MSAD#51 School Board Meeting 10/5/2020

001really don't have a relationship or have had a personal interaction so i asked for a bit of information um about this employee so that i could share it with the rest of our audience and those watching out there so here is what was shared during the opening day celebration just a few weeks ago the individual who stood out to the nominations committee was praised for her outstanding contributions to the school school community she is clearly respected and admired due to her unfailing dependability and dedication and goes about her work with caring thoughtfulness and enthusiasm she was described as the epitome of hard work thoroughness and attention to detail with a work ethic that is true inspiration to efforts that all should put forth a colleague wrote that she tirelessly goes above and beyond without even

002considering what she does as above and beyond it is just what she does one nomination stated one nomination stated that this individual engages with each of us as she goes about her work and empowers us by presenting us with a well-cared environment each day as far as being inspirational she shows that no matter what you do in life you can do it with your utmost attention and a dedication to doing it your best another co-worker expressed that too often we overlook the importance of support people in our lives who enable us to do our jobs better the physical environment in which we work is incredibly impactful to the quality of our work and sets an emotional tone for our interactions with others there is a ripple effect in the large community like our school the

003actions of one person are not isolated but rather flow outward to impact others that nomination went on to say that this individual is one of the persons behind the scenes in my work life who helps create a positive tone in my day from the moment i open my classroom door i know she has a similar impact on my colleagues it is an honor and feels completely fitting given the current times to congratulate our grilly middle school custodian marianne anthony as our 2020 employee of the year so marianne we do have marianne we do have something for you and i believe um i'd open it up for other board members to speak um if anyone is willing of course i couldn't pass that up ever um and mary ann i know this horrifies you to have

004people talk about you so of course we're going to do that um i just wanted to tell you um if none of us up here knew anything other than what tyler just read that probably would be enough and having the respect of your colleagues is just phenomenal but a number of us have seen you in different venues supporting the district supporting people you represent yourself so well and in doing that you you do everyone around you justice and i can't thank you enough for what you do for the community so thank you marianne oh go ahead margo i just want to say i served on the committee and it was a real honor to learn about all of the people who were um nominated it was harder than i thought it was going to be

005but it just gave me a lot of pride um overall just to hear about all the great people that that marianne works with and that we all are here to help support so um congratulations to marianne and to all the people who are nominated all right marianne you want to meet me halfway i'm sorry [Applause] okay it's awesome to start the night off with such a positive um agenda item so following that we have approval of our minutes uh the first i'm going to follow the agenda that was presented thank you i'm going to follow the agenda that's been presented thank you the last time i'm going to answer that question is i'm going to follow the agenda that's presented so i'm going to move on to approval of the september 3rd 20-20 minutes may

006i have a motion so moved second thank you any discussion okay all in favor thank you and second september 14 2020 may i have a motion so moved second any discussion okay i just want to say i'm abstaining from both of those okay just for jeff that's taking minutes all right thank you um and all in favor i'm also abstaining from uh september 14th okay thank you anne all right and now we will move on to public comment um just as a reminder public comment is for three minutes um i will set a timer as soon as you start speaking when you hear the timer go off please respect the time limit so other people's have a chance to speak my name is mike doyle i live in fort smith new hampshire and i own

007and write for falmouth today.me i'm going to dedicate my three minutes tonight to the men and women who serve in the military all over the world protecting our freedom of speech and freedom of the press by doing the pledge of allegiance i invite anybody in the room who'd like to join me to stand at this time 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 for all thank you go ahead [Music] sean mcbridey cumberland the new slogan for mscd51 should be engage empower inspire and forget to do your diligence the political indoctrination of your children is well underway under the guise of mscd51's equity and inclusion committee we're nearly all members of democrats in the

008school board where seven and nine voting members are democrats what if some of these members are actually self-proclaimed socialist democrats there's a severe conflict of interest to tyler mcginley school board chair and co-chair of the equity and inclusion committee can whimsically announce a new anti-racism partner with usm with no school board vote shockingly enough no public comment no expectations of success no transparency to the parents no discussion about costs and that's been working on since june it would be also nice to know if you knew some of the policies they represented so essentially cci which was allegedly illegally hired by three members of the school board and superintendent jeff porter laying a foundation of training for our teachers to teach critical race theory now msad51s graduated from cci a socialist and anarchist company their words

009not mine to a full-blown marxist company black lives matter in the race grifter extremists abram kendri for both partnering with usm again after msid did zero diligence guilt by association take two abrams highlights capitalism is inherently racist except for i know he's profiting from all of your white guilt he also stated white people were literally aliens but then scaled that down to say they were just simply a different breed of human he came out to attack amy coney barrett the next supreme judge saying that she was using her two adopted haitian children as props in her life along pictures of denial from his book how to be an anti-racist he states the status quo must be fought and beacon beaten and anyone not actively engaged in that is therefore a legitimate target for attack fought

010and beaten legitimate target for attack antifa is just not an idea folks it's an organization so gurley is okay with socialism and anarchism now it's okay with marxism and violence and monstrous acts of lawlessness these are the leaders you want laying the foundation to educate your children could you pull your mask up over your nose please thank you these children the parents who don't want their kids immersed in the hypocrisy of indoctrination need to take a stand the school board needs to end this irresponsible decision making immediately and also learn the policies in which it presides the policy of public participation allows for public comment on any agenda item before it is voted upon you continue to not follow the policies because you've publicly stated you don't know what they are that's also against a

011number of other policies in which you became the chair of this board i have two students in the schools a first grader and fourth grader and i am here this evening to express my excitement and my gratitude for the invitation to participate in the usm partnership on equity and my appreciation for the work and the commitment that you all have made to that work which i believe is extremely important i think there are a number of things that i would hope are not controversial about a commitment to equity and things that we could improve including things such as having a representative having representative teachers and staff and administrators who represent the diversity of our student body it was interesting to look through some of the information that was sent with the update on september 24th

012about how equity does tie in with the district's vision for citizenship and how we do have a you know 7.4 percent i was just looking at of our student body is non-caucasian identifies as non-caucasian i don't know what the numbers are for our teacher staff and administrators but i expect that they are not that high so i think again taking actions such as hiring a more diverse teacher administrator staff body would help reflect that i would hope that all kids in our district would have the opportunity to read books where they see characters who reflect them and what they look like and that that's not just for our non-white students that our white students my kids are both white that they also get to see folks who don't always look like them in the literature

013that they're reading and in positions of education and power and i hope that all of our kids have the opportunity to feel a sense of safety and belonging that we are creating a learning environment where every kid can come ready to learn and i think that equity is a really important part of that so i really appreciate the work that you're doing i'm excited about the possibility of this partnership with usm because as i read the update that was sent out it sounds like there will be a planning process and that out of this there will come a plan that i think my hope is will help us better understand what we mean even when we say equity and what truly those goals are and what the specifics are so that we're breaking down some

014of the misperceptions and misinformation that might be out there that that this really is a good thing that i think our community can come around and that we can all embrace so thank you is there anyone else for public comment this evening okay all right we will move on from public comment to presentations um from program and curriculum highlights from julie olsen and susie robbins okay good evening so i am here to do an update similar to the administrators who came two weeks ago about the opening of school and how it's going under instructional support for the start of the year i want to start by just saying our staff are really remarkable and our students equally match that remarkability our staff have been strong flexible and really student focused this has been a very

015hard opening for our staff having to work with students who don't fully understand the pandemic they don't fully understand our cdc guidelines and why they are required to wear masks or maintain six feet from staff that they used to give fist bumps to or give high fives to or walk really close and get physical prompting from our students have done a really nice job adjusting to the new normal so certainly i think all of our students have k through 12 pre-k through 12. um they have been remarkable um we had many students that we were very nervous with parents this summer about whether or not they were going to be able to wear a mask in school and tolerate the six feet and whatnot most of those students have already learned to wear a mask

016and are doing that throughout their school day we have a few students in the district who are still working on that but all of their data is trending upwards meaning that they are actively increasing the amount of time per day that they can wear the mask and so therefore they're having opportunities to be in the same classroom with some of their peers during those times that they have their masks on our parents have been really strong partners in teaching and growing with us in the new expectations which really shows the strength and consistency across settings and increasing our students performance one thing that's very unique to special education and i think was worth noting is that regardless of our students are in fully remote school hybrid school or with us for four days a week

017in person we have a responsibility to implement their individual education plans full-time five days a week so our special educators from day one have been servicing students both in person and remotely in groups so they may have two or three students that they're working on a reading group with in person and they have two or three students who are in a google meet at that same time with them as part of their reading group so they are servicing five full day a week of ieps with students who are only in person for the most part two days or are fully remote in some cases since we're responsible for all of the ieps and our staff have really adjusted to that they hit the ground running and have not looked back they have gotten just better

018and refined their practices and we really are in occupational therapy physical therapy speech therapy social work as well as all of our specially designed instruction we're meeting those ieps across the schools and grade levels we do have about 28 students district wide that are accessing four days a week of in-person instruction and those are primarily our students with significant functional life skills needs who are really unable to access remote learning and require that in-person instruction additionally we have a couple of students in our ed program at the high school who are accessing four full days as well i'm working really closely with the surrounding directors as we navigate these times so that our practices match those of our colleagues in falmouth and yarmouth and cape elizabeth and great new gloucester we additionally we meet weekly

019with the state director so that because as we've been told several times ida was not built for a pandemic and so while we have really clear regulations much of what we're navigating don't follow those regulations i mean we we wrote ieps for five full days a week we didn't write it for students to be in person two days a week and what that would look like additionally i wanted to note that on top of sort of navigating the opening of the school year our staff this year every five years each district goes under a review or an audit from the state department of education and it's our year so not only do we get to sort of navigate um what it looks like in in this new time we are also in review so that

020starts in september and they're on site in may so we have each month we have expectations of what is to be supplied to the state and get information back and corrective action plans and whatnot and then they'll be on site in may to do additional sort of feedback to staff and visit programs to ensure that we're in compliance with all of the regulations so certainly i would say i've seen a lot of energy from my staff and a lot of enthusiasm about finally having our students back in front of us and really needing that free energy i think the spring was hard to have remote instruction for some students who we knew needed the personal contact they're excited to have them back they're still growing they're still learning and they're still developing around the expectations

021we still have challenges in front of us we have a lot of backlogs of evaluations that we were unable to do in the spring that we're now catching up on and certainly staff are working tirelessly to do that with the idea of any hope that we don't close for any period of time and our student progress looks really good overall we've you know students were able to maintain where they were in the spring for the most part and have taken off now into the start of the school year our outdoor learning spaces under the tents have been utilized very heavily for our students particularly those that were struggling to wear their masks and need to be in separate rooms from any other students or outside so we were you know a little disappointed that the

022weather took down a couple of those and are looking forward to replacements but um overall i think that we are in a much better place than we anticipated being a few months ago and glad to have our students back thank you julie does anybody have any questions or comments for julie i just want to say thank you i know that um your staff and your department this was a big lift there were a lot of unknowns as it is for everyone um but your staff has a particularly unique situation in in this setting and um i just can't say thank you enough for all you do and how creative you've been um in finding different types of masks and protective equipment i just i really appreciate the constant dedication to making sure everybody's safe thank

023you tyler if i could uh as well i would like to echo what you said about your staff and on a good day it's probably not the easiest job that anybody ever decided to do and as i look around and see some of the very very skilled individuals who who do this work and make changes in people's lives um i i want to echo uh my appreciation i guess a question uh to you would be is there anything that stands in your way for being even more successful in the work that you're doing right now or is there anything that you need from from the district or from us thank you great question we are currently understaffed and we are actively trying to hire and so you know i'll do a guiltless plea of if

024anybody knows anybody who can work as an educational technician or a special educator please you know we're a great district we'll give a lot of support and train people accordingly we have some wonderful students to work with and that would help a lot um i think you know any year it's hard to be short-staffed but this year it feels particularly challenging to not have the staff that we need in front of us and it's not for short of us trying i mean we actively are advertising it's just that there aren't people right now applying for those jobs is the shortage as a result of covid or is it just excavated a little bit more i would say both every year we generally have some positions open um but this year we had more resignations due

025to copen thank you thank you julie thank you okay gca house [Music] thank you good evening everyone so before i start my presentation on the remote school i i also wanted to let you know that there are two other areas that i'm focusing on um to at least to start the year so the first area is evaluation and professional growth that is a committee the steering committee that will be reviewing our current evaluation system so that we can see what components we can do in the yellow zone what components can we tweak to fit in the yellow zone we'll also be looking for ways we can provide professional growth opportunities for staff in this type of environment and we are adjusting our system to fit with the new two-year probationary period that has started this

026year before this year it was a three-year probationary period for new teachers before it was three years it was two years so it went from two to three and now it's back to two so we need to take a look at our evaluation system and make some adjustments to make sure we fit the new state requirement the second area of focus will be continued work with our certification committee certification was slow last spring through the state and they made some adjustments to accommodate people but we need to take a look at where people are and again take a look at what the two-year probationary period will mean to our certification committee so those are two separate areas and then obviously the majority of my presentation will be on the remote school so time was spent

027this summer looking at curriculum i worked with kathy carney who's one of our gt gifted and talented teachers who has worked over 40 years of experience working with home school families we both joined online groups to understand the strengths and potential drawbacks of curriculum i worked with the state curriculum group to see what was going on all over maine we reviewed the curriculum for alignment or the common core state standards which both this district and the state use for learning outcomes then we looked at our district curriculum for a scope and sequence that's used to meet these outcomes as we continue to fine-tune our curriculum search lastly we look for curriculum that was feasible for our families we wanted an online platform that limited the amount of screen time needed for students to make progress

028we wanted something that would provide families with the structure and support needed to be able to work with their children at home but not be overwhelming so we made a decision to use edge annuity with students 6 through 12 the online platform and an online platform called exact path for our students in the k-5 grades we are supplementing exact path at the k-5 level with curriculum from match fish tank which is out of cambridge and eureka math so our remote learners we currently have 130 students enrolled across the district and our remote school learners receive their electronic devices first our tech department focused on students in the remote school knowing they needed to access online curriculum so here's a snapshot of what it looks like at each of the buildings k through three we have

02960 students at this time we have a k1 instructor with 35 students we have a 2-3 instructor with 26 students they have class meetings with each grade level they excuse me post weekly lesson plans based on what the wilson school has designated as essential skills so out of the common core state standards knowing that kids haven't had a lot of direct instruction since last march we had the wilson school all the schools have narrowed down what are the essential skills that kids need so we took a look at those when we were designing our lesson plans and as i talked about there are some resources that we use and we continue to use online learning platform it's skill reinforcement and reading language arts and math it begins with a diagnostic assessment and then adjusts for

030each student and we use the information from exact path to find kids who have similar needs to plan small group instruction and then both of our instructors have daily office hours for parent contact 4-5 looks very similar there are 20 students at this time we have one instructor kathy carney who is half time with this and also half time teaching our gifted and talented she holds class meetings four days a week and again the weekly lesson plans are based on essential skills and then the curriculum pieces are about the same and again daily office hours for parent contact the middle school which change platforms so we have 23 students at this time we have a full-time instructor or part-time instructor mark mcdonough who also does gifted and talented and then we have a full-time support

031person jerry colella his job is to really monitor all the edge annuity classes that students are in see where kids are getting stuck check their assignments he also takes attendance every day and then mark holds office hours for parents four days a week at the high school chris and his staff have worked really hard to create student schedules that are similar to the ones they would have had in the hybrid model we have 25 students at this time they use a combination of edge annuity classes and some synchronous learning dan westhoven who most of you have met is a coordinator and he does weekly check-ins with the students and right now the things that we are continuing to work on we want to adjust our curriculum based on input from the hybrid model so working

032closely with the schools to make sure our curriculum alignment is similar to what they're offering and then obviously we'll adjust our curriculum based on student need we have ordered materials for our k5 learners now that we know who they are and what their needs are we have a quick survey we're going to put out for our k-3 families we're finding that some especially at that younger level do not want their kids in front of a screen or wanted for limited time so we really want to touch base with them to figure out what components of the remote school offerings they want to be part of we'll have ongoing meetings with the building staff to monitor attendance and student progress and we had a parent forum this morning from 9 to 10 and i thank you

033for those of you who are able to join where we receive some feedback that we will take into consideration as we continue to tweak what we are offering excuse me while i roll back to my seat here thank you susie yes um does anybody have any questions comments kevin i don't want to go first okay peter uh susie what are we microphone work so see what are we doing for uh science uh social studies and languages in the six to eight so six to eight months most of their classes or all their classes are through edge annuity the only drawback for edge annuity right now is that our sixth graders are not able to take language courses through edge annuity because they don't offer courses through them so we are looking at using a platform

034called mangoes we couldn't use something like rosetta stone or duolingo because they won't sign a student privacy act with us so we have to be careful about the online program platforms that we choose and and the high school uh kind of the same thing how do we handle like uh science labs and stuff like that i'm gonna chris is not here anymore chris do you want to talk about the high school and science labs and sorry for just a second sorry could you repeat the question real quick uh how in the high school do we handle uh first of all like science labs and second of all these specialty courses that we have like economics and computer science and heaven knows what that i can't think of and you're asking specifically for our fully remote

035students is that yes yeah okay um good question so the as far as labs go um obviously we don't have access to the same equipment for say a highly specific biology dissection or a potentially dangerous chemical reaction if attempted at home that being said the online program that that our science courses are through does have a variety of demonstrations and then in addition we're attempting to replicate um you know susie susie mentioned that in in a number of cases where possible and appropriate we've we've tried to run synchronous classes with our staff and so our our ninth grade foundations of science course is a synchronous course with one of our teachers where a combination of demonstrations with basic more basic science experiments that can be done safely at home you know physics experiments using uh

036the baseball bat and the ball maybe not the window but those things that can be done safely are being guided by the by the teacher thank you um and then as far as specialty courses uh we do have access to a full slate of of electives through the online program that's that are self-paced we have that includes you know we have a couple of students taking a psychology course online through that as well as an astronomy course so there are elective offerings again not with our staff but through the online program that that we're able to offer thank you so the only highlight i would add to that is that dan westhoven is piloting a project his um silo project so his self i don't know initiated learning independent learning but students are working with

037him and it's an elective credit but they are self-designing something that they want to get better at and then working with dan creating a pathway in connections and ways to get there things like i want to run a 5k and i've never done that before um i know there are other examples but for one that's a new program that the high school is piloting with remote school students i just recently saw something that a presentation that he shared about that program and he himself made himself the student and did his own project to really show how that program works and i just want to say thank you for acknowledging that those programs are just as important as biology and other things so um i'm glad i don't know how he does all of these jobs

038but i'm glad that that program is there and i will say that i attended the forum this morning and i was so grateful to hear from some of the parents that gave us some good feedback and some real willingness to help at the same time and um there seems to be a need of just connection and making sure that kids feel connected and parents feel connected and maybe there's a way to connect those communities online so i think there's some simple solutions at first and continue to grow so thank you for all you're doing i didn't mean to stop yeah go ahead and um susie i would echo also what tyler's saying um outside of the remote learning i think the connection with the kids that are coming two days a week i think there

039needs to be a little bit more connection with the parents and the students and the teachers just to kind of have that said the question i have is we have a commitment for the remote learners through the end of the year december have we been looking at what what date we'll need to to know whether those students are coming back or if we're going to have bigger numbers come january and are we going to be set up to bring those kids back in easily or smoothly and how that transition will work that's a great question and somebody asked that this morning okay we have not designed exactly what the transition back will look like we have only picked december as the date that we need to start um wrapping things up and taking a look

040at what will happen in january so i'll have a better answer for you soon okay thank you yes so susie this is one of those places where i desperately try not to dive into the weeds uh because it isn't quite frankly where we should be playing but i'm going to anyway so um the question i was going to ask which i think that you've answered well and jennifer kind of crossed with that which was those things that we do to support the parents uh you talked about the the virtual office hours that are being offered in each building how many parents are taking advantage of that i would say at the k-3 level almost all are it's it's tricky because a lot of it is online curriculum and we're asking kids five and six-year-olds sometimes

041to log in and they need their parents help so sometimes we need to support parents with technology issues it's also scary for parents i think the parent connection with each other is really going to be important because i think that it is scary they worry about their kids obviously they worry about not sending them back and what they might be missing and i think it will be important to have them connect with each other but also connect with other families and is that a place though through those office hours and then in forums like you did today where they can continue to build that network yeah i think that's one way to do it um there are other ways as well i think this morning they started self-organizing during our parent forum so that they

042could communicate with one another i know they planned field trips together too especially on wednesdays on those off days so that's one way the other thing that i know the k1 class is starting pen pals so they'll have pen pals with students or who are in school so in the hybrid model so they can connect with people outside of their school per se i think the other important piece will be ongoing parent forums and parent meetings so that's something we have in mind and we just talked about that this morning that's good will you be put you'll be cheering out some of the things that you picked up in the forum absolutely um jeff is i think we have one more meeting parent forum tomorrow night and then after that we're going to gather all

043the feedback from the four forums that we've had make some suggestions so you'll hear more about that great so then i'll just um ask you that final question that as um as we look at additional federal funds and if you're putting together a wish list of what's going to make that remote school having additional rigor making it better for the parent experience and the learner experience what would be on your list so um i'll echo what julie said staff is one thing especially when we have 60 students at the k-3 level having more staff at with the younger learners would be really important again it's not for lack of trying we have advertised we have interviewed and you know schools are expect a scary place to be for some people right now so we really

044haven't found the right person yet thanks for everything you do susie no thank you anybody else all right thank you susie so next we have a superintendent's report back again all right good evening first of all i just want to thank julie and susie for their presentations tonight over the last couple of meetings we've had our principals present we've had um two of our directors uh at the next board meeting um mr poulin and mr bien curran will be presenting um on district-wide items as well we're trying this is something that we do each fall for those of you who are new or just need a reminder try to bring all the administrators are in charge of different departments different schools in our district and have them highlight and update what is going on so

045for the superintendent's blog this week as susie noted we've had three listening forums we have one more tomorrow night and we've had parents asking we've also had a staff forum last week so we'll have four forums um that we'll have held by tomorrow and we're going to be taking that information there's there's a lot of good feedback and summarizing and coming up with basically the the big items that we've heard um in order to improve the yellow zone um as we head towards the holidays so we've asked people uh two questions during these forums one is what's going well and what are things that you would like us to adjust or tweak um in um the yellow zone so we've gotten a lot of information from that so we appreciate that so also in my

046report tonight a lot of people have asked how do you do certain things during a pandemic well this is an example for example gms45 this is a physical education class obviously during pe class we have to be careful in terms of cdc guidelines for students before having students exert they are outdoors at this time and during the winter months we plan to have kids outside and a lot of pe classes are being held outside um at this time but when they are held inside and this i believe was on a day when it one of the few days when it actually was inclement weather students also can be involved in other activities that are very much around physical education so this was around students demonstrating and honing their motor skills and hand-eye coordination doing a

047low cardio drumming activity which is also a musical integration piece that was part of this physical education class and that was becky bellmore's pe class so fall sports um thankfully we were able to start the fall sports season um the mpa provided guidance and you know just like all of us at this point trying to figure all this out during a pandemic thankfully the mpa gave us the guidelines that we could work the season through one of the bright spots i suppose you could say is that we really have been forced to look at live streaming athletic events so that we can provide access to parents and others this is something that we've been wanting to do for quite a while and we decided obviously this is the year to do it we now have

048a youtube link that people can go to and actually watch their children's sporting events and also providing that as a as a service to the community i think it's a way to get people interested in the schools that may not want to watch a meeting or whatnot but would be interested in watching some sort of a sporting event so we've been able to do that with field hockey and with soccer so far we plan to expand that making your own seat cushion this is one way of being creative during the pandemic we have some teachers that have opted to purchase and we've had funds available for purchasing seat cushions when kids go outside and nearly every day except for maybe one we've we've had great weather and be able to do these things but there's

049other ways to um to actually create a a nice seating arrangement if you want to and these kids actually created their own and these are called i get i think they're in the girl scout program you can actually create cineponds and so that concept from the girl scouts was transferred over to the middle school six eight and we had kids creating their own i believe during art class their own cineponds and then using them from vinyl grocery bags in some cases to create something that was uh somewhat comfortable so we have a variety of different you know ways that students are sitting outside or or being active outside or sitting and learning covid funds round number two we did just uh receive our allocation amount from the state department of education it's a very quick

050turnaround quicker even than the first round um the funds and the application are due october 15th which is less than two weeks away very quick to decide how to spend 1.5 million dollars is slightly more than what we had last time there is a finance committee meeting that's being called this week mr desmond i believe has started to call a meeting so that um we can put these ideas um on some sort of a timeline to get this application in in such a short order um in spending the 1.5 million again like the first round december 30th is the deadline for spending all funds associated with the coronavirus relief funds so all told the district will have received just over three million dollars this fall in in crf funds student flu clinics we're really happy

051to be able to offer this in conjunction with fire department emt working with the town these these flu clinics are incredibly important this year i think getting a flu shot is a good idea every year but this year in order to reduce symptoms so they don't get confused with covid i'm 19 this winter and try to keep our students as healthy as possible we do have a student flu clinic and it's going on tomorrow and on wednesday it's by the alphabet just because we're expecting a rather large group of students to participate in this so if you need any more information we sent it out also through our newsletter schools have sent this information out as well and any sort of links that need to be need to be accessed we also providing every as

052we do every year a staff flu clinic this month and that will be a separate clinic to keep our staff um in good health as well so that they are not having to stay home as much if they're not feeling well obviously this is a year though if we if people are having symptoms we are asking them to stay home a lot of times students and staff will kind of muddle through a day if they don't feel 100 we've been stressing a lot especially with our staff that if that's the case please do not come in and if you've got symptoms that are related to that could be coveted in any way and we have a screener that obviously our students and staff are are following and then the second part of my superintendent's report

053is strategic priorities and um i will tell you this will be a short presentation it's the shortest one i've given on the strategic plan since i've been here just a reminder this is our strategic plan it has four parts um in any given year these are the parts that we would be focusing on all four of them um wellness early childhood education skills for the 21st century and every student college and career ready this year is going to be a slightly different year usually there's some sort of a top 10 kind of big ideas that we are trying to look at objectives in the strategic plan we are not talking about the top 10 this year this is not a year to do that and appreciate the board's support in placing the vast majority of

054our strategic plan on hold obviously with the idea that we have a pandemic response plan that you have approved and we need to be making sure that that is implemented all year long there are a couple of key areas that are exceptions to this and it doesn't mean just because we're not focusing on certain parts of the strategic plan that the work all of a sudden stops there's certain areas of the strategic plan where there might be a group or committee that is continuing that work it just isn't a major focus of the district during this year obviously because we're focusing so much on the health and safety and i'm reworking our instructional program for this year so the pandemic response plan obviously is health and safety how do we achieve you know a productive

055school year in the yellow zone for our students we'll be talking more about essential skills and what skills the students need at the end of this year those skills are going to be honed back from what the state standards are and learning targets to being what are the most important things that students need to learn obviously in person learning virtual learning days in remote school are kind of our three buckets that we're trying to that we're talking about literally every single day of the school year and trying to refine these things also how do we respond if there is a positive covid case many districts in our area have experienced this already we have not thankfully since school has started but there inevitably will be a day when we will need to and how do

056we respond to that um and we do have we're developing contingency plans right now i was actually on the phone with another superintendent in the area last week who went through an experience recently and just kind of got those steps and the the information from the superintendent on exactly how they responded when they had a positive case which i thought was very helpful and then obviously readiness for the possibility that the entire district goes red there's two reasons why that would happen one would be if the governor decides that we're going red as a state or that the county must go red another reason would be if we have a situation in our district locally that requires us to go red whether it's multiple coveted cases or shortage of staff or a major drop in

057student attendance all of a sudden those might be reasons why we would need to go red as a district otherwise we're trying to not go red as a district trying to isolate cohorts isolate a school even and trying to avoid the idea of the district being in red and if we do have to go in red and i've said this multiple times it most likely would be for a two-week quarantine period unless the governor makes a decision outside of the the district but just to get beyond the quarantine period and then to bring people back in so that would be in my situation being able to say that's the worst case scenario that i'm foreseeing this year another area of focus this year so there's really the pandemic response plan there's there's three this is

058the second one prioritized learning outcomes we call these essential standards we also call them essential learning targets they're all pretty much the same thing just different names what are those things again that students should be able to [Music] you know know and be able to do by the end of the year that's different from a normal year in a normal year we have a lot more opportunity for curriculum and in this year we've our teachers have started that process that was during the first five days and we thank the board for those five staff days and being able to identify those most important learning outcomes for the year in a content area at a grade level or by a course at the high school and so we will be publishing those actually on our website

059and making that apparent to parents students and of course of our staff which are the ones the people who are developing those outcomes so that people know where those those learning targets are during the year because they are different than than a normal year and this is what why are we doing this given the limited time that you have with students this is written for a time not such as this just in a normal typical school year this is also true but even more so now curriculum design has become more and more an issue of deciding what you won't teach as well as what you will you can't do it all and as a designer you must choose the essential and i think this is really challenging for teachers who are used who are very

060conscientious and want to make sure that students are well prepared for the next grade level and for life beyond really um for to let go of some of the stuff that they have been teaching and and i've already run into it i was talking with teachers last week and and that's exactly what i heard and we've you know we're just constantly messaging this is not a typical year and it's more and more important this year that those essential standards are the ones that are focused on and then the third major focus and again this won't involve a huge amount of folks but it will involve obviously the facilities committee the board some of our administrators and in the building committee but the k5 facilities work needs to continue our enrollment projections haven't changed even though

061we are in a unique year we need to not lose a year in thinking about what the next steps are for um you know our enrollment surge so in terms of the primary school project um just you know where we're at right now there's been a properties these are all things that we've been doing property search we've looked at multiple properties as the board knows those property none of them have panned out at this point for various reasons as you know and we're also taking another look at our campus and seeing if there's opportunities on the campus again we've already looked at our campus twice now in the recent past but i think you know giving in a third try again with a different lens is something that i would want to make sure we

062do without passing up that opportunity as we continue to search for property so that advertisement is still out there i have still gotten inquiries um in the last month even about property we've passed those on to the architect again nothing has panned out at this point that would be a value to the the district at this point in building a a new school but it's something we need to continue looking at but there'll be a process even looking at the campus again there's an opportunity to look at another concept design that might work on this campus or not looking at the facilities committee or having the facilities committee review it and then making sure that the board is very involved in that process so those are just some steps that we're going to make sure

063we're not leaving behind and losing time over the next few months so in just a reminder we have a strategic dashboard it's on our website there's a link and any anybody can go to this dashboard and kind of look at the status of the strategic plan again a lot of these things will be on hold for the year but the work that we've done up to this point as a district can be can be found here on this dashboard and there's ways of clicking through that and looking at specific items in the in the strategic plan so much different strategic plan presentation than than other years but i think it's a year that we need to really um focus our efforts on just you know a few things as a district again there's work in

064the strategic plan that are continuing in different areas and those that work will continue this year with different groups but it just isn't a major district focus right now in in terms of what we need to be doing um and the resources and time that we have so happy to answer any questions i have one question then um anybody can chime in and you mentioned um i think at the end of this year we're going to be having an update on learning outcomes and that was something that i think a lot of families are nervous about what those are and how they can be communicated to um parents so that they can feel like they're on track um so can you just elaborate on that a little bit more and how that will be shared

065right teachers actually have have done a lot of this work already during the first five days so a lot of the learning outcomes that we that they have been developing are on paper and what we're doing right now is compiling everybody's learning outcomes across the entire district looking at each grade level each content area that they've been developed and putting it into a usable format making sure we don't have gaps once that problem we just started that about a week ago so once that process is finished we're going to be posting that and sending it out to parents directly and actually our staff is also interested in seeing the whole district a lot of staff members would like to see content areas at different levels for this year and just kind of seeing where those

066learning targets are but yes um that should be that work should be done within the next three three to four weeks okay so that we can let parents know that's my goal is to have it done within a month great i know that will be really appreciated so thank you uh peter go ahead uh jeff i know we're on a time constraint but is this is the full board going to have a chance to get a cut at this whatever comes out of the finance committee before i know we're on a timeline of the 15th do we need a special meeting so that uh i mean i'd personally like to see uh what it is how it relates to facilities and i'm sure the rest of the board members are curious are we going to

067get a cut at this so i would i would i was actually talking to scott today about that and we were a little discouraged that we only have less than two weeks to get this done and we just got our allocation late last week um it's even shorter than it was the first time around and it doesn't even give us a board meeting to get through that i would defer to tyler and to kevin as the finance chair um to you know i think we need to talk with both both of you about the possibility of a special meeting um i think it's something you know we're spending a little over one and a half million it would be i would advise that the full board at least has that option of approving it not

068just the finance committee i think it's it's good practice but it would require before the application is filed in approval and really we need still several days to make sure that application is completed so if there's a finance committee i think we're trying to get a finance committee meeting in by the end of this week i think the latest that we could do a special meeting would be early next very early next week and of course we have a holiday on monday but um and i think you know if it's a one item meeting i can't i can't imagine we couldn't pull off a remote meeting for that if it's a one agenda item but we just um i know several members will be part of that finance decision but um i do feel uncomfortable

069with one and a half million dollars not being approved by the full board um in a you know we apologize that this is such a a tight turnaround we are very surprised that it was the 15th was the application deadline um in just getting that amount yeah i mean as uh you know you never want to turn down money but i i do think it was in some ways an irresponsible move by the state in that we we really had some thoughtful discussions and the strategic stuff on round one but to come up with 10 days and i know we've got some strategic things we want to do with our facilities and we're probably going to have to do some very creative things to see if this can fit in but it's with the exception

070of whatever we can do to help staff and get more people in and do all this other stuff but boy i think it's almost totally irresponsible to actually uh you know force money on and uh that could be spent to maybe fill in the get revenue gap that we're going to have next year in our budgets but i do realize there's a problem that some of this money was tied to covid but i just i just feel very very uncomfortable having to do a half expletive deleted effort to have to come up with this stuff and so much for my editorial yeah scott and i have a webinar tomorrow that the state is providing that we'll be participating in it's basically what you can buy and what you can't buy in a short period of

071time the december 30th deadline is very difficult to meet because you have to have things on hand yeah by december 30th and so we don't have a lot of choices here we have to buy you know items that we can have on hand by the 30th of december and we have to get that application in in very short order so a lot of the superintendents i had a meeting last week were were saying well this is this is too fast um and you know can you at least give us ideas about things that would be pre-approved by the state so that we're not guessing at this point we only have such a short period of time to get it together so we'll be participating in that webinar tomorrow and hopefully being able to give the

072finance committee a good um a good accounting of what we think would be our suggestions for using one and a half million we certainly have needs we just need to know we just need to hone those needs in right and they have to be directly related to covid 19. and these are i just want to make sure that just for the public these are federal dollars that flow through the state department of education right so the congress passed this this money the states can use it as they wish but they have a deadline the governor then released these funds to the public school systems in two rounds and she released basically the full amount that she basically could at this point release to public school systems so we appreciate the money and we appreciate the

073the federal government providing these funds but it's challenging yeah just a few quick things uh first i i echo exactly uh peter's uh opinion um that but noting that my frustration is definitely with the state i don't think this is anything on you um like you mentioned this was congress passed this money congress passed this a long time ago the state knew we had this we could have done this in one round and given folks a longer lead time that's just an airing of frustration so in the moment of editorializing i'm joining you peter um that said um you know i i do think we have the opportunity there are things that we know that can work so i certainly do trust you and scott to start to come up with items the finance committee

074and such but again i agree having the whole board be a part of this would be really important specifically i just want to put in a plug i really would strongly encourage us incorporating more deeply more deeply integrating outdoor learning into this round um you know we had to pull things together pretty last minute we've had a number of meetings i think we can put more effort into it this time and perhaps do another big tranche uh towards that um the other other items um thank you for putting together the parent forms uh i think i really i really appreciate it i think it's a great thing uh that that we're doing um and just a plus hopefully it's been useful i'm so i wish i had gotten to them i'm gonna try to go

075tomorrow or participate tomorrow um hopefully we can continue those throughout later in the fall you know not right away but you know things keep going i think the forums are just a good opportunity for folks to wade in and make sure voices are heard in addition to the board meetings um and then the final thing a question uh you you'd floated possible changes to the yellow plan i'm just interesting interested to know if you have any ideas of what we would foresee in terms of changes so i am going to provide the board a summary as to all parents that attended as well as all the staff summary of kind of the big ideas um so i i don't want to i'm not sure i am prepared to even though i got pages of notes

076and i have some big ideas that have come up um we just we have another forum and i'd like to give parents an opportunity to chime in on that but um i definitely see several things that we could make improvements in from based on the forums that we've had um they have been interesting and i i agree i think during this unique year we're in it would be a good idea for us to continue hosting forums whether we have another one in january you know some forums in january and then and later in the spring i don't think this year is going to be a lot different unless things change rapidly you know with vaccinations or whatnot so it will be important for us to continue getting feedback from people there are other ways to

077get feedback i know you know we offered two three parent sessions we're offering but still i know parents have different schedules we tried offering those at different times one in the morning and two at night but it is difficult i think for people to give up that time and so we're also looking possibly at a combination of a survey later um in the fall in addition to holding more forums in the middle of the year just to give people another opportunity to give us feedback and in terms of the outdoor learning um we want to do that i think our you know and i say our scott and my frustration is the turnaround time that we have to have these things in place and the timelines that we're dealing with it's very challenging to meet

078these timelines by december 30th and that's why kind of the focus on a larger project like the amphitheater that we know we can get designed and we can get a contractor in and and try to get that through but it is challenging to spend that kind of money in a short period of time it's usually something that we would spend over a year looking at thanks god scott jeff oh my goodness it's already a long week it's monday sometimes we're the same never know all right does anyone else have any questions kevin i just wanted to address uh both peter and mike's question uh with regard to finance and um i absolutely i think that after we have a discussion on friday have options have opportunities have that discussion to help move that forward in

079the most expedient way possible it is going to mean that it may be an exceedingly unpleasant quick turnaround because um we're going to pull the finance committee together on friday to look at those and and the reason i think that we have to keep asking those pointed questions these are funds to support what's going on right now i agree in in infrastructure and everything else but um if there are ways that we can use these funds to provide a better experience a more robust experience for people that are remote it's an opportunity they've got to be part of the district more than they are right now and and i know it's it's challenging so i'd love to see uh what you and scott can come up with on that um and then you know mike

080simmons was a brilliant finance um chair because he was able to pull together the the difficult discussions and then bring it back to the board so i'm going to try to emulate that and see if mike can help me think around corners on that piece of it um that that that's it so you know it would we'd have to meet next week and it would be uh you know a wednesday thursday kind of thing if that's okay i don't mean to over no i think it's a absolutely um so i think it's just a matter of waiting to hear from all of from us most likely fran about trying to schedule something that we can all um be available for so go ahead buy us so as far as you mentioned the significant likelihood of

081really eventually having a confirmed positive case is there specific i know freeport had something similar to like an outbreak i wouldn't say but kind of a collection of positive cases do we have a specific plan to deal with a conferred positive case when it comes yes we have a leadership team meeting tomorrow and that will be one of our agenda items actually is to have some sort of a framework in place with the input of our health team our district physician on exactly how we would do that the thing is in in talking with another one of my colleagues is that it's challenging because every case is a little bit different and how you approach it is different and the cdc does walk you through and they basically direct you this is what you will

082do and you will do this contact tracing and these are the groups that you need to contact trace with this particular person student staff member or whatever so they they're very cdc is very directive and that's been the experience that i've heard from um you know probably three other districts now that i've been through it so but we will have a general feeling or general way that we're going to approach this as well um you know in my i've said this before but as long as there is not a staff member you know that we have to take out of the mix because they have been you know they're ill because of covet for example we would try to first quarantine a cohort and the staff that goes with that cohort whoever works with that

083cohort and do basically move everything offline or out of the building and and go red with that cohort students and staff for as long as the cdc tells us we have to so that's anywhere from two days to 14 days um and it depends on what cohort you know if it's a and b sometimes it's going to be pieces of a and b because the staff members work with both so generally is to not disrupt the educational experience at least it's in red people are in red but it wouldn't be more than 14 days according to the cdc guidelines so unless all of a sudden multiple cases just bloom in within that cohort then it makes it longer but um if it's just you know one case um that's that's the general direction is to

084continue the education um you know at home so that's exciting to hear that it isn't like you of course you don't really see a foreseeable like complete red scenario moving forward it would be like two weeks in red right to attempt to return to y'all okay if there's multiple cases and again this is all just based on what you know we've gotten for guidance from the department of education cdc so far if there are multiple cases within a school that could mean that the school is closed um you know when i say close go into red okay um for the the time period that the cdc says up to two weeks yeah so the cdc their guidance says two to 14 days that's their period and it depends on the situation that that we're in

085okay that's awesome thank you thank you jeff i have a couple questions do we do we have um when you look at the plan on on having people go out because they're quarantined will there be thoughts on what staff will do if they're not sick but they're being quarantined yes that's actually what we're going to be talking about tomorrow for the leadership team as a responsibilities of staff members during that time because it's going to look different right and to make sure that we we can keep people engaged and working with kids if they are in fact healthy just being quarantined right exactly and is is there a list from the state that that lists which schools have cases and whether it's a student or a staff member is there anything like that the main

086cdc i believe carries that but the department of education to my knowledge has no information but it's just by town with the cdc it wouldn't be by the school district right they don't list them by schools okay thank you go ahead uh so i was wondering if the if we will if people will have input on how the extra covered funding funding is spent just because i know that as a student i received multiple times the school didn't have the funding so we can't do that so i was just wondering if students teachers or just people in the community will have input on how that extra money is spent yes i did talk with the president of the teachers association friday and when we knew what where allocation amount was and just said if you

087have ideas for membership of the teachers association we'd like to get those in a very short period of time i think i would i think madison that's a great idea for students and mr hoffman i can certainly talk about the student government at least giving some sort of you know feedback on that we don't have a lot of time to get it from all students at this point but at least if there's a group at the high school that we can turn to such as student government or student council and get their feedback i would love to do that trying to get as many ideas right now as we can with that um is there any more uh information about online learning with live streaming classes because i know personally i have one class that's

088live streamed and it actually really helps and i was and i know a lot of other students that would really appreciate online learning where it's more live formatted and i was wondering if there was any more progression with that so the request for proposals is not closed yet it will be closing very shortly we'll be awarding the contract through the finance committee to a vendor i believe by october 13th is the date that we're hoping to issue that award so from there we'll develop a plan with a vendor and first getting our network repaired and up to speed where it needs to be with all the fiber and that process will continue we'll start right away after we award that and then we're going to start the purchasing process it might be the same vendor

089or different vendor it depends um on what a vendor can offer us sometimes vendor only does network sometimes a vendor does both they'll provide the equipment for live streaming such as cameras and mics and all that stuff but our rfp put out a mobile unit classroom unit which means that teachers can actually pack up the equipment and take it home with them and actually live stream from home using the equipment or they can do it in class and we opted to do that instead so once we have all that information it's going to be a while before all of that is in place but we are we are actually putting together right now a um live stream work group um and this group will be um looking at uh managing the project so that we

090are um very thoughtfully bringing teachers in and training them um who are interested in doing this you know initially so we can get it going um and then you know going from there that's kind of our initial plan right now but yes um live streaming will be you know i think very helpful for students who are on the off days and also in our remote school who've been um you know asking for that as well and those are things that we're discussing live streaming also and i'll just put it out there i think is most appropriate for the secondary grades middle school and high school um at the elementary level it's not we haven't found it to be as effective in terms of looking into it and i also think philosophically i'm not sure live

091streaming at the elementary level is something that young students should be should be doing so those are considerations and that's obviously how we build the rfp as well thank you jeff anyone else have any questions for jeff jeff you might as well stay there because we have a couple more things we might have questions for you it's hard not having you with us at the tables um so as we move on to communications um we look at policy be again um as a first read i didn't know jeff if you wanted to mention anything about that or if we're going to just keep it as a first read for now and vote on it next meeting yeah and i apologize that we changed that from a second read to a first read i think at

092the last meeting we talked about being a second read tonight so fran and i went through the policy last week and when we looked at it we saw that there was some information in the policy that needed to be adjusted for your review beyond just the 6 30 time if you choose to go with 6 30. so in making those adjustments we thought it was it only made sense to bring it as a first read the other adjustments is to make sure that we're following practice some of this language is very old language and it was talking about noticing a board meeting seven days prior we haven't noticed a board meeting seven days prior and there's nothing in statute that says we have to do that for years and years and years and years so

093it really doesn't make sense to continue having that language in a policy our practice has been for years um you know 72 hours if practicable we always try to get the agendas out on thursday at least 72 hours on thursdays prior to the monday board meeting and we have a relationship with forecaster where they expect the agenda on thursdays um and if not we tell them for some reason we've got to get the agenda out friday morning or whatnot but that's pretty rare so we wanted to change the policy to reflect our practice and not um it was we considered to be very old language so that's a that's an adjustment in there and then with emergency meetings we changed the language i believe it was three days notice um if you truly need an

094emergency meeting i think it was three days notice i don't have it right in front of me um you're certainly not going to want to give three days notice for an emergency meeting or that so we changed the language to 24 hours so if the board needed to for some reason you have a topic that you need to have an emergency meeting on i can't think of a time when we've actually had an emergency meeting but we would just have to give 24 hours and again there's nothing in statute that has a time limit that's certainly by policy and a local decision so we're recommending that that is entire hands if you need to have a meeting quickly so while we had that policy in front of you i just wanted to make sure that

095we had those adjustments and in doing so we didn't want it to be a second read tonight obviously for the board to digest it thank you jeff does anybody have any questions are we going to discuss this at all with the first reading we can go ahead no i uh you know i uh i will uh just do a frustration i i do think that 630 makes more sense but as a formatting thing i think half of our meetings were an hour to an hour and 15 minutes into our agenda before we get action items now i realize that some of these reports are important but you know two meetings ago when we had something very important to discuss in an executive session it was 9 15 and you know we'd lost a couple miles

096per hour off our fastballs by that time and i and i think we've got to find some way to put a time limit on these reports so that uh if we've got important things however you know there are times that are important like when we when we had a lot of public comment on an item and it was the totally appropriate thing to do to get those folks to comment but you know we were an hour last we were an hour last year last month and i realized some of that was we were trying to find out how the how the school was getting going you know we were an hour and 20 minutes tonight and uh i just uh i i guess i'm spoiled by the council that in most cases with those agendas

097we were into our action items probably on a on a good night probably 15 minutes and on a when the howling mob showed up we might be uh you know a half an hour to 40 minutes but i just get frustrated as hell as we sit around and all this stuff and if we've got important things for the board to do that we're dubbing around and don't get to them to an hour and a half to two hours into the meeting and again that's my soapbox and i apologize you don't have to apologize peter i think that that's something to keep into consideration setting the agenda is something that um we can adjust and i'd be curious to hear what other people think about that whether it's right now knowing that we're already an hour

098and 20 minutes into it or offline well i always i'm very good at lighting fuses so i've done it again does anybody have any comments as it relates to the gender flow or follow-up to peter just really quick i i hear your frustration peter the only thing that i would say is that we tend to ask administrators and others to give reports and they've been here all day um and so that would then potentially hold them back it's just shorter yeah okay does anybody else have any discussion points for this before we move on margo um i just wanted to bring up when when this was talked about at the last meeting um the thing that i thought about is that sometimes there are meetings prior to the school board meeting and i just wanted

099to check with jeff and other people who are here all day who usually are at those meetings like policy for example does moving the school board meeting earlier take away the time that you need to finish your work day have something to eat and then go into two meetings back to back so i just i don't think so no i think it's just 30 minutes i think if it was an hour that would probably be the case for some of us trying to do those meetings before board meetings etc but i think a half an hour is okay okay do you say so that's yeah that's my take on it um i the other piece i was just gonna mention is that if there is um you know if there are um you know a

100wish of the board or will of the board to look at your agenda again and how it's presented different districts do agendas in different ways you know some some districts have the action items right at the beginning of the agenda some i mean it's all over the place there's no one way of doing it but that you know the policy committee um if there's an interest of the board that the policy committee um threw in as the chair you know take that up as an item on the policy agenda um there's a hundred ways to to run the agenda for a board meeting and you certainly have the the chair has the discretion of changing the agenda um you know especially momentarily if necessary and i know we've done that on different occasions so yes

101thank you um all right so moving on um under communications we've talked a bit about this already this evening but parent forms we've had two of the parent forums so far we've also had a staff forum i attended all three of those so far and there's one more parent forum tomorrow evening board members are welcome to attend any of those um to listen and to get some insight to all the things that we get presented it's helpful to have that insight does anybody need any more information on that everybody's received an invite i'm guessing um i'm just grateful that we were able to do them i hope we're able to do them again throughout the year it is one of our board goals and to know that we've already kind of accomplished step one of

102that goal feels really great so thank you again to all the administrators for adding that to your days and especially at the end of the day i know they're appreciated by our community and um provide a lot of great insight so now as we move on to items for action um the next item is approval of a professional staff grade seven uh science teacher um could i please have a motion for moved thank you in a second any discussion seeing none all in favor any opposed no thank you and then we'll move on to vote to elect the board delegate to the msba delegate assembly on october 30th 2020 and thank you to kevin desmond who has volunteered to take on this so moved delegation okay there you go second i'll second and um i'm

103also interested in attending all right okay great good is there a limit to attending no okay especially this year because it's virtual yeah it's definitely a helpful as a first time board member it's definitely a great way to get some more information yeah so um i would reach out to fran if you're interested i will okay all right all in favor all right and then the last item um is the 2021 calendar revision um jeff do you want to give any background to this i feel like it would be helpful yeah so when the board approved the calendar for the 2021 school year back in i believe it was april or may when you approved the calendar there was a notation on the calendar that said after three days the district can revert at that

104point to a remote learning learning days but the three days of weather related snow wind whatever that brings us out of the district we would have to go through three days of those add those on to the end of the school year um i've been asked by parents i've been asked by teachers why are we doing that why can't we just revert to since we've already perfect not perfected but we've experienced this um for many months um especially last year why can't we just go into red if we know that a storm is coming or we have the idea that there might be one coming kind of prep people for it we're also in a mode this year obviously where students do take their devices back and forth especially when they're leaving their cohort days

105so they're prepared that's kind of been our prep to do that so it does kind of raise the question is it necessary for us to do three days of weather related tacking onto the school year this year um or you know would it be the will of the board to go ahead and just waive that requirement for the year um end the school year on and i don't have the calendar in front of me but on the day that was designated in the calendar just as a side note because this is an odd year that we're in the commissioner has already waived any days missed so you remember that we change you change the calendar to allow for the staff to have five days at the beginning of the year we lost three student days

106when we did that the commissioner has waived any days lost at this point they don't have to be made up at the end of the school year and given the year that we're in i think that's probably a good thing at this point she's only waiving making that wave until january 15th so any days lost after january 15th for weather do need to be made up um you know by the commissioner's decision-making at this point unless she changes that so i'm advising the board that i don't know if there's really a point in in having that go forward with the three days or if we can just revert to a virtual or remote day when there's weather conditions that would call the district out there's one exception and that would be when there's power outages

107and the reason we're not doing anything about the other day when there were widespread power outages is that it falls within the commissioner's waiver for until january 15th so we don't have to do anything with it but um that certainly would be the exception is when there's a widespread power outage jeff i have a question about power outages i mean just the other day i lost power but like three houses up the road from me didn't so how would we assess that to say nope it's big enough where there isn't enough um households to be able to connect remotely yeah we got we got a several reports i had people emailing me administrators had people emailing we also had a lot of staff members who couldn't access so they weren't even able to get in

108so when we have that issue we just call it as a day and that's why it took a little while for us to call it but we had enough people that just couldn't get in so it really wasn't a day that was going to work okay it's a hard call because there are outages aren't always just a whole town exactly um sometimes they're you know scattered but we do the best we can and we had enough people that were especially our staff couldn't even get in that we knew it really wasn't going to be productive jennifer you have a question but i think to talk about the power outage i think from a student perspective it was still expected that they did the normal day and then there was social media saying they didn't have

109to do it so i think the messaging has to be clearer as we move through this because i think it just felt really clunky i think coming from our household anyway yeah and i i did hear that too jennifer well i and that comes from me so i'll make sure that we're making that more clear we're just calling it you know um it is the first time we've dealt with it most of the time it's usually snow or something like that that we're dealing with and that's an easy call and i think there was frustration because some people didn't have internet kids were really upset because they felt they were behind right and then other people were fine like we were saying so i don't know how to make it better but i think next

110time if you know in hindsight it's the first time we've been through it that if we have a power outage and we're hearing things by eight o'clock in the morning we're just putting out a message that today is not a school day okay um even if we're you know even if it's not affecting the entire district but it's pockets i just think out of fairness we have staff that also live out of the district if we've got enough staff you know i had principals emailing saying we have some staff members that aren't able to access now yeah it's it's just not going to be a school day at that point yep that makes sense peter well i'm going to break precedent and actually move that we approve the calendar revision okay do i have a

111second second second we can any more discussion but we're just voting on removing this revision yes okay i guess i wasn't clear on this so so the revision is what it's what jeff stated was to remove the three days not just the calendar as it stands through the end of the year so can i just do mine sorry so no i don't i mean i looked over the calendar that's being presented till the end of the year and i know that what you just presented i just want to make sure i'm clear on what we're voting on i know that you want to get out of here peter no i am not i think he's he has made that fairly clear but if you're confused go ahead so we did put out three different calendars

112recently that were updated obviously and we had cohort a b calendars and then the district calendar which was updated on the district calendar we did not remove the wording obviously because the board approved it at the bottom that said you know after three days or something like that um you know then the district can revert to red you know a virtual day remote day when there's a weather related condition so i'm asking the board tonight on the district calendar itself not the cohort a or b to remove that language so that now gives us flexibility so we do not have to make those three days up at this end of the school year no matter what cohort day we're talking about okay thank you i don't know if that's more clear but same question thank

113you jeff it's important that we all understand what we're voting on you're basically removing that notation that's on the calendar yeah okay um any more discussion all right all in favor was our second i'm sorry oh i'm sorry i don't know who was the second there wasn't one okay mike simmons second and all in favor thank you thank you all right and uh lastly adjourn the meeting i need a motion for that so moved thank you mike and a second a second thank you kate all in favor thank you everybody thank you