001one more let everyone know what we're trying to do here is run two meetings virtual and live it's a bit challenging so our audio is good in the conference room judy have you joined us on the phone should we hear her through this she says she has almost no cell service she can't hear anything okay so i can see i can see that you are they on in you'll get infections hi this is judy i've been on for about five minutes are live streaming we're ready to begin thank you welcome judy thank you for doing that from scenic mississippi okay we are calling this meeting a board meetings to begin and i'd like someone from the board to consent to read our district mission vision and the school board mission vision and mission and the
002character counts can you see it at the top of the agenda okay and i will read it okay our district mission is to teach all and reach all our vision urbandale will be a school district that brings learning to life for everyone our board mission is to partner with stakeholders to teach all and reach all through governance of board policy and operating protocol urbandale is a national leader in character counts endeavoring at all times to promote and model the principles of trustworthiness respect responsibility fairness caring and citizenship in conducting tonight's meeting we expect that all participants will act in a respectful manner consistent with these principles so i'm going to be showing the agenda up here as the meeting continues we'll open with the public hearings on the hilarious elementary school demolition grading utilities contracts
003this is a public hearing so i am requesting if anyone has a comment that they speak to the issue now hearing none i'm going to close this public hearing and this i will be an action item later in the meeting so we'll call this meeting to order formally and we'll have a roll call mark smith here ashley anderson here judy downs here catherine hauser here okay man i have a motion for approval of the agenda hello all in favor aye aye good job okay we do have one request for communication from the public so this is the your opportunity man you can tell us your name and your address thank you hi my name is tammy ryan and i live at 48 31 locker drive i'm an insider i'm state grad but i just got
004my phd from the university of buffalo in education so i'm here because i have concerns about hs802 in this implementation in my opinion it is bad for teachers because it's made them afraid that something they say could get them fired teachers already have enough on their place and it should be our job to support them rather than adding to their stress i think it's bad for students of all racial identities students of color feel pain when for example black people only show up when you're talking about slavery or the civil rights movement as though they have no other role in this country's history conversely white students are left without the knowledge and empathy to engage a variety of people when they become adults and bad for business one of the skills that is on almost
005every job posting is critical thinking skills and um if students are not able to practice examining different perspectives in their classroom and having those conversations with their teacher's guidance they'll enter the workforce without having developed those critical thinking skills anti-racism is not about demonizing the u.s it's about helping us see all aspects of our history so that we can grow and improve for everyone it's not shameful to admit our country isn't perfect when your toddler is learning to eat with a spoon showing them how to improve doesn't mean that you hate your child avoiding talking about utensils won't make them go away and talking about them doesn't mean your child should feel guilty so they may feel uncomfortable at times thousands of empirical studies have shown that racism is actually real for example even control
006for class and parents educational backgrounds some groups are disciplined more often and more harshly for the same behavior ignoring racism will not make it go away but guilt is wasted energy as uh somebody who has used critical race theory i do not believe that white people should feel guilty that's pointless instead i um ask that the school board support the district teachers as they learn more about these issues and how to discuss and discuss them in their classrooms in positive ways that are inclusive for all children and this includes providing optional pds on how to talk about racism while being inclusive to all children and letting the state know that you do not support hsb thank you okay we'll move on to number five which is dr daca's report um this is an update so
007i got ahead of it there on our uh esser funding sorry thank you um as i believe was stated in some of the previous board meetings the district is providing on the website an opportunity for community members and staff to take a look at the plan for expenditure of our ester money and those funds in essence are provided by the federal government through the state in an effort to allow us to reach the kids and the staff where we weren't able to be being in a hybrid or an online setting we have as an update hired the six individuals that we stated i believe it was last month the three elementary school math teachers to support our staff in reaching our students with math and again math was chosen because that is the area that
008most of the national studies are showing has hit has been hit the hardest reading is also hit but math has really taken a um a deep dive we also hired three pre-k to 12 social emotional behaviors there'll be two at the k-5 level and there'll be one at the 6-12 level and those individuals will help our teachers to build support systems in their classrooms to help address the social-emotional learning that our students are needing that is growing every day given what they've experienced in the pandemic we have another component of that which is our power up program through summer summer school version that will be starting i believe somebody correct me if i'm mixing my dates up rolling green i believe is this week and then in august we will start at home at webster
009i apologize i'm still trying to get all of this organized um so those positions have been hired and are in place we have an opportunity for community members to provide input we have received one public comment and that was that we make sure that we do not forget our minority population that was hit the hardest that's our low income students as well so we definitely are interested to hear what the community has to say so if anyone out there wants to provide any input please go to the urbandaleschools.com website and put your input in and we do take that very seriously i think that's the only thing okay next item will be a facility update not an action item no answer sure all right so i'm bill harder with stall construction this would be update
010for ues number one and they won't stay uh so areas a and b which are the two classroom wings uh complete schedule for dlr punch list we actually moved that back a few days to the gonna 19th things up this week i met with paul earlier today and went through that and then once that's done i'll go out and clean up those items that are left areas b and c which is kind of the commons gymnasium area paintings still going on at the ceilings walls and the commons casework specialty items getting installed at the makerspaces teachers lounge tell that kitchen floor is complete remain commons he's actually going to be done on friday this week with that jim's container basketball hoops are hung it's ready for flooring we have a little bit of acclimation on
011the wood in their way for humidity numbers to drop uh ductwork completed in the whole area except for a little bit in area b which is the open ceilings makerspaces second floor in the north startup cooling power chiller boiler water heaters and air handlers have been completed still doing a little bit of controlled work on those essentially all the equipment's there and running kitchen equipment was scheduled for july 15th we actually got a surprise this morning with one truckload of kitchen equipment so it's on site and the second one's coming tomorrow as far as site and exterior main entry concrete walks done southern parking lot lots are all done courtyards all been poured out they're kind of they're working on the front kind of going to the west of area a today but with the
012rain they were a little muddy but another wall panels continue on east face the building and they still got that north second floor if you notice they flip the panels up and take them back off for air retaining wall detention pond is complete one other note i guess the perimeter site safety fence is gone a few areas that are still fenced obviously pension ponds grading contractor working on removing excess oils from the site and grading in front of the concrete guy fencing contractor removed site vents installed fence post to courtyard playground he got started putting sleeves in for the pond and then got rained out so he'll be back through that irrigation contractor who's been on site installing sleeves under sidewalks for the irrigation system and one more thing the armored map was scheduled to
013ride the day goes reinforces the size of that engine palm they've got the weight just for a ring got to get in that pond with an excavator so we're done popping the pond down today uh upcoming inspections concerns so we got a meeting with the city of urbandale fire 11 o'clock on friday maybe kind of an initial walk just to get their minds around the building city of urbandale's actually been there a lot that guys are every tuesday so he's been really good to work with but just bringing the fire department in to start working through any concerns with negative lighting anything like that with that said looking for co inspection on july 28th so then a couple things i was going to bring up so we got a little glass handrail hiccup kind of
014a material production delivery issue that's running behind it goes on the wood learning stairs so we're working out a way to get around that for until he gets material supposed to be here on the 19th everything right now they're telling us that's checking out so it's funny the glass is going to be there before the actual metal rail uh and then the only other thing is we're i know uh lauren's been over and seen mike i know elise has been in the building tim has been a great help simon and dr watson so we're fighting through a little bit of manpower issues with some of these guys i mean obviously you drive around town everybody's looking for help so we've had some good motivational speeches [Laughter] much less going back to the nineteen he said
015that's right much less has moved back yeah we bumped it back there's still a little more painting stuff and we just got a few of the doors for the same tank rooms and that just showed up so we're gonna try to get them done get it i didn't want all those being on the list i want to talk to paul it's kind of like got a few more days to finish it instead of making a longer list how long has the flooring been sitting there for the gym uh it's actually been in there for about a month but they're really they're losing control of the hvac system yeah okay so yeah we have humidity gauges in there and just kind of get that down to a acceptable level and if you ever want tours let
016me know or my cardboard i know at least comes over quite a bit thank you okay so judy's having some connection issues trying to text to see if we can join us can you text sarah and see if she can join early i'm i'm on okay so you may be able to check off when sarah joins seven we hope okay because we're moving i'm doing my best here i'm here okay awesome thank you yeah okay so we'll move into the action items uh 7a this is the contract that was previously mentioned talked about the demo earth working utilities work on galleria do you have any clarifications questions agenda has an extra 800 on it um so i just want to make sure which one was correct so the agenda has one million nine six eighty
017eight and then the other one doesn't have the extra encoder [Music] dlr group um so the correct number is the add of the 800 that was just a clerical error on the on the letter so i have the bids here just as a confirmation we double checked that so that's just a classical error awesome thank you guys and we'll move on to 7b which is the contract for the construction testing and inspections of the grounds in that any clarifications there no i know one second okay all in favor aye aye for the same sign that one's unanimous um uh 7c will be um excitingly establish a bid date the public hearing for yeah establish a public hearing date of september 13 2021 to hear any public comments regarding urbandale and new elementary schools oh in
018favor aye aye aye on the same sign thank you an awesome move to establish a big date of september 2nd 2021 at 2 p.m to receive bids for the elementary school number two project fall in favor aye aye call the same sign so that is also unanimous thank you mark ashley um we'll move on to the uh handbook updates for the upcoming school year okay i have a whole list i'm sorry the middle school handbook still has gendered language in it that i was hoping we could have edited it out let's just stay there whenever there's more information um i don't know who's i'm not just going to address all my questions because i apologize um i was wondering if we should have matching language between the middle school dress code high school address within
019regards to their hood language the um the high school has it so that it can't block someone's face or stop you from being able to identify them where the middle school took out all mentioned netflix so i just want to make sure if it would make more sense to have those match i don't have to address this question too i think each of these handbooks have kind of a different lead team that works on them so i i i in regards to the handbook for some of you so if you want to table it's where i can actually direct my questions through people i'd appreciate that yeah i think that might be i'll move the table second all in favor hi hi hi okay same sign so we will um actually if you could forward
020those questions again yes to rosely and then yeah often then again i'll just talk and take another one yes that'd be great okay nutrition services say this is jesse yes hello um you have any questions uh it's just a renewal right yes i didn't have any questions okay tell me i have a motion all in favor aye aye aye thank you oppose same sign all right unanimous thank you guys okay we'll move on to f this is a resolution to purchase property that's adjacent to the new elementary school yeah i'm all in favor of that segment a second all in favor aye aye aye aye good unanimous uh um opposite sign okay the next item is 7g and this is at a recommendation to lease an additional area across the way and i am i
021know that ashley had some questions mary beth would you be willing to talk a little bit about the background of that yes so shall i just talk about it and then you can ask questions yeah yeah that'll be amazing so um the what we call 801 which is where the superintendent's office is and most of the administrative staff or administrators live there has been in place for almost seven years now and probably before that that lease was coming up in the in the midst of our construction a building or a site two-door sound by placentra came open about two years ago we needed to house some things from instead as we did that demolition and we also needed space for adventure time so we also leased that property and the leases were closed but they
022weren't did income due at the same time so one thing we had been looking at in the midst of the pandemic and in bringing staff back and knowing we didn't have enough space set up was what our options would be so as the items are being moved out of olm's dead storage thing we found we would be able to construct offices in there to accommodate some of our staff and split us up so that we were more evenly distributed just for the city of urbandale for capacity and that type of thing in addition we've been concerned about a consistent board space that we could use that we could wire similar to this so that what we learned through the pandemic about streaming and just audio we really appreciate the city of urbandale allowing us to
023use the facility it wasn't always available the acoustics and our various buildings didn't work and it certainly made it a challenge with streaming we needed that consistent more permanent type structure because the equipment truly is not very portable um and so it just so happened that this space came open and 800 square foot which literally we would just have to go through a wall just create a doorway and it is a great space it is ready to go we don't have to do anything to it and actually the build-out that we would be getting for a02 what we call ao2 dr watson negotiated with that that if we did the sleeve the build out which amounted to almost 60 000 would we would not be charged for that and so we felt that it provided
024us some needed space in a good way and also that extra room that we could use not only for boardroom but for training as well and brought our leases together so that we would have time to decide what we're going to do with our extra buildings as this moves forward with construction that was part of my question because i thought we were building admin space into the new elementary so i just wanted to see if that coincided with the four years that we'd be leasing this and whether that makes sense right that's a really good question because i think the intent would be if we have additional space that certainly would be logical but i think and you know as we talked with clr and knowing that the hold up possibly in construction we just
025thought let's buy ourselves a little bit of time and make the skills very useful so that's what we looked at well what will be sorry let's go let's find out my voice the extra space that we using for boardroom and trainings what are we going to do with it when it's not being used for those things that's just going to sit out the ears well i i think um and dr doc can maybe speak to her brief time there about how little space we have and i feel like it would be even when it wasn't booked yeah it would be like okay um you know for example we have auditors coming and it's it's gonna be a struggle like where do i put them they're coming back twice i'd like to put them over at
026802 where most of my team will be but i won't be able to do that because that'll be in the good instruction for six to eight weeks so we're kind of having to shuffle around i don't know i i think the lack of space here is is glaring and i think that the training room is a really nice room but it's also there's a series of dominoes you have to set up to before you can move into her office and she moves into mine and i go into yours there's all the things that are in these other places and that has to go somewhere and it gets it's getting we talked about it the other day it's just getting stacked up with things and there's just nowhere to go i understand this for four years
027i decided to talk four years that it would be utilized i can assure you and i i think it also presents us that option too so if we don't if the construction does take longer than we thought given everything it does give us those options and i i really feel strongly that for our um community to have that transparency having a single place that they can go where they don't have a sound issue or a video issue that they can count on to to know that they can participate that way in the board meetings i think is really important we have to make sure that there they've got that ability to do so without difficulty i know dina and my secretary julie spent probably over the last week five hours in here trying to figure
028out where's the best place for the camera who's got the table how many people are coming and it's just it's it's just not a quality way to set it up oh i haven't decided to make sure that we're going to be utilized if we're going to find them for your lease that we're utilizing it for four years and i would conjecture um you know when i've been in other districts that had a dedicated boardroom no i don't have a problem with having a dedicated wardrobe it's just it's used all the time i mean so any trainings that the entire district would have to maybe be involved in there could be people from the ao that are there in person but as we perfect a way for people to be combined as distance people wouldn't have
029to drive out here i mean they could just literally log on and um you know from my exp i can only find my way here from the north because it all looks the same and [Laughter] i'm just saying sarah is apparently waiting to be let in okay and it's given her the ability to talk so she can just follow the prompt okay did you hear that judy do you have a quorum now uh very close we'll let you know when sarah's on okay okay i'm here i'm here until you need me to not be here so you don't need me to be here at the top of a um okay um are the questions clarified yeah so may i have a motion if they're on first i want to make sure we have a forum
030for talking judy's still here actually i'm i'm i'm not going to leave until i know you always want to make sure i move all in favor aye aye opposed same sign okay that passes unanimously uh do you just pop in when you find it when she's on can you tell claire are you there now you look like your audio's on i'm in the meeting just so you guys know okay judy go back to your family bye bye thank you for showing up okay we will move toward the um the athletic trainer agreement for the coming up upcoming year any clarifications on that if not may i have a motion almost approved okay all in favor aye aye aye aye opposite sign so that's unanimous um next item is approval of the contract with the equity
031audit firm any clarifications there um i just wanted to double check in the accessibility we talked about them coming back 18 months after their initial assessment to see how we've improved with any changes that we've implemented i didn't do that when i first looked at it updated so i wasn't sure if i'm upset ryan can you speak to guests thank you okay they're supposed to come back yeah we had talked about in the subcommittee of having um once they finished with their assessment and given us um kind of told us what the data was and then we could start implementing our things in 18 months have them come back to see how we've improved and um connect them to their pointers and coordinated vertically conclusions of the district um under bullet point too where it
032says presenting findings into your reflection that is where it has been written into the contract that westman will come back in 18 months to evaluate our progress i found this just another when i looked at the last thing i wanna make sure that i got everything under control there and then um i noticed for the instructional rounds they're only doing the high school and something they weren't also doing in middle school the equity rounds is in collaboration with a team of teachers that we would select for teachers and students so it's a real collaborative effort westmont will come in to provide that will provide professional development for teams in division that can then do those equity rounds we decided i decided to go with the high school simply because of cost um to go in
033and do all eight buildings the additional cost was going to be um excuse me sixty two thousand seventy two dollars yeah so one building was going to be seven thousand eight hundred and forty four so my thinking was receive the training and see the professional development and then allow that team and then go to the middle school and then all of our buildings for that matter yeah my my question is just because we have done those safety surveys and we always get relatively same equal settings between the middle school high school so just wondering if it makes sense to do both of those two buildings and then have it for those elementaries or just understanding why it will be possible so thank you else thank you for your work ryan thank you and everyone else
034have talked sorry you have a motion i know bruce unanimous okay um then we will move into the sale of our decommissioned uh electronics i'll move to improve the sale batman all in favor aye aye sarah yes hi thank you that's unanimous thank you we make up our own rules on this one okay so um i'm just going to open this up are there any clarifications or questions on any of these numerous items okay so for eight ask just so i understand for the authorization of free bills we are giving a bunch of refunds on immigration services and i just want to know why like what they're for this is end of year stuff or yeah so we have seniors that are leaving us okay i'm going to do that and then also um what
035we've noticed and i've um we've had discussions in the metro group that i'm in other school is that because the government because of the federal care zach's money that the people haven't been able needed to use their lunch buttons yeah for questions oh perfect okay um and then for let's see s2 which is the roof reversing for the gym i was wondering um if the new rust is going to one if we have the ability to potentially add solar panels to the high school at some point and if the new gym rough enabled us if it didn't do it other places if that roof will enable us to do so uh barry hello eric with the alarm group again um so kind of two parts to that question um the new roof will be able
036to uh to handle the membrane we'll be able to handle that we did briefly consider that during the um through the re-roofing um design um the issue there is that with the structure below i'm holding up all the weight of that um there would be some structural reinforcement that would be required and then the secondary piece would be the electrical connections and transfer switches and things so because of the cost of those items we did not do that at this time so if there is a time that you want to include or put solar onto the building the membrane will hold that but what we're looking at is some additional structural support and electrical modifications down below do we have a ballpark for what that was right now [Laughter] um and then you may be
037able to answer my second question well for the um for the third item under f we're increasing what we're paying on the contract for personnel which is twirling like 300 000 for um yeah i just want to like i want to understand because it's for the changes that are the changes by change order for personnel equals 344 000 and i'm just curious why well i was just related to just all right but um i think looking back back in september so there was a reconciliation of what irma elementary number one cost and some contractual obligations to stall and then we had some other changes and things for the alarm group and things at that time so if i look back on those um speaking of behalf of the bill here sorry i don't i never
038wanted to direct myself to the universe that was a reconciliation from the contract language at that time so those amounts actually correspond to 3 4 5 7 exactly what um what was there okay i decided and our board approved it after september 2018 okay thank you sorry any other clarification okay so um we approve the uh to approve the consent agenda say i those same signs so that appears to be unanimous okay um i don't have any board reports um what we will likely continue to do and discussion with rosalie so you can expect this in the future maybe you want to talk about what our plans are for the board meeting yeah um yeah i i i have been watching the board meetings for about seven months now um and one of the things
039that i feel like we um could could do better is that education of the board as far as uh the personnel who are going to present something that also to me again translates to the transparency to the community because the community doesn't i mean they have access to simply and they can go in and pull those documents but they don't necessarily speak the language that educators speak often so i feel like a short not i'm not looking for three-hour board meetings to extend things to be unreasonable but i really do want to improve the way that we educate both the board and the community on the presentations that are brought forward so i've mentioned that to my directors at our first meeting i'd also like to go back to having a i understand this was
040in the past having a work session and having a business meeting so that the work session is where we can get into real deep conversations about the questions that you might have and then when you come back to that second meeting that's the business meeting where you're prepared to make the decision and you're not under that pressure to do it in the um in the immediate board meeting that you're at so i think that that can help improve us i know in speaking with mary beth at their business of the district personnel issues we have to pay bills so i would propose that there's a very short consent piece at the beginning so that the business of the district can continue when we're not handicapping hiring personnel or paying our bills but the rest of
041it um and there's not presentations on that typically so the presentation piece would be in the work session and then the business meeting the staff would come back ryan for example since i i'm looking at you he would come back if this was the work session to the next one and he would just simply say two weeks ago i brought forward the equity contract and as you remember we were recommending to go with west wynn and i will take questions at this time if there's any short quick questions but the meat of the conversation happened prior to that so that's what i've been um thinking about and i think can really help us ramp up how we bring the community and the staff back into understanding what we're talking about okay so when we have
042two meetings a month probably the first one we got the work session right again with that small consent piece yeah the first one and i think we if you've noticed last week we are firming up our timeline for staff to put things on the agenda so the agenda setting that happens with the president is finite and that we don't keep adding things to it that are not predictable and so everyone that has an item to go needs to have that to my secretary by the close of wednesday so that she can publish that on thursday so that people can read it and if there are questions we're all here on friday so that you can ask those questions on friday versus on monday when everything's going crazy monday's typically a big administrative meeting time so
043that way we can focus on those questions and get those answers to you in addition to what you're going to be able to ask in the works okay i don't have any discussion for other matters all in favor aye hi hi okay