years will do to students who are looking towards college um and i'm not sure if this is a question for you or for uh some of the other people in the administration have we seen a significant uh difference in terms of uh percentage of students applying or getting early responses or being in process for moving to colleges um i can only use um the few students that that i know and i can only use the input from our preparation both the high schools have scholarship nights that will be occurring in the next three to four weeks and the number of recipients of scholarships is is equal to what we've had before and the number of

087letters that are going uh out to people or in terms of what schools are getting into is is equivalent i think what a lot of people are deciding my own family and child as well are are the colleges going to be open you know is it worth paying the tuition to go to a larger university if you're going to be online so i think those type of questions are happening in every household i have two children in college too so i think that's going on with everybody in terms of where they're going to go but in terms of acceptance rates where our kids are going i believe the success rates are still out there whether or not they choose to do that is is you know something that i don't know at this point it's

088really good to hear thank you any other questions for mr williams i'll just add a clarification that what the university has seen and what a number of universities have seen is somewhat a drop in enrollment but a lot of that gets conditioned by whether there's housing available and what kind of housing it's going to be so chico state's going to be 50 on campus i think that butte is going to be close to that so i think as more traditional views of college activities open up we'll probably see a return but right now nationally it's it is down not the university saying no but a lot of people deciding that they can't handle doing online i would like to add one more thing that i think is a good piece of information for the board

089as well first of all i'm going to speak for pb and chico high school right now it's just glorious to see our kids back doing activities and i want you to know in the last probably four and a half to five weeks that the amount of um soft social skill or extracurricular activities that are occurring on our campus have have dramatically ramped up so i know we're often talking about the learning loss or learning gap and we all want to get back to full time as soon as we can but i want you know for students what they really want to have happen is is happening at a more rapid pace and a more normal pace at this time and as the restrictions from the county in terms of their color tiers adjust i know

090mr shepard and and our ads meet weekly to decide like exactly we have to change protocols daily in terms of the amount of vouchers we're going to give parents and stuff so i really think that our coaches and all our kids have been practicing and also our theater and music groups all our extracurricular activities have really hung in there and are really reaping the benefits of that i also would say that i can't speak for pv because i don't know their testing schedule each school designs its own testing schedule but i do know that our testing schedule depending on what the state decides with ap and s back testing we will be going into a two and a half or with make up possibly a three week adjusted am pm testing cycle uh as as

091two of two to three of the remaining seven weeks so whether or not we come back or don't come back we will have another schedule change in the next three weeks that will put us into a alternative day testing schedule that will last for about two weeks two to 12 days and then we'll go back to whatever schedule you decide and then we'll have a final schedule as well so i just want to let you know that in the in the gap that we have left there could be potentially three additional schedule changes for kids within a seven to eight week period we'll do whatever you guys want us to do though i think our staff is ready registrars counselors whatever you need mr tennis um thank you mr williams for being here um i

092met with a group of students on monday who believe that the the state of mental health on your campus in particular but but both the high schools is not good how do you feel the state of mental health is right now on among students at your school and what are the major factors that contribute to that yeah i noticed that i i believe there were some members of the board mr tennis i think you're one of them that um thank you very much by the way because you didn't have to do that for uh attending a training that uh through um the school district we were able to get mr collins an expert in mental health and mental health training and his work has been really great because it's about providing people with resources and

093how to move through it i think the mental health question is is tricky because you can use mental health is something that's pertinent to the individual so there are some people that are doing very successful right now and others that are struggling but i don't know how many people are struggling in a normal environment compared to a non-normal environment so i don't have data to compare and i also don't know if if making an additional change is going to contribute to more ill mental health or is it going to improve mental health because that's going to be dependent upon the individual and their mental health so even though i might be able to predict the strength the mental health of my campus i'd be guessing but i can't predict what decision is going to affect

094someone's mental health in the positive or the negative again i think if i did that uh not to quote mr mckay but i i would be remiss to make comments on something that i don't have information on nor am i expert on do you think we should triple or quadruple the amount of counseling and i don't mean academic counseling i mean what would you call it social emotional counseling wellness counseling that's available to students at the high school level uh i think our focus um needs to be on a holistic approach to counseling if i may and my wife's a school psychologist so i've got a little bit of insight on that which is there's three or four different types of counseling and i think we need to be really clear about what the school's

095going to provide and really what that means a menu i guess is what i'd say and the school district is working on that i believe miss demi trobridge is in charge of that a school psychologist for the district and what i mean is when you say counseling is it check-in check out counseling is it immediate crisis counseling is it long-term therapy and then we def what are you determining is long-term is that is that two meetings a week for a month and then you're you're cycled off is it a check-in every uh other week and then a handoff to an outside mental health professional is it referrals to victor counseling or through medi-cal and so i think there already are these services taking place all the time i thought what we really need to focus

096on making sure our families and our students know what that menu is so when they need something they know who to go to to try to get the the correct service if that makes sense because we're also partnering with many other agencies in the county and other private sources as well and so i think that's the task is to weave the web of all those connective energies so it's very transparent to the students that need it and um i will give a shout out i don't where's miss olson um hi diane so diane's cutting through some really great i think red tape because the hospitals i know they have protocols with their hipaa laws we have protocols with our hipaa laws and i think there's groups of professionals in the county that are meeting to

097try to create a significant uh sharing of information so we can get to the heart of this oftentimes when our students have mental health issues outside the school we're not aware of that because it's up to the parent to either tell us or not tell us so that's just an example of the effort not only going to bringing counselors but really understanding what the role of each group in the community is and how to make sure that the the parents see what each group's role is and how they can access that i i appreciate your patience in that that was a long answer but it's i'm sorry it's a it's an issue that's on my mind obviously we have a lot of money you know pouring into the district i mean i i want to

098say we have at least 45 million dollars coming in is isn't it more than that though i mean it's with the original s or one dollars it's over 50 million one-time money so i feel that that that some of that money ought to go toward direct psychological wellness uh direct benefit to students i think we're in a dark time right now yeah i would agree with you i'd also say that is that is happening so i know on my own campus i was given some funds and i used some other funds to build a wellness center in in my library that's going to be staffed with i believe jay i don't want to misspeak but an extra 50 percent uh wellness counselor with the 50 i have now so i'll have a full-time wellness professional

099actually in a wellness center a hundred percent of the time next year so i i agree with you those are the types of things we need to do but i i would i would caution that we create a really uh not as seamless but as seamless of a plan as as we have and not just throw people at it but really come up with a plan of how we're going to integrate resources thank you there's no further questions thank you very much for your time that's end of our presentation so unless you guys have any further questions from our directors or myself board member dalby do you have any additional questions um i don't uh i have i think we lost you i think she's making a motion that we go to school full-time questions

100ms dalby if you could repeat that please you froze on us for a second because that would be out of order yeah i noticed so much but i have quote questions about um sort of um of our suit could you repeat um but they were not enough for me um i wouldn't make emotion at this time because that would be up do you know what she said caitlin i'm going to see if someone else understood what you asked okay my question was mostly answered thank you caitlin president robinson we do have some speakers on this item i keep turning my button off excuse me but i i did gardening again and my back is not happy with me um we are at the time for public input and so mr shepherd you're on president robinson

101how would you like to handle the order we do have for this item we do not have any students signed up to speak nor do we have staff we do have parents and as on my spreadsheet here they're indicated by in person and by phone okay i don't i don't have the separation between in-person and phone but um i i don't believe we would make a difference between in person and a phone our our criteria was that a speaker card was submitted by 12 o'clock okay so that's the criteria that we will follow if there are no students then we'll move to yeah it's been randomized so we will just go ahead and move through if they are here in person obviously step forward to the mic um if they are not here in person

102then we'll make the phone call okay president robinson do we need to repeat the parameters for speaking addressing the port i'm sorry again do we need to repeat the parameters for addressing the board time and yes there's a three-minute limit we haven't had a uh a number of speaker card requests that would take us beyond the allotted time that we set aside so we're good there everyone will get their full three minutes we have a yellow card for those that are in here in person i believe you have a a bell for those that are on the phone to indicate 30 seconds left at three minutes um you will be asked to suspend so let's start with the random selection what's first our first our first speaker is joe kidd ah joe kidd is present

103thank you step to the podium sir hi good good evening my name is joe kidd i have three daughters attending chico schools at chico junior in chico high i'm also a coach on the chico high ski team i'm here tonight to ask you open schools full time and immediately the information and the data available support this decision and override the insufficient reasons that have been given to keep schools partially closed i not rules to comply available covit is also difficult removing chairs from the break room and other modifications is inconvenient yet we've remained open and have a zero spread of cobid within our facility it's also my understanding that we have had little or no spread of covet at our schools due to similarly inconvenient and difficult decisions that have been made at this point

104our teachers have been vaccinated many of our neighboring school districts are open full time the cdc issued guidelines to make opening schools significantly either easier people are allowed to fly we're allowed to eat in restaurants without masks on agricultural and food workers are producing food that all of us eat safely doctors and dentist officers are open and performing electric elective procedures yet we say it is inconvenient and too difficult to open schools this reasoning is insufficient well those of us lucky enough to have resources have been able to make arrangements to deal with our situation over the past year many of our fellow citizens are not so lucky when food production employees go to work many of them have few options for their children who are cooped up at home with little instruction or supervision

105many working families and single parents find themselves in a similar situation and yet we tell them that opening school will be inconvenient the answer is insufficient it may be true that schools should not be the place for receiving nutrition and for counseling and perhaps we should have this debate but now is not the time and we're not going to solve this in chica opening schools now will be difficult and inconvenient for some and it will be a huge relief for many others we saw tonight very clear data indicating that 78 percent of parents want elementary schools open with a 40 participation rate that's an incredibly high participation rate in a survey that's real data yes some of our kids need to change will need to change their part-time jobs yes some class schedules will be

106changed and many of the most in-need children will return to full-time school where they desperately need to be the price of inconvenience is well worth the reward finally to say that we should not open because there are only seven days left in the school year is an insufficient reason it's true that there are only seven weeks left but these are no different than any other seven weeks leaders are called on to make difficult decisions to support those most in need the reasons to keep school closed are insufficient and the reasons to open are overwhelming please do your part as leaders and open our schools thank you thank you speaker number two second speaker is lisa chambers she's in person lisa chambers are you present at the meeting this evening i don't see lisa chambers okay

107would you like me to call okay i'm calling lisa chambers voicemail okay the next speaker katie vanderwaal cook i'll be calling her hi katie i'm gonna put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board okay if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead katie hi thank you for taking my call i strongly support and advocate the school district staying the course with the am pm scheduling model for the short remainder of the school year it would be incredibly unfair to the students to again upset their schedules this of course doesn't even begin to address the huge upheaval of full-time in-person change would have on the students who have been distance learning for a full year from a staffing perspective how would playgrounds be staffed with supervision on

108such short notice with qualified candidates this isn't easy to do during the best of situations how will elementary cafeterias work all of the children unmasking to eat and uncle in an enclosed space when the temps are too high in may to sit outside or in the morning during breakfast when they're all in an enclosed area will distance learning students again be shifted into other classes other teachers for the last remaining weeks of school how will a new new schedule affect the students that are receiving additional tutoring and thriving in a smaller classroom environment do we lose all of that newfound success for those students please continue with the am pm model stay the course give our students some consistency and continue and put the best effort into making our new school year in august the

109best it can possibly be for all of our students to come back in a successful full-time manner thank you very much thanks katie okay our next speaker's in person matthew thomason sure can can all of you hear me okay it's been over a year without proper instruction for our children during that time we have seen a systematic failure in our district to provide kids the learning environment they need what are the facts the facts are we have record numbers of learning loss the grade letter f has quadrupled this school year the kids most severely impacted are those we've warned about for months english learners foster kids homeless minority groups lower socioeconomic status groups there is so much learning loss that the district is having to use funds throughout the summer to help these kids catch

110up before next school year and kids in lowest grade levels have been most adversely impacted as evidenced by the bpst scores another fact is that at least two children of cusd has committed suicide since the fall scores of school-aged children have presented to inlo medical center emergency department for attempted suicide suicidal ideation or significant depression this does not even tell the whole story because this does not include those seeking help outpatient facilities in reality the crisis is much worse than we may ever know these are the facts and these are the results of repeated poor decisions by this board to keep our kids out of full-time learning we can see in the survey results that two-thirds of all parents are in favor of returning to full-time instruction now these are your constituents you are here

111to represent them and the students who have no other representation the teachers have their union we have no one else while i'm on this topic i understand that hearing from students about matters that affect their education is a noble idea but policy should not be determined by their opinions as their parents are their legal guardians and would know what is best for their child and their family speaking of students they have struggled with the mental health crisis so much at chico high that they have begun to organize themselves to bring awareness of such what will it take for this board to listen to the medical and scientific community to believe what is happening right under their nose the cdc and california department of public health recommends schools returning to full-time medical psychological and pediatric associations

112across the country and the world recommend returning to full-time due to the negative consequences we have seen in this community it is not enough to be stuck in cohorts where kids don't get to interact with their peers the same way as if they were full time and by the way these recommendations stand even while variants of coven 19 are spreading so any excuse of not opening because of variance is completely unfounded and fear-mongering i'd like to also remind everyone listening that every single school in our district or excuse me in our county will be open full time by next week except for chico unified while you may complain that we only have so many weeks of school left and what's the point thank you sir i say saving one child from another suicide would make

113everything worth it and i say that your previous decisions are the exact failure in leadership that we have been mentioning over the previous months okay i'll next be calling katie muff voicemail all right our next speaker i'll be calling jessica gianola hello jessica i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead okay hi board um thank you for for taking our calls uh i i wanted to voice my support for our model staying as is for the remainder of this school year for the primary purpose of stability really whether or not cove experiences are emerging or or or not kill it aside just the amount of change that our students and families have had to go

114through is a lot and a move to full time again means that kids are losing out and some of those services and some therapy services my daughter will have to lose her speech therapist so for the rest of the year all the way until next school year she'll be basically without any therapy because it'll take way too long to get reestablished develop a relationship with a new provider before the end of school and this really seems to be a more of a push almost like a stubborn push from one side against the other let's make this happen before the end of the school year so we could save pride or whatever it might be instead of thinking of the students the surveys i keep hearing the parent surveys quoting what about the kids i looked

115at the kids the majority of children want to keep the same that's who we should be listening to they're asking they put on the survey please keep it the same they're the ones that are impacted by this so i think it's important that we weigh that we think of the kids the mental health aspect i really hate her that keeps being abused with our school in person not in person situation mental health that exists all the time with everybody and it's important that we have open conversations and that we we commend our schools for putting more resources in place instead of bashing them like there are damn that they do and if they don't and it's not a negative thing that they've recognized more opportunity to add more services i thank them for it we

116all should be thanking them for it the parents should be doing they can the teachers will do what they can and we really see working together showing our students our families a good role model of how to make it through a pandemic in one piece together everybody's suffering i don't know if that's 30 seconds what but anyway i just support you guys i know this is a hard position for the teachers for the board for the parents the parents on either side it's hard but we're almost there and we all look forward to the fall we really do and we should come together for that instead of more division until the very end they have testing right around the corner let me focus on that oh thank you thank you okay our last speaker is

117in person arwen funk you hear me thank you so i have some prepared uh comments but i just there's a few things based on tonight that i also need to say i'm here to advocate for reopening for full time in person school really what we're dealing with here is that this board is holding on to the responsibility as if you are personally responsible for every child or staff member or whoever within our district that contracts a virus and it's an absurd premise it doesn't make any sense and it never did it didn't exist before kovid and um and it's an unreachable goal to suggest that you can keep every person safe we've been here an hour and a half and almost every single bit of the conversation was a yeah but yeah but yeah but

118trying to deal with every little detail and as matt pointed out that every other district our school in our district has been able to find a way around it and when the bidwell principal spoke i mean it's clear that nobody here seems to know why they're all making it work how they're all making it work why don't you know that is something that we should know if they're making it work why don't we have that information of how they've done it why are we recreating the wheel and to the parent who just talked about that we should give the kids a say in these surveys i mean i have great kids i'm sure we'd all think our kids are great i have an eagle scout but if i let him choose his diet he'd do

119nothing but drink coke and eat salami all day long so i'm not really sure that's a great idea either people can manage the disruptions and discomfort in their lives for a period of time but it's cruel to inflict on them on them on a populist indefinitely it makes no sense at all that everything else is opening safely other nearby schools airlines restaurants the post office sports strip clubs but our schools are still closed it feels like we've got these two choices these two sets of concerns that are warring here and one of them is disruption and upset and and difficulty with some logistics which i get as a thing but on the other hand we've got this topic that nobody's talking about i mean two minor comments from our middle school and high school principals

120but mental health issues suicidality you guys aren't discussing any of this and i mean the long-term destruction of our town if our children are under undereducated relative to our surrounding communities how are they going to get jobs in the future i mean there's really long-term ramifications of the learning loss here i i hear the word disruption a lot and tonight and i think it's an important point to consider it is not disruptive to return to normal that's an unfair characterization it's the calm after the storm it's the blue sky at the end of a dark tunnel it's an oasis in a desert it's necessary and critical for a healthy existence that you let us go back to normal continuing to do this is what is disruptive thank you speakers mr tennis i'd be open to

121hearing from more speakers if if if the chair was a minimal or the president madam president if you were amenable to taking we've heard from all the speakers my time's not so precious that i can't hear what these people have to say eileen dr kaiser the only uh group that we didn't get to hear from that we had anticipated were students so that's the only additional comments that i'd be willing to hear do we have any students in the audience we have two could we have a a pro and a con on those students do you okay step up to the microphone please my name is acacia pema felner and i am a junior at chico high school and i am here on behalf of students parents teachers and the community and those we have

122lost to suicide this year i'd like to briefly touch base on saying that i believe high school students should be separated from middle school and junior and elementary school for going back am to the p going back full in person school it would not be benefit beneficial for high school students to go back in the little time that we have and then i would also like to say that we need to be more supported as students we are struggling and we're desperate with our mental health as you see we've lost many students this year and a teacher and i cannot tell you how many i've lost count that are struggling that i've heard from personally we would like to request more funds go to the wellness center that is on our campus that has been

123built we need more school therapists not counselors preparing us for college but more on school psychologists and therapists thank you for listening to me thank you thank you next student please um hi my name is kylie krhulis and i am a junior at chico high i'm here on behalf of my peers to give the board a point of view from the students um a lot of us believe that we need more mental health or wellness funding to have someone to immediately talk to when students go to the office they often get told to make an appointment which isn't helpful for someone having an immediate crisis also when we email our counselors we're not always guaranteed a response within like the time we're having that crisis this is why we need the wellness center and why

124we need more funding i heard mr williams say that we have um half two half wellness counselors if we put more funding to hiring more more kids could feel more um more prioritized and heard and feel that they could go there and actually feel welcome and not that they're wasting someone's time or that they're unwelcome that's all thank you thank you we're still checking the speaker requests one moment so we do have two names that are under um 4.2.1 mary kay benson and danny demio and then katie vanderwaal under [Music] 4.2.3 so were those people that are did someone submit under the wrong agenda item number superintendent stately i did text katie vanderwaal cook to confirm that she wanted to speak to the to the budget item and she does okay i mean it's only

125a couple of people i don't know why we can't let them be heard i understand sir but we we do follow protocol whenever necessary we have a structure that you know that keeps things flowing and we're double checking to make sure we haven't screwed up to keep someone from speaking is there jordan colby jordan colby yes there is a jordan colby a step to the microphone can you hear me okay i'm jordan colby i'm a parent of three uh children junior high and younger why change now we only have eight weeks left well if my kids had one week of school left i'd want it to be full-time because it would be three times more school in one week every day matters that is why this is important well what about the new variants they

126might be more contagious and dangerous to kids do we have any solid data on that do we actually know that it's not wise to make decisions on things we don't know so how about we stick to what we know we know full-time school can be done safely because there are scientific studies that demonstrate it we can also see durham moreland and parochial and charter schools within chico offering full-time education because they decided it was important to give these kids a high quality educational experience what is chico unified trading these kids opportunities for nobody knows what we're getting out of this are we lowering community spread by cutting our kids school hours probably not the literature certainly wouldn't support that conclusion can we start making decisions based on things we actually know that's informed decision making

127here's one thing we know for sure we know the vaccine works really really well high quality peer-reviewed scientific literature shows it we need to stop pretending that the vaccine doesn't matter it matters more than any other modality we've used in this pandemic the scientific data for masking and social distancing pales in comparison to the high quality evidence for vaccination in the pfizer and moderna trials severe covert was prevented in all subjects nobody died from covid in a vaccinated individual that was a powerful treatment effect and that's why unions and educ for educators across the country lobbied to place educators in tier 1b for vaccination placing teachers at the top of the list was the right decision i see teachers working hard this catastrophe is absolutely not on them but saying that their job can be

128done remotely is minimizing the important work that they do with our kids their jobs are essential to the development and education of our children that's why we vaccinated our teachers in february the families of chico unified have been patient but we are suffering it is a moral failure of this board that we have not progressed beyond the bare bones educational model being offered families are leaving chico unified because this board has created an educational island where the children within our district are being denied the quality education offered all around us the modification of spacing guidelines is a golden opportunity to do the right thing for the families and children of chico do the right thing and place the education of these kids and the mission of chico unified school district at the forefront of the

129decision you make tonight thank you thank you have we identified another um no we are at the end of our our uh yeah we did have uh one that we're gonna do a phone call on that we may have had the wrong phone number on um i'm not sure if john had the wrong phone number or not but okay we'll try the number again here i'm calling katie muff hi katie i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay hi my name is katie ma i have three children at chico usd i worry about what message we are sending our cusd children when so many things are opening up but our schools don't continue to progress towards a more

130normal day of school when a child can now go to a movie theater travel on an airplane spend time indoors unmask with elderly family but can't go to a full day of school we send a message to our young impressionable youth that it is not important many children get a sense of purpose from working hard at school and being part of the school community but not returning to a full day as soon as it is safe to do so we take that away from them many children have spent this year feeling they lack purpose and more time away from school only exacerbates this a loss of purpose leads to apathy failing grades depression and suicide i think i hear many argue we shouldn't change for just six weeks but added to 10 weeks of summer

131and 56 weeks since the shutdown not returning to full that full day now puts cusd students at not seeing a full day of school for 72 weeks if you can remember what almost a year and a half feels like for a child you can empathize with the hope and relief a six-week return would bring this vote to return to as normal as school day as we can currently provide shouldn't weigh on logistical challenges it should be based on claim stating our cusd children's right to a full day of education now that is both safe and possible and as a direct result also children sense a purpose everyone has a constitutional right to a full day of education and you as the board were elected to protect this right for all of our children thank you

132thank you board do we have a motion relative to this item dr kaiser i like to move that we return to full-time school at the beginning of fall semester i'm still going to rule that motion out of order well you just said a motion yes i did i asked for a motion the appropriate motion at this point would be to suspend the rules in order to reconsider the decision we made february 3rd someone would have to right raise that as an issue nobody has yet right and if no one raises it we move on to the next agenda item hearing none we'll move on to the next agenda item thank you board let's take a five minute break you are welcome to continue to attend the meeting and see the rest of the agenda will

133take a five minute break board our next item is the discussion action item authorization for external use of chico high school cusd facilities julie kissel facilities construction manager you're up julie hi good evening can you hear me yes we can great uh thank you i'm really pleased to bring this item to the board this evening it's a small step in a positive direction for our community and i'd like to mention that toward the end of the lead sheet we talk about the center for the arts and theater inside theater use and i just wanted to mention that since the writing of this lead sheet over the easter weekend actually the guidance put out by cdc has changed for indoor theater use already so i just wanted to inform you that in the orange tier which

134is what we're in now capacity first of all indoor use of theaters is allowable but capacity is limited currently to 15 of the capacity of the building or 200 people and that increases to 35 percent of capacity if all guests are tested or show proof of full vaccination so i just wanted to let you know that we plan to open up the theaters in the district for inside use according to these regulations although it seems like there'll be small groups of participants julie uh can you repeat that i'm sorry which part dr kaiser the part about the change and how many can be uh you know allowed in yes in the orange tier uh it is capacity is limited to 15 percent of the facilities capacity or 200 people so no more than 200. okay

135um that capacity can be increased to 35 percent if all guests are shown to have be fully vaccinated or are test negative for the covent virus thank you you're welcome thank you for asking so this is a lengthy lead sheet and i won't go through all of the items i'd open it up to questions um if the board has any questions about any particular facility and how it will be opened up for external use julie this is president robinson on the elementary school sites um when you talk about reservations is that for the the schools that have gymnasiums or other classrooms that could be used after school or is that for field use is the field used still first come first served with no reservation at elementary sites yes it is and um miss robinson

136this is only for ex outdoor use so that would apply to the elementary school fields and blacktops that they're open first come first serve unless a reservation is put into place so outside user groups can reserve elementary school block top areas and elementary school field spaces if they desire to thank you if i could just i'm sorry i was just going to add that the focus here if you look the the out the available times for outside use are are very diminished from now through june 30. and that is is really simply because of the um really extensive use of our own facilities for our own programs for the remainder of this year so this is a stop gap it's for implementation from now through the end of the through june 30 through the end

137of the year and then hopefully we're in a position where we can fully open and be back to normal but just again as a focus this is really for that short period of time where we're really going to be very impacted for our facilities for our kids and our programs thank you dr kaiser i know we are we're not going to have any playoffs in football but do we have other spring sports that might actually be competing for playoff time surfaces no okay now the cif has not supported any playoffs right that's what i thought but when you said competition i was okay thank you mr tennis would it be premature to make a motion um do we need it says oh okay because we are approving the guidelines so yes it is appropriate to

138make president president robinson made interruptions yes we have two we have two uh community speakers oh i'm sorry thank you i'm going to call mary kay benson hi mary kay i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressed in the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay okay go ahead hello school board i'm calling on behalf of north state shelter for all and we wanted to be able to present a proposal to you all having our spokesperson charles with yoon presented and this would be in conjunction with some of your unused property in having it be used for sanctioned campgrounds for homeless children and their mothers and families if needed on some of your properties that you have control over and i believe charles with yoon

139has sent you a proposal about that and unfortunately he couldn't be uh here tonight but i thought i would just try to ask you if you are open to that if he could make a short presentation at your next meeting and that we could tell you all about it we would be providing all of the services the porta potties the hand washing stations the trash bins the pickups monitoring it that kind of thing so it would just be a matter of if you've been following the news we have a homeless crisis even if the city doesn't believe it and we just need some land use and so that's basically what i wanted to ask if you would just consider listening to a presentation and putting it on the kate agenda thank you i think i

140would um suggest referring you to mr baltimore um so that you can discuss with him um your issues about um availability so that you have accurate information in order to proceed with your request mr baltimore you we have her phone number would you be in contact with ms benson yes i will certainly call miss benson thank you thank you mary kay thank you okay i'm calling danny demaio hi danny you'll be addressing the school board i'm going to put you on speakerphone if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay okay go ahead danny yeah thank you everyone for your time my name is danny demaio and i'm the president and head coach of the local non-profit running club it's ecostriders it's our mission to introduce the sport of running to

141our youth with the focus of track and field and spring in the spring and cross country in the fall we primarily serve kids from the age of six to fourteen years old when our oh sorry my computer sorry i had a little feedback i apologize um when our kids graduate from pv and chico high they're directly um i'm sorry about that when our striders entered high school they graduated from our club and they joined the high school programs both pv and chico high are directly seeing the positive influence from our club on both the number of athletes and developed talent kevin gurt and vince phelps ara can attest to this track is a spring sport and set to kick off april 12th simply we can't have a track without a track season without a track

142i'm very proud to say that i want you to know that our coaches are 100 volunteers and committed hundreds of hours to our striders we have also raised funds over the years to pay for operational costs and are in order to remove all barriers for our kids to enter the sport of running in chico unified school district continues to leave the fields closed we will need to utilize both paradise and the durham facility this presents a significant disadvantage to the kids who do not have transportation additionally running presents a low exposure of health risks to in our current covet environment and liability for the district chico striders is a fully insured with the district as well as an additional insured in the policy please help us by changing your policy allowing external use of facilities

143to not only baseball fields but also the track please remove the only barrier left in the way of fostering an equally and equally healthy lifestyle and love supportive community i appreciate everyone's attention to this matter and consideration for this position thank you thank you for your input mr tennis i believe you have a motion to be made um i move that we i don't know exactly how to craft my motion but that guy that just called in danny de mayo it's a great program and all they would do you know is want to use the track to run around you know i mean it's a great program it's we like cross country we've discussed um informally i don't know if we've ever discussed it formally but you know it's a it's a less expensive uh

144activity sport and it's really popular nowadays and a lot of kids really benefit from that strider program it's a really awesome program and i think that we should figure out a way to to to enable them to use some used tracks so that kids can participate in it because right now the program's kind of shut down i have a question if the activity that mr tennis is speaking up this was in the guidelines we're about to pass that would uh make it available so that was what i was going to ask julie mr bulma can jump in as well i believe there were some reasons from based on internal use that the tracks in particular were not available until at least late in the evening julie can you clarify that please yes certainly um we

145would love to be able to open up the stadium facilities for external use but as you all know we have multiple sports for our high school students on top of each other we're doing fall and spring sports all at the same time so the stadium is in use every day monday through saturday all day long and in the guidance that we've provided for your review tonight we would only be opening it the stadium which includes the track uh between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m on weekday evenings and saturdays and sundays when available so i guess the the opportunity for the striders would be on saturdays and sundays if available um mr landau i'll see you mr dr kaiser you'll be next a question oh i'm sorry sorry a question for julia or kevin

146are there any other we've talked about the stadium are there other tracks i'm not sure exactly what the strider's needs are are do we have other facilities at uh other sites that might we won't be able to open to them um without talking with them i'm not exactly sure what um would be required uh mr ness i can speculate um my son my oldest went through strider's great program um but basically i can't speak for him i'm sure he'd be available if we wanted to call him but um no they meet and they go through running drills and stuff like that i mean i think weren't we talking about some old track or something like that on some some campus like within the last meeting or two i mean those might be viable you know

147possibilities if there are any old julie kissel are there any old older tracks non-stadium running tracks out there in our in the chico unified school school system our chico junior high and bidwell junior high as well as some of our elementaries have uh granite tracks so they're not running tracks that are you know surface like our high schools but they're utilized for elementary and junior high pe it's across oh sorry it's a cross-country focus then that's something we'd want to speak with them about and see if those are options that would be viable the challenges julie mentioned is on the stadiums with just the number of our own students but those other facilities may if they fit their needs be available per this guidance so as a university uh cross-country and uh track coach um

148most of the universities use i mean chico they do use the park and use that running surface because it is there's no traffic for periods of time and it is flat so i think it's very clear that we can't interfere with our own groups uh who are i mean we pull up here and there's five different teams out there you know practicing but um certainly um the goodwill park we have had all kinds of meets there and cross country has their meets there so um it may be that they're just unaware of some of the other areas that happen those tracks aren't measured and that's part of the the sense of it you know so anyway i think what's um i would encourage you regarding this guidance this guidance would allow us to engage these

149outside organizations and have a conversation if the times available to them would fit their programs and allow our staff to then schedule them while also maintaining the time for our own programs so at least it allows us to have those conversations with our outside groups because it's not completely closed it just means that we have earmarked some time that effectively we can manage dr kaiser i would like to move 4.2.1 do i have a second second thank you is there any further discussion i just would like a quick point of clarification yes tom so i think i heard you say that passing this without any changes will allow us to engage with uh with the group that spoke to us and see about using our other facilities for them correct correct thank you okay um

150i'm going to call for the vote member dalby are you out there are you ready for vote caitlyn yeah i'm here okay we're calling for a vote on approving the um facilities use guidelines for the rest of the year until june 30th i believe uh how say you hi dr kaiser aye mr tennis tennis eye lando eye robinson eye it passes 5-0 okay next up okay we have the chico high school architecture career technical education project yay team julie kissel thank you is this an exciting project over at chico high school one of our career and technical education grants and as you know we have already um completed the first phase of the project which is the greenhouse over at the ag department and the second phase is to modernize the two agriculture classrooms and

151to add a shade structure outside for the welding program at the time that we put the lead sheet together the project had not yet bid however it did bid on april 1st and the we got five impressive bids and the low bidder is hankins group for 450 000. uh you see that the construction budget that we're asking you to approve this evening is for 700 000 and that includes the portion that you previously approved for the greenhouse so tonight we are asking you to review and approve the project to move forward with hankins group as the general contractor thank you julie have we had any additional staff fall through the roof at the greenhouse at chico high no we have not oh good i'm i'm i'm going to move approval of the uh awarding of

152the the bid second any further discussion board julie can you spell the name of that uh contractor yes it's h-a-n-k-i-n-s hankins and we have worked with them previously that part of their group is an electrical company and they've done many projects for us in that electrical capacity however they are a general contractor and this is our first project with them as a general thank you board member dalby are you ready for vote and how say you i vote i dr kaiser oh robinson i i'm sorry i'm still giggling from uh for those of you that don't know we had a a staff member at jaco high fall through the roof of the old greenhouse facility he was hurt pretty badly okay our next item i'm sorry that passed 5-0 thank you thank you thank you

153julie um the next item mr baltimore yes so we're bringing forth a document and we're really calling our planning document related to the covid one-time funds and in the top right hand corner we've summarized the available new dollars and again as a reminder these are one time in nature we have the s or two dollars at 10 million the ab-86 in-person instruction grants at 3.7 the ab-86 expanded learning opportunities grant at 8.1 million both of those ab-86 are state dollars and then now the s or three dollars additional 22. almost 3 million so for a total of 44 million dollars just in the new money that's going to be coming into us at our last meeting back in march march 3rd specifically the board took action on the items that are grayed out the furniture

154for social support distancing at the elementary level class size reduction the mtss coordinator and then elementary counselors for two years what's included in this spreadsheet also is we're still categor categorizing the expenditure through the mtss categories which is consistent to what ed services is doing is it's looking towards its implementation of the educational program and then we've also added the number of years in which we would use these one-time dollars and we have the current year next year 20 22-23 and then we've included 22-23-24 because there is some federal law that allows an additional year of expenditure so we do believe for the federal dollars sr2 and sr3 that we can spend those dollars out through the 2024 year so we've included for planning purposes the benefits of these dollars over multiple years so the

155list we understand this is a very long list and very broad and quite frankly maybe not fair to bring this to you tonight and ask you to vote on all of these items because you may have certain questions and it takes a little bit of time when you start looking at there's actually 50 million dollars of budget allocation here but our intention isn't to ask you to vote on all items what we are asking you this evening is to take a look at these certainly ask any questions we intend to bring this list back to you on april 21st however there are some items here that if we want to start addressing some student loss and some of the conversation we had earlier we would recommend to the board consider taking action this evening to

156approve these allocations and an example would be the one point full-time equivalent intervention teacher for all the elementary school sites for an estimated cost of 2.5 million the reason we might ask you to approve this this evening is allows us to start recruiting for these teaching positions right away if this is something in fact we want to implement so we identified those items that we felt have a time imperative that you might consider taking action on this evening in green and most of them are related to staffing and anything that has a longer timeline for purchase and just the total of all the items in green are is listed at the bottom at 12.831 million dollars repeat what you just said please the last little line yes uh the total for all the items listed

157in green which we would ask the board consider taking action on this evening for allocation totals twelve million eight hundred thirty one thousand dollars and that is all the items in green do want to point out that we have in there the additional counselors to support mental health we have mtss as well as wellness counselors and tcm extra assignment to increase student support so some of the themes that we've been talking about this evening are included here mr landau dr kaiser you'll be next in fact i wanted to address exactly that i understand that we want to fill these positions as quickly as possible so when thinking about the mental health support positions and intervention teachers uh if we approve this today are we looking at uh hopefully filling these positions are we looking at

158summer next year or right away i mean what's the timeline for getting someone in these in these positions so that's a good question so and that's why it it is impera important to approve them as soon as possible because we're competing with all the other school districts in the area for the same people um if we get approval tonight we open the positions we typically will open for two weeks and then have interviews shortly after that we can move fairly quickly so it's potential that we could increase staffing at the wellness centers and potentially increase some of the uh so i potentially offer some of the uh immediate uh crisis response counseling that the our students are talking about well unknown um a lot of the people that are in these positions are under contract

159for the remainder of this year so we will at least be hiring starting next year i couldn't guarantee that we could get the quality of people that we need immediately for this year because they're typically going to be working somewhere else it's possible if some of them have already graduated and they're just looking for that that first position and we do hire some of those folks but um but especially important for hiring for next year because this is the hiring season that we're competing with all the other school districts for i understand that i don't know if there's a way within the hiring process i presume there's not to emphasize people who might be available now i really think we need to listen to the uh students who spoke here earlier about an immediate need

160for a ramp up in in crisis services i understand that um it will be a challenge a lot of school districts are doing the same thing and the the folks that are properly credentialed in the counseling areas are going to be at a premium so that's important for us to be hiring now before or at least during the same time the other districts are so on that note um are we only looking for pps's or are we or are we thinking about social workers and lcsws and mfts and that kind of thing yes definitely the latter at the current time we have our properly credentialed teacher i mean counselors for academic areas and they're only required by law um at the high schools they're not required by law at the elementary and the junior highs

161because we're they're not advising for college preparation and that type of thing so we're definitely looking at for those those other areas licensed social workers and mtfs mfts thank you um member dalby has her hand up sorry dr kaiser that's okay you can go to dr kaiser first kathy she's i want to move uh 4.2.3 and if i get a second i'll speak to it point of order yes i remember dolby we're still in dece yeah we were still in discussion um uh madam president has not asked for a motion yet um so i'm gonna ask my question yes we also have speakers waiting oh you have online speakers waiting okay thank you member dalby if you could yeah um just a friendly reminder for the board that we should be waiting for madam president

162to ask for a motion and raise our hand and then i'll and then present our motion my question is on this document um uh is this whole list um i'm assuming it's all totaled at the bottom um and shown like how much is that is it still within the amount that we will have to spend are there things on this list that we're going to have to pick and choose to take off the list because we can't spend all of it that's a good question eventually yes that is a good question there are actually there is almost 51 million dollars of ideas and programs listed here and as we noted above there's only about 44 million dollars of available revenue so yes there is some prioritization that would need to occur but what we would

163specifically ask for this evening and again noting that this is a lot for the board to take in at one time i would recommend that the board target or focus in on those items that are in green that we believe have some timeline imperative to implement and then bring this back on april 21st to then have that further prioritization conversation to whittle this down to fit within that 44 million dollars of available revenue okay thank you mr lando one more quick clarification question i see one of the items in green is a pbis lead in the amount of five thousand dollars is that a stipend thank you ah yes does it um any board member have any questions about any of the items marked in green i do yes mr tennis how would you propose

164working at kevin um i'm hearing mr lando sort of have favorable things to say about the idea of maybe maybe increasing what we're looking at for for wellness therapy he's free to whack me or something like that if i'm reading that incorrectly um how would we do that if we wanted to to take a stick a toe in the water there well certainly the board has the authority and discretion to um you know direct and provide allocation amounts that may be different than this what i might suggest since this is a lot of information at one time um one i would focus in on just those items in green if you felt that those were appropriate to approve to move forward and we could get started then and then when we come back on the

16521st and really have a better idea of what you think the priorities are or if you want to add to a certain item we could do it at that time one recommendation i would make to the board is that we don't allocate all 44 million dollars quite frankly i actually might recommend that we shoot for something like 35 to 38 million dollars holding some of those dollars back for things that we are are not seeing yet and quite frankly getting more feedback as we go down the line from our school sites so i'm taking a long time to answer your question mr tennis but i think from a program standpoint if you want to change the amounts in green and felt comfortable in that area that's what i would recommend for this evening and then

166we will bring this back on the 21st really for kind of a full review so i should propose a number change on that is that what you just said maybe i think that's true okay so so i'd say um maybe to triple what's in place now which is a half of an intervention counselor right now at each at each high school site we're also adding we put on there adding an extra counselor um above the wellness counselor two on there so you'll see secondary gets a we're proposing another counselor above the halftime wellness counselor like an academic counselor right it does not have to be no just like we said we're expanding what we're asking for our counselors to be able to do there was also the um one of the speakers one of the

167students brought up the issue of uh the wellness center there was a in that person i was in a meeting with with her on monday and um they weren't of the opinion on monday that there was a wellness center at cheek ohio they called it the back back room they called it but they said that they thought they needed a wellness center so i think maybe we're thinking we've got one thing but they at least monday they weren't thinking we had that so is there money in here that could i mean one thing also that she said or one of them said was that i've heard this is like they feel like they're not in a private environment right so so they feel like maybe they've heard staff talking about other students in a way

168that they thought was inappropriate you know i mean who knows exactly what transpired but i imagine a perfect little place where where a student goes to check into a you know like a conversation with a chico unified staff member and it's a private environment and maybe they're known by name and if you really had a crisis you know it would be a place where you could go to have a conversation with somebody that you could signal you know yeah absolutely and we have heard that loud and clear in meeting with our students during our student lcap meetings this year that they really want a more confidential way to reach out to help from their counselors and so you know that is certainly something that we're working on now the wellness center at chico high is

169designed to do exactly that and mr williams has money to do that it is still in development it is not done yet it is still under development so that's probably why the students you know aren't familiar with it by that term and mr tennis i just i haven't run this by mr shepherd but i was talking to a person from county behavioral health one of the things we got started on this one students told us that they needed that as miss staley's saying but we have a few of us have visited a wellness center at down in fresno clovis north has a beautiful section where they have their academic counselors one area then they have a wellness center so we're going to be planning on taking some assistant principals and counselors down to look at

170their their center so we have a baseline because again they have a center where the kids can go in where they have a counselor they have interns from the universities nearby and then they also have pure seniors that work with the younger ones and again i really want people to see that i've seen that in person and it's pretty well and so we'll be taking people down there to make sure we're developing these centers the proper way and if i could just add if you look at the spreadsheet under line 51 it references whisper rooms the idea is that these are rooms and we have already installed these in a couple of our locations at some of our elementary schools they are enclosures that can be installed in classrooms or in office spaces and they

171do provide a confidential space for counseling so that has been a consideration it wasn't listed here as a time priority because they're readily available so if we bring this back to on the 21st and that is still something that the board would like to support we can easily get those before the net start of the next school year okay i'm following mr tennis's inquiry in what we have in in green um do we um could we make an increase to that line item without uh presenting it it wouldn't present any difficulties because the you know it's within the parameters of the money that's available in this first approval tonight do we need to do it in order to begin to accomplish what mr tennis and other board members are asking for staffing we need to

172if if we are hiring physicians we need to be out looking right now and interviewing now dr kaiser so i want to caution us about putting too many structural implications on this especially in terms of the services the city has run into this behavioral health has run into this it's very very complex and what we provide as somebody i think it was doug said you know it's a it's a check list of potential services but it's not what someone might perceive as full-time or in-depth counseling that takes over a long period of time i um i think everybody is drawn to the same issue of the kids that are struggling that we know about but i do think that in this context and kevin's kelly both referenced it time is of the essence we are

173an extremely situation with very limited professionals available to us in this area and i think all the high schools and junior highs around us are having some of the same consequences so i'd rather see us think about moving this forward by approving it and then as as you find more contextual frameworks that you can explain to us i mean jim's already said it's a two-week we have to post for two weeks so we can't do anything you know we get that out there then we would have a lot better idea of the kind of people available to us but also if we can go see something that appears to be very successful in the high school environment that would be also really good so i i just feel like if we start to try to

174fine-tune this too much now we're losing really valuable time but they say that we need to get out there and start hiring if we're going to do it and if some of us look at this line item and we feel like it needs to be a little bigger we need to let them know tonight and so it warrants a you know a conversation about upping it thank you mr lando thank you uh perhaps then instead of uh getting into a big debate over what number that should be um that when we uh we instead simply authorize staff uh to make offers beyond the amount here if we find the candidates instead of saying hey you can only spend another hundred thousand and say here's a you've got this much already if we get find three

175great candidates who are extra go ahead and you have pre-authorization to just make those offers as well i would second that motion i think that flexibility helps us there's no guarantee that there's quality candidates out there in the numbers that we need hopefully there is but if they are we don't we don't want to lose them either so i think that that's great flexibility and the other challenge with this is that um these are one-time dollars so we're going to be creating a service that we will not be able to continue past three years so it's a challenge we certainly know this is an issue to address cova that's what these dollars are for i just want to continue to point out that there is a point where this will end because we just do

176not have the ongoing resources to support this type of program and also what we're looking at right now is possibly 17 to 18 counselors that we'll be looking to hire just on what we've approved already we're not at the point to call for a motion yet board we have speakers waiting to address the board caitlin did you have a an inquiry um just really quickly um uh with that topic um just one last question about it um would it be or maybe i missed this in the discussion um with clarity um possible to fly those positions for next year um and stay you know leave it open to possibly sooner if the right candidate fits or something like that with the idea that we can fill that that wellness center position sooner than later or

177you know wherever it may need to be if we can do it you know in two weeks rather than wait until next year along with that flexibility is that something that's possible yes i see heads nodding that yes if we have the right person you can modify the start date okay um and i'm not sure if that's something that would need to be like board directed or approved i just wanted to clarify that and then um just a friendly teacher a reminder mr baltimore we love growth mindset around here and i would love to think that if we establish a really good program wellness program wellness and mental health program in our schools that those programs aren't going to go away we're just going to have to find um different funding for them in the

178future so i'm gonna think positively about those programs and and assume that we're gonna get to work and find out how to fund those fund those um further into the future thank you we're good you call for a motion no we're we have speakers waiting dr kaiser yeah no i was putting them on hold okay i'm calling katie vanderwaal cook speakerphone if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay go ahead hello again uh concerning the budget i'm um asking that funds be allocated to support our distance learners that will be returning to school campuses in august i would like to encourage the school board and superintendent to plan an early return uh for uh to school of a couple days uh for the students who have been distance learning this

179past year they are going to need a bit of additional time to adjust to being on campus with large groups of students and working in collaborative environments again this time could be used for team building social emotional outreach as well as campus support and working as a team such as doing a group mural at school or a library project as well as team a team building sport to help them all adjust to being together this will also help to forge some new friendships as many haven't seen their school friends in a year or more thank you those that's the only speaker i have on this item i thought we had two thank you okay now board we are in a position to ask for a motion dr kaiser i so moved the passing of 4.2.3

180mr tennis i'd like to propose a friendly amendment that we point of order um well completely with the spirit of what you're doing i believe we need to have a second second to put the motion on the floor before we can amend it okay so either you and i can second then we can amend it um i'll second the motion and then i'll ask for a friendly amendment and that amendment friendly amendment would be to um uh increase authorization for staff to hire above what is listed here in the category of student wellness up to three times the amount shown dr kaiser will you accept the amendment i don't see that as friendly i think it puts us where we don't really know what the rest of our financial resources might be since kevin just

181encouraged us to think of the actual amount committed right now is in the 30 30 million right what 30 35 well the items listed in green total 12.8 million and we bring it back to you we'll probably ask for you know an allocation up to around 35 37 million so i would really encourage us to wait till we come back and we start having an idea of where the these money barriers or money issues might arise okay i'm going to call for a vote then on the original actually i'd like to propose an amendment as well oh yes mr lando this is not going to be a friendly amendment i don't think apparently so i'm just going to ask to put the amendment up for a vote i would like to amend the motion on

182the table to allow our hiring our staff to hire any qualified candidates to meet our immediate mental health wellness needs and given the limited pool we're pulling from i don't suspect you guys are going to go spend 20 million dollars on counselors so i would like to leave it to their discretion to hire any good candidates they can find even if that does uh exceed the line item there i'll second that yeah i see that as a substitute motion with a second is there any discussion on the substitute motion did you ask if there was a second on the substitute motion yes yes i'll second that it has been seconded oh okay my my question and i don't know about caitlyn my question to kevin would be i'm not sure we got greater clarity about

183this we've already indicated we want to take care of social emotional needs so actually i think based on what the discussion i've heard from the board and if it's recorded in the minutes our understanding is that we will go out and try and recruit as many counselors as we can and if that 1.5 million dollars is not enough we would bring back an estimate of new cost associated with that and increasing it at the time i here's here's where my clarification is as many as we need not what can i mean right we we know we have a specific framework that we have to operate in but then yeah that would be a good clarification thank you the only um clarification i would request is related to the motion it just said pass but was

184it specific to the items listed in green only yes yes if i'm uh that i believe that's the intent of both of them if i'm making a substitute motion instead of an amendment then the motion would be to approve funding for the items listed in green on this spreadsheet with the change as previously mentioned to the amount we're authorizing for mental health and wellness hiring so just for clarification for hr i'm essentially doing a dual recruitment one for the short term and then one for starting next year because those may be different pools or groups of people that are available so is that correct okay okay um i'm going to call for the vote member dalby hey dr kaiser yes mr tennis uh tennis eye dr eric mr lando hi i almost promoted you to

185a doctor robinson he's got that green shirt on with the surgical mask there we go that passes five nothing thank you members um where are we on our agenda elementary secondary schools emergency relief are we on number four i'm i'm sorry yes thank you mr baltimore uh yes and this is really a perfect example of how quickly things are changing when we brought the line items to you that were listed in gray that you approved for expenditure out of s or two dollars it wasn't until the next day that we received s or three and the state a b 86 as well so what we're requesting is that um at that time we earmarked that those five expenditures specifically to sr2 and we're asking that the board would consider unlinking those five items specifically from

186as her two dollars because there are different timelines associated with these dollars and now there's almost kind of a we're going to have to do some accounting work to make sure because we included the crosswalks in the other to to prove that these items are addressing covid19 we're just requesting that we eliminate that direct link to sr2 and allow us to spend this within esther 2 3 or the ab 86 dollars wow i understand that the only last thing i want to add is i did mention on the last item but we will be very specific in the accounting of this related to the state's standardized accounting code structure usually utilizing what they call goals and functions so we'll be able to report how these dollars are being used bring that back to you as

187the board and the community so when you talk about wellness we'll be able to report how many of those dollars based on the allocation you made we've actually spent and how those dollars were used so we'll be very specific in the accounting so that we can do accurate reporting for you this is the fun stuff hey um kevin on a somewhat serious note i want you to sort of remake a speech that you made a couple weeks ago we have a lot of money coming in right from covid relief there's a state source of money and then federal sources of money um and you said something like you had an interesting turn of phrase like like i almost want to say you can have whatever you want but but not quite that much or something

188but but what how should we be thinking about this money that's coming in is there is there scarcity that we should be concerned about when we talk about hiring counselors for you know for the kids in the midst of covet or should we not think in terms of scarcity for for that purpose well i think the challenge is these this is a large amount of one-time money but one by its nature it's one time so how do you effectively use the dollars one to address the learning loss and the social emotional for those kids that need it because they've gone through this experience and then how do you also leverage these dollars to give you multiple years of benefit because there's an opportunity to really create schools that we want to have and we never

189really had the opportunity to do before and so we're having conversations about outdoor shade structures and and you know the concrete picnic tables that are going to be there for 25 30 years it really can shape what our schools look like in that way hvac systems we'll bring more information about this but we can really move our district in a much more forward advancement towards air quality which is going to be an issue in the next year five years 10 years related just simply where we live so i think to answer your question is i typically use the term we can be anything but we can't be everything because there's a limit and i do appreciate trustee dalby's perspective wanting to grow out of it but there is a limit on the budget typically in

190any given year in this case might come would be we can be anything and we really can be anything as long as we do it thoughtfully permanent infrastructure is is is a really logical thing to invest in you know so the wellness center i mean i don't know how much i don't i don't know how much exactly we're pouring into that but that seems like like something that could be a really good use of this one-time money and i would really encourage the board to go through this list and we'll bring it back to you on the 21st and uh from a private prioritization standpoint but some of the things you just mentioned getting many years of benefit out of these one-time dollars would be just a very i think effective use a good stewardship

191use of these dollars we have had several reports now about the very high uptick in pollution due to the fires very very significant in our area and with the mega drought we're in likely to continue so i i think that issue about thinking about our air systems much more bigger or longer term than covid but you know this is a really critical issue for a lot of people so anytime something that addresses an immediate issue can be extended long term that's that's a huge benefit we may have to do the same thing with our water systems with what they're talking about so yeah i agree cable do we have any public comment have come in no none then we are at a point where i'd ask if the board has an emotion motions associated with

192this agenda item dr kaiser i moved 4.2.4 is there a second i'll second that i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion remember dalby nope she's shaking her head no i'm going to call for the vote all those in favor of approval signify by saying aye hi passes five nothing thank you board okay we have the approval of the student calendar under the human resources approval mr hanlon okay thank you so each year i bring to the board your approval of the calendar that is three years out and this just happens in april of the of each year and we're looking at the 2324 calendar it's there's no significant changes or anything even minor changes it's very much very traditional start and end times with the exception just a reminder we

193have two new board members last year we adopted the first calendar that ended on a friday rather than a thursday give you a little history that dates back to us needing to share the stadium at chico state because chico high did not have a stadium to have a graduation in so it always kind of ended on a thursday and that that set the tone for the whole district well that's not any longer necessary we have a great stadium for to hold a graduation and it's much much more friendly to our families who invite their family members in from out of town for the weekend rather than on a thursday which is is much more difficult so um other than that everything is very traditional holidays holiday breaks spring break all those things are very traditional

194so if you have any questions i can answer those and if if for some reason you see something on this calendar that is not acceptable you can certainly bring it back at the next meeting member dalby you have a question yeah just um for for clarification because i feel like i remember voting on calendars before does this get does this get passed by staff um to discuss it all or is it just something that gets kind of done internally and then and then and then shown to us so i do run it by both of the unions and ask for input we we also i also run it by ed services for input so there's a lot of eyes that have been on this and input um on the uh for example uh student conference

195days at elementary and and those types of things so um it's not just uh just me putting the calendar together we have a lot of people that that have input and opportunities for input on it mr moretti uh are you asking for input well actually um our contract says that the district will consult with cuta but since my wife and i don't agree on the on the calendar to have cuta come up with a consensus so the way the district does it where you know they put it out ask for input from everyone that is the consultation so just so you know that they are following the contract thank you mr moretti members any other just caitlyn were you finished okay members do we have any more discussion uh if not i'll we'll entertain a

196motion mr landau all right i moved the adoption of the 2023-24 student calendar as presented i have a motion and a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed none it's unanimous thank you oops yes board member request to agendize items is number five before we adjourn to closed session i don't see any hands going up oh mr landau this is not so much request to agendas as um we heard from mary kate benson early and i just wanted to know if we had uh received that proposal from who charles was within i think white people so i don't believe the district has received a proposal from charles i believe it went to dr kaiser and we have reviewed that um we have talked about whether

197or not that would be appropriate or not to agendize that item and i think we're still doing some research with attorneys looking at whether or not that's even something feasible to do i'll leave that to that you guys and thank you okay then i move that we move into closed session do we have any comments from anyone wanting to comment on closed session okay see none we are recessed to closed session we will announce any actions when we are finished yes we'll need to move into the room and then miss dolby will make sure erica gets you the phone number to call in um is there any way to drag a chromebook in there and just let me zoom in on on that too or does it have to be by phone i just don't

198know how good my phone's gonna be okay i'm gonna guess the answer to that is yes i'm looking at mr vincent okay we'll see you in the other room caitlin all right thank you uh you