Urbandale CSD School Board Meeting 1.11.21

001okay we are live streaming and ready to begin the meeting okay so we have a quorum so let's just go ahead um mary beth you want to make the announcement yes this is a meeting of the urbandale community school board and this meeting is being held virtually due to the covet 19 pandemic this meeting is being held in open session okay we'll call the meeting to order and may we have the roll call mark smith catherine hauser here brianna sarah geyser here ashley anderson here stacy anderson sorry here that's okay judy downs here um and sarah schmitz okay that's everyone except sarah schmitz sure you have a motion to approve the agenda so moved anderson second okay all in favor aye aye opposed same sign okay that appears to be unanimous um i have been

002told we have six people who want to address us from the public um so i would inform you um before you speak to tell us your name and your address and please realize that we are allowing five minutes total for each speaker to come up to 30 minutes at this point we we do we cannot answer questions um but we certainly will listen and take everything you say into account so go ahead dina sure so pete sand we'd like to invite you to share your comments i'm promoting you to a panelist now okay uh board can you hear me okay now yes okay thank you very much members of the board i just wanted to voice strong support tonight for returning to full-time school with the beginning of the second semester as we all know

003hospitalizations in iowa are way down the vaccine is rolling out and we should take this opportunity to return to full-time schooling and the start of the new semester is the perfect time to make that return uh back to mostly normal i am glad that the board does plan to return to full-time schooling in the near future however i really can't see any good reason not to do so at the beginning of the new semester when i looked over the agenda it appeared to me that the justification for the board's plan was that there would only be notice of three or four school days for parents to plan to return to full-time schooling if this was done next week i think the vast majority of parents would welcome a return to full-time school with no notice

004at all it's taking away of schooling that requires parents to stop the world and reorder their lives in order to deal with the change a return to full-time school requires no notice at all in my view i urge the board to take this golden opportunity to resume full-time schooling on tuesday january 19th with the start of the second semester i also note that my daughter who is a high school junior urged me not to make this statement tonight she said dad you're taking away my nap days uh please take away my daughter's nap days less napping and more learning thank you very much ford thank you okay the next person we'd like to invite to share a public comment is vern milsap i am uh promoting you to a panelist now are you guys there

005we are you can go ahead okay thank you yeah well here we go again kicking the can down the road just like all the other times when is it gonna be good enough guys oh you don't have to answer that catherine i already know it'll be someday in the near future right that's what we're told at march of last year are you still there your audio looks like it's still on so feel free to continue speaking and that just like pete said you guys got to be looking at some numbers when i read the the the internet they say the numbers are not there most of the time nobody has died the vaccines are here regeneron redesvere all that stuff so and like i said i can about bet that i know who is prolonging

006all of this and if they don't want to be teachers then maybe they should look for something else to do and besides here here you guys said you were going to send out a survey i got the survey and a couple other my friends and we all voted for 100 going back to school full-time well it seems like you guys just ignored those surveys because i sure i sure don't know what the the tallies were so did we just vote for the hell of it and then it doesn't mean nothing who is making the decisions not to go back to five days oh again catherine i'm sorry no one can answer any questions i'm sorry well that's a lot of my agenda but i just don't get where you guys are getting off and ruining

007our kids lives just like pete said yeah take away their nap days you guys are pathetic i'm sorry but whoever's making these decisions need to wake up you guys are jeopardizing our kids you guys are all grown adults surely you can put on your big girl big boy pants and and make decisions that benefit our kids can you guys do that is that possible again we started this back in march and now it's damn near the year there's one other thing too catherine i'd like to bring up there is this thing called critical race theory that i during my videos cutting in and out so bad one night but i stayed until the very last way up until 9 10 o'clock i don't know what it was but it was late critical race theory donald

008trump has taken out of our federal government and i'm sure they'll take it out of the schools critical race stereo i want all the parents who are listening to this to look that up and if you and if you look up common core it's just as much junk as that it's all junk you guys can't even teach our kids and then when you do it's a bunch of crap everybody's scared to stand up to anything they're all wanting just cower what why are we paying you guys and why are you making who's making the decision you guys are the board and obviously you didn't take our survey into account for nothing what i'm glad you guys ain't paid but you a bunch of you need to be voted out of there to get somebody in

009there that they're not afraid to put on their big boy pants so but again back to critical race this mr mr millsap i apologize for um we have hit our five minutes if you'd like to make one last closing statement you're welcome to get rid of critical race i hate to say that to ryan you hired him brand new for this year but if there's a problem and you need critical race that means the teachers again are not doing their job because they're being biased if there's no problem don't try to fix it thank you thank you okay the next person i'd like to invite to share a public comment is lucas mccannon and lucas is a uhs senior lucas i am not finding you in our attendee list um you are welcome to respond

010to my email that had instructions on how to join this evening in case you are on and perhaps um your zoom might have you listed under a different name feel free to email me and i will circle back at the end to invite you to share your comment so the next person on our public comment list is brian eilers brian i will be promoting you to a panelist now hi uh my name is brian ellers and i live on tawanna drive and my wife and i have two daughters who are in fourth grade at webster elementary twin daughters thank you board members for your hours of sacrifice and for the administration and staff for all your heroic efforts thankful for the new metric recommendations that emphasize in school learning continuous online learning did not work

011well for our family for the first time our girls was telling us that they didn't like school they have always loved school the mental emotional and social toll was clear they suffered academically despite the heroic efforts of teachers both are on ieps and online learning certainly does not compare to in-person learning not only is the teacher student connection hindered but technological issues also can further exasperate an already tenuous situation we're concerned about the academic ground lost continuous online learning took a toll on the entire family we tried to navigate work hours for my wife who could have been replaced in her part-time position if she stayed at home 100 of the time we found an academy that could supervise and monitor for a few days not optimal but necessary season of online learning was highly

012stressful after two weeks of online learning we were told we needed to go for two more weeks because of expected spike in positivity from thanksgiving that never occurred and of course online learning was extended again into the christmas break we're thankful for the administration's metric recommendations that would change more to more closely mirror what the state guidelines have been from day one we agree with an emphasis on in-person learning five days a week with the change to hybrid when the numbers dictate and the use of online continuous learning on a building by building or class by class basis only warranted if quarantines or absentee numbers show it's necessary we understand current numbers are barely over 15 percent but polkcountyiowa.gov shows the trend for our zip codes as decreasing so it's very well possible that the

013positivity rate could actually drop below 15 percent over the next week or two we hope that five-day in-person learning will begin as soon as possible if that is the case quoting from business insider which reported on dr fauci's interview on abc news on november november 29 close the bars and keep the schools open fauci said to host martha raddatz obviously you don't have one size fits all but as i said in the past the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school fauci said that schools largely haven't been the drivers of community spread of the virus noting that massless groups congregating indoors are the major culprit if you mitigate the things that you know are causing spread in

014a very very profound way in a robust way if you bring that down you will then indirectly and ultimately protect the children in the school because the community level has determined how things go across the board he said if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all not like one would have suspected he added let's try to get the kids back but let's try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we're trying to avoid we agree let's try to get the kids back statistics for the state of iowa show zero percent of kova 19 deaths are among the age group from zero to 29 years old one percent from 30 to 39 1 from 40 to

01549 5 from 50 to 59 and 93 percent over 60 and of course most of that is over 70 years old we understand that family members with underlying conditions could be at risk so we are glad that there is online continuing continuous learning option available for those who are concerned about in-person learning can't there be some accommodations also for staff that are in the highest risk categories finally other schools and surrounding districts have either had five day a week in person learning or they are scheduled to start they seem to be figuring out the potential staffing issues so i'm confident urbandale can do the same thank you again for considering a move toward more in-person learning for the sake of our children's academic mental emotional and social well-being thank you thank you thank you okay

016i'd like to invite jill niece to share a public comment please i'm promoting you to a panelist now hello members of the school board administration community i'm jill niece i live at 3929 82nd street in urbandale i come to you again tonight as an educator and parent of children at all three levels of schools in urbandale i have two students at uhs one student at ums and one student at rolling green i have been following your return to learn plans and meetings since june when it was time for the district to determine how my youngest would return to school at rolling green since they were one of the first school buildings in the state to return to school for the 2021 school year i have struggled with what to say tonight since the new metrics

017were published late last week with the agenda for tonight's meeting this 15 low enough metric to safely return to our full and some overfall school buildings like many in our community i would like nothing more than for all of our children to be in school all day every day like normal and like many others in the middle of this global pandemic with very few people vaccinated i don't feel that safe i appreciate everything the district has done to keep our staff and students safe and i hope they continue to do so and listen to science not the most vocal group who as i predicted tonight is the ones who wants everything to be normal i've been keeping track of the numbers since this pandemic started in march and today added line 306 to my daily

018spreadsheet this was like many other days of 15 or higher for polk county on the 14-day percent positive number the past five days have been at 15 which by the metrics on the table tonight would call for a continuation of the current hybrid model while i understand that many reports are that the spread of this virus is not taking place in schools the ongoing spread is leading to many of our staff and students needing to be quarantined the problem for me lies with the question of how can we limit quarantines when so many outside school activities are still going on but that's another story for another day i'm going to go in backwards order and address my concerns starting with the high school students i know that zoom fatigue is real my high school students

019expressed this to me many times while in the sixish weeks of virtual learning prior to the holiday break this was with words such as mom i can't keep doing this and mom when i'm done with class i just want to be done and not do my homework in similar sentiments which i reminded them we just have to power through and we know and they believe too that it was the best choice for them for safety however they also shared that during that time they learned more than previously during the school year our theory is this was due to daily contact and instruction from their teachers while i understand the current plan is to allow for synchronous learning for this population on their at-home days i'm curious how the teachers will manage two groups of students

020at the same time also i question if the teachers have been asked about this plan i'm guessing many of them have the same concerns for middle school i think think things have been going well at least at our house and most students should be getting what they need academically the staff has been sending communication in a variety of methods and with minimal reminders i feel that most students should be able to complete their work independently as for my second grade student we continue to have some one nearby during his at home time to make sure he does what is needed however for a child who is very disorganized and struggles with writing he is doing quite well overall this year and his organization and time management skills have actually gotten much better i haven't addressed

021the mental health concerns which we all know are there in another piece to this puzzle but like the academic instruction that needs caught up many of these needs can be approved in the future what can't be fixed is the guilt children would have if they cause a lifelong illness or worse death of a favorite school staff member or family member or friend due to spreading this illness to others in closing my hope for this meeting is that the board will continue to make plans for our students and staff based on science and data and do what is best to keep our staff and students safe for the time being missed and instruction can be caught up but we can't recover lost lives or lives that are changed forever due to illness i leave you with

022this thought from early on in the pandemic which i've shared before and has been paraphrased many times by many people in the end we may never know if we overreacted to this situation and did too much but will be painfully obvious if we all failed to do enough let's be cautious err on the side of doing too much thanks for your time thank you okay i'd like to invite boris bachmann to share a public comment of course i'm promoting you to a panelist now good evening my name is boris bachman i live at 352082nd street and 711 aurora avenue i'm an urbandale resident high school teacher and parent of an urbandale student 10 years ago i went home after school on a thursday afternoon we were starting spring break and i stayed up late after

023putting our then second grader to bed and watching the evening news my wife and i were watching japanese television and programming was interrupted by news of a gigantic earthquake that shook northern japan and sendai city where my wife and i were married in front of her family including her 94 year old grandmother five minutes after the quake japanese news was warning of incoming tsunami three to five meters in height and as we watched those projections increased eventually reaching predictions of over 10 meters in some areas my wife and i watched live coverage a tsunami that looked like cg impacted levees did not hold whole towns were picked up and swept inland villages were wiped out schools were swallowed about nineteen thousand people died about five hundred thousand people were displaced or homeless japan had sea

024walls they were not enough they had warnings but the initial warnings underestimated the wave size thinking that the tsunami wouldn't be severe people just started doing what they always do after bad things like earthquakes they started cleaning up when they should have been running in japanese there's a proverb in english it's translated to in victory titan your helmet if you celebrate too soon bad things happen a samurai who removes his helmet after defeating the enemy is going to be unprepared for further battles the proverb is an admonishment to not get complacent when things go well because they can always get worse you can win a battle but lose the war many of those that died on march 11 2011 could have been could have been saved and could have survived if they had tightened their

025helmets one month ago the fda approved the first covet 19 vaccination and over 8 million people have received doses we are close we have rounded a corner and even in the midst of all our suffering and grief we can say that victories have been had there's been talk of having one-to-one computing and going paperless for years we are now essentially there teachers and lessons are more accessible online to students and families at home than ever while fully remote there were days when i saw every single one of my students on my roster that almost never happens even pre pandemic our superintendent will probably never have to call a snow day again the district is doing their very best under very challenging circumstances to live up to the mission statement of teaching all reaching all there

026are unintended consequences of the hybrid and fully remote schedules yes i am frustrated with the situation as anyone is not a day goes by that i didn't wish everything could just be business as usual but it's not business as usual and wishing won't make it so there's been progress but the school board is still meeting virtually my friends that work downtown for insurance companies many of them have been working virtually since the start of the pandemic and they still are today the push to slow the spread has failed now we are considering changing the metrics to allow for a higher allowed positivity rate i understand that but i am disappointed now is not the time to loosen our helmets currently the mitigation strategies that we are implementing in my classroom consist of social distancing smaller

027numbers and masks if we are going to throw away the mitigation strategies of social distancing in smaller numbers how can we make every effort to keep our staff students and communities safe if we are determined to stay on low ground with the tsunami at our doorstep then i would propose the following steps be given serious consideration vaccination for staff partitions in classrooms and eating spaces temperature checks of everyone entering the building readily available testing for staff students and family n95 respirators air purifiers in every classroom higher wages for associates lunchroom staff and substitute teachers and compensation for increased class load incurred by teachers teaching both remote and in-person classes in closing let me repeat what i have said to the board what i said to the board again earlier in august when i that i

028agree that kids education would be better served if everyone were in in the school building full-time but in the face of the pandemic such an approach is negligent i urge you to err on the side of caution to the community i say please tighten your helmet i know you're tired sorry your teachers and staff we are not in the clear yet let me end by saying thank you to the board and to our administration i complain as much as anyone but i am sincerely grateful for all of your efforts in the face of what must be unrelenting pressure and very little appreciation and praise i believe that the entire school board and the district has done their very best to live up to the ideal of teaching all reaching all and i hope that we

029will continue to do our best in a safe and responsible manner thank you thank you and i'm going to do one last search for lucas mccannon just to make sure that i have not missed you and i do not see lucas in our attendee list nor have i received an email so we can close public comment for this evening thank you great thank you if you're still on here thank you everyone for your comments and um we will move on the um information for future meetings i might just point out there's quite a bit of data in there if you have questions for anyone who has posted this information i would invite you to to request that information by the next meeting and we'll move on to the facilities update number five uh saw bill

030on here and john or steve whomever yeah i think bill's available and i think there he is i think he'll give an update thank you so on ues number one the academic wing southwest wing top floors painted your finishing drywall we'll move down there and paint that i think some of the staff have been through there and looked at that painting's going well it looks nice so we'll continue through that southwest wing to the north west wing roofer is there now we got a notification today we got six loads of roof insulation that will be delivered tomorrow and then he's there to finish all the roofing out which will dry everything in which is a good thing kitchen floors were all poured today so that's going well the outside of the building we still have

031the south parking lot covered up with blankets we're going to test that tomorrow to see if it's not frozen and that will be in the docket to get poured in the next week or so weather's helping us out a lot mechanical electrical is going well mechanical rooms done and they started piping setting equipment in there so everything's looking pretty good a little bit behind with that roofing of that the main commons area but i think that'll catch up quick now so should be good there and other than that i guess so mike barnsworth the on-site superintendent would invite anybody to come out and look through that and the painting and everything on the d2 level is done it'd be nice to look through that if anybody has any questions comments about that but i think

032so far your staff that have been through there have been impressed with the space and i think it's going to turn out really really nice great do we have any questions from anyone well thanks for the update bill okay our next item is a covet update with dr schaefer and probably lauren decry or steve or whoever i see doctor yeah i can go ahead and get started if you'd like okay so unfortunately not a positive update today polk county hit 15 several days ago so we are actually now as of this evening i think it was earlier today we hit 15.2 the state is at 14.6 uh the both of those are inching up which with each successive day a couple of things of note here is you know we'd like to be when we're

033talking about cases per 100 000 down around 70 or less than 200 when we're talking about a seven day range and we've been there for quite some time average new daily cases are at about 300 new cases per day in polk county 1600 for the state of iowa and a couple of things to note in here too sort of that lay underneath the data and that you have to dig into the state data to see um and something we're seeing in polk county is about 16 percent of these cases so almost 50 per day are happening in children and adolescents ages 0-17 and that's a higher percentage than what we saw previously i'm definitely hearing anecdotally from some school districts that they're seeing quite a few pending cases so this is uh just something to

034keep our eyes on as far as student and staff cases and those in quarantine this is also aligning with the search that we're seeing in the community and something that you'll see in a search data i'll show you in a minute is that this increase actually started more around christmas than right about now which was when myself and a lot of other experts had thought it would begin um as far as student and staff activity though like i alluded to we are seeing activity that was similar to what we saw in early november so early in that search we started to see a jump in student state student and staff cases and i'm seeing jump in student cases not so much among staff and of course increasing numbers of people in quarantine so in terms

035of what this looks like over the next couple of weeks so we never drove our activity levels down very low um so the result of that is that we start at a higher level and will probably surge to a much higher level so within about 14 days we will be at the peak of where we were in november and then somewhere maybe between eight to ten days after that we would expect to see a surge in hospitalizations um something that's interesting hospitalizations are sort of fickle um especially when the community activity is just beginning we saw a brief increase and then it sort of stabilized it would be nice if that would stay stable but i don't expect it to with the surge in cases that we're seeing and we're averaging at least two deaths

036per day and here's our cases for a hundred thousand of course percent positivity i threw in a little zip code data um i don't know that this is particularly of value right now um given that the county is already over 15 and this is just a more detailed graphic just showing the trajectory of that curve is pretty significant it's actually more significant in terms of the rate of change than what we're seeing at the state level so other things that are driving this i'm sure most of you have probably heard about the uk variant that has been in the media quite a bit the last couple of weeks that variant is significantly different in terms of the number of mutations that it has and how it looks to the body but one good thing is

037that it appears the vaccine is efficacious or effective against that strain other things that we don't quite know are if reinfection is more likely given that it looks different to the body um it is more likely that you would be reinfected with the uk strain than you would be the regular coronavirus strain the united states only looks at the dna of about .03 of coronaviruses so while we've detected this strain in a handful of states i would expect for it to be present in most so i think it's only a matter of time one other feature of this particular variant is that it's about 50 percent more transmissible and you can see a really abrupt spike in uk activity because of the transmissibility or the ability for that strain to spread i don't think we're

038necessarily seeing that in iowa quite yet but we are seeing it in california and a couple of other states that have really aggressive increases uh one graphic i wanted to interject uh with a little bit of positivity is progress to vaccination so the states in darker blue have vaccinated more than two thousand people per hundred thousand which for iowa is about 64 000 people and this is with the first dose so we're still as a state working through that first iteration of healthcare workers also starting to vaccinate long-term care facility residents and their healthcare workers and we're getting a second dose in some of the healthcare providers who received their first dose in december so what this means in terms of timeline that hopefully teachers and other essential workers optimistically might start receiving uh vaccination

039towards the end of the month early next month there is a webinar tomorrow with polk county public health and i know your district administration attends that we'll talk more about the vaccine plans for polk county so in some we are surging again i saw this surge and confirmed it about a week ago and all the metrics are pointing to the fact that it will sustain itself we need to be on the lookout for the variant that will probably emerge in our population sometime in the near future hospitalizations thankfully though are steady uh vaccine rollout as we all know is moving slowly but it is moving and then influence activity which this is i think another point of positive news is extremely low in fact the lowest i've ever seen in almost 20 years of doing

040respiratory viral epidemiology so that's one little bit of good news so any questions on the data the information presented dr shaker can you talk a little bit about um the timeline of vaccines and um when an individual is considered to be inoculated after they receive their second dose or can you talk a little bit about that yeah about upwards of 14 days so first dose um what's interesting with the first dose about 50 to 55 percent of people will develop a solid immune response to that first dose so the second and and that happens within about 10 to 14 days of them getting that first shot so if you don't respond for the first dose or you don't mount a very good response that second dose picks up another 40 of people who didn't quite

041mount a good enough response the first time and again it's about 10 to 14 days after they get that second dose you can really consider them fully protected so it's really similar to flu you have about two weeks after you get your flu shot you're protected it's a good question and those are 30 days apart depends on the vaccine one is 21 days the other is 28 days and astrazeneca will be 30 days which i would expect to be approved maybe sometime the end of this month catherine i think you're on mute it's really for the best um any other questions or comments when it when it comes to protections for folks um with the discussion of going back 100 in person that gets rid of our social distancing uh pretty pretty effectively throughout the

042district um what i'm not phrase this right sorry um right now we're doing social distancing and masks when we're in hybrid model how bad is it to get rid of one of the major pegs of how we're stopping spread in our district that's a good question um i mean i think when we first talked a couple of months ago we talked about the pillars of protection and distancing masking being really critical to that along with contact tracing quarantine and isolation if you take away one of those pieces you do increase risk of infection with the new variant what happens with that variant and we're going to be dealing with this soon so i think it's good to talk about it is that people produce more virus when they're sick and then uh they also gets

043it quicker so what that means is mass still protects you but the more time you spend with somebody the more virus there's going to be in the air so distancing matters the virus can't spread further just because there's more of it but there's more virus to be in the immediate environment of a person does that answer your question thank you great questions anyone else like to ask dr schaefer something about this presentation okay um how about anyone in um from the district who wants to comment on this not on the metric recommendation or anything just on this okay thank you dr schaefer very helpful thank you guys take care of yourself we'll do you too okay so we'll move um into the action items uh currently there's a metric recommendation that uh maybe can be

044kind of summarized for us and then i think what we'll do is uh as i sent out to everybody uh sarah had a great idea um that each of us could be could uh have an opportunity to ask questions or clarifications and then um whoever is appropriate with the administration can ask answer those once we're kind of all done i do i i really think it's important for everyone to be able to have a voice if they want one if you don't want to you can pass um and so i don't um steve krista lauren whomever wants to take a stab at the metric recommendation that has been proposed yes i'll go ahead and start off so the proposal basically is in alignment with the one that was set up by the iowa department of

045public health in congruence with the department of education and congruence with the governor so basically it talks about 0 to 14.9 percent then schools would be 100 in person and they basically in the um state one or i'll just call it the state one the de they mention a hybrid that you can go into it at um when it's 15 or higher again you would not according to the state one you would not come out of hybrid and go into a 100 percent uh online or it's called required continual learning unless you had 15 or more and uh either staff or students 10 above the average from last year the other way to go into the required continuous learning would be if the uh 14-day average positivity rate was 20 and that's when you could

046apply to the department of education for a two-week waiver the district does have the option always to make emergency decisions for up to two days so administration is recommending we follow the guidance of the de but we still think maybe it's because we're used to it that we still there's still a place for a hybrid i know the board in past meetings has said what is the number so these numbers um while the 15 percent means again if a number were at 15 percent or again depending on which model you're in for three or more days that would cause an emergency meeting with the board uh to potentially change the um instructional model at that time and again that's not to say that we have to go into either the required learning or the hybrid

047depending on which one you are um but it is saying we would have a meeting we still think there's value in the hybrid model okay do we have any questions before we ask people to to list their questions catherine are we going to do that for both items yeah yes we can i think this is the major part of the meeting so if you're patient with that so um and again anyone who isn't comfortable bringing up any questions or concerns you certainly don't have to i guess i i have an initial question if i can jump in um with steve and just so that i make sure that i am understanding the the recommendation um on the metric and does this you're saying this does deviate from the state's recommendation in respect to the 10

048percent no it does not deviate the only thing that maybe deviates is if um if we have a desire to stay in the hybrid where um according to theirs in 15 to 20 you could be fully it's just we were just kind of we thought that there was still some desire to have a set number for hybrid and so that's why we're kind of looking although again that's one of the challenges with those numbers because again if we don't have any internal need whether it be from um staff are very low cases students are very locations and that's why i think the state did not set an amount saying this in the hybrid as you recall our our ones that we initially aboard approved had a um a set between things this is not said

049it's pretty much two numbers um although in the second one 15 or greater we have two options okay and that that 10 that we're talking about is district wide and not building level well it would again if it's building level then we would look at that building possibly being closed not at a district unless the whole district were but no that's where we would look at the uh building level because if we can keep the rest of the district running and it's just one that has those issues with either students or staff we would um try to keep the whole district moving that's good yeah i think that's what i've been looking for all along is to have some flexibility with whether it's its buildings or or grades and maybe this provides us a little

050bit more flexibility to keep other buildings open so mark are you comfortable to go ahead and raise any other concerns that you have and then we'll just go one by one about the metric recommendation yeah um can i reserve my time that that was my primary uh issue you know broadly i will say i've been a little frustrated um with the leadership from the board you know specifically and how we've communicated this uh to the public and to our teachers and i think you know all of us board members received a lot of emails and we've effectively uh by by what we've done and was to this point pitted uh it almost seems teachers and and parents against each other and i know that's none of our intent in all of this and so you

051know i'd really like to get through that tonight and focus on students which you know i think is all of our ideal um you know we also have to think creatively and as the situation dictates and so i'm very happy to see that we're gonna potentially look on a building level um you know that being said i i do have some other comments and questions as as we go to that uh 7b instructional delivery model so i guess i guess i can wait on that and listen to everybody else's questions right now good thank you uh who wants to go next i guess my only question um to that is steve then are we there are we at the 10 absenteeism and the 15 percent i mean i know we are for the pope county

052but is every building at that 10 percent absenteeism i mean we are not we we have no buildings at this point there are the uh 10 we have one that's eight percent over um last year's um average daily attendance ada um but we are no buildings are at the ten percent or staff or students oh so the metrics though that you're proposing would say the and 10 percent so it's not just the positivity rate that's correct usually i mean that's the way that it is written um i don't want to change um theirs per se that's the way it's written which means we have the option technically while it's 15.1 we would have the option as a district to go either um one percent or excuse me hi stay in hybrid or go to the

053required continue learning which is the in person and you said that we have just one building that is over 10 or no one zero okay thank you and our closest building is at eight percent right now that's correct eight percent over last year's average daily attendance so they're not at the 10 mark yet correct okay rihanna do you have anything else you'd like to clarify okay who else wants to go next don't make me call on you do the teacher thing catherine i don't catherine i don't think i have questions or need to speak on the metric okay thank you yeah and and i would um state the same thing i have uh questions and or comments related to the next item however i'm comfortable with where we're at here okay i i have i

054i'm just i'm curious why we're moving from 10 to 15 outside of just matching the the state recommendations i thought that the was a really good compromise that we came up with last time and i don't understand why we're not sticking with that given that there was discussion in the past and there still is the the talk about 15 being exceptionally high um compared to other states not in iowa but uh throughout the world if we're looking at that i think we can all admit that compared to other countries america has has not done the best job handling covet in iowa has consistently ranked lowest with handling it well um and i think the 15 positivity rate and basing so much of our metric all right our decision making off of that has leads us

055down a path that i'm not necessarily comfortable with and i thought the 10 was a good compromise last time and i i personally don't feel comfortable moving it up to 15. so the answer to your question ashley is compliance with the de again if we were to um not be in one of those two models hybrid or required continued learning um in person um every three days so we had to make it up it could cost the district a half a million dollars to pay our staff and i i understand that i'm talking more of like not necessarily like difference between like the uh hybrid to online specifically the 100 in person to hybrid being at 15 versus at 10 percent i can understand 15 i guess uh because of our mitigation strategies i can

056understand 15 being from hybrid to con to fully online but i don't understand 15 being from 100 in person where we can't socially distance and we're taking out one of our largest pillars of mitigation which is especially with the new variant can put people in danger more danger than just that average pandemic um why we're moving that specifically to 15 because from what i i don't unless i missed a giant change from the de which i don't know if i did that's part of the question did i miss that i miss a change uh i'm sorry i didn't understand those questions sorry the de has had this model since the beginning they have not changed theirs whatsoever and that's kind of what i was like if we had it at 10 and we were still

057in compliance because we were in the hybrid model why are we moving that specifically to 15 versus leaving that at 10 and leaving 15 for hybrid 2 online yeah i just we just made the proposal because we feel we've we've learned a lot we're at a different place than we are we've seen many many schools who are back i was going to save it for the other one but the de i believe claims that 92 percent of the districts are 100 percent in person and i've said for about two months at some point we can we just can't ignore that it is being done in other districts and done well even without social distancing i use i i i'm just going to keep going i apologize to everyone else i with us being so close

058to having vaccines ready for teachers i just don't see the large need to push this at the time given that within i'm hoping within the next month because we're we're slowly moving into 1b where our teachers will be able to get vaccinated that i mean we're as i think one of our parents and or teachers talked earlier during the public comment i mean we're we're right there i don't understand why we're switching it up at the last minute especially with the new variant coming where we're putting people like that that's where i'm struggling with this to understand why we're doing it and again my answer is we just feel we need to be in align with the state but we weren't out of alignment with the 10 in hybrid not from that end but we

059were alignment if we followed below 10 that's correct but again now we're basically 100 in alignment with every other district in the state that's our intent so i'm not i'm not trying to argue the board i i specifically just want to understand for myself are we out of alignment by having ten percent be when we go into hybrid no it was only if we went like you said um if we went 100 online thank you yep certainly sorry steve i said i didn't have a question is it okay if i go sarah yeah um yeah well i only want to because i'm uh i'm in a stable location where i go for it sarah i'll try to turn it up for you it'll only take me a moment um my uh one reservation to this

060would be um ensuring that we give our staff the freedom to uh provide whatever mitigate mitigation strategies they are most comfortable with within their classroom having that not micromanaged at the building level so if we move forward with this metric allowing teachers if they feel most comfortable teaching from a specific location in their room not moving in and out of the that location if this drives an opening of our building i would like to ensure that um we are giving them staff the freedom to decide what delivery model inside their classroom works best for them number one number two um can i ask a clarifying question or are you sharing i don't want to interrupt well i i was just gonna put it's whatever go ahead steve i i just wanted to give staff more

061freedom within their their classroom um i know uh there there were some limitations on you know like putting partitions around their space and those those types of options that we had discussed earlier and i just um one am asking that you know those be considered to um that if staff are having to quarantine or be outside of the classroom if if the new metric requires us to move forward into uh face-to-face um a hundred percent face-to-face that we um staff are not having to use their personal sick time um and then i think that's all i have on that um that i can see in my notes right now so okay yeah you can answer that i just i have some concerns that are weighing on my heart and mind you know i'm i'm displeased

062with i'm gonna echo a lot of ashley's comments but i'm i'm displeased with um moving further away from our original guidance document um i thought that that was was a compromise um you know a lot of people are quoting fauci and we had a parent quote fauci tonight and the article's been going around urbandale closed the bars and and opened the schools and i agree with that a hundred percent but we can't strip that statement of context to do that fouchy quite means literally you need to close the bars and other things so that we can open schools um there's context to that statement and our administration in iowa has been negligent there's nothing more i want than to go back to school return to learn full in person we need vaccines first we i

063i'm unsure why we've been standing our ground this whole year to to move now um when we're so close to the finish line and so close to having a vaccine you know we have to stay diligent um it's not it's not fun i'm not having a good time myself in this um pandemic um i i just think 15 is it's it's negligent it's not what the other other states are doing um i i that's all i guess that's all i have to say is that i am uncomfortable with leaving the hybrid model um at 15 i don't know why we would think that was an acceptable number now um than we would previously i understand that we we know schools are not super spreaders but we've been doing mitigation strategies the other thing that i

064want to mention is the kids falling behind this is a nationwide and a worldwide issue our kids will experience a year of relearning together this is not an issue that is unique to urbandale it's not unique to iowa it's not unique to the united states we are all in this together as a community and everybody you know wants the answers now into to pan out and i think at this point to not stand firm would be absolutely absolutely negligent of the board that's all i have to say thank you can i interrupt i realize that i forgot one of my comments my questions and i forgot it was on a different page um i wanted to get more information on our subs i know we were waiting for the december grads to see if we

065hired more um and how that will help because with with the percentage change with face to face with the potential for more quarantines and more other but people having to leave more often uh what does our sub look sub pool look like now did we hire people hi lauren did we hire more folks um and then other than that i was hoping we could have a larger conversation about uh all of us have talked a lot about mental health of our teachers um having them make all these different plans move back and forth giving them enough time one of the things i'm really concerned about is when it comes to sub shortages how we pardon i have a daughter just dear father so um now i'm getting yelled at by a six-year-old uh i was

066where was i 52 subs um some of the things that we've been doing in order to to cover up for our sub shortage um involves them giving up even more of their time to fill in different spots sometimes they're watching more than one classroom how is how are we managing all of that especially if we're going face to face and we're definitely not social distancing and we're definitely gonna have two more contact racing and we're gonna have to watch all of those numbers and i worry especially with the new variant coming if we do end up getting it within our schools that we have a snowball effect and i just i want more information on the whole sub conversation okay i'm kind of making a list here that we'll bring up maybe in a little

067bit is that okay we'll finish this off i'll comment i always comment and then we'll have try to cover the subs the um the teacher mitigation in their rooms the questions that i wrote down that people have brought up okay can lauren still answer my question since he's right here and he's unmuted and so far we've kind of had to get back and forth for all the other questions okay sorry i i can speak real quick to this at least the current state of our substitutes we have added some over the christmas break and um we have three uh additional full-time subs on the board packet for this evening uh which we're really excited about and i think that is going to help us a bunch in terms of our fill the other thing i

068would say about our subs is that um we we now just based on being in required continuous learning for those six or seven weeks um they are much more skilled now at subbing in our remote classrooms as well and and that has been a major benefit in you know going into a lot of our secondary rooms that they're doing some of both they've been able to bounce into those pretty effectively and seamlessly uh so that is that's been a positive as well and and we'll be looking to hire that that last approved one as well here over the next few weeks okay thank you okay i am just going to talk about a few other things i would like to point out that we are a character counts district and a character counts city and

069i i i do understand that we as a board have some responsibility but i believe that the community does too in fact i got another message just now telling me that i am inept gotten that all day gotten online bullying incivility and um i'd just like to point out that i am a lifelong educator i don't do bullying so if you whoever is watching you want to keep doing that you need to understand that that is not a good strategy with me so i know there are intense feelings and i have to tell you this is a lot like a divorce there's no win this is not an easy problem or we would have taken care of it so i will point out thank you for thank you for speaking up thank you yes when

070people call us lazy and things like that it really doesn't motivate us to want to read their messages out of our and telling us lazy and stupid and playing god turns me the opposite direction so you can continue that strategy but it is not successful i would also like to point out we do read all of your emails the fact that we don't respond i got a hundred today thank you so much to the peer group um and we are volunteers we don't get paid i i would just like to add one more piece i want to thank um ashley um technically most new moms would be on uh maternity leave at this time and although um we've been the last few minutes got some comments brought to us about her baby being in the

071picture we on this particular board we birthed three babies in the last year and a half so ashley bring your baby on screen and keep doing the work you're doing sister okay thank you i love having your baby on meetings i yeah this is the third board baby keep it up and people who say you know you should be voted out i welcome you to run for the board it's an opportunity that you cannot believe so please do consider running for the board we'll have an election in november so my other uh question here i want to just clarify very clearly that the reverse side of the coin with the 15 pushing us into maintaining the hybrid the reverse is also true is that not is that not true that if we have three days

072under 15 then we meet again to reconsider our learning model right that's correct so it is conceivable that in a week we have three days below 15 and we meet again and the possibility is that it may be recommended that we go back fully in person is that accurate that's that's potentially correct okay so um i thought i had read that correctly but most of the communication that i'm getting from the community doesn't appear to have understood that so um the other concern that i have and this is just something that i'm raising and i have talked about this repeatedly with a number of you it seems to me that having consistency when it's quite clear that the rates in the com in the county are rising the consistency of delivery models so flopping back

073and forth between okay now we're going to be online we may be online for two weeks and then we're going to come back we're going to be all in person i am happy with the recommendation personally that we are going to examine this not necessarily holistically but where we are actually targeting where we have issues as far as and so i i do want the public to understand that it is quite possible that your child could be in a class that is quarantined for a week because of an outbreak and it is also possible that a building will be in quarantine because it is a building-wide issue so there is no guarantee at this point that you will be in school five days a week it is a guarantee that in all likelihood some of

074you will have a call from our head nurse saying you have to quarantine for a week so please understand nothing nothing is set in this plan or guaranteed my other concern is that at ums and uhs those that staff unfortunately because of the delivery model sees 150 students a day so they will see 150 students over the course of one day the elementaries and if you if you don't have a child at that age you don't know that the elementaries typically can kind of keep themselves to the 20 to 25 that they have in that classroom and they can mitigate things more easily so you need to understand that there are really very different concerns and complexities to all these issues it's not black and white and again we would have taken care of this

075a long time ago if it were these are other concerns i have if we go into and these are just random things that i'm sure you've already thought about are we going to allow people to sign up for busing are we going to allow people to sign up for adventure time if they need before and after school what are we doing with the issues with food service we don't have enough people to actually do food service delivery i could share the same concern that has been brought up about sub coverage and i continue to contend that the staffing is going to be key you know we can send our students to school but if you don't have an adult in the room it's probably not going to work i know that the buildings i've talked

076to a number of the principals they are preparing fully preparing for all the possibilities of trying to do mitigation for full five days um so the assumption from some people in the community that nothing is being done is not accurate they are preparing extensively on how to deliver lunch how to have recess how to have uh you know the full choir for example in a room so i think telling people that you need to trust the administration that they are actually preparing for this and people are listening to you the abuse has to stop so i'm done a lot of good topics there catherine thank you so i don't know how those things will actually be addressed because they're really more of a concern when we flip into the full five day a week and

077i think the questions about the mitigation in the teachers rooms are also and it's my understanding that the sick days we already extended as a board that people would have 10 days that you know basically don't have to be used is that accurate lauren yeah the the board approved the continuation of the four of the six parameters of the cares act um that ran through december 31 uh for the remainder of the school year which is the ten additional days for those four reasons which quarantine and uh being having to be in isolation um those same reasons that we had uh utilized before break so yes that is accurate okay great thanks lauren i knew that i just didn't know beyond that time frame if if an employee is still out with covid i guess

078from my perspective if we are moving into a different model or if we are bringing in a new metric if we should then also be requiring them to use any of their days i guess was my concern and i don't know you know what that would look like but is that a case-by-case basis where maybe we extend those days so that they're not touching their own personal sick time okay it would take additional action by the board if we were to go that route um i will say i guess not that it matters a whole lot but uh we are just one among only a few districts that have continued the the 10 days actually of the cares that now others i think are looking at that i'm not sure if anybody has gone beyond

079that um at this point because for the most part i think the thinking is that folks would use regular um leave that they have but if if the if the board wanted to look at addition to in addition to what we've already put out uh or put forth and gotten approved um we could look at additional leave i suppose going forward lauren the only thing i was thinking was if like a new mom you know maybe we have a new mom in the district who use the majority of her time this year and then she returns as an employee and then is then out again after contracting um kovid uh you know or being a nice you know just whatever would have happened along those lines within our you know within our district i do

080um you know i just i i i don't know yeah i would like to extend it um but that's you know again i'm one voice on the board and i'd like to give our staff what they need on all levels to feel that you know we are backing them as well i am very supportive of that as well i would just caution the board to maybe have a little more information with 750 plus employees in the district um you are already extending yourself out with those 10 days um you know this has been a very costly pandemic for the district as well so you do have to take some caution relief stacy can you hold that just one second i feel like it's fine i'm sorry to be rude um i feel like especially if

081we're going to be taking strategies where we're getting rid of some of our mitigation techniques and we're putting people in the potential for more outages and all those other things i don't think it should cost them because we're making that choice and i'm not trying to argue with you ashley but remember with 92 plus districts back they also don't have social distancing um so you you uh all i'm saying is you'd want more information before you jump i'm i'm just i'm we're not voting at it obviously i'm just saying i'm in support of it especially for doing this and if everything we're so great they won't need it but if it doesn't work out great and we get hit i would rather we protect ourselves steve can we have numbers brought to us um you

082know or can we have something generated so that we we at least would have um an opportunity to look at what that would um you know a dollar amount for the district mary beth lauren is that something you can sorry that's i don't work there i just know we've this has been very costly as a district i understand well and i do think you know we've talked a lot about other things there is a strong possibility that if we move forward a month two months i mean that's probably optimistic but there will be a vaccination available we will be able to do a number of other things so deciding that the discussion i think is valuable but i don't know that we need to do anything about this at this point so yeah i if

083you if we have exhausted our discussion um i would like to have someone make a motion on the metric unless there is more more discussion i can move to approve the metric provided by the iowa department of education wherein we would implement a hybrid instructional model with 14-day poll counting positivity rate greater than 15 percent and inability to staff at building our student application absenteeism greater than 10 percent does that work i'll second okay so let's do a roll call vote one sorry one point of clarification if we get that second part where it's either ten percent student absenteeism or 10 staff that's when it's highly likely and just so everybody knows where we would look to again target that grade level and or school to um do the online just so everybody understands that

084yes as far as on a building and grade level there that's correct correct yeah i'm with you steve thanks just want to make sure everybody understood that thank you ray beth yes so a roll call vote on the motion as presented sarah schmitz i'm gonna um hold off on my vote mary beth will you come back to me mark smith yes houser yes there geyser yes ashley anderson no stacy anderson no duty downs no there schmidts no okay that motion did not pass that was a 4-3 no to yes okay so let's move on then to the um item b 7b can i ask for one point of clarification so as that failed we've heard many times that the board was not pleased with our current one so i i i assume we'll follow the

085current metric i think we think until we approved something else that's what we would need to do i mean procedurally but i could be wrong okay thank you okay let's open up discussion on 7b the instructional delivery model uh beginning january 26 2021 we have questions or comments you can take turns in a similar way as we did on the last item and if there is there is no clarification then we can have a motion on this recommendation also i just want to add one of the reasons why i think that hybrid is a good model right now is i do believe it's what kept us in school longer in the fall than many of our neighboring districts who had to go online either buildings classrooms or or district-wide before we did because they were

086fully in person and they didn't have that social distancing and we've gotten a lot of feedback from folks and i would say i think there's a misconception that all parents want a hundred percent in person learning um and i think the dichotomy that's kind of being posed of parents versus teachers is sometimes false because a lot of folks are thriving in a hybrid model or they understand that there are other factors um such as being able to keep in school for longer and not have to go online um so i i'm expressing my support for the administration's revised recommendation i i would like to and sorry can i just and i would to explain um that the lack of flexibility for the hybrid as articulated by ashley anderson um was my like the crux of

087my lack of lack of support for the um the metrics proposed tonight um i wanted to kind of go off of what judy was saying in regards to the hybrid and i think as a district we've we've learned a lot and we spent our winter break working to try to fix some of the uh previously disliked parts of the hybrid especially at the high school level i think there's still work that needs to be done on it obviously um because there are some kids that are struggling with it although there's going to be kids who struggle with every model whether we're fully in person fully online or in hybrid um but i don't think that should stop us from working on it and i think especially at the high school level uh we received a

088lot of emails today from high school teachers like today yesterday et cetera um discussing that they're going to be working on a more uh synchronized i don't know if that's the right word um version of it so that the kids when they're out of school um on their asia like supposed previously asynchronous days will now be getting at least a touchstone there um and i would like to see us i i don't know what kind of pressure that would put on our on our staff um so i would really like to get more from opinions from the people who are actually in the room doing this work but i would like to see how we could possibly maybe add a touchstone on there asynchronous days um i will say i did see a list of

089what the kids who uh when the elementary school when they're on their asynchronous days the work they're supposed to be doing my daughter is in the full-time online for kindergarten and i will say her work looks very similar when she's fully she's been fully online all year um very similar workload i think uh personally especially at that age um the work that they're doing i i find it helpful with mine and then the rest like her day is then filled with fun movement activities and crafts and other things that get her brain working in a different manner and that's not always easy to do but i think there's other options and just to assume that the minute they're done with their schoolwork that they're not getting anything else out of that day especially with little

090kids they learn so much through play and music and other things that i think it's it's it's i find i just find that my daughter specifically and i know a lot of other kids learn so much through play that it might actually be helpful for some children so if i may for the board as i look at our our current board approved metrics basically it's 10 or greater positivity rate over 14 days we're required online so just a reminder if we go to fully online we will be again not we will be breaking the regulations by the d.e steve those have always been used as guidance haven't they we've never stuck hard and fast to those the board has continually asked what's the number what's the number um i assume that that that the 15

091meant we would apply for the waiver and if we were granted the waiver we were granted the waiver and if we were not going to the waiver we would stay in a hybrid model that's how i interpreted the soft sort of following of those guidelines i maybe i'm i'm the only board member that felt that way no you're not steve i i mean when we applied bring forward in the future it's well when we applied previously we were far above our if i recall correctly we were significantly above the 15 percent and our absenteeism and our buildings was i don't remember the exact number and rising um so we used a combinat you know a combination of factors to drive that decision very similar to what you had proposed in the um revised metric however

092the differences the way i understand our metric has flexibility and the other metric is hard and fast um and the lack of flexibility would have been my reason and not moving forward with a the new metric okay and i again i'm i heard differently i thought from the board is that we were looking for hard numbers that's why we came with that recommendation which is fine if that's not where you want to go but yeah we've spent a lot of time trying to get what we thought the board was requesting you have heard different things from different board members you are not wrong steve but as a board seven of us haven't voted together and said we want a metric without flexibility okay very good and i think i think that a crux of it

093comes down to um how some of us want to make decisions and some of us want to make decisions with you know more context and some i i shouldn't say that some want more flexibility somewhat less flexibility and it it is unfair and it is hard to have both of those um but i guess that's it's kind of the no one situation so i when you say that you've received that feedback that's true but you've also you know there are yeah that makes sense judy thank you i think for myself i'm still really looking at that 10 absenteeism um and that we need to really take that into consideration building by building and you know your recommendation then didn't even i guess i'm a little confused because it didn't even follow the metrics that we

094were going to approve or possibly approve um because of that and you know 15 and um that absenteeism to me that's really telling for our buildings and we have one building i believe metro west that's hardly had any absenteeism or positive cases of covet and so in that respect i think this this building needs to be open and i i feel like we haven't given some of this a chance at all we just are basing things on what you know our gut feels and what i understand we have an epidemiologist that has been giving us lots of great information but i i felt like even in the fall we were at a point that we could have probably had some more of these discussions and now here we're in january and then it'll be the

095end of january and then we keep kind of pushing that needle so i i guess i'm not really wanting to see when can we try something when can we make some decisions based on the data that we have per building to be able to kind of go forward and try something i'm just confused by the statement that it's like we're going by our gut feeling but also we're getting data from the epidemiologist and i do understand going building by building because i'm favorable to elementaries coming back prior to high school students and things like that but i i think that's that percent the percentage and that is countering what the epidemiologist is saying i guess i'm i'm thinking a lot of people are basing some decisions on some feelings some personal feelings um and granted

096that happens right all of us have that permission to feel um and we also have to take in everybody's information that we've gotten multiple emails from staff from you know our parents what we haven't had is multiple communications from our students you know have we talked to our students have we surveyed the students to see i bet even some of our first graders or kindergartners could tell us if they want to be in school or not and i'm not saying that they make the decisions whether it's safe to do that or not but we need to talk to them we need to get their input on where they're at especially our secondary students i think a lot of them would have you know some information for us as a board and i think it would

097be very helpful for us to listen to what some of our students may be telling us besides the ones that have been brave enough to reach out and i you know i give commend them for being able to do that because that's not a very easy position to put students in you know one of the other elephants in the living room is um you know i've had several people ask me how come we can have athletics when we're in a hybrid and again that's the department of ed who that's their guidance that we're following that if you're in hybrid or full you can have complete athletics and the truth is our activities not just athletics activities are probably the um events that put kids at more risk than anything that we have including if we're

098in classrooms and again i must do we need to consider shutting down athletics steve in light of where we are is that what you're recommending i am not saying that at all i'm just saying we have to talk about it because not necessarily shutting down but i'm trying to answer for our public for the many emails i get and trying to educate people that that's in the requirements we are within the requirements we can do it um i think it would be um you know very few thank goodness athletes um or people of course we haven't had like the choirs and stuff in full yet so um we don't know what'll happen there but again i guess when i look at all the districts who are back and they're back in school they're back in

099athletics and there's not that many cases i would not say that whatsoever i am a supporter of activities i'm just trying to educate our public that that's why because the regulations are different for activities than they are for academics but even with that um the the current like the latest uh messaging out of the government is that we can open up to more spectators coming out those things and we're still keeping those guidelines in place that we only have two per well that guideline also actually is you can but you have to social distance which means you can't but that's but like let's i feel like we're we're sort of making some some accommodations and we're trying to do that with the hybrid model as well so i don't really we have stayed in athletics

100consistent since last um spring we have not changed we've used social distance at all our activities um and we haven't changed so when the governor says you can open that up no you really can't because you can't open it up in social distance at the same time that's kind of misleading by then the governor's part okay action item on the table please um and i i i don't want to throw a wrench into this i mean i know that we have intense feelings but the bottom line is our current legislature and governor are probably going to force us into a five-person five-day model and i do think that we have to think about the possibility of that and how we will have to conform to that so it isn't something for now but part of

101the preliminary work that the staff has been doing and the community has been asking for needs to be done so we can be prepared to do that if we don't have a choice and i sent you all an article today on the board you all read it i'm sure some at some point we're going to have to deal with that reality um and i i would feel better if we were somewhat prepared that being said um clarifying this instructional delivery model at this point it appears that it is recommending to remain in the hybrid that's correct and what's the time limit on that until the rate goes down yeah and i don't know again i wouldn't know what level that is um if we're using again guidelines of that so that's again this was based

102on the premise that the recommendation was there was it was easier to follow um if we're using our 10 as guidelines i don't know if that means you know 14 13 i i i don't know what to tell the board i guess i was hoping then you would have that conversation and give us a little more guidance um i think you're right steve and i think that's why i look towards that metric that was recommended by the administration there and and it failed it provided some guidance and still looked at a building by building and grade if need be and now you're faced with an unknown again and i know we love to say that we are so uniquely urbandale but we are a lot like a lot of the districts around us and they

103face some of those same problems whether it's building shortages like you know waukee building uh new schools because they're out of it and you know we're we're putting our administration into a huge bind again and we are we're pitting teachers and parents in public because we are unwilling to provide a direct comprehensive metric it's really making it tough on steve steve and his staff here but mark do you think it's because the board is a little bit divided it seems like there's a part of the board that's happier with the metric today and there's a part of the board that was happier with the previous metric we approved hey i'll be honest i still don't know what that meant prior metric was that that was approved and what went into it that was my complaint

104from the very beginning to a certain extent sure we clearly are divided but we need to at some point make some decisions and and provide some guidance it goes back to what catherine was just saying you know we're going to be forced into some of this and and at some point we have to comply with the state level recommendations uh for for what we need to do because our teachers are looking at that our public is looking at that our administration is looking at that and and we're flying in the face of that despite all of the communities around us being in the hybrid model is not it is absolutely in line with the department of education we have not deviated away from anything that would compromise our funding or anything of that nature that's

105not my understanding my understanding is that we are working within within the boundaries of the department of ed i specifically asked that question like two or three separate times like 10 minutes i heard you ashley with what steve is saying he doesn't know and i don't disagree with that but to to characterize it as us being out of line with with the department of ed i think is a mischaracterization because we are still currently in line i i never said where i don't i agree i agree forward i don't know how to base a recommendation coming forward yup and i will i would suggest that we're going to be here until midnight we don't give him if we don't give them and the families a path forward and i continue to say we can we

106can argue philosophy all we want bottom line is probably by the next time we meet we're going to have to provide a full in person five day a week option which is only good another layer on it um i just i had written you know written some remarks or some comments as as you know we had kind of decided to do tonight so i'm just going to summarize this um just into one statement and that is that um first i think we need to think globally and um act locally i think that's our responsibility currently um so i also um do not think we can say students or teachers without putting them in a category together because without without our students we don't have teachers and without our teachers you know um we also do

107not have students so when we are thinking and acting on one level we are actually thinking and acting on both um you know i will continue uh to say that i'm comfortable being forced by our governor to open our doors because i think she's been negligent in the handling of this pandemic in our state and we as local volunteers have been left to clean up her mess and and i am beyond proud of how urbandale has uh prioritized health and safety in a global pandemic um as as our number one priority um with all of that being said if our administration is confused by the metric that they wrote uh we could help clarify that um tonight and i am still very comfortable looking at case by case building by building circumstances and opening and

108closing based on that i agree with brianna's statement of um you know buildings like metro who have not had really any cases to date you know being excluded from decisions that are made but uh i mean i'm open to further conversation but i'm not open to hard and fast with following uh the state issued metric that when when they have not prioritized our staff and students throughout this year and just a word on on metro you know they have between eight and twelve students there in the morning um and in the afternoon they're and they've got a lot more space so if you look at any building in our entire district as far as numbers and space they have it remember they're only there a half a day to start with and then they have

109people online as well in the remote learning so again i come back to what's the direction on item 7b and what's the direction for the district on what the model is going to look like while we can remain in hybrid while being in compliance that's what i would like to do if our numbers substantiated if the numbers were to suddenly go down and i have such great confidence with the vaccine you know have been promised at a quicker rate that we can return to learn um sooner than sooner than intended i just would like to stay compliant with the de as long as we're not forced to go 100 in person i don't think it's wise to do so at this time i would agree with that with the percentage rates being so high i

110would like to stay in hybrid while it is still so the community spread is so wide we've done a really good job with mitigation we've done a really good job keeping our staff safe and our kids safe uh we'd had the flare-up that we all knew was going to come everybody got pushed into remote learning i think if we stay in hybrid until i mean we have we had the 10 in the in the previous metric i think that's still a good base um i would like to see us look at building to building and see what we can do there i think uh metro west being separate is a really good idea so how would that language look different than the the motion i think we just need a timeline added to it right

111or say actually is there another component that you just said i i i would assume i don't know however anyone else feels it but that we would have like a bottom percentage that would push us into return to learn which i think it uh full in face to face would be 10 which is what our previous metric was and we'd stay in hybrid and then based on the 15 which is where the d e is that then we would apply for a wave if we didn't get the waiver would stay in hybrid and we just kind of play it like that based on building in classroom and when we'd use the absentee rate to push classrooms and buildings specifically into online learning if we hit a percentage rate of absentee i think that's basically how

112the metric was set up before wasn't it i don't know if that's clear 10 we go from face to face to hybrid 15 we apply for a waiver for remote learning and then between 10 and 15 based on absenteeism we move classrooms and buildings into remote i think that's how the metric was set up before we have two kind of i think we have two options here and we can do both or just we're not well well i'm not i'm we can edit that that metric right now and vote on an edited metric and then let's do that and then we can one second and then we can vote on b or the other way around we can do those things we could also vote on b and give it a timeline or a a

113metric as a motion right so we could say move to go hybrid until x date which i would contend the next school board meeting would be a good um a good time frame because a lot of these decisions have been made in two week kind of increments um or we could say go hybrid until a number so we could do that or we could give them a new metric so edit that one that was there with some sort of component um and vote on b until that new metric would trigger a change so i like that judy we have something like that here editing the metric is complicated right now would it be an option to to edit it so that because we're already over 15 that we wouldn't apply for a waiver at this

114point that we would stay in a high we would vote for a hybrid model and stay in that hybrid model until a different percentage i think the language in it includes the opera the options so we wouldn't need to change that i think the and steve correct me if i'm wrong on the reading of that metric and mark maybe you have some input in this but what what i would be looking for i would vote to support it if we had the option to go into hybrid between 10 and 15 percent and so that's kind of yeah we didn't again the proposal was following the des and there is no mid-ground um we were just trying to give the board that mid-ground of 15 and 20. because before we could ask the de for a

115waiver it'd have to be 20 unless we meet that 10 percent staff or students then you can ask for it at 15. so then we would just stay in hybrid i really don't feel comfortable going back face to face unless it's below 10 percent which was our compromise from last time hybrids are working really well even at 15 it's been working really well but but ashley um you know i i guess for me the one piece that was missing out of the recommendation this week was a phased-in approach which is what i thought we might be getting um you know when we just went from virtual uh you know quick stop in hybrid and then opening our district at 100 that's where the confusion set in for me we had spoken about um i thought

116in the past about doing some type of phased-in approach so i guess my question would be is how do we identify that within whatever metric we are you know hoping to generate because i really do think throughout this entire process we haven't stuck very closely closely to any metric that we've created so we're going to put a lot of man you know a lot of time into doing that um and and i'm fine with not it not being hard and fast i just would like to know what could trigger and maybe administration has decided um that this isn't a great plan but some type of like phased-in approach rather and all in our comments to the phased-in we see no correlation between starting any grade and affecting another grade um it really has no impact

117of k2 where to start because they do not come in contact with grades three through five um unless they're passing in the hallway otherwise i mean even there it there's it makes no rationale there's no pro or con um if you plan to get everybody back anyway um the the phased in or transition as we decide you might look at that one document that we added there was a couple of different models there and they really didn't make a lot of sense to us especially when then when you talk about the buildings there is zero impact on elementary versus middle school versus high school oh can i jump in here please thank you um they you cannot you cannot edit an agenda item an action item that you voted down in this meeting so that

118is a moot point so at this point in all likelihood we need to vote on this instructional delivery model catherine we could give guidance we could give guidance and ask for how we want it changed i mean that could happen it could happen but we're going to be here until midnight and i'm not seeing any consensus on this item so it's probably going to have to be addressed outside the meeting with either editing or suggestions or surveys no i i get that i'm just trying to help steve out here so in that case i think what we would need is an amended motion to the recommendation to come back with some sort of deadline and i mean i think the easiest thing is two weeks what do you like what do you guys think judy

119i apologize but but i'm gonna say this so if anyone is talking about the recommendation that was voted down it would take a person who voted no um to bring it back up and then we could edit it are you gonna bring no i'm just i'm trying to be a solutions minded person here right so yeah there are four of us who voted no i'm trying to find some middle ground in order to help give steve and all of our families and teachers some sort of timeline associated with this i will say in all likelihood as you insinuated catherine we will be in hybrid when the state votes to mandate 100 in person and the decision will be taken out of our hands and that will happen and that is you know when it happens

120that's just fine um but so in all likelihood honestly any metric that this board approves um would still have to come back to a vote to make any big changes and we still might not support following those guidelines or the decision will be made out of our hands so i don't necessarily think it's the most important thing to have a foolproof you know metric because i think very soon it's not going to matter but just tonight if we do vote to go into hybrid at second semester i think there has to be some sort of timeline associated with that so what i'm proposing i guess is to um do it in two weeks and get a new recommendation at the next board meeting and see if the administration recommends continuing or not and as we

121know timing's always crazy i mean even for tonight we're we put it together thursday vote tonight for a week or two later i personally in full transparency again i read a lot i listen to the iowa department of public health i have conversations with many people i would again i haven't seen an article so i'd be in i i know there's talk about the uh legislating mandating it but i don't know if they'll take that on um i think we have at least a greater chance may possibly a greater chance that in two weeks there will be this third wave slash surge um and everyone will be online that's that's the word that we're hearing probably more than anything um so i don't think it's a matter of going the other way but i if

122i was a betting person again i don't have a crystal ball um that's more my concern the des moines register published an article today about highlights from the first day in session and they indicate otherwise and i've noticed indication but i think doing it is a a whole different step i'm not sure if they'll take on that um responsibility quite honestly can i make a suggestion then that we voted i could be wrong to stay in hybrid for the next two weeks and in that time we asked with the understanding that there's there's a good chance that the state legislator will will decide this for us that our recommendation to admin and staff is to try to shore up the rest of our mitigation strategies um figuring out what we need to get partitions if

123that's what teachers feel comfortable with as sarah was saying give give our teachers a chance to voice what they feel they need to mitigate as much as possible face to face and see what we as a board need to do to support that whether it means approving um more like uh i i know we got we all got the email that said that there are some classrooms that still didn't have hand sanitizer approving more of that approving um partitions approving different uh other strategies other than i just think there does have to be some guidelines though because i mean we've had requests to have ozone machines and i mean we folks we'd go broke if you did every single thing that you think you could do um it's one thing to do mask i mean

124we offer face cards which are just like plexiglas it's your personal one i mean it doesn't have to get extravagant um to meet the requirements that those and what the mitigation is trying to stop and i'm not saying we have to go extravagant i just would like to know more from the people in the classrooms the professionals that we pay to teach our children what they feel like what they need i want to hear more from them specifically so that we can see what we can do on a large mass scale to keep people safe i'm not saying we have to approve everything i'm not saying that everything that comes before us is an automatic yes i'm just saying i would like to hear more from the professionals that are in the rooms in the

125trenches doing this day to day okay here's what i'm going to propose we aren't going to act on item a what i am hearing most of you say is that you don't like the 15 you want to drop to 10. that's what i'm hearing you say so if that is on on item a that the objection to that one was 15 percent okay so some guidance okay so and the way i read b if you take out the 15 that's exactly what b is recommending and given the information that we got tonight on the probability of the rate in two weeks being at the november level there is no reason to disbelieve that so what i'm hearing you today is we stay in the hybrid as this says without keeping the 15 percent number in

126and we go ahead and okay this so that the system and the parents and everybody understand what's going to happen the next two weeks i fully believe that with some input from everybody that we can literally come up with a new metric that everyone can live with so um i don't i i don't know if i'm miscommunicating this but i think emotion on the instructional delivery model to remain in the hybrid until the next meeting when we actually will have probably an altered metric recommendation and as we have all agreed probably guidance from above so is it possible that we could take that step to have a motion to remain in the hybrid i would move to approve item b until uh to be reconsidered at the next board meeting okay here's i have a

127question though so my concern about the metric just to be clear is that it was hard and fast and i think we do need to be flexible because just because city or just because county rate i i actually think we made it more flexible for the district to make changes but um you know that was just from my perspective i i do hear that a lot of people are misunderstanding or no vote but um to from my perspective if this county positivity rate is 15 or whatever um and we are but we are doing okay within our system we should keep our doors open and that is where i felt the confusion was to me about the proposed metric um also i am very much open to looking at bringing some of our students back

128at-risk students special education students um younger our younger students i think we have some concerns in some of our buildings because of our numbers but i at some point i do think we have to have a plan to to bring some students back i personally as a member of this community and and member of the sport am not comfortable bringing our entire district back in one day when we have been so far from there okay there is a motion on the table in the short term uh but uh can you remind me of the motion as it was to accept the hybrid model until our next meeting that is what i heard is that accurate stacy yes i will second that okay we have a roll call vote judy downs yes stacy anderson yes ashley

129anderson yes brianna sarah geyser no hauser yes smith no sarah schmitz yes okay that motion carried 5-2 to accept 7b which but saying that we'll be reconsidered in with at the next board meeting so two weeks so one point i do want to make clear to the board um and again i don't know how to say this in a really really nice way but administration's job is not to try to conceive what we think you want we will still bring a recommendation that may not equal what you want and you're going to have to have that conversation so please be thinking about that um because all we're going to do is make our best professional recommendation um and and one point in case you wanted to go with this 7a there was a a hyphen

130not a bullet i could have used bullets said we may also find that district decisions are not clearly based on only the percentage listed for the 14 day for example if the county positivity rate is at 21 let's just say it's 15 but we have none or limited cases in our school maybe we wouldn't follow it so it was trying to give you that freedom too to think through that hey you know do you want them solid do you want some freedom you can still have freedom within numbers because the data has to support it we we the whole reason we even went to our own metric was because we didn't feel the one data point positivity rate was appropriate we were trying to bring in other data so that's why it was never quite

131clear on a clear-cut number does that make sense yeah it doesn't honestly to be to be frank if you were if it was 14.9 today and you propose according to that metric to bring schools back second semester i would have voted no so like that's why i struggle with that which is fine but again the board can change that during your motion no i understand that okay but that's also why i understand and respect all the hard work that went into making that metric but i had to vote against it because because of that one reason so you know i don't want to make this harder for you and i did tonight but but that's the decision-making and that's all i'm saying judy is is next time if the board doesn't like it then try

132to change it in that motion because you have that right you are the board you're the decision makers um we understand as administrators we'll give our best recommendation and you can choose to follow it or you can choose not to um and we will always support the board's decision thanks steve i think it kind of goes back to what brie was saying all before we uh we are apparently making a lot of decisions kind of based on on gut and if you know at some point we have to provide some guidance and and draw some lines um and now we're substituting our own numbers because of a gut feeling and i would disagree with you mark our epidemiologist tonight spoke very clearly about so i mean unless she's speaking from her gut also i i

133think um we took a lot of what she said into consideration as a board and i don't um you know i don't uh i i can't fault my gut you mean analysis of data by multiple points yeah i take it you know sorry for insurance interrupting each other is good to get this point across i think that um insinuating that a more nuanced decision-making component is a gut feeling is disrespectful and i think that not being disrespectful and i'm talking about a number moving it from 15 to 10 and and what i'd asked before you know when we originally did that what what was that based on and originally that was based on we looked at some other uh districts and copied that over and it is it is a comfortability feeling now for for

134the board it was also part of a compromise given that the cdc had five percent for a while uh i they might still haven't double checked it recently and no this cdc is not a comfort level that's science or are you moving it from the ten i fought for five i fought as hard as i could for five because that was what science was telling me i settled with the ten because it was better than what the state was giving us which was fifteen to twenty that doesn't end with all good feeling and with all due respect um everybody on the board had an opportunity to sit on that committee and um i i would have welcomed anyone to do that um and there you know it wasn't everybody offering to take their free time

135and do that so um i you're on me at sarah sorry did you hear anything i said i i personally felt that that um you know we did the best that we could in that committee um we took what was brought to us and we tried to make a number that was uh you know and i'm still gonna not apologize for keeping our staff and students relatively safe safe throughout this process that's not a gut feeling that's ethically doing the right thing okay is it possible we could move to c 7c is that a no no of course we can is there someone to speak on it questions ashley has been on patiently waiting hi everyone hi all right on another note i'm starting to plan for preschool and child care for next year and

136um throughout the year i've worked with mary beth and gary sinclair and you know we've been evaluating our current state of finances however tonight's more so to move forward with setting our fees for next year so i can start releasing pre-registration information because we're set to start our pre-registration process for preschool next year on february 9th and currently due to the current state and with where with what we feel is best for the students and families we serve we are not recommending to increase fees for next year we did have a three and a half percent increase last year but right now we feel that it would be best to continue with the exact same fees next year as we do this current school year awesome we have any questions thank you for your patience

137ashley no problem okay do i have may i have a motion move to approve a second okay um let's do a roll calls that some involves fees for programming there geyser yes hauser yes mark smith yes sarah schmitz yes stacy anderson yes judy downs yes ashley anderson yes that carried unanimously awesome thank you uh we don't have any board reports steve do you have anything i do not thank you i move to open the consent agenda awesome thank you let me have a second second thank you do we have any questions or clarifications on any items in the consent agenda okay if not may i have another roll call mary beth you're on mute i thought it was someone else judy downs yes ashley anderson yes stacey anderson you're unmute stacy yes sorry houser yes

138there geyser yes sarah schmitz yes mark smith yes that's unanimous thank you now we're at the work session um ryan do you just want to i mean i i did read all of it i assume that most everyone else may have also do you want to do a brief explanation of what what this is kind of proposing absolutely well good evening um and thank you for the time i you know looking at the clock i will do my best to keep it brief um i've done a lot of self-reflecting done a lot of reflecting on the events on some events shall i say that it happened in the in the past in the past month or so and i've come to the realization that everybody's journey in this diversity equity and inclusion everyone's journey is

139a little bit different and i kind of go back to a comment that miss judy made um about a month or so ago during my last during my last learning where she had asked me to reach out to different uh different school districts and find out what both what uh measurable goals if you will that other boards around the state around the country were implementing and i did that i reached out to districts like ames that like ankeny like waterloo and some of those other folks that i have had conversations with throughout throughout the state and one thing that continually comes up is trying to figure out where the board is individually and collectively along this journey and so i received several recommendations to issue the idi which is as the a lot of the

140information said is the intercultural competency inventory i mean what it is it's as you read it's a it's a 50 item questionnaire uh which kind of measures uh behaviors towards uh uh cultural differences etc um and i think it will provide uh this group will provide this group with some very good information on where you are at in your journey on this continuum if you will and just as a matter of fact as i'm sitting here during this meeting the individual who i who i'm partnering with uh to administer the idi sent his his proposal and his recommendation to me which i will send out to this group tomorrow morning for your approval um so with that being said um i would like i would like uh to move forward um with this idi uh

141once we have the proof when we have everything set up i will reach out to brother ken morris um and then he will send electronic login credentials for you to take the idi and then he will reach out to you individually to schedule a debrief and then as well as a collective debrief of the information again to see where we are at collectively and i think with that information we could sit down and we can create some board goals as suggested by ms judy about future learning and things that can do to move the board forward in your collective commitment towards diversity equity and inclusion that sounds wonderful are there any additional resources that you need from us just to say okay i'm in and then i will i will reach out to like i

142said i will reach out to ken tomorrow and we will move forward i'll have car i'll work with miss mary beth to get uh get it taken care of because there is a financial component to it clearly but we can move forward with that would that be a contract that would come to us at a later time mary beth or and not need a vote tonight it would just be like a go-ahead and then if any expenses were to arise related to this work that needed board approval we would see them at a later date great so you don't need official stamp of approval tonight just like this okay okay put your thumb up if you're okay with this okay i can't see everybody i've got you on the speaker thing okay i think that's

143good that one's great to me thank you thanks for sticking with us okay any other matters if not motion for adjournment so moved i'll second okay all in favor i