9/2/2020 Board of Education Meeting

001thank you okay my clock shows five o'clock so i'm going to call to order this special meeting of the chico unified school district board of trustees if you would please rise and join me in the flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation one nation indivisible with liberty and justice okay thank you for joining us this afternoon before we begin our items on the agenda i wanted to explain a few things about how the meeting will be run all of the agenda items under the discussion calendar are information only this means that the board will not be taking any action on these items this evening i'd like to quickly review our public participation procedure for tonight's meeting per the

002governor's executive order our meetings are being conducted virtually to help reduce and minimize the risk of infection from covid i do not have my mask up because it fogs my glasses and i cannot read but rest assured we are at least 10 feet apart thank you since this is a special board of education workshop public input must be regarding an item that is currently on the posted agenda members of the public who wish to bring forward an item that is not on the posted agenda must do so at a regular meeting of the board full participation information can be found on the meeting agenda we we continue to encourage members of the public to participate during tonight's meeting comments on an agenda item will be taken when the agenda item is being discussed by the

003board there is an item on our agenda which requires a public hearing and so that the comments regarding that item will be taken when the public hearing has been opened up speaker priority will be given to those who have submitted a speaker's card and it appears to me right now that there are two that have done so if there is still time remaining within the designated 10-minute time allotment then the board will provide an opportunity for members attending the zoom meeting to raise their hand and speak and each speaker will be allowed to speak for three minutes speaker priority will be given to speakers who have not yet addressed the board and only a repetition of speakers will occur if time allows we also caution you that if there is redundancy and the same comment

004being made over and over and over again we will maybe ask to hear from other viewpoints if time remains we may ask that the time be extended for the public comment to continue speakers are asked to attend the board meeting virtually through the zoom invitation link at the top of the agenda when it is time for speakers to address the board their name will be called and the microphone on their zoom account will be activated speakers should rename their zoom profile names to match the name on their speakers card to expedite this process after the comment has been given the microphone for the speaker's zoom profile will be muted the board is unable to read written materials presented during the meeting members of the public may submit an email that will be sent to each

005board member by using the email address and public comments that are come via email will be attached to the meeting record okay i hope that is clear enough and if so we are going to continue with the first item on our agenda which is our consent calendar so are there any board members who wish to pull an item from the consent calendar yes dr kaiser i wish to pull the contract for comcast and that's under 1.1 correct okay any others uh linda any from your side no okay all righty so may i have a motion for the remaining items i'll second that okay we have a motion by dr kaiser a second by tom lando uh we will take a roll call vote for all those in favor of this remaining portion of the consent

006calendar linda how do you vote harvey i lando i griffin i robinson i okay that passes unanimously kathy what uh what about the comcast contract so i wanted to pull the comcast uh contract to give a shout out to comcast and to john vincent who arranged this contract this gives two months of free internet service to qualifying families an additional four months of free internet service that we at chico unified will pay for so with all the duress that many families are facing i thought this was a tremendous cooperation between comcast and chico unified and i just wanted to salute them so with that i moved the comcast communications contract i'll second that motion okay motion by dr kaiser second by eileen robinson any further discussion regarding this item all those in favor please say

007aye hi okay that passes unanimously i also understand that this period of time after that six months elapses that we will be renewing for those uh families that are not able to afford the comcast is that accurate mr baltimore that is accurate okay oh i'm sorry who was that really supposed to be to you missed okay i wasn't sure who was the one who was uh up to to speed on that okay john vincent blushing oh oh you're over there okay didn't see you over at that end you would for sure know okay so that takes care of our business services consent calendar uh we will move now to our discussion portion and this has to do with educational services the information about learning continuity and attendance plan and tina keane is going to start

008off with that thank you tina thank you very much tonight i'm coming to talk to you about the components of the learning continuity and attendance plan typically every year we come to the board and our community with our lcap which we do not have in place right now due to covid so john vincent if you can oh actually i have it i'm sorry right here we're going to start in with a little bit of the background of what this plan is senate bill 98 which was adopted in june i believe added a number of provisions to the education code regarding instruction during the 2021 school year one of these provisions is edcode43509 which among other things requires all districts and charter schools to draft and adopt a learning continuity plan this plan requires a detailed

009description of the ways the district will address many issues related to in-person and distance learning a little background on this it is a pretty comprehensive document of about 35 pages and it is all narrative except for some budgetary pieces so tonight i want to give an overview on the parts of the plan that that there are 10 of them that we were asked to complete and give you kind of an idea of the feedback that we're going to be getting in the next few weeks between our public hearing tonight and when i come back to you on september 16th for approval as you can see all of the districts and charters in in the state have had to do this the interesting thing with this is that there is not a whole lot of time

010as we heard about this in july after it went into statute and it has to be adopted by september 30th by the local board in the midst of that we get school up and going and we had changes as we know in between that time as well as far as our model of instruction so it is a pretty tight turnaround i do want you to know this public hearing is to gather input i've already started gathering input from site council meetings there was one at marigold today we'll take it to our dlac which is our district english learner advisory council on september 9th and virtually every other school will be having their site council between now and then to gather feedback from folks so it is narrative i apologize for a lot of the words

011i will show you the document after i go through the slides so you have an idea of what it looks like but bear with me if i read some of the slides so the learning continuity plan highlights a couple of things how the district will provide continuity of instruction during the school year to ensure pupils have access to a full curriculum of substantially similar quality regardless of the delivery method one thing i do want to comment on this jeanette spencer from butte county office of education who works with us on these plans set a big part of that providing continuity of instruction during the school year is also to keep in mind going from perhaps distance learning to in-person learning we hope it doesn't go back again to distance learning but to keep in mind

012as this is really a moving target for so many we have to to think in in those terms an important piece of this plan is to ensure access to devices and connectivity for our students professional development plays a big role as well and resources those things that will be provided to staff including technological support learning loss how the district will address pupil learning loss that resulted from kovat 19 during the 2019-20 and 20 21 school years a little note on this part right here throughout the plan does run the theme of what what was lost in education due to the march 13th date of having all of us go online there was significant time there that we know was lost with learning and that does that does present itself in this plan even though it's

013for the year 2021 and of course the end which is one one of the reasons we are here tonight the plan must be approved by the local board by september 30th after a public hearing has been held so digging in there are 10 sections of this plan it's important to note that within the ten sections there are sub sections as well so there are four to five subsections in each of the ten again i'm not going to go through all of it because it's it's a it's very wordy we will have the draft on the website so it will be totally transparent to the public and all pardon me here we go section one general information this section wanted us to write a brief description of the impact of covet 19 and how it has

014had an impact on chico unified in our community just a quick note to this as we all know our county and our community has gone through several things in the last two years that have impacted us and this this is right on the heels of that stakeholder engagement this is a big piece of this plan it includes to describe the efforts made to solicit stakeholder feedback those stakeholders are our students parents and families teachers and staff and also our stakeholders who speak languages other than english we have done this extensively and continue to do this in various ways there are zooms that we've had with students both elementary and high school parents and families lots of surveys there are facebook live communication ongoing communication with families and parents in that regard teachers and staff there

015were a large group of teachers and staff every monday through the summer that got together on zoom to help kind of flush out ideas about what what we can be doing as news was coming to us about the possibilities of instructional models and of course our stakeholders who speak languages other than english we ensured that surveys and information was always translated and again we'll take it to our district english language advisory council next week section 3 talks about in-person instructional offerings so this describes the actions the district will take to offer classroom-based instruction whenever possible particularly for students who have experienced significant learning loss due to school closures in the 1920 school year or are at a greater risk of experiencing learning loss due to future school closures there is also a funding part of

016this related to our in-person instructional offerings in the plan if you read it it really describes our plan that was adopted by the board in july the am pm that would be the piece the information that we know at the time of this plan writing that we would go forward for in-person instruction in that model and the funding is quite extensive chico unified has received a large amount of money through the cares act which is federal money and that money is all funneled into the pieces uh many of which are in this plan in terms of professional development technology um my goodness curriculum things like that that we've been able to use that cares act money for in the event of distance learning which is also included in the plan that we were asked to

017describe how the district will provide continuity of instruction during the school year to ensure pupils have access to a full curriculum of substantially similar quality regardless of the method of delivery we also had to address our access to devices and connectivity for our kids and families people participation and progress it also will address the grading and assessment which ted and john will give a brief description and update to you in a moment the distance learning professional development staff roles and responsibilities how we're supporting our pupils with unique needs and again more funding in terms of the distance learning piece so at this time i want ted and john to describe the grading and assessment piece good evening was that are we working okay perfect uh in the elementary world that's always a big question as

018far as for elementary teachers in particular where do we start instruction so trying to get a sense of what we do with that as far as how it relates to grading and some of those kinds of things our elementary dlc group met right away second week they were meeting and kind of going through our district assessments so they really looked at it through a lens of what what do teachers need to know about their students to start instruction at the appropriate place and then the follow-up question is what's doable right now in an online world as far as being able to assess students and get a sense of where to start with it so we went through and did a pretty significant modification of our assessments as far as what they're doing shared it out

019with staff and everybody is off and running as far as baseline assessments in elementary right now kind of following up with that uh our elementary dlc is meeting again tomorrow and we're going to start talking about assessments as it relates to the curriculum and also in kind of the scope and sequence and what we're looking for teachers to try to be doing as far as assessing and sharing that information with parents from there eileen uh thank you ted because i know there are uh guests listening in could you um explain the the dlc and and the other things that you're uh commenting on by sure so in uh for chicken unified we have a district leadership council hence dlc it is composed of a teacher leader and there's one from each school site and they

020are composed of kind of different areas we have primary teachers we have title 1 teachers we have special ed teachers that are on that group so they're charged with looking through kind of the things that are happening in the district and helping us work with putting things together related to what assessments are relevant to give how our report cards look what kind of professional development we want to put out for staff so that's the big charge of dlc so we meet a couple times two to four times a month depending on what's happening and that's really our teacher leadership group and we really lean on them pretty heavily to kind of look when we're making district-wide decisions that affect everybody that's the group that we lean on and kind of look for guidance on with

021those kinds of things so that group was incredibly helpful with this because i know they are at a school site level when teachers have questions or concerns that's who they go to also because they know that group meets consistently to talk about all those topics in the district so that group is going to keep meeting weekly for the time being to kind of talk about assessments professional development in particular what do we need to be working on and focusing on in those areas and that's where they're at right now we're going to meet tomorrow like i said and talk about more curriculum-based assessments and how they match up to the scope and sequence with things as well so ted has stolen most of my thunder about dlc and the the plans that people are developing

022those groups are still meeting they're meeting regularly uh we met last week for the first time with ela and and this week with math with edge annuity and the other online platforms that we're using grading and assessment is pretty consistent it's pretty clear how the students are going to be graded and assessed there's a significant amount of consistency which is something we came out of the spring desiring i think it's the main reason grading has been included in this board workshop that we revisit last spring and through a grading and assessment lens and ensuring that there's equitable and consistent grading and we know there are some challenges inherent in too much consistency to be sure that we are meeting the needs of various levels of students and so that's where the teachers come in and

023doing all they can to adapt and adjust to students needs while maintaining that consistency so i'm sure we'll be talking later about other aspects related to curriculum and grading but from a secondary perspective we're using the platforms mainly because of equitable consistency let me ask at this point it has already appeared twice the emphasis on how the district will provide of instruction in a curriculum that is substantially of similar quality regardless of the method of delivery so what steps were taken in order to reach that goal of getting a curriculum getting assuring that students would have access to to such a curriculum well i can speak for secondary and i think it will bleed into elementary as well that decision was made three and a half years ago when edgenuity was chosen that consistency of

024curriculum was chosen then and yes there's a it's a different game when we're talking 6 000 kids versus 200 kids but the decision to use the consistent curriculum edge annuity three years ago has has borne fruit here because we have the familiarity with that program so since we had a uh say a test group of people the people who were in the independent study program through oak bridge what was the response to edgenuity that led you to believe that that would be appropriate for this well i don't want to frame it going back three years but i can tell you since we started this school year i have yet to receive a single complaint from an oak ridge kid student or parent and so i that could imply that the population that's been using oak

025bridge in the past is really comfortable with the platform and the delivery um obviously we've been receiving significant amount of feedback recently about the current population using edge annuity and so there are some challenges there but based on the on the past and the feedback we'd been receiving it had been working okay and that that came also through vetting through teachers as well and their experience with it and making adjustments sorry interrupt making adjustments the the the oak bridge curriculum they're using now has been adjusted since the first year you know with modules being added adapted removed edited assessments being adjusted so those those changes have taken place over the past three years and those same kinds of changes will continue to be made yes yes uh eileen uh john something you just mentioned i

026have a question is what was being used at um oak ridge before because they have had time to work with it and make some tweaks and adjustments and things is that platform different than what we're using um with our other secondary students so just to click i'm sorry the second part of the question if teachers at the secondary level are given um flexibility to make modifications add and subtract and flip uh curriculum uh usage in their classrooms wouldn't that necessitate some kind of adjustment with the grading and stuff if it's not being delivered the same in every class so let me answer the first one and the platform is the same the courses and the modules because there there's such a wider scope of courses being offered versus what had been offered at oakbridge for

027a variety of reasons both lower level and higher level or higher achieve you know just different levels of of course work that there are there is a significant number of courses that have been added to the whole course list all of those courses have customization capability every one of the courses and that's that's actually what we're doing right in the middle of the customization and that's a that's a significant word customization customization can happen prior to the course being even open to the students one of the buttons to customize in edge annuity is actually called on the fly you know you can customize on the fly if we feel like we need to need to customize along the way so the customization is a critical piece of the flexibility of the program and we're learning

028hourly of things we may need to consider to be customized interject before you answer the question so one of the aspects of this is it does talk about substantially similar quality it does give access of the students to ap and to a to g courses that they need to qualify for college and my understanding is you can only modify about 20 percent in order to keep that recognition official so you can't just go in and take it apart correct just have you have a margin of correction or manipulation or innovation but in order to keep the validity of the courses standing you do need to stay there and i think that's the continuity and substantially similar they're not literally the same but they're parallel issues and if i can reinforce with the board too we

029do have a process for that customization it's not just willy-nilly people deciding they want to add and drop across you know the same course course alike within a department there's a process that the administration is involved in and because some folks don't know all the implications of customization so teachers and department chairs or department leads or or course likes meet with their admin team if they decide they're going to they're going to customize good good to know okay i don't want to keep interrupting you but thank you very much for the background on that all right section five addresses people learning loss uh and as i mentioned you'll see the theme running through this plan of 2019-20 and 2021 school years together because really we are starting backwards in march and working on describing how

030the district will address people learning loss that results from coven our actions and strategies that we will use to address learning loss and accelerate learning progress and a description of how these supports to address how learning loss is measured i i will address here too real quickly that pupil learning loss is of paramount concern and it is really one of the pieces of this plan that jumps out to us the most and with six months virtually six months of kids not being in school i think we all would agree that it is of um paramount concern and and how are we going about it and how can we adjust if it's not working and how do we find that data that shows us if kids are are learning or have lost some learning and you'll

031see that again in another section in a moment section 6 talks about the mental health and social and emotional well-being we are asked to address how our district will monitor and support mental health and social and emotional well-being of pupils and staff during the school year to circle back to the beginning of how our community has had some some life-changing things happen in it within the last couple of years we were lucky to have some things in place such as the at-risk counselors at the high school going into covid so we are fortunate in that regard but we still are able to use the cares act money to increase our support in this [Music] regard section seven people engagement and outreach this is another uh piece that is pretty meaty and of concern especially now

032in our early days of getting back into school our district's procedures for tiered re-engagement strategies for peoples who are absent from distance learning and how we will provide outreach to pupils and their parents or guardians including in languages other than english this actually came up today in the site council meeting i was attending to bring this plan for feedback and it is paramount especially in our teachers minds how are we going to make sure our kids are engaging we want to see them and make sure they're okay we want to see them and make sure they have access and they can learn and if and if not how can we help we need to to know so we can help it spurred on some great conversation of um how we can improve that so that's

033just an example of we can write things in a plan but when it takes on its own flavor at every school site and every every school within our district under the big umbrella of how are we going to do this it's just a great way to engage people with with this kind of venue and taking this for uh feedback we can engage people with their thoughts right now you know for example there was a second grade teacher that said i i just i'm worried about them how how do we know they're okay so again we want to make sure we're addressing that section 8 is school nutrition as we all know vincenzaro and his team at nutrition services does a bang-up job in this regard for our community and we have included a description of

034how the district provides nutritionally adequate meals for all pupils when participating in both in-person instruction and distance learning i will add through vince's program and nutrition services program that all all children under the age of 18 in our community will be fed i'd just like to add a personal observation i was going to pick up my grandkids lunches and i saw a family that included a toddler all the way up to probably a i don't know third grade uh kid and they had five kids and when i commented how great that was they said well we have families here that have seven kids you know all 18 and under that are that's how they're getting their meals so given the number of people in our community who have lost their jobs and for whom you

035know they're fighting the issue of how they're going to do rent and all those other things this has just been a phenomenal aspect and on friday you get double so i just really want to do a shout out to the teams at the schools and they always have a smile you know i appreciate that comment because to add on to that they always say sure no problem we can do whatever you need there's never a roadblock there's never a but it's what do you need so yeah section nine and we're almost done section nine is additional actions this is a supplementary section that districts can put information in to address the additional actions that they are taking to implement the plan we did include in this a description of our workday child supervision program currently

036our chico unified staff is able to participate in a workday child supervision program on many of our sites in very small cohorts of children being supervised it is not school but they are supervised and supervised by our classified staff who has been kind of reassigned because their job may or may not be be their their typical job may not be um gosh what's the word they may not have something like a bus driver for example a bus driver may not be driving a bus every day in in kovid so that person has been working in a different uh in a different capacity we are increasing on tuesday to include more of our students including offerings to foster and homeless students as well as uh some at risk students that that we would like to participate

037and then also have our essential workers moving into that piece we had some feedback from some people who in the community who are interested in that as well we do have space capacity parameters that we are working with as we have certain spaces on campus less than we would normally have because teachers are in the classrooms but students are in small socially distanced and pods following all safety safety protocols and the last part asks us about an explanation of how the needs of our foster youth english learners and low-income students were considered when making the plan and addressing the funding toward it so that is an overview of what the plan is in a moment i'll show you just kind of an eyeball view of what it looks like we can put the draft on

038the website as well for the next couple weeks until we we have it come back for approval but just again for you to know it is going to cite councils so we can have stakeholders from school sites give us input it is particularly interesting i think this you know this the way this plan was created in july the template was made on august 1st and it is due by september 30th and it is um it's great to make a plan and to have have an idea where we're going but as things as reality comes to us and uh you know the re-engagement strategies is a perfect example of that how are we ensuring as we go through this that we are able to connect with our students and make sure we know where they're at

039and if if they're not engaging for whatever reason we can we can work to find out why that is and how we can help so the next steps the plan will come back with all of the notes and additions edits deletions that we will have in the next couple of weeks so we'll come back to you on september 16th okay thank you miss keane and your assistants for all the information you provided uh okay so i believe at this time it would be good to go ahead and open up the public hearing we can hear from the public and then the board can talk about it if they wish knowing that we will be bringing this back for actual approval at our next meeting so if everybody's okay with that we'll go ahead and we

040will first listen to our two speakers that signed up to speak initially we have allocated 10 minutes towards this when that 10 minutes has elapsed we will ask the board if they wish to continue with more speakers if there are more speakers who wish to speak and we'll just handle it that way it's three minutes per speaker and so our first three speakers should probably take up most of our initial 10 minutes uh so in any case um whoever who is manning the um and thank you the fir we have two people who have submitted cards the first person is heidi dausman heidi i'm going to ask you to unmute hi thanks for taking my uh questions i just was first off i'm just kind of wondering where we are with the school waivers if

041um i know that the surveys have gone out and i think we have filled this friday um but i'm just kind of i've noticed i've checked the board several times that they're all been received but there hasn't been any any updates to that um and then the next part is of course just i understand the teachers are trying everyone's trying very hard but i'm just hoping that you guys are hearing that there are many of us who want our kids to get back into school we know that the best way for them to learn for according to the cbc a lot of pediatricians psychiatric society set kids in school is the best way for them to learn so i know from other friends that there are teachers who are out there who want to be

042in school and some of them are actually kind of afraid to speak up because of unions and just other things their jobs they're concerned with you know everyone's concerned about that right now but i really am just speaking for the parents of the kids that we many of us want our kids in school we just know that for them to learn this way is the best way and i'm just hoping that these waivers are moving forward so that's what i wanted to say okay um miss daley did you want to mention anything having to do with the waivers at this point sure uh we sent the waivers out for the board direction and they are in fact due this friday at that point we will disaggregate the information by grade level and by school and

043we will bring that information to the board at the september 16th meeting and then at that point the board will discuss and make decisions as to what the next steps would be we have laid out steps but the next step is at each way along the way is for the board to see the data and vote on that next step okay thank you can i just clarify i'm sorry that miss daley said you're setting the waiver out you meant you sent the surveys out right you are correct yes we sent the elementary waiver surveys out we sent those out to uh all elementary parents as well as classified staff and elementary teaching staff okay our next speaker is ready then yes our next speaker is brandon blizman brandon i'm going to ask you to unmute

044brandon your microphone is live all right hey thank you hey trusted board members my name is brandon blizman i'm a proud parent of a fourth grader and a seventh grader in chico unified i'd like to thank all of you for your commitment to the welfare and education of chico's youth i would also like to commend you for all the thankless hours that it's been taken to navigate the the chico unified ship through all these challenging and dynamic ever-changing times you know over the last three years butte county has been no stranger to adversity butte county and the chico unified school board have demonstrated an enormous amount of resiliency patience and really just love for our community through all these challenges you've been able to look uh to look to one thing to maintain that the

045use social emotional and educational well-being and that's school now those kids look forward to going to school unprecedented events over the last few months have put our children back into the distance learning environment you know you guys have done a fantastic job engaging the parents with surveys along the way soliciting feedback as a you know it's a good way to to make those kinds of important decisions regarding this upcoming school year after after reviewing some of the the lcp i couldn't help but notice that some of the higher ticket budget items were for zoom and edgenuity you know let me tell you about my son a little bit like most junior high schoolers he's he's a kind expressive loving kid who looks forward to going to school you know he's taking on the challenge of

046distance learning like a champion but over the last week i witnessed the crushing of a child's wonder and his desire to learn as his happiness turned to overwhelming frustration and tears on edgenuity our kids are already suffering from lack of emotional connection and social interactions ingenuity really this last week have just fueled that fire you know as as parents my wife and i you know wanted an educated if we wanted an education model similar to this we might have just opted for oak bridge you've you've sidelined the only good things left in some of these kids life which is their teachers edgenuity in my experience over the last few weeks has been nothing more than a sequence of videos that are very repetitive with minimal if any teacher interaction a quick internet search for that

047platform yields uh some interesting results one of them that i found of a recent school district who adopted it for a large population says that does not meet expectations now i understand that you had to maybe make a rush into this decision or maybe had some budget constraints now my hope is that there's been some misunderstanding when this was when this um i guess platform was selected for this large population of kids you know i'm i'm here this evening just to make a suggestion i strongly suggest that you allow the teachers to conduct live teaching via zoom which i know you're paying for track the progress through google classroom like they've done for many years now you could even keep the same one two three four five six um days in the in the middle

048school level there mr blitzman i i'm sorry but your time is up so okay thank you your your uh participation okay so now we will take if there is a person in the queue uh who was raising their hand we will take a person there for okay our next three minutes thank you michael kerwin michael kirwan i am asking you to unmute michael your microphone is available michael all we're hearing is music so i'm going to mute you would you like to take another speaker uh yes let's let's see who else has their hand raised okay we have drew collins is the next drew collins okay one more speaker yep okay our next speaker darren marshall darren marshall we're asking you to unmute okay we need to i think this something is happening here that

049is inappropriate so um since we have allocated this 10 minutes and we cannot continue with anything further since something is happening with interference with our ability to listen to speakers i'm not sure exactly what is going on but mr vincent do you have any idea what that could possibly be with all due respect to mr vincent we have students who are logging in under other people's names and they're just playing games they're just they're playing music they're taking time away from people who really have something to say so unfortunately they're impacting the community but they're just playing games and logging in under other people's names that's what's happening okay dr kaiser well i would like to suggest that the people who had and we've had some very very good student comments i mean impressive but

050i would really like to suggest that if there's a student or a parent out there who did have something they wanted to say and got unfortunately blocked by this kind of you know scamming or whatever that they please send us an email so that we can get their comments thoughtfully and they will be attached to the minutes correct erica and so then other people get to read them as well thank you okay yes christine griffin yes um linda yes i have a couple of questions for miss keane if i might okay let me uh well i guess we can keep the public hearing open still until we hear that is that how that generally is acceptable yes we can continue discussion under the public hearing or you can close the public hearing my hope is

051that we can get this situation fixed so that we can hear from some of the public i know we have people that want to talk and it's frustrating that they're not able to do so exactly um okay so i'll keep the public hearing open there's no harm in doing that um and i'll go to linda and then we'll go to you eileen great so um ms keane this plan i'm going to try and formulate my question here cohesively the learning continuity plan is it a living document and i ask this because it's really been a wild ride since the covid 19 hit you know there's been so many different regulations we have to move this way and that way and up and down and so if we put this plan in place what's to say

052something drastic isn't going to change which really has to make us do a total upheaval on our plan so i guess my question is do we have to update this and how often do we update this good question i asked the same question to our support jeanette spencer out at butte county office of education because i like you thought the same thing and she said and i totally agree with this that yes if things change this is what we know as of right now as of today and um to be due at the end of september but certainly if things change we can update and um move forward i don't know if the if the california department of education will continue on in some regard with a template down the way for that piece i

053don't know certainly but we would continue to have the most updated plan i think for our own knowledge and understanding and chronicling of what has happened yes excellent then my second question is you know you had mentioned all schools need to do this including charters do we have any oversight responsibility on the charter's learning continuity plan that are authorized through our district yes much like the uh spring time we had the covet 19 no was that that was last spring the kova 19 operations report that was due the charters also had an obligation to to complete that and their uh part of their obligation to to put it forward to the county was also to pass it forward to us as the authorizer the same remains for this one as well yes and i do

054happen to know they are working on it and going through the same processes right thank you thank you very much you're welcome okay miss robinson um yes madam president thank you i i did want to just let the first speaker whose name now i can't remember uh know that i did recognize his points in an email that he had forwarded to the board so just to let him know that i have read the completed uh the complete email that he did send to us and i appreciate his you know his input and being there tonight sorry to the rest of the folks that are having a problem with this i had tina i had the same question um about uh updating as uh miss heavy did but i also had had a concern no i

055had a question do you have a concern that we're going to have enough time for the teachers to do the um evaluation of um the access plan and and stuff in order to put this together to submit i mean they're only going to have two and a half weeks of experience and so much of it right now is just getting kinks worked out what kind of an obligation do we have to upgrade our plan and who does the assessment is this going to the county uh to the state board of education to you know who's reviewing these plans to say oh chico unified looks great or i'm sorry chico unified that doesn't quite meet the standard we were looking for sure i can address both of those as far as the your first comment about

056the engagement of students and how we're we are literally just right into school the feedback i'm getting is in back going back to my roots as a teacher i can understand this teachers want to see their students they want to know that they are okay they want to know they're there and again if they're not those those teachers by and large are ready to say hey hey we need some help here we need to know where this student is so by by creating a flowchart for lack of a better word although each each school has its own flavor and their own supports we do have a lot of common supports so there was great feedback to help create kind of a flow chart to make sure that nothing gets lost along the way in terms

057of how we reach out to our families this the second piece you asked about was the assessment and who reads it this goes to the county to butte county office of education and they read it and it's not so much an approval as kind of a yes i see that they may ask us questions they're really looking for my understanding and trainings that we've been on they're really looking to see how more than anything we are able to adjust to in person and then distance in person that's that's p a part of that continuity that that the plan requires we hope we certainly do not go in and out of that but um they have offered trainings that i've been involved in and and um really i feel like as this is the first time

058this document has come out and it does have a very early date we're all in the same boat of of putting in the best ideas and plans and then adjusting along the way as we have to okay dr kaiser so i think the essential concept here and concern is fluid if we look at the universities around the country who have opened to in-person education it's been largely an absolute disaster even chico state who had every single possible health caution and had dramatically reduced their students and only had certain lab classes that were in person with very highly technical equipment they lasted one week university alabama a thousand cases and i think less than a week so nobody has an answer to this yet um i think this is just uh the effort to sort of

059appreciate how complex this might be that we don't forget to touch a part of education that we see as critical it doesn't mean that anybody's answer is going to hold up for [Music] the whole semester or school year i think those are all just reality checks okay yes tom all right um i'm looking at the section 7 on the lcp which is again the people engagement outreach portion um and it sounds like the major concern we're hearing from those families that are not thrilled with edge annuity is that missing relationship piece i was hoping uh twofold that one you could talk to us specifically about what we are doing to reach out to families who feel isolated and disengaged like what is does that plan look like what steps we're taking and secondly i'm not

060sure if this would have directed you or miss daily what can we do going forward to make sure that we don't lose more student engagement or that we continue to build on those relationships which are in many ways the most valuable part of our district that relation between teacher and student so sure for the for the families that we get that are not engaging that means that teachers are seeing that students are not they're not attending they uh again i go back and we i feel like we do this so much but they are so pivotal the the targeted case managers that we have on site are of tremendous assistance many times they they know the families on the site very well they are aware of things that might be happening within the family many

061of them have done home visits or have made phone calls they are reaching out as well um the wellness teams on the sites as well as school has started are are involved and i think we will just continue to see that grow within the within each school um the second piece of that relationship we all agree that relationships do matter and it is very hard in this in this online learning to do that our counselors are available as well to reach out and they are doing a tremendous job the best that they can do to get kids engaged in those time slots to um to meet with them mr orlando um one of the other things that mr shepard has been working with his principals and department heads as he talked earlier is about pulling

062out lessons of ingenuity and adding in more zoom lessons with our teachers so they'll be going back and forth of doing that and trying to see how they can get their children more or the students more engaged in their lessons so we can add some of their own lessons in there because we're clearly hearing it from our students that they're missing their teachers and we want to be able to do that we have to be very careful on how many lessons we do that because we have to give them a to g of compliant or we're allowing teachers in the future to come to us if they have a full course designed that we can look at to see if we want to improve it to replace so we we do hear their concerns and

063we will continue to work with that so we can get more teacher engagement with our students can i add just one more thing just moving forward uh we've been meeting regularly to decide to identify professional development plan that's ongoing to address our targeted student populations and while we're addressing those targeted student populations we also think we'll be addressing all our students so we are in the middle of planning a district-wide staff development day on september 15th that will what we think will provide some insight including inviting panel members who represent those those targeted student populations panel members who represent our english learners our students with disabilities our african-american students our foster and homeless so they'll be a part of panels to help us discover additional mechanisms to engage those students because these folks have lived

064that experience so rather than just assuming that we can keep doing what we're doing we're going to try to add to our toolkit okay i want to bring something up that relates to what is going on in this very meeting and that is this is a zoom meeting and there is manipulation that has occurred by students coming in and and doing things to interfere with the process and my understanding is that with zoom meetings that have occurred where teachers have been teaching the same sort of thing has happened so a lot of parents have been saying well just put the teachers back up there and have zoom meetings and have them teach in a regular classroom type of situation but if we're seeing this type of behavior where students who are out there come in

065and mess around with the system and prevent the teacher from teaching and prevent information from being disseminated to other students is there a great risk of that happening so i would like to bring that to people's attention that if people are looking to utilizing zoom and having teachers in front of their classrooms like they would be in their regular classroom setting where they're instructing and they're interacting it would be wonderful if they could do that but one of the things we're seeing is that unfortunately there are people out there that are subverting that process just like you had kids in the back of your classroom that were messing around and trying to you know disturb the class you've got the same thing going on in zoom so one of the questions i have is is

066the google meet um is that a safer type of process or is it the same uh threat that goes on with that and the additional thing that i think of too is if you do have all these uh type of things going on is the system going to be overloaded or have we taken you know care of that i know we've done things to boost our systems with the zoom but you know can that be overloaded if there's there's a lot more um happening on the system so if someone could address that yeah john vincent can i think he can address the google piece and i can talk about the overloading the system from a different perspective okay so in regards to your first question about zoom there are steps that we can take to

067help secure zoom so these these things don't happen there still are ways that kids can find around things but we can take steps to really mitigate these so we can talk about in private i really don't want to say what those are here in a public forum as far as google me goes one nice thing about google media it's tied to google classroom so all the kids are already logged in with their email addresses and with google classroom you see who is all in google meet you can see who's there so it really helps to mitigate this so not so easy to crash it so in google meet it's not easy to crash it because you have to log in with the chico unified email address or account our kids do and you can see

068exactly who it is whereas like with this zoom is what we're seeing here this has an anonymous link that people can click on and put in whatever name they want and that's what we're seeing here so it's difficult in this situation to manage this but in google me it is easier well i mean i i you know i guess it's we have very proficient students who are so good with computers that they can do this sort of thing i guess that's a positive to this but i sure wish they would use their talents in other ways yes i agree um so uh yeah we we definitely do not want to have the crashing we don't want to have the bombing we've had some some pretty uh horrible things that have happened and i'm not sure

069if all the the families out there the parents out there are aware that those type of things have happened and that has been something we've had to consider as well so one thing i'm sorry i'm just gonna add a family example so my niece is an ap art teacher down in san marcos and going crazy teaching because she has a nine-year-old a six-year-old and the three-year-old boy and he was driving her crazy and the last thing he did yesterday was while she's sitting in her lap he signed out every kid in her class and said have a good day so you know it's hard to stay ahead of them yeah definitely yes john did you have more to add yeah i just had one more thing so this week we migrated over to the education

070licenses for zoom for all of our staff so we can then look at those different things that we can do to help make those meetings more secure and push out those settings now to our staff to help them to know what settings they need to set to make their meetings more secure okay thank you thank you for all the hard work you've done trying to secure this okay any any further questions from i'm sorry well john shepard had a comment and then yes john oh just really quickly so we have some folks in the district that are directly affiliated with chico state's platforms and blackboard is the platform that chico state uses affects over 150 000 csu learners and it went down and it's been in it's been in effect for i think 12 years

071so we're going to face some of these some of these issues i'm not i'm not for a second you know implying that that's a good thing but these things are going to happen and we'll just need to adapt to them okay yes well i just wanted to say it's very frustrating because i received a lot of communication regarding edge annuity i know the board did as well and we certainly wanted to be able to hear from people and i know we have people that wanted to speak but this is an example of what our teachers are facing and the challenges that we're facing so i've been on some meetings with superintendents and other educational leaders up and down the state and even in our own county and they were very excited to hear from me

072how is ingenuity going um how is using a platform going because they were experiencing some very embarrassing and frightening incidents with zoom and you know even some in google classroom that had taken place and i had to say you know what we don't have the answer either because obviously we are disappointing a lot of students and families with the ingenuity rollout that has not been certainly what anybody had hoped um and we are now taking steps to rectify that we understand you know we heard last year from uh our parents loud and clear 4 000 surveys came back and we need a more more continuity to our program so when we looked we thought okay this will provide that continuity this will allow a platform that is the same for everyone moving forward so that

073we can get in that rhythm recognizing all along we would then need to be pulling teachers back in to provide instruction and connection but we need to do that faster because kids have been out of school now for six months and they are out of the routine but they really now more than ever need that connection with their teachers they need that connection with their peers um we all wish we could be back in person because so we wouldn't be having these kind of discussions and frustrations maybe other frustrations but not these um so there really isn't the perfect answer out there there are issues with zoom there are issues with uh google classroom both uh google meet and zoom crashed and we're down today we were actually meeting with a student regarding the edge

074annuity platform she was very articulate had wonderful suggestions but she kept freezing we kept losing her so those are the frustrations that other districts are facing we are facing the frustrations with edge annuity so i think our our approach needs to be how do we integrate as much interaction as possible provide that social emotional support for our kids so our families see that there are staff members there for their kids that we're not just throwing them you know into a setting here click on this and go um you know that that has not worked we've heard that loud and clear and we will make adjustments to that um and that you know we do appreciate the parents and the students that have reached out to us and said hey here's the here's the gaps this

075isn't working for me but just know that straight zoom isn't working for people either so it's finding that happy medium we're not going to get it right tomorrow but we will keep working towards that we need to keep hearing from you give us those suggestions when we get the it's just overwhelming that doesn't help but when you can be specific and we certainly had that from the young lady we spoke with today we've had it from several of the parents then we can address those issues so be patient with us be kind and patient with your your children as well and we will continue to slug through this and i am so apologetic that we cannot hear from people tonight because i i know there were many of you that wanted to speak well there

076was one more thing that i wanted to mention because we weren't able to hear more speakers that kept coming up with ingenuity in that conversation and something that i wanted to make sure all the parents understood is that we have arranged teacher time in the afternoons for teachers to address some of the concerns if students are having a difficult time and parents if they know their students are having a difficult time so whether it's the students or the parents please please contact the teacher directly and explain what you are experiencing so that they can help you individually we as a board can hear these things but they are right there on the front line and they are willing to help so please do that as well and i think one of the things that we

077can do here um you know we have received a lot of email communication regarding the concerns what we can do is post those so that people can see that they're there that we are hearing them that we are getting that input you know again it's just frustrating not to be able to have the input at this board meeting but we can provide those yes thank you okay with that being said um unless there's anything further i'm going to close the public hearing and was there anything anyone else wanted to say at this point i just don't think my niece will run out her little boy but you know we all have kids that are uh adaptable to internet and we have kids who need a different framework and we're just doing our very best and

078we all understand that that is what we want and we're trying to get there okay so i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and i believe since there is no action to be taken we are just going to move forward to our next item which is a human resources item that has to do with providing information about uh policy training and a complaints overview and that would be mr hanlon and i believe mr marchant maybe mr cole i'm going to have him make his way up here while i go get the clicker so give me a minute oh i see i see you're just you're switching chairs here okay so we have mr uh cole who is the executive director of human resources and we have mr jim hanlon who is the

079assistant superintendent of human resources okay so in light of recent events the board has made a request to review district policies on inappropriate and unprofessional behavior harassment mandated reporting staff training and the complaint procedures regardless if it's a student a parent or an employee so we're going to cover those we're not going to sit here and read a bunch of district policy for you but we're going to summarize it and go through it and if there's any questions then we're here to answer those and go through them but hopefully we'll answer many of your questions for you so with that david is going to start here uh good evening um sexual harassment uh policy 41 1911 really deals with our protected groups of different employees based on on the identities that are listed here gender

080and gender identity expression but it's not just limited those it's those and includes other groups as well when we look at the training requirements for all employees we actually have uh two hours of training that required for all supervisors where we require one hour of training for all um classified or all employees district across the board and we also supplement that training where we we've brought in kingsley bogart to provide further training regarding sexual harassment as well as gender identity training with lindsey moore so kim bogart and lindsey have both come out and helped present when we look at the public poly dissemination we have postings across the district for harassment and our policies posted we also during our orientations provide the training for sexual harassment and then we that annual training just spoke of

081where we do it every two years or every year for two hours for our supervisors and one hour for non-supervisors and then finally within that policy there are components of it that it's within the board policy it talks about if you violate that there's a there's a component that if you someone makes a complaint we make sure that there is no retaliation regarding that complaint but further if you violate it you can be disciplined up to including discharge so it's a very strong policy we use it quite a bit to support our employees but we make sure everyone is trained on that policy okay so this one is employee to employee harassment the next one is harassment targeting a child by anyone so it could be it could be another child it could be an

082employee of ours it could be a contractor but anyone that targets a child so all of those other things apply but it also specifically prohibits retaliatory behavior and a requirement to immediately report which is our mandated reporting requirements so that's it's embedded in this board policy and um and then also a requirement to ensure that all students receive age-appropriate information on sexual harassment and that's embedded in our health curriculums along the way so so students get knowledge and information in those areas as appropriate at a particular grade level okay so 41 19 21 professional standards goes into a lot more detail it really focuses on exercising good judgment uh when interacting with students staff or or members of the public it will go into if you look it's got a lot of great descriptions within

083it describing what inappropriate conduct is beyond those that are listed it also talks about uh when you single out a student for any personal attention or friendship it goes into discussions about being at a lo being alone with a student outside of the sight of others it talks about inappropriate contact as well within this there's also a component of requiring people to report any discrimination harassment intimidation or bullying so it goes into creating the standards of what we expect our employees it still holds the uh if someone does make a complaint there is the retaliation protection component to it and this board policy as well carries discipline with it so if someone does violate it they can be held accountable okay so the next one 4119.24 even goes beyond that as you can see has

084many of the same things but also um non-educational contact with the student and it used to be just phone letter that kind of thing but in the social media age electronic age we recently have added email text and then also participating inappropriately in social networks so we do permit social networks to be to be made for example like a banned facebook as long as it's public and parents are aware of it and have access to it and it's a good way to communicate to the whole band be at the homecoming game half an hour beforehand at such and such a place plan to meet and warm up and those types of things so there's some good things with social networks but we require staff to participate them in a very public way they may not

085go on to a student social page and then befriend them and those types of things that would be considered inappropriate we also require um for for the use of district equipment when they're communicating with students because that is our equipment and if there is any um suspected inappropriate behavior we have the right to inspect that equipment and um and see what's going on so if if a employee is contacting the student through their own private means that's a red big red flag for us and it's really for their safety yes it's for both there's an allegation they should use a district phone they could um so um we don't have many of those they they're not really handed out they're they're kind of administration so um so there might be in a in an emergency

086type of thing but at least then there's a record of it and we mean when you say half hour before the football game meet here um that could be a last minute change how would they communicate that if it's not on uh i don't know it could be but again this is a protection for the students and the employees so it might not work out for that particular game so i know that and that was an example but i know that teachers will sometimes use those very public social pages and instruct students be sure you check that you know an hour before the event or something like that so the next policy is really a focus on the importance of creating maintaining the positive school and climate and here it lists within it uh some

087of the attributes that go into supporting that but really the focus of this is enhancing an orderly and caring non-discriminatory teaching environment and so it's one of the shortest policies we have but probably one of the most important ones we have so the next one here are re regarding complaint procedures so with 13 12.1 it's a direct implication or a direction that specific formal complaints go through the uniform complaint procedure there's a lot of different items in the uniform complaint procedure that parents can complain make a complaint about or employees can make and complain about or even students but the one that is particular to harassment intimidation and bullying is the one i'm we're referring to here and we do have a uniform complaint procedure officer that's tina among all the other things she does

088and uh but typically it doesn't get to that level um it can be a supervisor but um sometimes that's not to the satisfaction of the the person that has made the complaint and so there's always a um a way to appeal it and eventually you can see down there at the very bottom the final appeal could come to the board of education if the person was not satisfied with the outcome anonymous complaints are permitted however we have to inform the individual that it may be difficult to thoroughly investigate the situation without giving their confidential information up of course we don't do that unless without their permission but we make make sure that they're clear that that may impede the investigation it may not be as thorough as we would like it to be if if

089we were not able if we were able to identify the person but we do accept those and we do follow up on those and then 4144 is a complaint for people that do not work for chico unified but have complaints about the interview process the selection process that type of thing that they feel like they have been discriminated against okay the next one is um just some some civil and legal rights it's kind of all of the other things so protection for religious and political activities as long as they're not done on the job they they cannot be brought into the classroom in any way but if it's in their private life they can an employee cannot be discriminated against it clearly states that district property that's under the employee's control particularly a computer in

090the classroom is district property and we have a right to search that if we have suspicions yes cody so i'm thinking of two distinct examples so if your religion requires you to have a certain physical presentation usually it's clothing sometimes that's how the hair is presented we can't prevent them from coming to school that way correct right i think it it particularly um refers to trying to communicate that to kids or influence them or using your your position of authority to influence or or or somehow impress on them your religion or your political activities and so in the second aspect of that outside of the religious one we had the example of a teacher who got harassed and threatened because she wore a black lives matter t-shirt in her class um we have a reaction

091to that because well there are some that could argue that's political um i would probably leave that to the board to make a final determination because that's going to be i don't know you can get you can get into particular that's a very good question i don't really have anything the teacher got threatened and they're at home yeah the threats and the threats and intimidation those are very clear that those would be investigated absolutely we do we do have some exceptions on political um the political piece of it so you might have a unit in government during an election but they have to present both sides you know so equally so that students are making up their mind given the information that they have but it would be a pertinent lesson for the particular curriculum

092but if somebody brought in a a yard sign and hung it in their classroom for one particular candidate or issue or proposition then that would not be okay and of course whistleblower project protections and then limited protections against liability so obviously if someone is uh in the commission of a crime um and not following board policy and the laws of the land then we are not the district is not um liable for their actions there on their own but if they're um if they are doing things that are in accordance with board policy and the law and they are sued then the district would take take liability in those situations to protect them so in the area of staff development um this is probably one of the areas that we've grown the most i'll give

093you this too jim this is an area in one of the the last handout you'll see that we have about 5 500 hours of training that occurred last year if you go back a couple years ago it was probably in the 1200s or less this is an area that we've focused quite a bit on in terms of internal training we provide uh office word excel things of that nature uh for employees understood moving up in the clerical areas uh we'll send our employees in the para educator about 44 or 43 of all our employees repair educators we'll send them down to a paraeducator conference we provide escape training for our staff and uh down in sacramento we've brought speakers in for pair educator training at the beginning of classes or at the beginning of the

094school year we also bring our nurses in for additional training one of the things that you'll see on the handout here we start talking about the new hire orientations there's kind of a breakdown of what that list and what happens so every single employee that gets hired in the classified side is required to go through a four-hour orientation and part of that is on that green sheet that jim has handed out is a breakdown of some of the classes and some of the things they have to watch videos they have to see trainings they have to go through and at the end of that there's a time when they come back in after they've seen those and will provide another hour of training and address any questions or concerns they have about anything they've read

095it's our chance to do the i-9s and things of that nature but it's a very extensive uh orientation and training that occurs so every single employee when they first get hired goes through that training and then we do the annualized mandated trainings followed up with some additional trainings to help support our classified employees that go forward all right so that's a brief overview of the board policies and the training um quite extensive training that we do with um all employees so any questions at this point questions i have a comment yes linda i would just like to remind the public that all of our board policies are online including the uniform complaint procedure so they don't have to feel uncomfortable about filing a complaint they can get the forms online am i correct yes thank

096you very much yes that's a good point good okay yes tom and along the same lines i would just love it if someone from administration would reiterate exactly what the process should be what's that first step if a student or a parent feels uncomfortable or is or unsafe with a with any of our staff well initially they're they would report that to the supervisor unless of course that supervisor was the one that was involved in the harassment or complaint then they would bypass that person go up so initially the complaint should go to the their first supervisor uh and then uh depending what the extent of the issue is of the problem whether it needs to be communicated directly blind it depends on what level of not all harassment's the same and not all you

097know comments are the same so we'd initially uh deal with those at the first step with the supervisor and if it was a student often they go to the person they're most comfortable with which might be a teacher a close teacher that they're comfortable with the counselor perhaps they they don't often go to administration with those kinds of things because that's not who they normally interact with on a day-to-day basis so we would encourage students to go to any adult and then those adults are required then to report it on to their supervisor but very simply tom if a parent or a student has a concern ideally they would first share that with the teacher and see if there's a misunderstanding but that doesn't happen sometimes because that's very uncomfortable and difficult to do and

098the order would be then go to their supervisor for for a parent with a concern over a teacher would be to the assistant principal or principal if there is still concern at that point they do not feel that that has been resolved then it would go um on up if it's an elementary issue it would go to ted if it's a secondary issue it would go to john uh to jay myself the board would be the sequence that that would go and the further it goes along you know the the easy answers have been resolved right so if there is really an issue and somebody is feeling uncomfortable and they are adamant about it by all means follow that complaint procedure we do do the mandated training each year that david was talking about earlier

099and so there is clear direction instruction for for staff at least to what they need to do in order to go through those steps most of the as kelly said most of the incidences that happen get handled at the site level at a much lower level i don't know how many formal complaints you had last year tina but it's like a pyramid um you know the tough ones and end up in her lap so i kind of you want to add anything to that yeah i think last year there were uh approximately five yeah so it's fairly rare that it gets to that that very formal process where you have an exceptionally tough case one i might add too with the mandated reported trading uh that also gives skills to the employees so they're actually

100knowing what to look for so a lot of times that whole process is not just about when it happens what do you do but be aware of these kinds of circumstances if you see these things if you're you know if you're aware of these things those are indications and that would be something that would go up the line as well okay um eileen did you have a question yes well uh just a clarification in the orientations and trainings that we do we do train every employee whether it's the campus supervisor or a cook they all get the same training because like you said that lots of times the trusted person on campus is is not um you know an uh an obvious person but uh you know there are kids that are aids with other

101staff members that do become trust the person enough to be able to disclose something that is problematic for them so i appreciate that the training goes to everyone and i also um was struck again i hadn't read those policies completely for a while but they they really are extremely um enlightening in in that they they spell out and describe exactly what's inappropriate what we're looking for what to look for i was pleased that we have them in there that that you know that cover basically just about anything you could imagine to protect everyone to protect our staff and our students so i appreciate the work you guys do to well and they're they're updated frequently um the social media one was something that that all of you adopted in recent years uh fairly recent because

102it had become an issue you know at some place in the state and um and you can see where the pitfalls are there so they are looked at every year and updated as needed so so maybe one last thing regarding eileen's comment we oh i'm sorry well it's a comment though in my professional expertise area i would have parents come up to me and they'll start the disclosure about their kid by saying my kid doesn't want anyone to know and that's one of the most difficult things because i'm having to provide legal advice to them but when your kid is going to refuse to testify i think that one of the most important things if we could encourage all of our staff that there is no recourse retribution effect but i think many times these

103um especially if it's a student they perceive that other students will exact some kind of sanctions so it's just a very difficult process that's probably our biggest barrier is the the fear of of retaliation um i mean we hear that at every level you know whether it's a parent or a student or or a staff member and so that trust piece and then that training piece is critical so that people feel that they can safely come forward david did you have more yeah yeah i think just one last comment regarding the training and ensuring that every employee gets the same training we're able to track that within our our process and so we'll actually follow up with people that have not had that training and then we annualize that training every year at the same

104time of the year so that we know that anyone that's hired through the new year goes through the orientation training that will capture that and all those people that have gone through it already are going to get it again next year at the same time and so we're coughed that we're reaching out here first of all i am very confident in the policies and the people who are writing them and even in 99.99999 of our staff given that this is not a time to pat ourselves on the back um something slipped up given to the situation that led us to talk about this and i really want to challenge everybody in this room to find a way to improve this process the trust that children will be safe when they are with us is the

105number one thing that makes the school work you're just talking about that in different context this can't happen again we have to do better so please over the next until we meet again i would love to hear some ways we can do that and we'd love to hear suggestions from you and the board as well i'm thinking on as hard as i can well i have to say one thing about that and that is that no matter how hard you try people will be doing things and if they are you know um savvy enough if they're deceptive enough if they're careful enough in what they do they will get away with things and i know tom you've been on the board for you know maybe close to two years now but we've seen a lot

106of different things come before us and you know it was not based on any person not seeing something not reporting something it was just that when people are engaged in something like that they're very deceptive very discreet in some ways and it's very hard to discern so i would just like to say that i don't personally blame anybody for that happening or say i think that we have what's in place and people are encouraged to come forward we have it embedded in our rules that if you see something if you know something if you hear something if you suspect something you are required to come forward so that's about as much as we can do to get to the root of things at times and we would hope that people wouldn't do this to kids

107but having a background in child protective services i know a lot of really bad things happen to kids and this is one of them so anyhow i don't want to belabor this but um yes we will be doing our very best to make sure that this sort of thing does not happen yes thank you liz um just to give some historical perspective on where we've been and where we are now i go back quite a ways with this school district and starting in 1973 i was a union representative for employees and incidents of sexual harassment in the first 10 years that i was involved with this district were were not handled well it just was a different time in our world and society and people were afraid to come forward and they were afraid to

108back up their fellow employees that you know witnesses were afraid to come forward what we have to now in the way of training and support and the the role of tina in the process that goes all the way through our complaint procedure is way ahead of what we dealt with in the 70s and i so appreciate that people have you know have just said this is not acceptable and we will not tolerate abuse of our kids number one but our fellow employees as well as you know anyone else this just is not okay and i appreciate the work that we've done as a district over the years to improve our policies and our attitude quite frankly our attitude has changed i i agree and one of the other things that i think is very important

109is that the whistle-blower protections are critical to making sure that people know they're going to be protected if they speak out they're going to be protected and and there will not be retaliation so anyhow with that unless there's anything further i believe this concludes our meeting and we will adjourn and we will go into our closed session so thank you all for being here and participating and um once again we are very sorry about the problem that happened with zoom