001you so [Music] okay we're going to call the meeting to order [Music] do we have a motion to go into executive session i move to go into executive session pursuant to idaho code section 74 742061b that's really loud aye aye and ross already said aye okay okay motion carries we're in executive session thank you [Music] where do you turn this off oh down here um so do so um so um so foreign so um so um so uh so um my um so foreign so me so um so um so um so um so um so dude [Music] okay so we're out of executive session um we have a motion to approve the agenda and move to approve the agenda i'll second that all in favor starting with russ hi sally hi kim aye hi
002motion carries agenda is approved um the students from marine elementary is are going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice if you look at the agenda there there's a list here that you can read about school board meeting protocols for those of you that don't know i just want to cover a few things before we get started the way the school board works there's a representative for each zone is your mic on yes it is not hearing yours i'm going to turn mine off unless i speak can you hear me okay so what i was saying is just to kind of give you um
003how school boards work for those of you that don't know um in the district there's five representatives so each area has a representative and so if there's issues that you want to take up about the school district the best thing to do is to call your zone representative if you can't resolve it obviously with your principal um call your zone representative or email your zone representative our emails are on the district website and we have received quite a few emails a couple hundred or more in the last month or two about the issues that we're going to talk about tonight um another thing that i wanted to say um i want to tell our um trustees of our school board thank you for the work that they've done the last year and a half has
004been somewhat stressful and hard and i want to tell them thank you for the time that they've committed um they've done a great job and i appreciate him we're lucky to have the board that we have that being said i mean there's times that uh we don't all agree and that's okay that's a good that's a good board that's what you want you want you don't want everyone to be on the same page all the time that's it's it's how democracy works but i do want to thank them for their time one thing that i i don't think a lot of people realize that you know for every meeting that we have we spend multiple hours getting ready for this meeting so it's we take our positions serious and we take time before we get
005here to know what's on the agenda and to know what we're going to do and we take time to listen to the patrons of the district and of our zones so that we can best represent you i just want you all to know that that being said um i just want to make sure that we don't have a repeat of last month i feel like the actions and behaviors of a few people last month hurt the kids in this district because we weren't able to move forward and to um create new policy it's the the way that the school boards work in the state of idaho there's governing entities that help us to be able to make policy and to change policy and the only way we can do that is through our board representatives
006we can't do it by a mob mentality so i i don't i hope that this meeting we're all a team we're we're with you it's not it's not us against you or you against us we're we're here for the good of our children everyone on the board has someone that's either gone through this district or have taught for 30 some years in this district or have kids in the district right now so we're all on the same page and we all got to get through this the things we're going through are tough but so is cuna and so is the our people in this district so i appreciate you coming and just want to move along here let's go to communications and we get a talk about a cune away award superintendent johnson thank you
007chairman and trustees there's not a link to this tonight but i just wanted to share with you um that we're returning the quinoa award to our practice within our district last year was a struggle for us to to do this and so um i wanted to just remind you at our opening session about three weeks ago we gave our first award for the school year to dan hoen he is a teacher at silver trail elementary and we gave him the quinoa away award for leading from where he is so as you know our operations crews are very short-staffed and we had a bunch of chip bark put on the playground and the chipmark sat in piles for quite some time because there wasn't the people to spread it out so dan who knows children well
008knows that a pile of chip bark on a playground what will end up happening to that once the children get there so he spent a whole day on his own time to spread it out to make sure the playground would be safe for our kids when they returned so we awarded him with the kunaway award and announced it to the entire staff at our opening meeting thank you so thank you dan [Applause] and just the other item chairman and trustees that is listed on your agenda as you said chairman grant we've had a lot of information a lot of feedback from patrons in particular around the face covering yes or no people have a variety of experiences that are driving their position on that so what we've done and what we typically do with all
009communications is we link them to our board agenda so you and anybody can see the the input that you've received just from the last board meeting but as you said sherman grant prior to that there were probably an additional 50 to 60 communications on the last agenda thank you thanks um next items is there anything from the consent agenda that we need to pull out okay do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda i'll make the motion that we approve the concentration tonight do we have a second i'll second it all in favor russ hi sally motion carries thank you so moving on to delegations um we do have what was it 10 10 delegates that want to speak one just for the the sake of being fair i i just want everyone
010to understand i talked i talked about it this briefly we have received countless numbers of emails so that we know the position of our patrons in our district and then when i'm looking at these if you can please be respectful um we're trying to give you three minutes so that you can speak to us and remember i've read i've read every single email that i've gotten and i think i've responded to every email that being said if you're covering the same topic that the next person is covering can you please respect be respectful and uh so so what i'm trying to get at is if we have three people that are on the same want to talk about the same thing and it's just repetitive i'd ask that you don't do that um for the
011sake of time and then also to be fair for the people that are pro mask or anti-mass we want to keep it to about the same amount of number for both sides if if you understand what i'm trying to say but so let's um so those that have signed up to be a delegate can you please um just so we don't have to wait for you to can you guys please uh either sit in the same area by the mic or or sit on or next to the wall so that we can because we're going to give you the mic there so that you can speak allison is the one in charge so she'll help us jason accidentally good evening mr chairman i'd like to take a moment to thank the parents attending this meeting
012in support of pushing back against the fear-mongering sweeping the country at the same time i'd like to remind the members of the board that they are just doing a job and answerable to the real authority which is the group of parents of the cuna school district children since march 2020 governments throughout the country and including idaho have forgotten the basic i'm so sorry i'm getting a bunch of feedback it's garbled i cannot hear what he's saying i'm so sorry should i back up further is that better that actually is thank you okay great remember that stand back here okay since march 2020 governments throughout the country and including idaho have forgotten basic civics courses and have assumed the role of authoritarians ruling by fiat they've told us who who could work and who couldn't they've
013made laws from their desk with the stroke of a pin bypassing the legislature they've enforced these illegal rules as citizens they have employed the police to harass those that disagree throw them out of meetings arrest them and keep them with legal bills to ruin them disappointingly the police have complied in this effort i'm the proud stepfather of a legal immigrant this gentleman a young man who got his citizenship and joined the marine corps to serve his country in the protection of the freedom and civil rights that all americans are born with my son served to protect the same freedom that has been usurped over the last two years by various government bodies i for one have had enough let me be crystal clear in my position mr german i will not force my children to
014wear a mask i will not wear a mask you will have to use considerable physical force to inject me or any of my family with experimental politically approved rna vaccines anyone attempting to force me will be deemed to have assaulted my family and violated the nuremberg convention in any number of hipaa laws and i will act as i would if somebody was trying to forcibly inject me or my family with heroin i will not accept any sanction or restriction on my children for not adhering to such a mandate if other free citizens of cuna idaho want to mask them themselves or their children or inject themselves with these experimental vaccines that is their choice and i will respect that however they do not have the right to force it on others nor do they have
015the right to bully or coerce my kids into taking it if any such mandate is passed we will refuse to comply and we will do everything in our power to make sure any trustee that approves such a mandate will never hold elected position again thank you for your time [Laughter] hi so i'm not really a delegate i'm just a mom and i didn't realize there was a color thing so um if there's count i'm not on any side i just wore this today i've lived in cuna for 20 years in idaho for 40 and i'm a mom of a kindergartner and my only child and so she got she got covered in kindergarten and that's her second time getting it it was really bad we followed all the cdc guidelines this summer we did really
016good but uh i don't i just wanted to say i don't think the guidelines are working and i don't think the proposed guidelines are going to work but i also don't think you can force people to wear masks and i don't think you should but so i just wanted to ask if if there was a way to make a classroom available for parents like me who want to have a class that just follows the cdc guidelines because that's what worked for us that's what i would like i don't want to fight with people i don't want to have conflicts i don't want people to feel like they're being forced to do anything but we found that that works for us right now my daughter's not in school she's waiting for online school to start which
017is two hours a day of instruction she used to have music uh library science uh things like that she's gonna have an hour of english an hour of math so i think we all can agree we want to have our kids in person learning um and we can also agree kovit is here to stay but we have different ways of going about it so i would like to see if maybe we could have some choices and one of the choices i would like would be if we could access a classroom or i could maybe some other parents who would like that where the cdc guidelines are followed i i realize that you guys have done a lot of work to create all these guidelines that you did and there are going to be challenges around
018like an idea like mine but i just wanted to bring that up so thank you very much [Laughter] [Applause] short person that i am be able to talk is that okay can everybody get it all right um good evening all i'm i'm my name is richard wortman and i am a grandfather to five children in the district um i am a veteran of two wars and uh i am a retired registered nurse so i'm here to try to recruit you all to please try to fight the hysteria join me in that fight um first of all let's do it back up and try to do a little bit of a risk benefit assessment here uh first of all we'll deal with the benefits of masks we all know scientifically that the coveted vaccine is .1
019that means 0.1 microns in diameter it will pass through very easily anything like this it will also pass through anything like this okay the only thing's going to protect you or give you any benefit in terms of respiratory protection is it is a properly fitted personally fitted medical grade n95 mask that's it that's the science so there is absolutely zero benefit to any of this none whereas the risk to children is significant first of all let's look at the let's look at the health aspects for the children um the for idaho the average uh infection rate for the month for last month was point uh was .65 for the state and 13 percent of that was children that beca that math does the math takes that down to five children infected a month in the
020entire i mean five children defected each day in the entire state of idaho 25 a week okay out of those children the majority are going to have minimal effect from the covid uh the hospitalization rate for children is is is very very very small uh the case fatality rate for children is is 0.6 percent so there's really very little risk for the children becoming infected uh whereas there are significant dangers we all know we know that there's oxygen deprivation involved and oxygen is necessary for proper neural neuronal function and cognitive function you get diminished cognitive function demented drowsiness headaches dizziness not to mention uh the psychological effects of of increased anxiety suicidal ideation and not only that but exposure to environmental pathogens is necessary for the proper development of the children's immunization a children's own
021immune systems without it you've impaired the development of their immune system their ability to resist infection so there are significant dangers involved when there is very little risk and i rise tonight to ask that we please consider not forcing masking on the children and i ask you to please join me in fighting the hysteria thank you very much [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] uh before we start she said she put some pictures up here i don't know if you guys can pass them around if you're able to so my name is amanda herrity and i'd like to start off by thanking you all for all that you do for our schools i know you didn't sign up for this unimaginable position serving our children in our community shouldn't be scary or intimidating and i'm truly sorry you
022have to put up with all this we are where we are and we can't change the times that we're in but you sit in a position of power to do something so if you got the pictures you each told a picture of my sweet six-year-old son kaden kaden was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called neurofibromatosis nf for short and it causes tumors to grow on his nerve system and his brain kaden has been under chemotherapy for three and a half years now he was at risk of going blind from tumors in and around his eye that wrapped around to his brain kaden also has autism adhd and severe speech and developmental delays caden has gone through more in his six short years of life than most people experience in a lifetime and he always
023prevails he is definitely my little superhero caden and i have been home for 18 months now and i've kept him safe if we could continue staying home we would but i don't have a choice anymore an online school for him isn't an option now his safety is in your hands this year cayden started special education kindergarten here in cuna he is the sweetest little boy he's funny caring and has a smile that brightens the world it's imperative for him to be at an in-person school so his development can thrive but he deserves to be safe as well as a school board you pride yourselves on making the health and safety of our children a top priority we as a community need to protect one another and part of that duty and for our community to
024function we need to provide selfless contributions it's a small price to pay to wear masks in school so kids like my son can be in school and be safe american academy of pediatrics reported over 500 000 new cases and kids since school has started a few weeks ago that's a 240 percent increase since july aap said children currently account for 29 of the cases nationwide masks offer a layer of protection to reduce the transmission of copid it is only it is only the ones causing doubt that are creating division and confusion this is about everyone i've heard you say that the plan for masks is based on numerous factors one of them being the number of positive cases in our area idaho has had a 60 increase of positive cases in the last two weeks
025wearing a mask provides protection and prevention to further reduce positive cases i don't want my son to be one of those cases positive cases or worse it seems too risky to wait until the numbers increase to decide to wear masks i don't need to remind you that the hospitals are filling up very quickly as this virus progresses we are seeing more healthy and more young people getting very sick please don't punish my son for the irrationality of other parents we need to do whatever it takes to keep everyone safe please require all staff and children to wear masks in school i won't scream at you threaten you i won't rise up as a mob and show up on your doorstep i just want you to do the right thing thank you for listening to my
026story and i trust that you'll make the right decision that's in our children's best interests [Applause] [Laughter] okay hold on i'm here today to express my concern for my school-aged children i've got three kids here high schooler 10 year old seven year old my family and i do not want to wear a mask to school my children don't want to wear masks we don't want to be forced if you feel you need to be protected wear a mask or seek homeschool or educate your children yourself if you feel you need this protection you need to wear an n95 mask because a do-it-yourself diy face covering will not do anything okay we need communication children are learning how to speak they need to see faces they need to see expression how are they going to pronunciate
027something when they cannot read your lips they're anxious depressed i've seen my kids so sad we had six plus months of zoom school my kids couldn't learn learn through a computer should we be forced to do that i was forced to homeschool my children my second grader has had about eight months of kindergarten she's in second grade now she's up to grade level i had to do it all myself do you wear a mask in public all day every day do you go in the restaurant or the grocery store are you wearing a mask are you pumping your gas are you are you having a mask on for eight hours a day and a lack of oxygen to your brain where you're bumping things over can't pick things up you you go to get in
028your car and you're gonna drive with your mask on with nobody in your car where's the logic i'm sorry i will be here to fight for my children i will not put them in school with a mask mandate there's also legislature here from the state of idaho put in place can pass it around i didn't make copies but its mask mandates prohibited saying that you do not need a mask face shield or other facial covering for the purpose of preventing or slowing the spread of contagious or an infectious disease a face mask face shield court face covering shall not be required by the state or a political subdivision as a condition for entry education employment or other services so you guys can read up on this i'm here to say no on the mass mandate
029if you need to protect yourself or your children go through those measures to do so if you want to wear a mask move to meridian or california or boise if you want to do that go there you can be in a mask all day long i left i'm the new invasive species sorry guys i'm here from california but i'm not going to bring my liberal agendas here and tell everybody to go mask up and vaccinate i'm not gonna vaccinate my children or wear them hello okay so pretty much everybody just to save time everybody kind of covered what i was going to cover so i just would like to say that i'm against the masks if you want to wear the mask that's fine but i think the kids should they should have the option
030they should have the choice and that's about all i have to say actually everybody kind of covered my stuff really good so [Applause] [Laughter] thank you for being respectful there's as we are right now there's four people that have spoke for mass and we have a couple people um actually go ahead christy can you speak to us christy bruce all right so my name is kirsty and i'm talking today about social emotional learning and critical race theory which i know tends to be a subject of it's not being taught in the schools but i do understand from what i have seen in the textbooks and what i'm experiencing with my child at the high school that there are yeah it's garbled again i'm so sorry do i need to step back that's better back here
031okay all right so what i was saying is after going through the textbooks and looking at the curriculum and then talking to different parents and looking at the queso website and just doing all the research that we have been doing the understanding is the governor passed the bill that bans critical race theory in schools but it does not actually ban critical race theories in schools now the theory itself is not being taught within the schools but components of the theory is in schools and it social emotional learning does balance that up into critical race theory and the social emotional learning is really overstepping the boundaries and creating empathetic students instead of educating the teach the children and when you get into the high school you have teachers asking pronouns you have teachers who have binary
032flags they have homophobic rules in the classroom which is totally inappropriate and that is where it oversteps the boundary and so we are no longer educating and we are empowering and creating inclusiveness within the school which also goes along with the mission statement with empowering our children giving them authority which the children do not need the parents are the authority the teachers are the authorities the students don't need that and then inclusive meaning we are being inclusive to the students that these teachers are trying to be empathetic and sympathetic to and that is not unifying everybody within the school and i just feel like we need to really look at that and see what is going on and not allow teachers to act like that and the classroom is completely inappropriate and as a parent
033it's really discerning to have a child to walk in the classroom and know that they're not included in that classroom because they don't have the right sexual orientation or whatever it is that that teacher is trying to do in the classroom and it's totally inappropriate and i feel like it really needs to be looked at and it really needs to be addressed and the parents concerns about the situations and about what is happening really needs to be looked at including with the mission statements thank you [Applause] how's that sound is it okay my name is gail czar we've lived in cuna for quite some time we do not have children but we felt it was important to come out here and support the parents with children i just found out about this less than three
034hours ago and so i put togeth i did some quick research math is covered real yes the narrative is very very exaggerated though and the numbers that the ida state of idaho provides proves that in addition i have spent over 15 years in health care so i have doctors np's pas nurses administrators and other support staff as friends and family today on i coronavirus.idaho.gov the numbers are updated at five so these are yesterday's numbers there's and 343 cases there has been 2 485 deaths it's kind of scary but when you break it down the death rate is 1.05 percent or as i would prefer to look at it the survival rate is 98.95 this is from age ranges 0 to 80. did you know that the average lifespan in idaho is 79. so let's remove
035those ones from 80 do they deserve to live absolutely that's what i'm not saying but it has the numbers 1191 of those deaths or 48 were over 80. so if we take those numbers out there have been 1 294 deaths um or 0.55 percent or survival rate of 99.45 percent in september there was 54 deaths i have personal knowledge of three of those or about 12 under 80. let me tell you about those three deaths a male in 20 in his 20s over 400 pounds a female in her 30s with an a1c over 14 normal is under six a female in her 40s who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day these losses are tragic but these people are not the picture of health is this what you're hearing on the news absolutely not please
036ask yourself why and stand up for these kids [Applause] good evening my name is lisa lynn i have three children that live in this district two or school age originally i wanted to come up here and present data to support my stance against mask mandates but if we're honest with ourselves it's not going to change anybody's mind so instead i've come up with a demonstration i have red paint this will be your coveted droplets okay now i'm going to tell you a little story i spent the last decade working in a large hospital where experience is pandemic from the inside prior to tsar's kobe 2 outbreak we were well versed in the proper usage of personal protective equipment we received refresher modules every year to stay compliant with protocols not once did those powerpoint presentations
037change in our understanding of how to properly dawn and off ppe here is my point masks are only as effective as the user it is unanimously understood within the medical medical community that once a mask was touched that mask was being contaminated and discarded i don't know about you but i often see adults frequently touching their masks with potentially contaminated hands how can we expect our children to fare better in fact prior to my turn up here speaking i counted the number of times the board members have touched their faces i stopped counting at 80. did you guys even notice without washing your hands before touching your mask or your face you have you may have contaminated it so ask this of the board please keep masks optional but encourage hand hygiene these contaminated masks
038are potentially hazardous petri dishes with not only covid but with meningitis tuberculosis pneumonia rsv please do not force our children to strap these dangerous pathogens to their faces masks do not protect us from dirty hands as this paint hopefully has demonstrated for you thank you [Applause] geez i should have bought my six foot two twelve-year-old to save me from this my name is sandra allen i guess my affiliation would be what we affectionately call the allen tribe which is my four grandchildren that i'm raising they've all gone to school through the cuna school district here my oldest is now in high school the youngest in fourth grade if i was to come up here and light a cigarette how many of you would lose your friggin minds why is that because the science says me
039blowing that pathogen at you is going to affect the health of all of you and because we're a caring community we aren't going to allow that it's the same thing with this there are rules that say we can't do things in a community because they affect those around us spewing harmful chemicals or pathogens is one of those we follow certain rules for a very good reason usually to protect others in our community we may have a right to kill ourselves in any number of ways smoking overeating drinking drugs whatever nobody has the right to inflict that on somebody else i am so sickened by the equivalency or the excuses that somebody weighed 400 pounds or smoked a cigarette or had diabetes or was born disabled that it's just i don't care what it was that
040is appalling as a human being in this society excuse me i'll go on far from compromising civil liberties mass mandates further them protecting the most vulnerable people children in this case making it even more vital my children your children everyone's children the argument that the argument can be made that there is no scientific evidence of mass protection is absurd and i won't go any farther on it refuse to argue with people that argue with science however there still seems to be vast misunderstanding purported here by some people that claim to be medical professionals of the purpose of the mask it is to protect others from you not not me from you so my daughter wearing her mask in school protects other people's childrens from what she may have but others refusal to wear masks endangers
041her and every one of my children that have needs it is absurd absurd that i was told since my daughter wears a mask she won't have to quarantine if exposed that's not how any of this works why should the health and safety of our children be controversial what are we teaching our children about interviews individual and community responsibility to others to some to be free is to take no responsibility to be truly free is to be responsible responsible for the health and safety of others even if it is sometimes inconvenient i'm not going to go to the dashboards and read the stories i would remind the board i'm sorry your obligation is to provide a safe and healthy environment for every child okay so now we're moving along here thank you for those that signed
042up for delegates and thanks for being uh respectful um [Music] unfinished business an update on our operational challenges as a result of covet 19 the delta variant assistant superintendent reinhardt i've always wanted to yell at you chairman grant honorable trustees i want to give you just a brief sense of of where we're at in terms of staffing it's national news that there are staffing challenges everywhere i have the honor of working with six fantastic supervisors that keep keep the wheels on our school district first our healthcare team we are fully staffed with nurses we are once one short on health aides you had approved five additional health aides they've been tremendous help to us transportation has faced challenges we've started to lose the ability to transport teams at night some of that's some that's short
043staffing some of that sickness of our drivers and so both of those things have happened in the last week i think there are three incidences of of things that we couldn't fully staff in the evening we have been able to maintain routes during the day however we have both of our mechanics normally driving and everyone in the office driving which is not ideal we would normally like to have at least one mechanic back and at least one dispatcher if not two dispatchers to keep everything moving and and safe so transportation is an issue child nutrition also is facing challenges we went into the year down 20 percent on our staff overall between sickness and attrition we've lost others we're it's fair to say that schools that cook need two more people per school we've sent
044out a volunteer form and our our staff our fantastic cuna staff has signed up to volunteer during their own time as well as we've shared that with the community and we're looking forward to to other volunteers helping to prepare meals for our students we feed about i'm going to get the number wrong vow about 2 700 meals 3 000 meals a day a fair number of meals and so it takes quite a team and we are we are significantly short on that custodial staff is not much different we have custodians that are driving around building the building a lot of overtime we're a little worried about injuries burnout and so custodial staff is shy also our technicians response partially responsible for this evening thank you very much and our maintenance team are fully staffed they
045like everyone in the in the country battles uh absences at times based on sickness but they are fully functioning so i wanted to give you a sense of where we're at as a team our classified team is about 300 people strong our certified team is about 320 people strong substitutes is the final thing i would cover substitutes is significant uh i see we have teachers in the front row we have teachers scattered throughout we are they're districts that are filling 50 of the jobs that need filled we're happy to say we're work better than that at this point but it's still only 60 to 70 percent filled that means teachers needing a day off because they're sick or because their son's getting married or or something like that a lot of times the teacher next
046door is having a run next door and cover things and so another maybe another plea to the public to apply to be a substitute but also to to just let you know that it remains a challenge for us districts that have raised their wage have faced similar challenges uh we find that there are people that simply don't want some of those positions but we need our community there's a lot of energy here tonight and it's our hope that our community rallies to keep our kids in school and keep substitutes and food and wheels rolling does the monies that the governor just delegated to schools recently is that going to help do you see it doing anything with that we have we haven't seen that money or had any guidance on that money we look forward
047to the guidance we did have word from governor little's office and we're happy to hear and we're sorting through it that state employees in the executive branch are now allowed to substitute in a school district and not have any time taken away from their sick leave or their personal or their vacation time so we have our first state employees showing up later this week from health and human services that's going to volunteer to sub for us they're going to have to undergo the same training all of our subs undergo they're going to have to go undergo the same screening but we're we're grateful for any of those steps superintendent johnson's actually asked the governor's advisors to consider other other means including national guard it's important to keep our kids in school so we are um
048we're grateful for those steps and we as soon as we have some guidance on that money we'll certainly forward it to you and we'll embrace every dime of it to strengthen our sub pool are there any other questions trustee trustee macarthur could we get a microphone for her um one of the problems is that school board members can't work in the district and we had talked last year about them lifting that restriction i'm just wondering if that has been considered have you guys heard anything about that from yeah i i do not know of any action trustee macarthur uh we do think could take some take legal action or legislative action in order to make that happen that would be a great thing to uh find find a way to maybe speak to some legislators
049about another thing that i was um i i have a sister that just went and looked into being a sub at west ada and they're removing a lot of their um like the lengthy processes because the trainings and everything it takes forever to qualify to become a sub um so i'm wondering if we've done that but also i i want to make sure that safety isn't necessarily being you know compromised i know fingerprinting is part of it for good reason um but at the same time like is there a way we can rush them through without compromising that kind of safety thank you we discussed that today at our human resources and payroll team to make sure that we had efficient processes but also balancing that out with safety just because um agencies can't share
050background checks and so to still have to require some sort of on behalf of you to still require some sort of screening to make sure that we have people that are safe around children and then some amount of training so that they have some bearing on you know i might i might drive a bus for the sheriff's office but maybe i've never been in a third grade class i haven't been in a third grade classroom since i was in one myself and and so it is a balance we will i do uh guarantee you that we're actively evaluating that process and trying to make it as efficient as possible trustee macarthur it is my understanding though that school board members can volunteer to help we just can't be paid well yeah working for the district
051right yeah so we can volunteer to sub we just can't be paid for it thank you do they still have to go through the background checks and the fingerprints and all that too okay the volunteer background check is literally a quick computer screen done on behalf of our human resources team it doesn't require uh fingerprints it's a back it's a quick background check to just make sure that there's no no cases of any kind of child abuse or any kind of assault on that person's background it's very quick and very um easy transition thank you um consider updating the current face covering policy um superintendent johnson if i might um before we go into this subject i might also say that the investment that you all made in um with using some of our federal
052funds to hire interventionists we haven't seen too much of that actually happen we have the people in place but a lot of times those people are also subbing so the the worry that all of us have in this room and i know it's on your minds and i know i and you are losing sleep over um catching our children up right providing them the education that they need um it's it's been a challenge because we had a plan to implement that and that plan has it happens on some days and some days it doesn't because we need people in the classroom so that's another piece of the the work and the worry within the challenges so trustees i'm here to present an option um within the very um difficult uh topic of face coverings for
053the school year as you know last school year um we required it any time a student was in person and there were some exceptions that were made for for students who had medical conditions um some behavior conditions those sorts of things but overall our students were face coverings all of last year um towards the end of last school year um i worked with people who had differing opinions as are expressed tonight to develop maybe a new look at instead of requiring it could we use the data that we have to make decisions and in may as it says up here the board adopted you all adopted the plan green yellow red and the case data um would be would be dependent upon cuna city and individual schools so would be we move from everybody to
054a school by school method so some things changed since may and if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide one was the central district health who is our local health district adopted the send centers for disease controls methodology so the numbers in the total cases per thousand changed they also added another color and um so that was a a change that's going to be represented in a recommendation um that has had input from um the differing views on this topic so that was just more this slide is just more information of things that changed since may if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide so we've we've had again lots of input um in particular talking to parents and staff from um all views within face coverings and we came up with a
055proposal for you tonight what this how this is different is really represented in the red colors from the previous adopted plan so what this recommendation does is it integrates the center for disease controls numbers because the numbers from central district health they would even say were somewhat arbitrary because they didn't have guidance at the time and it also represents a percentage of positive cases per school as opposed to a 100 000 number but it still includes data from the city the other thing that you see there so i'll go through this so low transmission a city case rate of 10 or less and that's per hundred thousand and that data we get from central district health but that rate is different the school percentage of positive cases less than or equal to one percent so
056that's how we would kind of determine what low transmission means and so based on the school based on the city if the city is in green or yellow and the school is in green we're in green which is where we are right now um with all of our schools as of last report in yellow is moderate transmission and that mass would be recommended instead of optional and we added required for staff and primarily that decision was reached because of the number of staff we're starting to see be absent because of um being ill from covet 19. and we don't have a lot of people to fill in the gap as you know and then the percentages would be or the city case rate would be between 11 and the school percentage of positive cases less
057than 3 percent so the school would be in yellow the city would be in yellow or red and then finally high transmission and to be honest i don't know if we would get to this point because in some of the cases as we've already seen we've had to close initial point because we didn't have adults there to teach and we didn't have subs to teach we had to send home a classroom at cuna high school of students who we had i think four out of the nine students who were sick and the transmission was in the classroom so what we have tended to see when when we see small groups of spread with code 19 is particularly in maybe vulnerable health condition students with vulnerable health conditions is is sending them home to to quarantine
058for a time and and removing and moving to remote learning for a short period of time so the the school percentages would be positive cases of five percent or more so the school would be in red the city would be really in red at that point yellow or red depending on the the significance and people have asked me how do you determine a hundred thousand you know in the city of cuna because we don't have a hundred thousand people here so it's a pretty simple math and i put it there on the top just to make it transparent it's the number of positive cases divided by the city population and it's multiplied by a hundred thousand so that's that's a way for us to determine the the um the per 100 000. so if you
059want to see kind of how we're looking at this um and i appreciate carelessa for running the computer for me so we're currently building an online tool that combines the city data with the students staff data and with some of the changes kind of pending on depending on what happens tonight i can give you an idea of what it looks like we already have a student dashboard and a staff dashboard that has been developed with matt who's out there thank you matt his talents to put these two dashboards together we've been using that since after christmas break um and so the idea would be to to develop this so it's similarly um transparent at any time usually we have data updating every 30 minutes so careless if you wouldn't mind clicking on that spreadsheet link
060so here's just kind of a visual of that information in action one of our challenges is central district health like many places as also struggling with some shortages of staff and they're a little bit behind on their updates on their website so i have the links we don't need to go there but across the top in cell e and in cell g and cell h at the very top um there's links to our data dashboard and links to ada county's dashboard so we just we go to central district health dashboard look at the the positive cases for the city of cuna they update it every monday they kind of let us know when that happens and we put the number of positive cases in there and then there's a mathematical equation behind that so you
061can see kind of where we are within the city as of um last week with the most current data there then if you wouldn't mind scrolling to the next tab over that says weekly school counts and actually if you go one more over school percentages so then what we did is we said okay based on the total population of staff and students at each school and this changes as you know depending on the number of students we have enrolled every day but we took our fifth day of enrollment and just said okay here's here's what we have um you can see the threshold for each school um at what would be one percent three percent and five percent for each school so then if you wouldn't mind going back to the weekly school counts so
062then that's translated every two weeks we would give an update to families on where their school is and we did that at our la not last friday's update but the friday before and just said we're all in low transmission so that's that first kind of color block there to column f but starting with last week which is column g though those are all the positive cases that we've had staff and students as of noon on friday just so you could kind of see what potentially could happen and then i updated yesterday's data into the spreadsheet so you could kind of get a sense of where we might be um next year at a or next week at the end of this week for the next two weeks so the other part of this plan is
063that every two weeks we would be reassessing um the status and the input that i received from parents is that that they were willing to the people that were maybe on the fence against masks or against nasa things like we never thought it was going to be all year compared to last year and so looking at this in shorter chunks of time would it wouldn't be a forever thing it would be a um depending on the number of cases um for two weeks increments i know that's a lot of information um to share with you um do you have any questions about the data i know you've seen this before that you guys have gone through to be able to show it to us in numbers and make it make sense thank you um and
064i know you know our continued efforts to be transparent fully transparent with our public um matt who's helping run the meeting right now has is helping to develop a tool that won't be so confusing this is what you're seeing right here that'll be more like our other tools so you can see um you know what who's gone every day um you know the number of students that are gone the number of staff that's gone for covid related reasons so if if you wouldn't mind going back to the presentation carelessa thank you that's the data and before you is the proposal and i stand ready for any questions i know this is a tough decision so wendy this is sorry so this is going school to school it's not the whole district as a whole but
065it's each individual school is looked at separately are you looking at classrooms separately also or schools as a total we've we've looked at schools as a hold from an enforcement kind of it's hard to this classroom has mass would we try it you bet we've seen and from last year to the things that we've learned usually when there's we haven't had we haven't had in the past since like closed a whole school we did a couple times usually because of subs but what we've been doing is kind of dealing with the um challenge classroom maybe a group of classrooms you know looking at it um at what what is actually going on in that school or that wing of of the classroom so i don't know if i answered that very well but would we
066consider it yes so i just want to especially if you told us too sorry i just want to reiterate this is by school and not by the whole district so i just high school and i guess i'll start off by a big step here this has been a hard hard decision and i know you guys have all looked at probably every single email that has come in and you know it is overwhelming to me i'm just going to say that up front because i really want to do what's best for kids and this community and to hear these people here and i appreciate all of the emails we've received i appreciate all of the people who have spoke tonight i know that they're passionate about what they believe and that being said um i kind
067of like what we have here and i'll i'll tell you why because i think it addresses for me and i know that there are people on both sides we're not going to make everybody happy but address this to me if we're low in that school then it's optional if it starts to go up and i feel as impor as a parent and a board member i feel i don't have the right to make people mandate things but that being said i also feel that if people are getting sick and kids are hurting then we have to do something and i guess the red gives a progression here and the green and the yellow and it's not my favorite but i don't have a great answer well kovac's not your favorite no very yeah it's not
068my favorite i don't have a great answer but i do like this and i like taking it case by case school by school and taking it not what's good for ada county but what's good for cuna and i appreciate that so i guess i'm i'm feeling like i think this looks good um is it the best nope um but is the best for right now i guess that's how i feel so that's my two cents and i'll add more if i need to are you making motion no i'm just talking about it right now i'm in the talking phase but it might become yeah so i will add my opinion to this because i know everyone's so excited to hear my opinion too um for me i feel that um it is we have passionate
069people on both sides of um of this problem and um i feel that one way of doing it takes away people's right to choose for themselves and i think that that is important um the other side allows everyone to make the decision on what's best for them what's best for their family what's best for their children and um i i know that there are um instances where there are health concerns for some people um i i get that i know that on the other side there are health concerns for wearing masks what it's doing to children um with the depression levels and mental health and those types of things anxiety and and such so i i know that there are problems on both sides and i feel that for us the best thing that we
070can do is allow parents to consider their personal situations and their child's personal needs and do what is best for their child and it is not our right to take away those that option for people um and so i feel that um making it mask optional is the best way to proceed and then when it goes into higher levels i'm still not entirely sure about requiring mass for staff especially because they have been vaccinated um but i definitely think that just recommending it for students at that level is best and i think that we need to make sure that that's what it stands as is a recommendation and only when we get to the red do we require that and at that point then we will definitely need to make sure that as a district
071we're prepared with options for those that do not want to have to have their child in mass or those that are really concerned about their child's health having online options expanding that whatever that looks like so that's another discussion another issue but as far as the mass concern i i think that we need to allow parents to consider the needs of their family and make those decisions for their children thank you [Music] [Applause] we have emotion if there's no further discussion i'll make a motion um i'm going to i'm not exactly sure how to word it but i'm going to say that we i make a motion that we accept the cunes school district face covering as it has been presented with mass optional and recommended as it goes into yellow and not required until
072red and i'll second that so we have a second um all in favor oh russ go ahead so trustee macarthur just so i'm clear are you is your motion to adopt the recommendation as it's proposed or are you changing something about the about the recommended auction no that is the recommended option is uh um [Music] sort of i guess i do have a little bit of an issue as far as the required for staff in yellow um i just feel like if they are concerned for their own safety then they can wear a mask if they have not been able to be vaccinated for some reason that type of thing but i just feel like if somebody's nervous about it then they can wear a mask that's so i i'm i'm just not sure why
073we're requiring it for staff at yellow and i guess that's a good question why is that something that the staff felt good about um the the requirement really had to do with our staffing challenges um with the hope that it would prevent further illness um from transmitting so we wouldn't have to have subs and that kind of so we wouldn't have to close a school classroom is there a way that we can have further discussion on that or is or i would like to maybe [Music] separate children in mask and staff in mass i don't think that they need to be combined i know that that's what the presentation was but to me i don't feel that they need to be lumped together i don't know how to do that so so so i i'm
074maybe you can restate your emotions okay so i would like to make a motion to accept the cuna school district uh face coverings policy as presented for students i would like to table the cunes school district face coverings as presented for staff for the moderate for moderate transmission yeah for the moderate transmission i i accept it in green and red so when you table that you're just saying that it works i want to remove it from my i'm sorry i know that makes me a troublemaker but i i feel like i'm not really sure i don't know i just am not comfortable with making staff do it either so kind of the same feelings that i had with requiring staff to get the vaccine in the first place i feel like they need to make
075that decision for themselves and so we ended up recommending it and making it really easy for them to get that but it was still their choice and i always fight for choice [Applause] so that i can be clear on your motion you're recommending that we approve this only for students now re-discuss the issue of staff and come back later to approve a plan for staff yes i think also once we come back sorry i'd like to know what the staff feels and how they feel so if we could have some of that information that would be great too i think maybe is there any information from the teachers union as far as this goes russ wants to so so just to be clear make sure that we're we're talking about the same thing would it
076would it work uh trustee macarthur if we uh just change the the wording to say that that your motion is to adopt this recommendation except to say and yellow mask recommended for students and staff so just strike required and required for those three words and required for with the expectation that we may come back and revisit that issue at a future board meeting does that clarify things i would be perfectly happy with that yeah if we just uh changed it and kept it to recommend it for students and staff i mean we're talking about educators we're talking about smart people we're talking about people that are you know going to be um smart about their own health and they have been they've been you know clean new rooms and all of those things they've been
077taking care to make it a safe environment for everybody i just don't think that we should take the choice away from them so i would i would agree with that if we could just um accept this policy but change the word required for staff to recommend it for students and staff i think i would be happy with that but if you want to continue the conversation about requiring it then we can table that little chunk for later i i personally don't want to table it i want to put this today i want to make a decision now and if numbers change then obviously we have to bring it up again so then do i have the ability and the right to change the word all right so i make a motion that we accept the
078cunes school district face covering policy as presented with a change in yellow to mass recommended for students and staff i'll second that um all in favor russ um hi uh sally yes yes and joy yes motion carries [Applause] superintendent johnson i would like to see though if we do get into that situation if we are seeing significant staffing problems that are going to require us to have to close schools then we should revisit yeah and and i would agree i i think i like the way that we've done this i like the way it's based on data i like the way it's based on schools but i think we have to retain the ability i don't think we foreclose the possibility that we may have to revisit this issue at some point in the future
079so thank you so moving on um considering or consider the ksd operational plan um assistant superintendent uh beckendahl and dave reinerson reinhart sorry chairman grant and trustees this is the operational plan that that you adopted uh some time ago and as things have changed we have adopted or adapted to the conditions therein as was your directive superintendent beckett all assistant superintendent beckett on myself here are not to go through every slide but we do want to highlight some of the changes and then we'll be asking you for action to adopt the operational plan as as it is uh care alyssa would you mind going to slide 10. i'll highlight a significant change the as we went into this year and notice significant gains or significant numbers in that have had coveted experiences or been diagnosed
080with the virus our dedicated health team led by nurse jordan uh had found themselves in a spot where it is simply uh has not been possible to keep up the standards that were in place when we were trying to eliminate transmission that's kind of the a nice piece at the top which is where we were last year really trying to eliminate transmission if you remember language of crushing the curve we find ourselves now in a spot where we're saying the virus is here we are living with it we are now trying to manage our life with it and so our health team simply couldn't and central district health can't keep up the guidelines that were in place to crush the curve but now we're we are we've shifted uh rather than contact tracing and quarantine
081hundreds and hundreds of of students and staff any given day we're now in a spot where we have had to say we inform people when there's a positive case in the classroom and we take that very seriously but we cannot keep up with tracing any everybody that's been within six feet for 15 minutes central district health frankly has also stopped doing that they they've stopped they can't keep up with the phone calls and so our the emphasis of our team now is to say stay at home if you're sick take a test get a vaccine if that's your choice and don't come to school if you're sick don't come to work if you're sick please do not and that's been really our a pretty major shift i think it's been a shift and if i
082could put words in their mouth that's been reluctant but necessary and because they they feel very strongly about health measures in our school but they also have have to be able to go home every night and and spend five minutes with their spouses and so we have made that shift and i think it's going relatively well and the the other slide i would just link you to there's a lot of misinformation out about vaccine vaccination policies i just want to call your attention to the fact that we've linked that those vaccination policies here um you adopted the vaccination policy for our staff last year one of you i called out the fact that it we made it an optional we encouraged we gave time off we we provided a free vaccination and well in the
083future but we made that their choice and also a link to our immunization policy district that that has been updated regularly through the years and has not required a covered vaccination despite maybe what some people say those would be the two things i would highly let's see i don't know okay um jeremy grant and members of the board um this was just this is actually something kind of fun to be able to report um with part of the money that was approved that we received um in the spring we were able to provide summer school for all of our for all students k-12 now the secondary 6-12 or actually 7-12 we do have an alternate application that we receive from the state so we are funded a little bit with that but we haven't been
084funded for an elementary summer school in the past and so with the esser money that we did receive we were able to have summer school we invited all kids all elementary kids that wanted to participate we had two different locations silver trail and reed the program ran for three weeks they were called summer heroes we had 274 elementary kids they did stem activities that revolved around reading and math and they incorporated science into that and they did some fun activities we have lots of pictures and lots of we walked through classrooms and saw a lot of fun things happening we were able to provide transportation too that was one thing we haven't been able to do even with our secondary programs is is have transportation but we knew we couldn't get the kids there if
085we didn't provide transportation so we were able to provide transportation for the kids we had the k-5 program we had the k-12 migrant summer program and then we had the 612 program and the 612 program focused on like closing the gap and working on some of the standards that the students had missed in in that time we only ran our programs in june because that's what our teachers were able to do everybody needed a break and we realized that so we said what can we do that can have the biggest impact in the summer at least in june and we feel like we did a really a good job as best we could um we were able to with this um 612 program two weeks before school started well actually i should say nine ninth
086nine twelve program two weeks before school started we were able to have two of our interventionists at the high school call the families that maybe didn't weren't able to come to summer school or we didn't have that second session in july like we've had in the past and to ask them like can you come in and visit with us we want to build a plan we want to help you get back on track so they spent two weeks calling over 200 families we were able to get i think they said about 114 or 170 i can't remember off on my number so i don't want to say it but to get those kids to come back build plans to work with them that were all these kids that were behind and help them get into
087interventions work on the standards that they were missing and try to get them caught up a little bit more once school started so that was pretty exciting we have another piece of um that's just unfolding right now that's new to everybody but it's that initial point it's an after-school program that jason's working on and it's going to be connected to the boise state a piece where they're going to take kids over there also but it's a new after school program we're just starting to work on and it will be with some of the same money that we use for for our summer learning last month so we have some really cool things happening we have an expansion with avid all of our schools have been doing training in professional learning communities we have hired interventionists
088to work with our students in tiers one two and three at every school and our teachers are required to keep their schoology up in case we do have to have a bug out plan or the kids that have to be online or that are quarantined so that we can we can try and do our best to keep kids learning and focused on what we really want is them to be successful we had an online option through idla idla was great this year they had an elementary program i know it doesn't work i mean we want kids to be in person and face to face but it doesn't work for some kids for for some reason so idla has worked with us to have an elementary option as well for those that need it and we
089do have that same option for some of our high school kids too so we've got a lot of good things happening and we were able to do a lot of good things this summer and we did use the money we feel in a really good way to help really put it towards students and get them working with our teachers who we know are amazing any questions amanda um thank you so much for doing this because this is where i really want to see us go what are we going to do with kids who have lost a year basically and uh so to see this is good but i really want to see us do more and take a look at that you know what are we going to do there um chairman nixon one of
090the things i would say with our interventionist that we are able to hire every school has that in the high school has two that are really working with those families that really were behind there were 200 families that were called and we do have obviously more kids who are in need of that but they're tracking that data and really trying to figure out different ways to help help those kids close those gaps and the interventionists in the elementary schools and middle schools are also working on those tier two interventions wendy and i are going to be going out probably starting next week and our three goals will be to talk to the principals about their professional goals but also show us what the interventionists are doing let's go to the classroom show us what that
091tier 2 looks like and we want to see what that looks like in every building and talk into to your point and be able to report back to you what's happening thank you for that but yeah this is really where i want to see us headed so thanks i think i don't know if i'm on maybe i'm still on come on okay um so one of the things that i've been worried about i've always been worried about the bubble kids that's what we decided to call instead of the crack kids kids following the cracks but um i feel like there's probably more of those right now and um i find myself a few weeks into school here and you know some kids share a lot some kids don't share anything about school and i find
092that with my high schooler um i'm getting regular reports it's pretty detailed i'm not getting that for my middle schooler and so i know that i'll have the option of seeing like some tests but that's like at the end of october and that's a lot of time wasted that i could have been maybe intervening a little bit more at home and so i know that there's probably a lot more of those little bubble babies bubble kids and so maybe the teachers aren't getting that information out as readily or whatever but how as a parent should people get involved a little more quickly a little earlier on without it going two and a half months that's just kind of the way i feel like two and a half months a lot of wasted time if i
093could have done something sooner um we invested as you know um uh trustee macarthur in a new um assessment tool in our middle school and i can't for the life of me right now tell you what it is star thank you it's a simple word i should be able to remember and we hope that that information is new so that that information can be giving you some reports to be able to know more than waiting till october we'll follow up with you as far as where we are in the implementation of that i know one of our middle schools fremont piloted it yet last year and so they're familiar with it um but cuna middle school would be new so we'll follow up with you and let you know so that'd be one answer is
094to to be able to take some of those i'm going to call them just in time assessments formative assessments to be able to tell you kind of where your child is so and then part of what that resource does is it tells teachers and or parents here's some things you can do to kind of help close that gap or accelerate learning if they're ahead thanks for reminding me i thought she was talking about power school that's why she's a tool but yes star and our teachers at the high school are using it too and they're doing some training on it because they haven't used it but it'll tell you what your reading level would be it'll do this assessment on your on your student so we're i think they're still in the middle of working
095through that with all the kids so we should be able to report back to you soon do we have a motion to accept the ksd operational plan mr chairman i would move to approve the ksd's operational plan to be in compliance with the federal american rescue plan do you have a second i'll second that all in favor russ yes sally hi kim hi joy hi motion carries thank you thanks for all your work consider the revision or the revised approach to the district's position on the community growth assistant superintendent reinhardt chairman grant i'd also like to call administrator reno who's my partner in this important work in the july meeting which i attended uh virtually you had had it the board had had a discussion on development in our community and ended it with a
096charge to us to go back and to not just study what what's happening but also to come back with a proposal one of the things i like about cuna school district is i think we lead the way i really believe as you look at the programs we've initiated through the years we've led the way in many ways and i think tonight we bring very good news about another way that we believe that we can lead the way as a school district and as a community robbie reno is my partner in this work and i'm going to turn the first portion of the presentation to him chairman grant members of the board thank you uh what you're seeing right here can you go back that goes what you're seeing right here this is the current city
097of cuna um this is mostly cuna school district boundaries you see a lot of colors there the the dark green is stuff that's already been planted been approved by the city council approved by planning zoning the light green is phases future phases of subdivisions that have already been built the red is sorry the orange is a pre-application so they're getting all their stuff in order to go to planning and zoning and they get the approved by planning and zoning they're in that process the red is what they the city calls in the weeds there are ideas from developers people who want to do communities build apartments build commercial buildings so that's how this map is designed let's go next slide please so if you look at that map that we just saw and on the
098right here if everything is built out in that map there'll be 16 409 units or homes built every home or unit that's built is 0.6 students per home that would double our district just with that build out we don't know how long that build out is but it's coming it's already past the phases it's coming just last year in 2020 the city cuna built a thousand homes in one year they used to do 400 to 500 a year they're now to pace a thousand um the new urban neural no plan for city cuna is putting a possible new bridge over indian creek at a different another bridge over any creek and then in the tracks that'll cause more growth um as you can tell cuna is turning into a real suburban community i just talked
099to one of our patrons who is a businessman in the community and there's not a lot of commercial growth and it's it's impacting how this community is it's a it's a suburban community next slide so that's why we are dave and i do this work because it's been commissioned since the last 10 years and 200 since this commute has been growing and the the two plans the board 10-year plan of the 2016 match plan they've mapped out this growth in the 10-year plan there's been a low medium and high projection we're at the medium projection where we are meeting those those projections right there in the 2016 master plan it was pretty they projected that there would be a i can't remember the number but a 93 000 or 106 000 job gap that we're
100seeing besides kobe that there would be a job gap in this community in this area that would require more homes and more population to the to idaho um with this growth we can't we can't control it the school district cannot control it we are unfunded in that the idaho's laws promote growth idaho's laws for schools put roadblocks in because we have the highest bond rate to pass a bond to keep up and remember bonds build schools and we have it's basically 66.67 agreement on on a passing a bond and bonds is what relieves the capacity of our schools as you know most of our schools are near or at capacity um and in idaho i know trustee thomas you you you are a legislator a lot and you promote impact fees and so that's why
101we are in this that's why we're talking about this next slide please next i'm sorry um so what what dave and i have been doing the last nine months we've been hacked so if i'm a developer i want to building qna i go to what's called a pre-application meeting i know what i need to do i need to talk to fire city school district we attend those meetings we we inform them what school zone they're in how many homes it is we we have follow-up meetings with them we have submitted recommendations from the district and then we've been attending almost every planning and zoning meeting and as attending city council meetings as needed that's been our current focus and adam came for our needs and then next slide mr reinhard is going to go on
102our our process we have experienced two different approaches in my time here and tonight i'm here to propose a third that i'm excited about when i began i would say that our approach with city council with planning and zoning was passive we would write a letter said we could absorb this development or we couldn't and that was it and once in a while you know we've had some land donated here and there but we've also bought some land and this passive approach i believe you found unsatisfactory and i believe that the patrons found unsatisfactory uh next slide please care alyssa our current um as of two months ago our current uh approach was to work harder to project out to say well we could have we could absorb this development now but when you put
103this development next to the development next to it next to the other one next to the other one it might only look like 200 homes but in reality when you look at say crimson point school dis school zone 200 homes are surrounded by another thousand homes and that growth we cannot that growth we cannot absorb without passing a bond and and mr reno explained that the bonds in idaho are certainly the hardest in the nation third position next slide please our proposal is this you advocated for impact fees i think my first delegate i ever heard was um mr durant who stood up and talked about impact fees in 2015 and you have taken that to the state house that has fallen flat at times we have a little momentum but the the hope the
104words of one movie star so you say there's there's a chance uh still still ring true however this chance is a little distant this is our proposal our proposal is this if a developer wants us to speak on behalf of their development it's planning and zoning or city council we will only do that if they donate land to the school district of a substantial nature and i'm not talking about a lot i'm talking about a substantial or a significant part that we could use for school or they would volunteer and i'm going to call it what it is tonight but i'm going to use different language in the slideshow because we've been urged by our attorneys and our developers and our city to call it something else but i'm just going to call it what
105it is if they volunteer to pay us impact fees it has to be voluntary then we can stand up to city council planning and zoning and say developer x has partnered with us in mitigating the impact to our school district and help the taxpayers find some tax relief in the future cause us to bond for less in the future it won't take away bonds forever it won't take away or need to vote and speak as citizens but it may mitigate it in the future if we have that opportunity with those developers we would speak on their behalf and say they've partnered with us we can understand this and support this if they do not partner with us we would simply say that developer x has chosen not to partner with us their impact is 600
106homes which equals 350 kids there is there's no money coming to the school district and it's going to rest on the shoulders of the taxpayers i can't block development but i can say that so that city council knows that this will eventually put a burden on us is it a burden we can overcome we have in the past but boy how long can you keep doing that when when we're going to double in size before the next plan is approved and so this is the first in idaho this is the first school district to take such a strong stance i've made everybody swallow hard that i've presented it with nobody has found a reason to block it they may the legislature may find a reason to come back at it but it's voluntary and we're
107simply saying we're partnering with you i ran it by our attorney our personal attorney your your attorney she emphasizes the fact that we have to say it's voluntary and the mayor and city the mayor has said the same planning and zoning director has said the same but we're excited to be able to say you know and this is something that is you're not going to see it in a year you're going to see it 10 years it's really the next school boards it's the next administrations that are going to realize real gain from this but the patrons will still be here we'll all still be here in some some fashion and so we're excited that long term this could help i stand and robbie reno stands for any questions so first of all i just
108want to tell you that i'm super excited about this as i was reading about this and um on the agenda i didn't have to swallow hard i love it i um [Music] i'm sure that because it's new um but i may not be here as a school board member but i'm certainly going to be here as a taxpayer and that's going to benefit us as well i think it's um a really great step in the right direction and i hope that our city council recognizes that i mean yeah they can do whatever the heck they want but it's not good for the community it's not good for cuna uh not just the schools but for cuna it's not good for cuna to just steamroll over um the needs that we have so um i hope
109that they will recognize the great idea that this is and thank you for all of your hard work and thank you for listening to um our direction thank you thank you trustee mccarthy yeah thanks i i think the stronger verbiage the better i think you guys good job i appreciate the fact just like trustee macarthur that you took our what we said to you and you put it into action and i appreciate that um because like she said this is what is good for cuna in the long run and just so you know impact fees aren't dead yet as long as i'm pushing it's not dead yet yeah yeah do we have a motion mr chairman i guess the other aspect of this is that you know the impact fees is only one part of
110it i mean there's still some amount of of mutual benefit because of the green space requirement and all those kind of things and so if they would rather fulfill that by donating land then they can get some additional benefit out of that as well and so i feel like that's that's important to recognize that uh we're not just giving one way you know you have to give us money in order to be able to to get our our recommendation but there may be some mutually beneficial things that we can do and and i so i like that aspect of it as well and but if they choose to pay impact fees instead then then that's fine as well you know however they want to do that so i just want to say too that i
111love this because we're being proactive in a place where there's a lot of growth taking place and and to tell the community hey we realize this and we also want to do something as a board so i would like to recommend what do you call i make a motion that we adopt this proposal um on the district's position on community growth i'll second that all in favor russ hey sally yes kim aye joy yes motion carries thank you chairman uh just one addition that i would add is that mayor steer has asked that a member or two of of the board of trustees priests we and it would help us frankly if a member or two of the board of trustees would present at city council uh this change in our direction because it gives
112them a little leverage then also with the developers and their conversation with them so i'll extend that invitation in the future through superintendent johnson okay so let's move to some new business discussion um second reading policies here listed do we have a motion for these readings i'll make a motion that we accept the second reading of revised policy 260 revised policy 262 strike policy 265 because it's integrated in policy 262 and 1012 and also the second reading of revised policy 1012. do we have a second a second uh all in favor russ hey sally kim aye joy aye motion carries thank you um chairman grant if you wouldn't mind um within those policies the at our last meeting there was another policy that listed our mission and vision and core beliefs we actually removed that
113temporarily because you directed me to go back to our committee we met yesterday and we have some work still to do to further engage our public and some of those ideas and so we want um to do something face to face when it is um we have time to focus on that um so we're we're not putting that before you tonight so i just wanted to explain why that was missing from the agenda so thank you um assistant superintendent reinhard can you talk to us about the land donation chairman grant and members of the board of trustees because you push back on a developer you save the taxpayers potentially if you approve this tonight in the neighborhood of five hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars because you requested that that land for a potential
114elementary school near the corner of black cat and cuna roads currently in the zone of indian creek because you push back that developer has come back with an offer to donate 10.5 acres now worth because of the price of land now worth approximately 1.6 million dollars the attachments describe the property and describe the agreement we would not uh of course build a school until we have the funds and have the need that will be sometime in the future but once this is built out it represents approximately a thousand new homes and so we now have a site dedicated within what's a subdivision that will be called season creek in the future if you choose to accept this parcel of land and i stand for any questions and it's a donation do you have a motion
115to accept the land donation uh mr chairman i'd move we approved the land donation i'll subscribe i'll second it on favor russ hi sally yes kim yes yes thank you thank you we don't wanna look a gift horse in the mouth okay so um trustee thomas gets to talk to us about the national school board association and their conference so the not unlike idaho school board association we hold the conference every november for isba the idaho state legislature has deemed that the school boards should be attending or being getting extra education on how to be a school board member and i i've talked to some other districts who send their some of their trustees to the national school board association it's a great opportunity to network with other states with other cohort courts and learn
116more so i'm going to suggest that that their conference is held in april and i'm going to suggest that every other year we send members of the board and or some staff from the district office to the national school board association conference where not unlike isba they have different tracks so they have a track for learning for the clerk and for the superintendents and for the board members new members old member seasoned members i don't want to say old we're um but i think that a great way to lay that out would be the people the board members who were not up for re-election in november so i'll use this year as an example so this year um zone um three and four are up for no two and four or no three three four
117three and four are up for election this fall so uh districts one two and five representatives would go to the national conference in april this next year along with a member of the the district staff i'm proposing that we send four people every other year to the national school board association annual conference does that make sense where's the next one the next one's in san diego it makes sense to me i think it's great to network and to see what other districts are doing it helps us to come up with other ideas but that being said who who pays for it and where does it come from [Laughter] we are given a certain amount of money every year from the legislature in in our funds to to fund our extra education the classes that we
118take um the trainings that we have so that is reimbursable for in that money okay that's my question and honestly we're not all school districts are using all of their money to be trained and if that continues the legislature may take it away from us and we don't want that to happen because we want the opportunity to become better board members and be as good as we can for our patrons and then another thing is uh what if some of the board members cannot go or it doesn't have to be no it doesn't have to be just clarifying it was just a suggestion on how we would break it up but if one person can't go then we would fill that spot with somebody else so you start looking for four people each time yes
119that's the members of the board and district office yeah so when the three when so when the three of us that are not up for election we'd take say wendy the superintendent or or then when there's the two of you go then you could take two more two because you just give two other people the opportunity to go and do that networking i think the logistics that can be worked out later i think that they can make a motion to yeah i i like the idea i want to just clarify those things at this point sure so um yeah i i guess i'm not sure if we just because of the logistics of uh people being able to go at a certain time and all those kind of things i don't know if we need
120to make it quite so formal as far as sure you know who's there i think maybe we we say we consider whether two or three board members and and one or two staff members can go and just kind of try to try to film the only reason i laid it out like that is because um that would give the the people who were not up for election the prior year the opportunity to use that knowledge for the next two years before they're up for re-election yeah i like the idea too of working with the administration and the board and that kind of stuff uh i'm just gonna throw this out quorum if there's three they always have they'll yes we just make a note that we have we'll have carelessa say that there may be
121a quorum but there will be no business conducted make sure that we do the same thing do we have a motion i move to consider the possibility of attending the national school board association annual conference but by every other year is that yes we have a second i'll second it um all in favor of russ um i didn't consider it yeah uh sally i had to consider it kim joy yes motion carries thank you okay so moving on to the superintendent's report on enrollment in the emergency levy and uh trustees just a short update on our enrollment as you know we we track enrollment throughout the year um but the fifth day of enrollment is especially important to us because it kind of it gives us a sense of a comparison data year to year
122but it also triggers a possibility of should we need to an emergency levy and what an emergency levy is is it is a levy that you as trustees can levy upon the taxpayers should we see an increase in growth and it was added to the idaho code many many years ago as a way to help districts deal with growth what you see here is our official fifth day of enrollment so on line 15 of the spreadsheet 2122 total you go all the way over to the right you'll see 57 15. so as of the fifth day we had 5715 students enrolled in our district if you compare that to last year's fifth day we saw a decrease as you know and we were 54 10. we are up 305 students compared to last year so
123that's over a five and a half percent increase from 2020. we're as you know a lot of our data when we share it with you we we compare it to the previous year but we also try to find a more typical year because last year as elmira has said was the coveted crazy year um and it seems to be continuing a bit into this year but our enrollment is up um so if you compare 2019 to 2020 um to 2122 we're we're kind of we're up 133 students which is about our 2 growth projection that we've been kind of keeping to so just some interesting data so the the second topic in the update has to do with emergency levy as i've spoken to you individually i did not ask for you to consider an
124emergency levy tonight with the increase in our funds with our coveted relief money and with a healthy fund balance which we will be providing you an update i believe at our next board meeting with our audit um what i am proposing is that we would not have an emergency levy as a way to provide tax relief to our patrons by not um levying additional funds because we don't need them we have always said we would only levy if we needed it and we um while we could do a million things with that money we feel like in order for us to function to buy the additional curriculum the different the additional deaths those kind of things that we need for additional um students that we can look to our covered relief funds and some of
125our savings in order to meet those needs so that's good news i've been in education a long time i've never heard those words so that's really good i know wow and then the second item and if you i know you guys have been sitting for a long time and we have a really technical term for that in the educational world and it's called the brain butt syndrome after you sit too much your brain starts to stop thinking clearly um the the second item is a is a a pretty intense not intense conversation but it i would be talking at you for a long time and i don't want to do that to you tonight it's not important um in in timely it's important but it's not timely um it's uh the link is there about
126just some legislative updates regarding critical race theory of which you are aware um and it really is a link to the the presentation that i provided to all of our staff to let them know of the recent legislation so i'm i'm going to propose that i share that with you at the next meeting in a short and condensed version to to save your maybe your sanity and and maybe your um health trustee johnson thank you okay so sounds like we're moving to good of the order um isb convention on november 17th through the 19th here in boise consider a work session chairman grant i do want to let the rest of the trustees know that i did attend the icba executive board meeting this past weekend they are intending on holding convention in person unless
127the city of boise or this the governor or someone [Music] shuts it down we will be attending it in person that'll be exciting yes very exciting and the meeting uh for the region is tomorrow but it's on this planet right yes so i was gonna bring that up too it wasn't on here but it was just discussed this weekend um the our region meeting where we discussed the resolutions there's only eight this year yay wow um we will keep them straight in my head right that is going to be tomorrow there's also a couple of other items they're going to discuss tomorrow but i was going to propose that we get together at the district office and zoom that together sure i think that'd be great bring some snacks i think we bring snacks yeah
128always i didn't bring chips tonight because we were supposed to be more formal i'm just saying that you could have bought truffles and that begins at six o'clock okay so let me just look at my calendar um are you guys going to be there are we allowed to go into the district office tomorrow at six are you guys okay i can do that okay yes yeah okay so work session needed to review the draft of realigned district zone boundaries september 20th that would be next monday i'm coaching football every single night except monday so that 20th will work okay that works for me too [Music] what time may i ask i have i do have an appointment but i can get out of it what time are we looking at six six works for me
129okay six it on on the twenty monday yeah and you'll send it out to this carelessness okay do you have a motion to adjourn i'll make an emotion emotionally adjourn oh second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries thank you [Music] okay so