001okay we are now live good evening today is monday august 24th 2020 the time is 6 30 p.m welcome to the regular meeting of the martinez unified school district board of education and we ask you again for your patience as we adapt to a new software we're using the zul webinar zoom webinar for the first time and i'm glad we're doing that but it's an opportunity to learn another system so we will call the meeting to order it looks uh oh great john we're able to bring you over excellent and now we have kathy as well fantastic so we have our full board here we'll move to agenda item three pledge of allegiance helen or alex alex has the flag wonderful who would like to lead the pledge jeremy would you lead the pledge ready
002be again i pledge allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation one nation under god under god indivisible indivisible with liberty liberty and justice for all wonderful thank you all agenda item 4 is approval of agenda madam superintendent do we have any changes to our agenda this evening no there are no uh changes to the agenda okay thank you agenda item 5 approval of minutes for the special meeting of july 17th and july 27 2020 do we have any public comment on on the minutes from these two meetings alex or helen did anyone write in on those or david is there anyone raising their hand amongst the attendees to to speak in public comment no there's no one raising their hand i
003have public comment but for specific agenda items okay understood very well we'll uh bring it back to the board um and student representative you may vote on these as well do we have a motion and a second to approve and adopt the minutes from these meetings we have a motion i moved to approve both the july 17th and 27th minutes okay uh i okay uh i actually think i heard remember fuller make the motion uh remember nelly would you make would you suck in that motion sure a second okay we have a motion and a second for member fuller and members and member janelli uh student representative how do you vote i and then full board those in favor hi those opposed abstentions the minutes from the meetings of july 17 and july 27 are
004approved agenda adam six are comments on the student representative and pardon me that's my dog um student representative please take it away our school reports for the august 24th 2020 regular board meeting are as follows los highlights from the week lje had great supply pickups for all grades where teachers got to meet their new students it was a blast to see everyone again and meet our new bullpups we will continue to do sunday night book reads through the pta facebook pages please make sure to watch upcoming events tuesday september 1st will be back to school night this event will be held virtually and the link will be emailed to families an hour before the event pta will be announced as it was originally scheduled for september 1st john muir's highlights from the week jme had
005a supply pickup at the district office it was really nice to see kiddos and families even though it was at a distance upcoming events pta general meeting august 25th 6 pm via zoom the link will be sent out tuesday september 1st will be back to school night this event will be held virtually john sweats highlights from the week all grades have supplies and have had great attendance in distance learning the pta is kicking off their danceathon virtual fundraiser upcoming events virtual back to school night is september 1st pta virtual meeting on tuesday september 8th at 7 pm morello parks highlights from the week it's been great to see our students and families at our supply pickup we miss you all upcoming events tuesday september 1st will be back to school night this event will be
006held virtually pta meeting tuesday september 8th at 7 pm the link will be sent out martinez jr highest highlights from the week it has been an exciting start to the school year with both teachers and students diving into distance learning school-wide students completed a virtual locker to introduce themselves to their teachers as well as practice new tech skills that they will be using regularly upcoming events wednesday september 2nd will be back to school night starting at 6 pm we are looking forward to seeing all virtually friday september 4th will be a minimum day our next ptsa meeting will be on september 18th a virtual link will be sent out to families alhambra high school's highlights from the week the alhambra staff was excited to welcome our new and returning students for the 20 20 21
007school year venturing into distance learning it's been a solid start to our year alhambra had a great textbook distribution last monday through thursday we estimate we had 99 of our students pick up materials we are working on an additional pickup day for those who could not attend we would like to thank all the parents teachers staff volunteers who vis who assisted with the book distribution during the four hot humid and smoky afternoons thank you we are excited to premiere the bnn the bulldog news network this week to our students and parents more to follow when we officially launch upcoming events virtual back to school night will be thursday september 3rd friday september 4th will be a minimum day the ahs ptsa will have their first virtual meeting on wednesday september 9th at 6 30 pm
008vicente martinez rioni's independent study and martinez early intervention preschool programs highlights from the week we have welcomed many new students families and teachers to brione's independent studies school this year we went from 75 students to well over students during the first week of school vicente is off to a great start students are settling into our distance learning model and are enjoying working with their teachers virtually meipp families and staff are working collaboratively to make sure our little ones have the support they need and deserve upcoming events we are planning our back to school nights for mei pp vicente and briones with dates to be determined martinez adult schools and highlights the adult school fall quarter starts tomorrow tuesday august 24 2020 all adult school staff participated this morning in professional development that included zoom using
009polling and breakout rooms best practices using canvas for online learning and other online tools to support synchronous and asynchronous learning upcoming events our food pantry will be open for touchless pickup on tuesday september 1st 2020 from 3 to 4 p.m cars will pull up to the side of the multi-use room and open the trunk one box of non-perishable items and three pound bags of fruits and vegetables will be placed in the chunk and that concludes the school reports for the august 24 2020 regular board meeting thank you very much for that report agenda item 7 are employee organization reports do we have any reports from our employee organizations i have a report do you karen no not now brenda please go ahead okay all summer educators have been working to develop curriculum and lessons for
010our students i want to shine a light on the absolutely herculean effort educators are putting forward to educate our students the past several weeks have been non-stop for all of us we're working 24 7. we're literally having to write and publish every facet of the curriculum in a virtual presentation and in addition to that we are having to learn research and master many many areas of technology unfortunately it seems that every corner our efforts are thwarted by technological glitches and google which means our tech department is working around the clock as well and we appreciate their support it is only the start of the year and we are so overworked that we literally can't see a light our stress level is through the roof we cannot add anything else to what we are doing i
011implore the district to understand this and to look for opportunities to lessen our load on another note tonight i would like to reiterate and reaffirm nea's commitment to eradicating social injustice and promoting racial equity within our schools at the district level the work has been placed on hold in our new superintendent mea will continue to move forward in the meantime over the summer we established our own proactive advisory council with representatives from almost every site who have met weekly cta has supported us with training and we have written a grant for additional resources for educators to implement this important work mea has hosted book studies as well as discussions of educational documentaries and movies we continue to develop a folder full of resources for our members our endorsement of school board candidates was weighted upon
012their responses to racial equity questions we have also highlighted the need not only for a superintendent that is passionate about racial equity but committed to moving our district forward in expunging systemic racism in our schools on behalf of mea the executive board makes a public statement that we stand in solidarity with the black community against violence and systemic racism as educators we are committed to engaging in immediate action to eradicate practices and systems that have sustained racial inequality for our students hate and prejudice have no place in our schools and community we have work to do we are listening and learning the change begins with me you us thank you thank you brenda and karen uh there's no report from cse is that right okay thank you agenda item eight are comments from pta are
013there any comments from the pta this evening seeing none agenda item 9 our staff board acknowledgements announcements and reports there is a 9.1 but before we move to 9.1 uh to any members of the board or staff which to make any announcements or acknowledgements seeing none we'll move on to 9.1 yes i have two announcements oh very good yes please helen thank you okay so one i wanted to just um put it out there about our meal service we do have pick up meal service at three of our sites for our students um it's not quite the same as it was in the summer you will need to have a student name or a student id number but the parent or guardian can pick up the meal for the child between the hours of 11
01430 to 1 30 at alhambra high school las fuentes elementary and martinez junior high lunches are for those that qualify are free or reduced and then elementary lunches are three dollars and a breakfast is 150 secondary is 350 and breakfast 165. when you pick up the lunch you'll be given you'll have the option of taking a breakfast for the next day either at the the price quoted or the free and reduced so both meals are handed out at the same time so i just wanted to say that and the second announcement has to do with los juntas i received word today that somehow dsa moved really quickly on the los huntes uh plans and we received word from over our contractor that they um they were scheduled for review and they're hopefully getting the needed
015letter of confirmation by the end of the month of august which means that we within the next two weeks which means that we should be able to start work on la cuentas on the around and or around the 24th of september 21st to 24th of september instead of waiting until november or december so that's good news that we'll be able to move forward and um the los hunter staff is busy packing up the library and moving woodbridge and all of those kinds of things on that news so i'm excited for that so those are my two announcements thank you helen jonathan i did have um a quick announcement that i'd be remiss if i missed the opportunity i just wanted to remind everybody that martinez education foundation is still doing a run this year is
016going to look a little different it's actually going to be a virtual run and there's going to be lots of additional information that's going to be pushed out but for anybody who wants to take a look at the information or sign up to do this information or do this virtual run you can take a look at it at the website at martinez.org that's it for me thank you deidra seeing no further acknowledgements or announcements we'll move to 9.1 this is an update on 3455 alhambra avenue helen rossi presenting okay so um the 3455 alhambra avenue better known as the old wendy's um has been up for lease for a while we know that uh covet has had an impact on people starting new businesses and maybe expanding their business and maybe the number of quality
017tenants looking for a new place to move to but since uh since mid-july we've had about eight new inquiries um on the property nothing serious yet i will keep the board informed but just you know to mull it around in your mind um the the um the requests or the inquiries have come from different types of of businesses such as restaurants uh plant to garden stores modular home sales and and model home coffee shops corn operated laundry so on and so forth so it's been across the board it hasn't just been one specific and we hope we get the right tenant um at the right rent really quickly so i just wanted to give a brief update that uh it has there's been an uptick in in inquiries so thank you thank you helen that's
018really heartening to hear and uh anyone out there looking to potentially rent a great retail uh storefront there's an opportunity on alhambra avenue get it before before it goes away gen item 10 are public comments under government code 5495 members of the public have the right to address the board on any matter within the board's jurisdiction however the board may not take action on any non-agenda item individual speakers will be allowed three minutes to address the board 20 minutes have been allocated for this portion of the agenda additional time is allowed at the end of the meeting if there was not enough time to speak during public comments now that we're using the zoom webinar we are asking that those people who wish to speak in public comment raise their hand as someone has already
019done and they will be unmuted and allowed to speak as we were using a written public comment format in previous meetings we will be reading some comments that we've received in writing this evening but we would ask that for future meetings people log into the meeting using the link and phone number provided on the agenda and thank you all for your patience as we transition again to a different piece of technology hopefully one that will work better for us uh mr wiley how how may i uh call on people uh who are raising their hand or is that something that you need to do sorry about that uh actually if you can i think you can go ahead and allow to talk i don't i don't have that feature as as uh just a panelist
020i believe that the host has that okay then i will go ahead i we do have one uh person who would like to speak who is linda olivier and so uh i will go ahead and um go ahead and linda it looks like you are now unmuted you have three minutes for public comment linda olvera looked like you were raising your hand you are now unmuted attendee linda olvera you have now been unmuted you may now address the board in public comment david let's uh linda if you're trying to speak apologize please accept our apologies if you could send either david wildly or myself a chat we will find a way to get your audio working in the meantime it looks as though we have another hand raise from someone attending via telephone person calling
021in from phone number ending in 5925 do you wish to address the board in public comment they would need to unmute their phone can you please please mute your zoom okay is that better oh yes thank you okay is that better no i don't know let me try something else can you hear me now yes but you need to mute you need to mute your computer [Music] okay okay now can you hear me loud and clear thank you if you could please state your name oh boy here we are finally what an introduction huh i'm so sorry yeah my name as long as you can hear me say yes one more time yes ma'am okay so my name is linda olvera i'm a resident of martinez and um i'm also a very very recent member
022of your racial equity uh committee and um i've been kind of waiting to hear about any kind of update on it for the last couple of board meetings and nothing's ever been said about it i know we've just had one meeting and um there's one scheduled for september meanwhile oh got to stick to three minutes meanwhile i've heard that there's some structuring going on of the committee but i don't none of us from the from from the community have been contacted about it i'm just wondering why the committee's being structured without input from the community that's one question i have and another question i have is that uh we're going through the search of a superintendent and um kind of piggybacking on the last words of brenda leal the racial um racism is is is
023something that strongly needs to be addressed in the survey for the superintendent and i would have thought that people in the racial equity committee would have gotten us a request to participate in the survey well i never did and so yeah so a couple of things just wanting to get an update on what's happening with this committee and um the the second question of why wasn't anybody on the community part of the racial equity committee uh well maybe some people were i don't know who was contacted i wasn't so why i'm sorry i can't i can't hear you well linda i'm i'm sorry but public comment isn't meant to be an in interactive um event you're welcome to share your comments and your thoughts but we aren't allowed to take action or speak on items
024that aren't on the agenda okay thank you very much thank you very much for your comments so david it looks like we can unraise the hands amongst the attendees public comment is still open if there's anyone else amongst our attendees who wishes to speak on open open public comment please do so otherwise we will move on with our agenda okay seeing none we will move on to our consent calendar which is agenda item 11. approval of the consent calendar means that all items listed here under are adopted by a single motion unless a member of the board or the superintendent requests that any such item be removed from the consent calendar and voted upon separately helen do we have any changes to the consent calendar this evening we do not very well do we have
025any public comment on the consent calendar i don't see any hands raised then we will bring it to the board move to approve second we have a motion and a second remember mclaughlin number janelli student representative how do you vote i full board those in favor aye aye aye those opposed any abstentions the consent calendar is adopted as presented now we move on to agenda item 12 which are items for board consideration or action agenda item 12.1 is appointment of custodial supervisor this is an action item stacy joslin good evening tonight we would like to bring forward jared roddell for the position of custodial supervisor mr riddell grew up watching his family love the martinez unified the martinez unified school district his grandma was the secretary at the junior high school and his mom was
026a librarian at morello jared attended john sweat elementary martinez junior high and alhamra alhambra jared married a teacher who now teaches fourth grade at morello park jared was destined to be in martinez mr riddell was hired in may of 2010 as a groundskeeper and was promoted at that time to head custodian at morelo park elementary school in 2012. during his eight years at morello jared built a reputation for excellence in everything he did he continuously went above and beyond to serve the morello community and was known for his impeccable work love of the children and passion for making sure the campus was clean safe and ready for staff and students jared took great pride in his work and was nominated as the martinez classified employee of the year in 2017. in addition to his work
027as head custodian he also participated in events such as one book one school he was the morello mascot shh don't tell the students he attended events at morello and also volunteered at alhambra high school for many different things jared did all these things while going to college at night to pursue his degree jared's leadership skills his deep understanding of his job and his ability to triage and willingness to support others was observed throughout the district which led him to a new opportunity this summer where he supported the custodial teams with supporting them with cleaning leadership working directly under mrs rossi our interim superintendent we held interviews last week and tonight we are asking for the board to consider and take action on our candidate jared riddell for the position of custodial supervisor in the martinez
028unified school district thank you so much stacy and congratulations jared it's it's a pleasure to be able to discuss this item tonight do we have any uh public comment on this i don't see anyone's hands raised do any members of the board wish to make any comments yeah i'd like to like to congratulate jared on going over and above his duties and taking classes and you know thinking about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it and help out so thank you very much and i assume after our vote we want to welcome you to your new position you were you also wishing to make a comment i was actually going to make the motion if i may yes you may of course great i would uh like to approve jared
029roddell uh as our new custodial supervisor second i would love oh very well kathy you may have it uh we have a motion and a second remember sequenza and member mclaughlin uh robin sorry this is a personnel issue so no student vote we'll bring it to the full board for approval those in favor those opposed abstentions the motion passes congratulations jared thank you for being here would you like to say a few words you're not obligated to but feel free to do so uh yeah i would really uh just like to say thank you to stacy uh miss jocelyn helen miss rossi and the board for giving me this opportunity i will bring the same enthusiasm and dedication i developed amarillo park into this new position especially now but always custodial staff are so vital
030to a school's smooth operation and i look forward to working with each and every member of the custodial team to navigate through these challenging times and ensure a safe and workable teaching and learning environment thank you very much thank you you're welcome to remain for the rest of the meeting or enjoy the rest of your night not on zoom we will move on to agenda item 12.2 temporary board policy change board policy 6146.1 high school graduation excuse me high school graduation requirement community service hours this is for information and the possible action amy black yes thank you i've also um asked that matt chamberlain and l'oreal con connor join me this evening and they can help answer any questions that you might have about this recommendation but essentially it speaks for itself with us being
031in a pandemic is challenging for us to go to the store let alone try to find community service hours and so we wouldn't want to have an unnecessary burden on our graduating students for this requirement although we do feel that this is an important graduation requirement at this time we're not sure about the feasibility of it being able to be fulfilled and so we're asking the board to consider a temporary change or postponement on this graduation requirement for the 2020-2021 school year thank you amy matt or lori do you have anything to add to that yeah we would just appreciate your consideration it's hard enough for our kiddos who are adjusting to the distance learning requirements for them to go out and find community service opportunities or volunteer opportunities it's just been difficult and so
032we would appreciate your support of this temporary postponement yeah i would ditto what matt said um we also have a lot of our vicente and brioni students are working to help support their families who don't have a lot of income coming in and so um you know they're they're stressed out about that plus trying to get all the course work done so we really appreciate your consideration on this well we appreciate you both being here and for bringing this up uh i don't have any questions but do any members of the board have any questions for amy laurie or matt jonathan i just have a comment thank you to whoever came up with the idea of doing this i think it's a great one we expect so much of our students and our staff and
033at this time this is a great time to postpone this requirement i would love to see it back of course once we come back from this coronavirus but thank you for doing this for our kids and i would be a head nod to say yes let's make it a connection i know okay good to know i'm i'm also nodding my head and either i see you nodding your head um john fuller what about you that's fine okay we will open it up to public comment before we take action any member of the public wish to speak on this todd navarro has his hand raised david wildly could you please allow todd to speak todd it looks like you are now permitted to talk if you could unmute yourself go right ahead and address the board
034great thank you jonathan um amy matt thank you very much i think this is important and i am in full support of it i would suggest um moving forward with the action tonight however i think it needs to be taken into consideration i'm not sure for juniors when the requirement begins that they can start gathering their hours for their graduation requirement but if that begins that opportunity begins for them in the spring i think considerations should be given to how we're going to approach that for next year's graduating class as well i while i would love to see that things will be greatly improved over the next four or five months if this requirement begins in the springtime for this year's juniors i don't think we're going to see a significant improvement in the environment
035that's going to allow our students to go into the community and openly volunteer so i think some consideration needs to be given to that to the graduating class of 2022 as well thank you todd are there any other comments from the public seeing none and knowing that we had at least three shakes of the head we're going to turn this into an action item can i get a motion prove the temporary board policy change for bp 614 6.1 second we have a motion and a second remember mclaughlin remember janelli and i believe uh student representative you may vote as well how do you vote hi and then full board those in favor aye aye those opposed any abstentions the temporary board policy change has been adopted moving on to 12.3 review of revised certificated job
036description behavior counselor and education mental health counselor this is an information item stacy joslin thank you and i've asked janelle is also available if there are clarification questions at the end at the request of mea executive board the district and mea have engaged over the past few weeks in the meet and confer process regarding the job title of our existing behavior counselor and educational mental health positions through a very collaborative effort there is an agreement to change the behavior counselor job title to mtss mental health counselor and mtss stands for multi-tiered system of supports which reflects the tiered general education support our counselors are providing and then to add dis to the educational mental health counselor job title which also provides clarification that these counselors provide special education services in addition there is a recommendation
037to update the qualifications of both positions to allow for an associate level which we haven't allowed for prior of applicants to apply for the non-licensed position and we do believe that this will expand our applicant pool for positions that have been difficult to fill we currently do have a 0.4 position that has remained opened so we are hoping that this would help us to receive more qualified applicants we added an associate level so the pay scale hasn't changed but you'll notice in the materials you received we added an associate level very similar to the teacher's pay scale so the person coming in if they did not have all of the requirements to be the mtss mental health counselor and they were at the associate level they would stay at class one which is the entry
038level for on our pay scale and then they would only be able to grow so far we're hoping that during that time they would be able to get all of the necessary requirements um to move from the associate level to the next level we also um included in our agreement with mea that a licensed mft or lcsw employee may provide the clinical supervision to the associate level employees as assigned by the director of student services janelle employees would be provided with a 4 500 stipend to provide that clinical supervision um the supervision hours will be provided outside of the supervisor and associates contracted work day again we do feel that other districts do provide this and we're hoping that if we can offer that clinical supervision that we might be able to attract and retain
039um qualified individuals to support our students so this is an item for your consideration and in your packet you should have um copies of the agreement the pay scale and the changes to the job descriptions are there any questions janelle did you have anything to add oops i'm sorry janelle did you have anything to add no i did not okay thank you let me check to see if we have any public comment on this to any members of the public wish to speak on this agenda item seeing none thank you very much for this presentation we'll move on to agenda item 12.4 and we will hear this item at our next meeting agenda item 12.4 elementary school waiver this is an information item helen rossi david you have to allow me to um share my
040screen yes hold on just a second okay you can go ahead okay is it on yes it is it did it really did it it did it awesome so tonight i i have a presentation for you about the new um elementary school waiver process let's see this is kind of fun to do while i'm looking on two different screens at the same time so first off i wanted to just recap a timeline on july 17th uh that we were put on the county monitoring list or watch list as a school district that had to open up in distance learning we did have a board meeting on that same exact night which kind of made the decision as to how to open um a lot easier because we could only open in one direction we did
041at that time um the recommendation from the superintendent at that time that we was that we would open in full distance learning and revisit options for safely returning staff and students to in-person instruction at the end of september had it not been mandated that was the direction we were going on august 19th the county public health department or the state opened up the elementary waiver process for us as we were less than 200 cases per hundred thousand residents for 14 days straight i think we're at about 148.7 which is well below the um 200 cases so what happens then is we qualify for an elementary waiver and by elementary they mean from from tk through um sixth grade sixth grade is considered as part of the elementary waiver there's an application process um that we'd
042have to go through and in that application we that application process consists of a checklist and we're going to get into that on the next slide but we'd have to create a reopening plan that hit every one of the 13 components of the ch of the um checklist and then that application would get submitted to the contra costa county office of ed and they've committed to a three-day turnaround um and once they approved it as having met all the 13 parts in depth on on the checklist they would send it to the contra costa health services department who would also take a look at it provide feedback corrections and they have a three-day turnaround at which time if we pass that level it would be sent on to the california department of education for review
043after three days um that after three days three days after it was sent or 72 hours if we do not hear back from the cda the application would default to approval and the district district will be contacted to inform us of approval status so it's about a two-week process a two-school week process that's why they say submit it at least two weeks before you want to reopen [Applause] now the the main part of the application centers around this um these 13 points well right here there's 12 the first point is to make sure that you post the uh reopening plan on your website so that everyone can see it so the sections of this document that um every district would and we could create one as a district so every district or every um private
044school on its own would go ahead and um send in has to focus on let me just understand the language okay so cleaning and disinfecting um how are we going to make sure that everything is cleaned regularly disinfected and how use of shared items will happen so for instance playground would they be allowed to use the playground because that's a shared item and how do you ensure that it's clean and disinfected between different students on that shared school supply so on and so forth cohorting you would have to make sure that we kept students in small and describe how we're going to keep students in small stable cohorts with fixed membership for everything that they do from recess to instruction to lunch um to avoid any contact with other cohorts throughout the day we'd have
045to go through entrance entrance egress and movement within the school that has to do with a lot of signage and a lot of rerouting of students so that they're not passing in the hallway in a small space and that they're keeping six feet apart um face coverings and other essential ppe we have to go describe how we're going to teach students about face coverings and how we're going to make sure that they're wearing them properly and how um what to do if they don't have one what to do if they refuse all of that has to be outlined health screenings for students and staff right now we use a health screening of um google form that everybody fills out that who comes to campus every day at each of the sites and at the district
046office it's a simple screening tool but how are we going to expand that to include the students that are on campus and all of the rest of the staff because right now only part of the staff is on campus we have to teach um and describe how we're going to how we're going to promote and incorporate healthy hygiene practices into our daily routine coming in from recess what's the procedure going to be for hand washing for hand sanitizing when there is no washing available all of those types identification and tracing of contacts what to do if somebody does test positive and calls the school and says or if we notice a student is not feeling well and the student has a temperature um what's the process and how do we contain that and and get
047the student help as soon as you know we can physical distancing how to how do we ensure the six feet or four to six feet uh depending on on what the age group in the classroom is the county has a flexibility in requirements but we're just gonna say six feet for now how are we gonna make sure that everybody stays six feet apart um what kind of staff training and family education are we going to provide on the enforcement of this plan what's going to happen when students don't follow the procedures that we lay out or parents don't follow the procedures that we lay out how is that going to be handled testing of students and staff i had an hour-long meeting with the county today and and a testing company out of las vegas
048i believe who works with our company nurse which is our workman's comp nurse program on on testing and how what that might look like because we're going to be required to test and i believe it's all of our staff within a two-month period every two months so i think half of them one month half the other so every two weeks approximately four one quarter of all staff in the district will have to have a test and then rotate through until it gets to their next two months how does that what does that look like how how do we go about doing that in in a reasonable manner and how do we afford doing that what are companies doing to help um companies like ours our businesses that are in the community or schools and so
049on and so forth so we did have an interesting meeting today and a lot of planning is going to happen around that and the triggers for switching back to distance learning aside from the county telling us we have to what are the triggers that we as a district are going to to put into place to say okay we need to take at least this grade level this cohort this school site back to distance learning so we need to put that in the plan and the last part is the communication how are we going to communicate with students staff and parents about cases exposures at the school consistent with privacy requirements such as ferpa and hipaa so there's a lot of information that goes into this not to say that we haven't given this a lot
050of thought already and have a lot of ideas and planning through the what came from the task force take that build on it and and build the plan but all of those requirements must go into this plan this written document and then it gets attached to the application the last part of this is that consultation is required consultation with our bargaining units is required so i've listed mea csea nasa confidential supervisory they also say with parent groups i put parent teacher association but the board edits if they wanted to add the dlac or other district um other district how did they word it parent organizations that's what it is other parenting community organizations to the list of people to consult with that's also something that we can do and i just wanted to remind everyone
051it's consultation it's not approval of the document but it's consultation of how it's going to work take feedback and revise as needed so what's the best way for kids considerations and discussion points um this is something that i i kind of thought up myself and thought i'd put out to start any type of discussion the first thing is space availability for cohorts to 12 for 12 to 15 students at six feet apart that's what we can fit in the classroom maximum so we couldn't bring back all first through six and have them all come five days a week or i would say tk through through six because we don't have the facility in spite of building bigger schools we still don't have the facility for because for every one classroom of 24 i would need
052two classrooms and another teacher to teach the testing of students and staff as i was talking about before there's also mandated rapid testing for those who have symptoms they want a two-day turnaround on those the staff needs to be tested periodically what types of facilities are out there that could help us for rapid testing the cost and how do we use health insurance coverage that we currently have to help us provide this to our staff distance learning independent study in person return so as you are well aware when we went to distance learning we allowed parents to choose to pull their children out of distance learning and place them in independent study as an option to meet the needs especially of those parents with those households with two working parents that weren't able to be
053home to monitor in the day that child was either with a relative or or someone that couldn't monitor their schooling so should we go to in-person return there are going to be students and families that don't want to do that that would rather stay in distance learning and and janelle can attest to this in order to get the the students into independent study we had to create a master schedule that had every student assigned to a teacher and pull those students out that wanted independent study and then memorize where everybody was take a snapshot pull those students out collapse sections and move students virtually to other campuses and then take those extra teachers and put them in independent study to teach the kids so now if we the board chooses to go in this direction
054whenever you do what will happen is if there are students if we do decide to let them stay in distance learning and not be a part of the hybrid that will get a reshuffle and students are going to have another teacher again um because it's not going to come out nice and clean that every person in independent study is going to want to stay in independent study there are people that are going to want their students back in the classroom so there'll be a switch again and same goes for staff the triggers for return to distance learning it's going to have an impact on student education in some way shape or form some will say it's going to be better and some will say it's not going to be better we like i talked about
055the rescheduling of independent study and dl students and staff and the impacts on parents we have to consider and they've been teaching their own children and i know myself as a teacher trying to even do homework with my boys was almost impossible because they want to listen to anybody but me i remember teaching math and having my son say to me that's not how you do it you do it this way and i'm like no you do it this way and the fights that would come so i'm sure there's some struggles going on at home right now and there are two parent working households who need to have those kids you know get the best education possible in in the best setting and a hybrid schedule when when we reopen it would have to be
056um in a hybrid schedule and that's going to change the child care and the work schedules of a lot of our parents at the same time so these are all things that need to be considered and i'm sure there's a million more but these are just right off the top of my head on you know while i was putting this together just to things to consider so um i'm putting that out there and at this time discussion questions things that i can explain or try to explain or investigate for the board i know it was a lot no thank you very much helen it was incredibly informative and my apologies for not having my camera on i have my young co-worker with me here currently so um trying to protect my own child's privacy by
057keeping my camera off didn't any members of the board have any questions or comments i just have a couple questions kathy i think jeremy was trying to speak first uh so jeremy oh okay sorry sorry kathy thank you um just a couple of questions i helen i take it county health services can't help with testing uh for our district they provide am i still on mute let me just check here i don't know where this thing went can you hear me jeremy okay that's all i need to know um they provide a list of resources and places that you can get testing but they don't actually provide the testing for you so for instance the company that we were looking we were talking to today what they would do is we would contract with them
058they would contract with kaiser and they the tests were running for them at about 125 dollars a test and so what would happen is um we would contract with them to do the testing and then they would bill out to kaiser but not everybody has kaiser so that would mean there's an issue with anyone who doesn't have kaiser so we'd have to figure out a different way to do it so it's going to be about finding the right vendor and the right procedure to get as much done as we can get done um at little to no cost so and then would we would we handle contact tracing in-house what happens is if if somebody reports to the county public health that they have coveted or they've tested positive then then county health contacts us
059but if someone comes an employee comes to us or a student or or you know whatever comes to us and tells us that they have tested positive what we do is we use um they have a a list procedure where we would start to isolate where that person was that day and interview that teacher or that classified person or that student where where were you today who did you have contact with those kinds of things and we turned that list over to county health they make contact after us in the case that it's reported to us first in the case where it's reported to them first they make contact with us we they've supplied us with documents letters and form letters and such this week to send out to our staff should something like this
060happen and and a script as to what to say should it happen but so it's it depends on who gets reported to first and so just one last thing um for we should probably send out a poll to the parents who are inclined to stay in distance learning for the year even if we uh go back to in-person learning so that's just one suggestion to find out how many parents want to keep their students in distance learning for the entire year okay and we we we promised parents or i promised parents i should say that in the first few weeks after the first few weeks of distance learning we were going to send out a survey to parents and to staff and to older students about how the experience what was working what was not
061working and that's something that we could include in that uh survey which will probably be out in about a week and a half to two weeks within that time period so i'll just write that down survey in person okay other questions yeah kathy go ahead please yeah i have several questions one of them is given the size of the cohort 12 to 15 students that means we have to have double the number of classroom space and double the number of teachers assuming if if we went five days a week that would be the case but the task force did come up with a type of hybrid schedule where one half of the school comes on the first monday and tuesday and the other half came on on thursday and friday or they came am pm
062so i think there were two different types in there i'd have to review those notes but i believe that there were two different options for a hybrid and we'd have to go with something like that to keep the cohorts small and then my other comment is obviously sixth grade for us is in junior high so i would say that we shouldn't include them are we required to include them if we do the elementary because that will significantly change the number of kids eligible i don't know that we're required to i mean my thought is when we go back to in person which we will eventually whenever the board tells us but my thought would be a fit you just don't open up the doors and send them all back in one day we we kind
063of have to phase in a greater level or two over a course of a week than the next week just to make sure that we have all of our t's crossed and our um eyes dotted because you don't want to bring back uh you know 3 000 kids and say whoops i forgot this you want you want to be able to to make sure that your procedures and your your your flow of traffic and your your sanitization and everything is going the right way that's what just off the top of my head it's not a plan that's in place it's off the top of my head that makes sense to me though thank you um i will have another concern and that is if let's say we were doing tk through five um some of
064the compliance issues with our kids with special needs are going to be significant as much as they're probably the ones who could benefit the most from the in-person learning because of their specific disabilities the other side of that is at least in my experience from having run a school for these kinds of kids is that they tended to be less compliant with rules like wear a mask at all times all of those kinds of things so that would be a concern and would we then end up with are we required to provide the in-person schooling for them because we need to provide the most appropriate free and appropriate public education so that's another wrinkle that i'm thinking of that we would have to pay some attention to and then my last comment i'm sure i
065have others but my last comment is i did recently have a coven 19 test with kaiser it took them seven days to test me and another seven days for the test to come back and that was very recently so i i hear that they're talking about kaiser being the fallback but in my experience they are not at all appropriate for the testing and they're not timely at all one of the other things that i did learn in that meeting today well the meeting prior to that the one with the county health department is that testing places are looking to move um educators to the two-day turnaround test right now it's first responders and so on and so forth that get the immediate results and other people other groups of people get pushed back a little
066bit but they're looking to move them up towards the two-day turnaround time there are different levels of testing that can be done the um they have the the big one with the swab that goes to the back of your throat makes your eyes water and there's the next level is um is is one that they were talking about as um it's a um it's a nasal swab but it's it's it's a quicker turnaround one so but i'm not sure it's stuff that we have to learn i have to continue i just found out about it today we just had our first workshop on it and i need to do some more investigating yeah it's not as invasive as the other one but i'm actually in a high risk group and in the high risk group
067it still took that long for those tests to come through no problem with my doctor but definitely a problem with kaiser so i wouldn't personally i wouldn't be relying on them as my okay well back response are the ones that would be doing it this sounds incredibly complicated thank you for bringing this to us um i would ask that the powerpoint that you have if you could send it out to us because i would like to share it with other people um i don't have it on my computer so thank you ellen so i would like to build up on jeremy um i would be interested in seeing how many parents just want to stay the whole year distance learning versus how many parents would like to bring their kids back um i really thought
068we should pursue that from the beginning and i think that can really help with the spacing and the staff needs it would take a lot of planning and execution but you know if you get half the people who want to do distance learning half wanted to go back to the classroom and we have the the staff that will sort of match that yeah we might have to do some different stuff but i think it's something to pursue thank you i'll put it in the survey hi it's deidre i i just had a couple questions um other than you helen who's who's taking on kind of the work in the discussion i know we're having a kind of our a public discussion but it almost seems it almost seems like it's appropriate to have our committee
069um meet back together and discuss some of these points uh either that or maybe we we have a time where uh like a special workshop or something and i know everybody's so stretched on time right now uh trying to roll out school but i also i understand whether we want to go back to apply for a waiver now or we just want to at some point in the future get the kids back in school in some sort of fashion there's a couple of the things on the list i think we could probably start working on now um and it's a long it's a long list for for helen and a couple people in the district office to kind of work on and then report back to us i feel like we might want to move
070things along a little a little quicker at least so we can discuss more of the nuts and bolts of it and and the big thing is is how would how are we ever going to pay for some of these things um i i think that we're going to find a way to do the testing i think i was very hopeful after that meeting today because if that's one company that's willing to bill our insurance companies for it that may be the way to go um but like i said i just that just was brought forth to the superintendents today as far as more than one person i think if i would like to um i have to look at all the task force stuff and i want to make sure that i have it all
071in from cj's files i would like to see how much of this because my understanding um from just in in bargaining times when we were looking at distance learning that most of the time was spent on a hybrid and returning to kids to school and so i'd like to see what was discussed by the committee and not repeat things that we did already because that would be a waste of they met i think 13 or 14 times i would like to see how much of that we can pull out and put into this plan and i would invite a committee to help with anything because more brains are better than you know a few but it's um i'd like to first see what they have on there and um use what we've already got as
072a foundation so if there is what i think there is in the notes from that that uh task force so thank you helen um i would just like to appreciate show appreciation to my fellow board members for the excellent questions and comments i agree with everything you're all saying when we first went into shutdown mode the the hope was that we would be able to reopen soon and for those of us who have young children at home and other school-aged kids at home of course the desire is to get them back in school and i know that teachers want their kids to be back in school um as as someone who's tasked with making these decisions speaking personally my my first thought has is now uh was then and will continue to be concerned for
073the safety of our employees the data coming from the science on whether or not children are vectors or how uh how much of the virus they can transmit is is still is still new um people have loved to politicize this issue and to say well children aren't aren't spreading the virus you can't get it from kids well let's look at this let's look at that that statement objectively at least in the united states as soon as the pandemic became rampant at least in in states that had some modicum of rational leadership which i'm glad to say in california we have had that we shut down schools so it's very hard to say how transmissible the data is from young children to adults because we've all been kept apart from one another and if you look
074at the states that have reopened schools or never fully closed schools some of the highest rates of infection have been occurring among young people in contra costa county alone the highest rates of infection are for people aged 19 to 30. that's the highest rate of the largest group the largest cohort in our county who are becoming infected with this disease and it's true that younger people have a better chance of surviving the illness but what we do know for certain is that the effects of the disease are long-lasting that a vaccine may never actually be useful because our bodies shed the antibodies within a couple of months many people have been sick with it since the pandemic first began i don't want that to happen to a single one of our employees i don't want
075that to happen to a single parent because their student went to school caught it from another child and brought it home none of that is an option as far as i'm concerned and i do get a number of angry emails every day from parents telling me that i don't understand science telling me that i don't understand the regulations and the recommendations from the cdc let's be straight here the cdc has never once issued recommendations that take worker safety into consideration and i find that to be reprehensible and it's a completely um representative of of the type of political discourse that's occurring in this country right now where we're not putting the safety of workers first the reason why we've had even a continuation of this disease is because we haven't prioritized the needs of workers
076and we created too many of these so-called essential worker positions rather than prioritizing health and safety and then when the state of california began having discussions in sacramento i mean around reopening no one wanted to hear the hard truth which is that you can't quote reopen an economy if workers have to be at home because their children are being taught over a screen and they need to be home to care for their children and to assist with learning it's even harder if you yourself are an educator it's absurd the system that's been handed to us and so at the district level we've been hearing for months and months and months while the districts get to decide the districts get to decide that's a whole bunch of garbage as our future president likes to say that's
077a bunch of malarkey and so here we are yet again tasked with this this this horrible decision of whether or not we're going to apply for this waiver which came out i think very hastily i'm not at all pleased with the way that county uh health services has handled this and i know that they're working hard but still i think we can do better because i know that each one of our employees is working to the utmost beyond their own capacity to educate our children under the most terrible circumstances and so for me if i'm going to have any sort of thought that that we're ready to to reopen school uh i i need to see that we're capable of meeting every item on that list that is a long list it's a difficult list
078to uh to to even follow let alone actually have the systems in place because we haven't been provided with the additional resources necessary for contact tracing and for ensuring hygiene protocols i i and that's part of the reason why i was so in favor of creating the custodial supervisor position i have every faith that jared will will do a great job ensuring that we follow proper hygiene protocols but if we can't get adults to wear masks and to distance themselves and to wash their hands how can we get children to do it i have a three and a three-year-old daughter going on 23 okay she she refuses to wear her mask how can a classroom full of young people be expected to wear their masks and then what we require our teachers to be the
079ones who are demanding that masks be worn at all times it's just an impossible task so i'm sorry to rant but this whole issue just has me so vexed because yet again when the powers above us talk about local control they talk about dumping the hardest decisions on us with the fewest resources available so hell and i applaud you all of our cabinet all of our classroom teachers you are my true heroes and the fact that people are upset about what's happening with distance learning i'm sorry but we didn't create this situation we're truly trying to keep you your families and your students safe while also ensuring that our teachers and classified staff are kept safe so i'm i'm okay with moving forward with trying to meet the requirements on the checklist absolutely do i
080think we're there yet no way no way but i'm glad that we're having this discussion and we're going to need to continue to have this discussion so i'm thinking that we make this a regular agenda item helen if at every board meeting we we can have this discussion i do believe it's a good idea to to um reconstitute the covet task force which quite frankly i think did a tremendous job and you know we didn't get to talk about this enough during july because we had so many uh other issues to discuss and those were some of the hardest decisions i think that we've had to make as a board at least as since i've been on the board but the hybrid models that were explored i think are very workable models uh and helen
081you brought up brought up a great point about the need to protect um or ensure compliance with hipaa and ferpa for people who don't know ferpa is the family educational rights and privacy act hipaa is the health insurance portability and accountability act these are laws that ensure the privacy of students and people adults for healthcare reasons that's that's hipaa and when we're talking about contact tracing in a school setting we have to be testing students and adults and we are not equipped to ensure full compliance with both of those federal laws right now um we can get there i'm confident that we can again i'm sorry for the soapbox i've just been thinking about this so much and again so many um forcefully worded emails um you know i'm i'm i'm glad that people are
082paying attention of course people are how could you not be but in order to keep our community safe right now i think we just need to stay the course do what we can to ensure the safety of our employees the safety of our students and their families and just continue to do the work um i'd like to open this up for public comment brenda leal you've had your hand raised very patiently and then i'll look to the attendees list so folks in attendance if you wish to speak in public comment please raise your hand so uh brenda leo please please speak to this issue thank you jonathan um first of all uh just a couple of days ago i got the current information um from cta about how about covet 19 cases among california's children
083increased by 30 percent over the first half of this month that is the largest percent increase of any age group reported um by the california department of uh services in addition to that um i would like you to consider also that over 30 of my members are high risk and another 20 care for people who are high risk so if they do become infected they will be taking that uh to their loved ones um that are very high risk um in addition to that if we go to a hybrid plan more than likely students will come to school two days a week there's absolutely no way that we can provide both distance learning and in-person learning it is just way too much so the hybrid plan calls for us teaching half our class for two
084days and another half of our class for two days there's just absolutely no way to do both i can't keep up with doing just distance learning right now and if you turn that around and then we have to um close which is highly likely that we would go back to school we would be there for a short period of time and then have to close our doors again we've already had a case um that that's not good for kids either it's like you know start stop and i am personally very proud of my class i've had 100 attendance in all of my sessions that i have taught since we have started they um they're doing their best to learn it is not an ideal situation um like i said i think i broke google today
085i truly do um it happens but you know what it also happens that these kids are going to be very very flexible because you really have to learn how to dance i used to think that teaching was a dance it's a cha-cha baby because with with tech we've got to learn to dance and it's a skill that our kids are learning um i i think that that's that's all that i want you to consider is just that this is actually a decision that could be lethal to um your employees and their families and um i also worry that the the modifications that we talked about in the task force i attended all the meetings um would not make me personally feel safe to go back i feel safe going into kaiser i feel safe going
086and getting my teeth cleaned there their accommodations of what they do how they take temperatures how everyone is screened before they ever come in that door are much more stringent than anything we discussed in our task force being done at our schools um and i think that until we can follow protocol with just uh the teachers there we shouldn't even be talking about bringing kids back so hopefully this is going to be over soon because it certainly is not ideal we all want our kids back but we want to go back safely thank you thank you brenda we do have a hand raise from danika pattayagani david could you please allow danica to speak thank you can you guys hear me yes go right ahead awesome all right hi my name is donnica kudianogi and
087i'm a parent of two los angeles students and i'm actually just requesting that our district does not apply for the county waiver to reopen our elementary schools at this time it would be wonderful if our students could return to the classrooms but the safety of our students as well as our teachers and staff should be put first i believe our district should continue to focus their efforts on ensuring that distance learning is successful for our students distance learning is not perfect but we are making it work and i do want to do a huge shout out to all the teachers and district staff that are working tirelessly you too david i know how much work you guys are all putting in on making sure we're getting it up and running thank you very much but
088i just feel by requesting a waiver we could be back in the same boat in a couple weeks if the governor shuts us down again parents and teachers have had to come up with plans for their students during distance learning if we return to school now they'll have to adjust their plans and if the governor shuts us down again teachers and parents will have to scramble again to find care there's also the concern about if there were an out were to be an outbreak within our school sites i urge the district to stick with distance learning until there's a clear plan for reopening in our county stick with it perfect what we are doing and prepare to open when it's safe to do so not by requesting a waiver thank you for your time thank
089you danica i see another hand raised from karen slipper thank you i would like the school board to understand that csea does understand the parents are concerned about getting their children back to a normal life which includes going to school but i would also like the board to understand that csea does not support going back to in-person school anytime soon we have already faced one person in the district testing positive and getting yelled from covid we are afraid of more people spreading this horrible virus we need to be assured that we are safe to return to work and at this time we don't feel that is so we miss our kids too and we want them to come back and we want a normal life too but we don't want to get ill or worse
090yet die from coming back to work please let another school district be the guinea pig on this one so that we can see their mistakes and learn from them please please please do not apply for the waiver you do not have the support of csca thank you thank you karen uh i see a couple more hands raised up next is megan nagola good evening everybody um i want to start off by saying i have a lot of questions and concerns about bringing up the option discussion for reopening elementary schools as a teacher and a parent in the district recently has felt that many of the decisions involving the teachers welfare has been possibly heard but feels like it's been falling on deaf ears in regards to schedule which includes less intense live feed time and
091more time to plan and prepare the same goes for essentially being denied the extra days in order to plan while also having expectations for robust and engaging lessons for students how can teachers keep up with the challenging and engaging lessons if we're expected to instantly turn our materials meant for in-person instructions into engaging digital lessons and also recently having the requirements of coding my new details of 150 plus students on daily attendance the teachers in the district and our own personal children have also felt left behind when it was strictly denied to allow our own personal children to come to campus with us in order to help them with their own studies as we do with our own rostered students so many simple requests have been made in the last month and yet every decision
092that has been made and pushed forward feels as though it's making teachers jobs harder at every turn it feels as though decisions are being rushed through and there's very little thought on how the actions will actually play out in the classroom setting and now we want to introduce sending our kids back what are these safety specific safety protocols and how will they be enforced and laid out are staff members being forced back into what they feel is an unsafe setting the last possible plans did not offer significant details on such important parts of reopening we cannot simply rely on our parents filling out a daily form saying that quote my child is healthy as parents send their kids who are sick and possibly contagious to school on a regular basis and i don't foresee the
093behavior changing much and we're in while also trying to control a pandemic pandemic from a parent's perspective how many other social circles am i now being introduced to are pushing my child into if schools reopen are elementary students expected to return in person if campuses are open how will the teacher maintain a classroom in person and online if there is a choice to return so many questions and i'm unaware and i'm unsure if and when solid answers will be offered upon having this discussion above about the waiver please keep these questions in the forefront for the overall safety and well-being of the community that we all love thank you for your time thank you megan next hand raised is anna marie avila farias yes good evening board members can you hear me yes please go
094ahead oh okay i wasn't sure um i just want to echo your sentiments um board member jonathan wright in relying on science i support that we continue with distant learning and not move forward with distracting uh with the plan that you guys have executed already we need to support our teachers and our students with the resources to continue distant learning until we are sure that it's safe to return to the classrooms we need to protect everyone's safety and rely on science i'm not really interested in another survey i want to hear from the public health specialist not from parents opinions of what we should be doing so please do not waste resources and doing another parent survey because we have a lot of science deniers out there so please rely on public health officials thank
095you uh do any other members uh in attendance wish to speak on this agenda item uh todd navarro please go ahead todd please go ahead and speak if if you wish oh sorry jonathan thank you no worries thank you i'd like to um extend my my thanks to my gratitude to all of the teachers and staff so across the district i know this pivot has not been easy it hasn't been easy for any of us including those of us who are trying to hold down a full-time job at the same time that we have multiple learners in the home one of the things in this discussion that i found a bit disheartening um and i i'm really struggling with is that the hours that a group of individuals put together to put forth a plan
096that we could come back to school or distribute learning to our students and now when we're being tested to potentially have to pull out those plans and given the option to optimize them we're now questioning them so i'm going to echo what what deirdre said and and helen we have to find a way to continue to progress forward at the same time that we're delivering the learning that we're doing but this needs more focus it needs more regular focus that's that's being that's more than one person helen and possibly two or three others at the district level and coming back to a board meeting every two weeks there needs to be some thoughtfulness put forward with a plan that everybody can actually stand behind not agree to it and then once it's time to implement
097it everybody pulls back that's not acceptable and it as a parent that's concerning to me thank you todd i see another hand raised from good evening everyone can you hear me okay yes i just want to echo what danica and brenda and karen and board member wright and so many others have said um something i've been watching closely is the colleges that have reopened in the last few weeks and their outbreaks that pretty much every single one obviously that's not a perfect analogy but there are a lot of areas where i feel like we should be trailblazers and i'm proud of the areas that musd has led like our equity committee but this is not one of them uh let's let's you know regroup revisit as some have said and and take a step back
098and you know if other schools other districts in the area decide to do this we'll see how it goes but again we need to defer to the public health officials thank you thank you courtney i'm not seeing any more hands raised i do know that we have several uh comments that were submitted in writing and they will be read to us by helen rossi the first one's from alexis weingarten um dear members of the board tonight i know you will be discussing and sharing information related to the martinez school district potentially applying for a waiver i urge the board not to approve submitting a waiver to open our schools currently in california it is wildfire season wildfire season as we all know can extend all the way through october with all the recent fires and
099smoke severity we would be closing schools for in-person instruction doing due to the smoke or we would have to keep our doors shut due to the smoke keeping kids inside even more which are not good conditions in a pandemic on top of this factor rushing to open schools could potentially lead to an outbreak in our schools which would then lead to closing them down and resorting to distance learning again both of these factors would create so much instability for our students we as a district have talked about how we are trying to prevent and make up for a loss of learning both of these two events which are out of our control could then result in loss of learning even though we are prepared to teach and learn in a distance learning model distance learning
100isn't easy and i recognize understand and sympathize with our community about the hardships they are facing with distance learning on top of pandemic circumstances distance learning in general isn't the most ideal learning situation and right now it is continuing to be our best option to prevent instability for students families as well as safety for our students staff and community i know this period in time is hard as we continue to work hard as a district and work together as a community i know we can make it through this uncertain and stressful time alexis weingarten fourth grade teacher two martinez unified school district board members from brandon collins need for in-person learning please permit me to share my perspective and desire for in-person learning as a parent of three children in musd schools as a survey
101a survey initiated by the superintendent went out to all families of all musd children for which the results were summarized and presented to the board on june 22 an overwhelming majority of respondents expressed a desire to send their children back to school with face-to-face instruction i was part of that 84 percent of respondents i feel even stronger now that in-person instruction and interaction is absolutely essential for my children's educational and social development we know more now about actual versus perceived risks related to covet 19 than we did when the survey was put out the very low actual risk based on the percentage of population severely affected combined with my own observations of the deficiencies in current in the current distance learning model compelled me to express these opinions further i am calling upon our elected
102board members to represent their constituents by having their comments and votes reflect this overwhelming majority sentiment okay um the decision to move to a distance learning model has already been made for the fall when coming to this decision last month the board heard hours worth of teacher community testimony supporting distance learning if we compare the case data presented by contra costa health department the number of positive cases have been trending upwards since the discussions were had last june in july i truly hope that this waiver is being presented as information only and will not be up for earnest consideration at this time i get it distance learning is hard and we all want our kids back in school but let us remember that this will be a short-term sacrifice in the grand scheme of things
103and if struggling through distance learning with my children slows transmission and prevents even one death in our town then we are on the right path i am not willing to take the gamble and i am not willing to ask that of our teachers and hardworking admin staff thank you marie danielle massa my kid used to love school now she's annoyed by it and as a family we're more annoyed we're even more annoyed by it our lives have been turned upside down because of it we are full-time working parents with two children and we just inherited a new job we don't have the time for we're trying our best but i don't see it getting any better i'm sure this sounds very familiar to many other parents to these parents i'd just like to remind you
104that distance learning was not imposed because of safety the cdc never recommended school closures and strongly holds the same opinion to this day so your child and your family are suffering because of hysteria and politics not because of safety if you need a crystal clear example of this woodbridge operates at your child's school right now this child's care service houses children and adults in a classroom setting indoors all throughout the day monday through friday aside from the out of pocket price per hour explain to parents how this is different than the actual classes that are now banned this will not change unless parents wake up and demand better for our children as long as rampant rampant misinformation influences school districts and teachers union distance learning will continue against the cdc's recommendation we already have the
105data and science on our side alex v and that's it that's what i have thank you helen we do have another hand raised from joshua barker yes hello can everybody hear me all right there you go yeah thank you all right so uh yes i likewise would like to echo uh some similar sentiments i believe have been made tonight uh regarding the uh opening of schools and uh going through parents surveys and making sure that we get the opinion of people who uh you know have their concerns of course but um we need to make sure that we're making these decisions based soundly and uh in the interest of science and of um of uh you know everyone's included their health as well as our staff the people who are putting their lives on the
106lines in order to make this a reality that we can take care of each other and our children uh i know that that will come with some sacrifices and that some people are going to feel as if their concerns are not being heard but for the ultimate and greater good and definitely for the the functionality or the function of this body i think it would behoove us to to maintain that um objective stance that we look at everything from a scientific and empirical standpoint and uh thank you that's all i wanted to say thank you uh it appears that we have no further public comment on this issue we will be bringing this up at future meetings um on a regular basis and thank you all for participating in this discussion we will move on
107to agenda item 12.5 november 2020 board meeting dates this is an information item helen rossi hi um in november the fourth monday in november falls on the week of the thanksgiving holiday break and when it does we have traditionally adjusted the calendar for board meetings should we decide we need that meeting i wanted to bring it to your attention this evening that you may want to discuss and look at possible alternate dates for that regular meet for those regular meetings in november and just um there is if to keep it on monday the november 16th is the monday prior we have a currently have a board meeting on the ninth and the second one was the 23rd which is during the break so we have uh monday november 16th open or monday november 30th open
108as well so if the board is interested in looking at an alternative date for that thanksgiving break um either of those mondays are available should they be available on your calendar as well and we have this as an information item so we'll be hearing this at our next meeting correct absolutely okay do we have any comments from members of the board yeah i wanted to add to make sure that we paid attention to as one person said and i neglected to say that we need to also address when we're talking about going back to school for in-person learning we really need to discuss and address the problems associated with fires because i i don't know about you all i can hardly breathe at this point and that's going to be the case for our kids
109so that's one more negative idea or something we need to take into consideration as we're looking to whether or not we're going to open our schools for in-person learning because this is going to go through october it certainly looks like at least through october thank you kathy deidra jeremy john any thoughts on the uh alternate date for the second meeting in november it's okay if uh you want to bring it up again again in two weeks or excuse me at our next board meeting we'll see if we have any public comment on this item any comments from the public about an alternate date for our second november meeting seeing none we will bring us up at our next board meeting moving on to our agenda and if i can get my laptop to work we
110do not need agenda item 13 agenda item 14 comments from the superintendent board members and future agenda items madam superintendent we'll start with you i just want to say thank you to everyone um employed by this district and all the parents who send their children here i know this has been a tough few weeks i really do and i think everybody is doing their best to put their best foot forward and um it's all for the kids it's all worth it and we'll get through it just like we get through most things so thank you every single employee and every single parent and family and student uh deidra do you have any comments to add yeah i um i just wanted to to maybe when we bring up every week when we talk or every
111it seems like every week uh every one of our meetings in the future about whether or not we're going to go back to school whether or not there's going to be a hybrid i know i know as a parent of kids in our district it's very unnerving when we hear things about whether or not kids could go back to school you know we're all juggling as much as we can and so the way the way i understood the data that helen um talked about today was that even if we did apply and everything it for a waiver and everything kind of fell into place it would still be at the very very nearest time would be two weeks and i think i think we owe it to our our community both staff as well as
112the parent community to have that assurance that they're not going to have to juggle everything um in in a week or a couple days uh and and really what that that timeline could be so i think i would like to see as part of our next agenda item when we are talking about um going going back to in person or hybrid that we do always discuss that timeline because it makes me very nervous trying to think how i can reschedule what is going on right now um it takes a lot of people to make things happen um and a lot of resources so i just want to make sure that we can continue adding that to our discussion in the future and then just following that my own personal note is thank you to everyone
113who is making everything work in the district um making making my kids classrooms work it's amazing uh and it it's actually it's really wonderful to see the progress and and you know i think the kids the kids are not only learning they're they're they're incredibly uh open to different things so um thank you to all of our educators all of our staff administrators and our cabinet who are are uh building this airplane while we're in flight it's a tremendous job and and we rely on you a lot so thank you well said thank you deidre cathy do you have any comments just in addition to all the staff that we want to thank helen thank you you keep showing how dedicated you are to this district and um try to take a little time for
114yourself and thank you for doing everything that you do i really appreciate it and i know the rest of us do too and i wanted to thank courtney i think you're the only person who's applied to uh for an elected position on the board who has spoken on this item so thank you uh jeremy do you have any comments i do um i wanted to of course thank all the hard work of our teachers staff uh and administrators in just getting the school year started i'm very impressed with the agility of our our teachers to adapt and make the experience great for our students i wanted to follow up on what deidre talked about as far as the waiver information you know thank you to helen for bringing up the waiver information as an informational
115item uh tonight i know a lot of people were discussing it in the community and it the you know i looked at the checklist and there's a lot of things that have to be done before we we are prepared to even apply for the waiver so um you know we got to make sure that our campuses are safe for our students staff and teachers before we even really think about applying for it so i'm happy that where this is going to be a continued continuing discussion um for our meetings and hopefully we can make some real progress on um what it looks like when we actually get back on campus thank you for that jeremy john fuller do you have any comments uh i think everything that needs to be said has been said so
116i'll just say good night all right thank you uh student representative robin johnson do you have any comments um yeah i just want to say thank you to all the staff and teachers specifically i know my teachers have really embraced this distance learning and it shows in the classroom or online right now and i really appreciate all the communication that we're getting from them and doing their best to be flexible and if something's not working they're listening to us and trying to apply what they can and make it the best it can possibly be where we are right now that said i also really encourage all teachers to try and keep that mindset i know it's difficult i understand that but i have a younger sister at the junior high and i know for her
117she can kind of tell that a couple of her teachers are struggling and i get that but the more they embrace it the more it will work for everyone the more it will help us to eventually move back into the classroom so um thank you to everything that they're doing and i hope that that continues thank you robin i don't need to repeat everything that all of you have said so eloquently but just to thank you all for your time thank all of our district employees all of our parents for your fair continued forbearance as will be in my mantra as we continue this and i just want to say on a slightly different subject i mentioned him earlier but i was particularly moved by the speech that vice president biden gave at the democratic
118convention last week i think it's in stark contrast to maybe what's happening this week and in his speech he spoke a lot about love and acceptance and in these times there's nothing more important than to remember that we're part of a community that we support one another we love one another as challenging as this has been and this has only been since march it's only august yet it feels like much longer for those of us who have been living at work as i call it staring at our screens all day long for those workers who have had to venture out into the world because they have what's considered an essential job for the students who are staring at their screens all day when they would rather be interacting face to face with their teachers and
119their peers and for our educators and other district employees who would much rather be on school sites helping to ensure that our students get the best possible education this has been probably some of the hardest times that any of us have ever experienced i know that for myself and so i thank you all because we're doing this together we will continue to do this together we may have disagreements and that's okay because we're coming up with really good ideas and i'm proud of what we've accomplished i'm proud of the way that we've rolled out distance learning 2.0 this fall i'm incredibly proud of how we've done it and i know people may criticize people will always find fault but for those on the ground doing the work kudos endless endless gratitude thank you all for
120your time uh we will end the meeting now it's only 18 after 8 o'clock so enjoy your evening and we'll see you soon take care of one another thank you we will adjourn thank you