001it's queuing up now should be all set okay good evening and welcome to the business meeting of the Scaro Board of Education tonight is Thursday November 19th 2020 could I have the roll call vote please I'm sorry roll call attendance Mrs gius yes Dr Gil yes Miss calones yes Miss Leighton here miss lindström yes Mrs cther here Mrs Turner here Mr Bennett and miss gius here excellent thank you um agenda item 2.0 is adjustments to the agenda I do have one adjustment to the agenda this evening um I would like to move agenda item 5.0 Scarboro Education Foundation update um to above agenda item 4.0 which is the superintendent report um we have a guest joining us tonight and for the purposes of her time um I know it's been a long work day for
002her we'll go ahead and get her in above um some some of our other business are there any other adjustments to the agenda okay seeing none agenda item 3.0 is public comment on agenda items if you would like to make a public comment please feel free to raise your blue hand and I can promote you into the meeting okay I'm not seeing any public comment this evening agenda item 4.0 Scaro Education Foundation update and Kelly if you could please share the slide deck for this evening um I'm going to go ahead and promote Miss doist oh she's gone oh oh here she is I'm here I don't have my camera going okay and if Michelle if you want to just introduce yourself um and then you can take it away with your slides yeah okay
003can you guys um hear me okay see me all right great um am I am I able to advance the slides or do I need you all to do that no Kelly will go ahead and do that for you great okay well good evening uh I am Michelle dest for folks who don't know me I am the current president of the Scarboro Education Foundation and I'm joining here tonight to give you a quick update on what we've been up to this year um before I get into what's been happening with Seth this year I just wanted to take a few minutes to kind of just step back and talk a little bit about seph's mission and vision I know a lot of you are really really familiar with uh the Scaro Education Foundation but for
004folks who might not be as familiar with SEF and what we're about and what we do or folks who are in the community listening uh I thought it might be worth just stepping back and talking a little bit about who we are and what we do so you can go ahead and advance to the next slide so we'll talk about mission and vision um I'm also wanted to give a little update on our cor current board of directors there's been a lot of change actually in our board um I wanted to talk a little bit about what we've been doing this year and that's uh the SEF is meeting the moment agenda item and then um touch on how you can help support St so next slide so our mission really is uh very simple
005um Scarboro education is Education Foundation is really about connecting the generosity of our community with the creativity of our Educators to invest in hopefully improving the learning outcomes of uh Scaro students uh you can advance to the next slide the way that we get there is simply through funding teacher grants um and so when I think about Seth I think the easiest way to describe it is that we are really seed money and so if we have an educator who has a great idea something creative that they want to try out something that falls outside of normal budget um considerations either because it's something new and end in ative that they want to try or because it's a one-time investment and they're still trying to figure out if there's some um you know positive outcomes
006from it Seth is a path that Educators can use to um get some funding and and make that idea come to life since Inception seph has funded over $220,000 in educator grants in uh Scarboro Public Schools one of the things that um we have been working on enhancing in particular this year is really kind of closing the completing the loop where not only will we um help provide funding for creative ideas but this year we're also um uh making sure that we follow that Grant implementation through to the end and so we actually assigned um Grant Liaisons to so it's basically a board member is assigned to each funded Grant to follow through and follow up with that teacher and say how did it go what were the outcomes and that's something else that we
007hope to provide as well is that we can provide some outcome data and just have you know an additional data point that hopefully will feed into the education system and future decision making go to the next slide so as I mentioned um I wanted to also just touch on our current board of directors um so Michelle dest I am the President of Seth um we have Andrea Byron who is our vice president and grants chair Colleen Aman um she's relatively new to the board and she's our fundraising chair John Ducey um who is our Treasurer and finance chair David Martin also is um very new to the board uh uh Amanda Moren who is our marketing and Communications chair and Christen Roy who is our secretary and one of the things I wanted to mention
008about our board of directors um especially if you've known Seth for a while is that our our composition or our Board of a directors has changed quite a bit in the last few years um Seth is has been around for a while but we haven't been around that long um really in terms of the maturity of the foundation and this year actually I believe is the first year that none of the board members are um founding founding members of the foundation so we've had a lot of change and that's been great that's been exciting I think a lot of fresh faces and new people kind of coming to the table with some fresh ideas and also just to put out there that we're always um you know looking for new people to join the board
009it's still a pretty small board um so we wouldd love to have more people involved so if people in the community are interested in getting involved with SEF um please reach out either through our Facebook page or our uh website you can go to the next slide so this year obviously has been a very interest interesting year for everyone um and Seth I mean probably what we're most known for is our uh spring fundraiser which is we call our operation graduation fundraiser that's where we sell balloons uh to celebrate graduating seniors this is actually you know one of our biggest fundraisers of the year and so this past spring obviously was a very unusual time and we were really happy and excited that we were able to figure out a way to still have this
010fundraiser and still maintain this tradition for our graduating seniors um and it was extremely successful fundraiser for us which was awesome um there was a lot of outpouring from the community people wanting to find a way to celebrate graduating seniors um and this was this is a way that they could do that we raised over $15,000 which like I said is is definitely our most um most successful balloons fundraiser ever and what that enabled us to do is that then when we came into the fall um and obviously it's still a crazy time and we were you know wondering how can Seth you know help our Educators during this very unusual time um we really took a step back and just thought about how can we Flex you know how can can we help uh
011support our Educators through through this unusual year and we were able to actually get some time with Mo'Nique which was wonderful because obviously it's she was stretched so thin but she spent a little time with us just brainstorming what do our Educators really need right now and how can seph use the resources that we have to help support them and what we came up with was that what you know what our Educators really needed was they needed um they needed an Avenue to if they have a creative idea that they can get that funding when they need it and so we basically changed up our grant cycle this year normally we have a twice a year Grant cycle where we just do grants in the fall and there's a there's a grant cycle in the
012spring and so we changed up that process to be a rolling Grant cycle throughout the year and with this great fundraiser we were set up so that we could you know offer that flexibility um where teachers could apply for Grants and we will review them as they uh as they come in so basically we can get teachers what they need when they need it can go to the next slide so how can you help support SEF we basically we have two things coming up um the first the first is our annual appeal so we are kicking off our annual Appeal on giving Tuesday which is December 1st and so we're just out there getting the word out and just you know asking people to please think about St on giving Tuesday please add us to
013your list of foundations and nonprofits that you're planning to donate to um last year we had 100% participation from the school board and from school leadership or superintendent and um so we're hoping that you know you guys will support us 100% again this year and we'll have great participation and we're hoping that you can help us just spread the word to to get um you know put us on your list for annual appeal and please donate uh to SEF this is actually our annual appeal is our largest fundraiser of the year so balloons is a big one but this is actually a bigger one for us and again you know a successful annual appeal is really is what will help set us up to continue to offer that rolling grants option through the spring um
014so getting the word out on annual appeal and then the other um Avenue we have for folks to get out there and support us in December is um the Limington Christmas Village um so we're going to be there volunteering on Sunday December 20th um it's obviously very difficult to do any kind of events this year but this was an opportunity where we were able to uh successfully or safely volunteer at the Christmas Village and we be there accepting donations they're going to set it up to make it safe um so that people I think there's going to be like a bucket with a pole on it or something so people can safely make donations so we will um be there as well so that's how you can help support us so that was it does
015anyone have any questions I have a question go ahead sir Michelle are you guys uh first of all thank you for that presentation um are you guys set up on as a donor on Amazon for like the smile. Amazon you know we are not but we probably should yeah yeah it's super easy right um so yeah if if you do that let me know and we can you can put out a campaign to like get people to change theirs I don't think it's much but considering how much people shop on Amazon I'm sure it adds up yep definitely cool excellent thank you very much Michelle for coming and giving an update and we wish you all the best as we enter into hopefully what is a generous season yes I hope so too thank you
016thank you April Yesa can you promote Max I am actually not a host um and so that was I was goingon to ask um either Diane or Kelly if they could do that for me I just did he should be along perfect thank you very much welcome okay agenda item 5.0 is the super attendance report thank you and Kelly if you could bring up those slides all right so I'd like to uh talk about weather conditions and snow days and provid some information on that we did a survey the last week and what we'd like to do is just kind of walk through the three or four slides first slide in front of you is on school days with inclement weather conditions do you have concerns that your child's teachers may not have connectivity and
017so if you look on the left side the family responses and on the right side is the staff responses and again where where I try to try to make sense of this and I I've looked at this quite a bit so I'm I'm not going to rush through the slide I I know you need some time to look at this but um on the family sides uh 28.5% said no they're not overly worried about that and um on the yes side it was 26.3% and then the Mayes were 45.1% so again almost half the population with the parents are sort of almost in the maybe component area and then um I would say the yes and the NOS are pretty close together you know pretty much 28% no and 26% yes and then on the
018staff response um what we have here is the Mayes are 32.3% and the no are 32.7% and I'm sorry I'm just there we go couldn't read the right side so I just get rid of my face there and on the right side is 35% yes so again um if you if you're looking at the Mayes and the nose you know you're probably around 64 65% um who are either Bassel ating between yes and no maybe and certainly some NOS there so I this is just trying to give people a sense of what people are thinking about our snow days and if we could go to the next slide that would be great Sandy before you move on could I ask a question you sure okay um could you um give us a little bit of
019context in terms of when the survey was sent out how many respondents we had who it was sent to like those those kind of things just so you know people on board are clear so we went out last week and um I'm not mistaken I think we had well I think we had like 3,800 plus responses um we ran it pretty much all last week and we actually put it into the newsletter as well the Friday newsletter that goes out from the um superintendent's office and that was an opportunity to get more more um people to chime in on this whole topic so that it ran for about a week and uh we had a really good response and um again the what I've learned in my years it's it's always been kind of all
020over the map everybody has a different opinion about snow days and I just thought it would be good to try to get the pulse of both the community and with staff as well great thank you yes next slide please so on school days when we are looking at um again the weather conditions um do people have concerns about the potential of losing power at their home given like experiences um so when you think about this this is sort of where I have had concerns in the past and I have strong feelings about making sure that if if we're going to have school that all students can connect um and I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go on but on the left side the family response was maybe at 32.9% and the
021yeses were 27.6% and the NOS were almost at 40% so again when you look at families um just to summarize almost 28% said yes and then the May and the NOS we're looking probably if you combine those together you know around 82 83% and again the Mayes could fall in any type of category so I I don't want to have any bias with this I just think that people are sort of up in the air when they say maybe and and maybe able to fall either way on the right side is the staff and we're looking at 35.4% who said no and almost 25% who said maybe and then 39.7 who said yes so uh particularly I think the staff responses um have a little more concern in this area and uh and um rightfully
022so you know they're the ones that will be teaching remotely and uh certainly that's a concern as well so I can go on to the next slide on school days we're looking at weather conditions um and again would it be permissible and uh looking at the family responses um pretty good response on remote learning just over 67% and certainly the other side was with no school around 32.5% and with staff responses um it was really pretty close I me right down the middle and uh I've had a lot of feedback from staff particularly who are concerned about this topic um just really worried about the ability to do remote learning on a snow day so again um there's many factors that go into this as we will be talking about this okay I think that's
023the last slide Kelly and what I'd like to do is just kind of summarize a little bit here some of my feelings about this and my thinking and where I would like to go with it um so I just want you to picture you know in the morning usually around 400 4:30 we try to begin to make a decision about snow days and uh a lot goes into it I coordinate my time with other superintendents in cumland County um certainly I'm talking to people uh particularly in the district um we talk to Public Works and at times we talk to the police and we just try to make the best decision that we can um I am worried about the ability given the diversity of our town and the region that you know North Scaro
024South Scarboro can you guarantee that all people have electricity and be all students would be able to connect and what I don't want to get into is a haves and haves not and you know certain kids can't get online particularly teachers as well you could have teachers that might work in one part of the district or live in the part of the district and they don't have power or we have many staff that commute from other towns and they could be in a position that uh they they have worse conditions and electricity is not available to them and again I'm thinking as an educator when you're at five six o'clock in the morning and you're thinking okay I got to go to school I got to make sure I can teach my students um and
025if you don't have the ability to e either drive to work and have school or if there's no school and you didn't have any electricity in your house I think it would be a concern about how could you educate remotely to those students um I also and I don't want to exaggerate this but I think we're in a very different time and I think uncertain times and there has not been probably an educator and I respectfully say this that has not said it's been very stressful and that's both in the district and outside of the district and I think Educators have worked incredibly hard and I'm just overly worried that we could set up even more frustration and stress with our teachers and students and families at times um knowing that if we get hit
026hard with a snowstorm and we don't have the electricity that cause some problems I have to say that you know looking at the data in Scaro you typically could have probably three if not four snow days on the average just looking that the last seven or eight years um and we wouldn't make up these days my recommendation is if we had snow days that um we would make them up at the end of the year and that would be something that we would want to make sure we stress with people and so I'm at the I'm just again I'm at a place where I was probably two or three weeks ago where I'm I just don't want to set up um any situation where it's not Equitable for our students and I don't want our
027staff to be more frustrated that they can't get online and we're not talking about a district that has 10 snow days a year we're talking probably average three and we could make those up at the end of the year so I would like to stay marching forward where we will have snow days I would recommend that we continue to learn about remote learning if you think back in March of last year and compared to the work that we're doing now with remote learning we're even getting better at that and I think the more we continue to learn about remote learning I think in a year or two this District may want to look at remote learning once you feel like okay we're not in this Co period a little more relaxed we've got a lot
028of experience with remote learning I think it might be another topic that you want to bring up I'm just not in any way in a position right now to um to think that we could go that route at this point in time hey that's pretty much what I have to say about the SM thank you Sandy um I'll start off by saying I very much appreciate that you um took a data approach for us um we asked you to gather some more information and to so that we weren't just making an anecdotal um you know so that you aren't making an anecdotal decision um and that it was something that we could have an informed discussion about so I appreciate um your willingness to reach out to the community and to and to get some
029more information for us um with that being said I also used the time between last meeting and this meeting to reach out to a few people to I think sometimes we have a question of authority um and just wanted to make sure that this is not something that the board would take action on but this is certainly something that we can discuss as a board um and so it's my feeling so that the board knows um that this is sy's discretion to call a snow day a snow day um and to make that call at 4:30 in the morning as he has traditionally done um and I think it's you know Sandy has made it fairly clear what his recommendation is that I'm certainly open to hearing other comments from board members um and so
030Alisha your hand is raised and then Nick well I I I would like to um discuss it a little bit more including that wrinkle that you just threw in which is inconsistent with my recollection of the conversation that we had last week that this was an actionable board item um I'm I'm not sure that after reaching consensus last week that we should be just sort of changing that um but but um my question was I couldn't understand if the if Sandy was saying that these um snow days would or would not be made up this year they would be made up yeah at the end of the year we'd have to tack them on okay so the rules are not different this year if if if there's a snow day this year um and it's
031and there's no learning going on um they would be made up with our regular hybrid is that correct correct thank you Nick um yes I'm I'm actually also very grateful that you talked Sandy about making the days up because uh as we all know our academic calendar is pretty thin at 175 days as it is so making them up is really crucial um I given this some thought and the and the only thing I wanted to just share with the board is is a couple things one well first I'll say I I agree with the superintendent's uh recommendation and perspective at this point I I feel like people have so much change and so much going on right now if we can keep one thing the same um I I feel like that's a benefit
032to families and and to have a snow day where everyone can take a breath students can take a breath and people aren't scrambling to snowblow the driveway and start the generator so that their computer can get fired up if they lose power and all that stuff I feel like if we can give them that element of consistency it's definitely worth researching in the future right now I just feel like there's so much change coming our way not by choice that if we can choose to keep one thing stable it might really help our families so that was just my perspective so to go back to your um comment Alicia I certainly don't mean to be inconsistent um I I'm learning um and so you know one thing that we that we and I struggle with
033is what is a board decision versus what is something that Sandy presents to us that then is or isn't an action item and so last meeting when it was presented to us I did say that if it was something that was an action item we could put it on a further agenda or future agenda rather um but in talking with msma um you know it it the the opinion of msma was that it was not something that would be an action item of the board go ahead Alicia sorry I muted so um I think last time we discussed this I I understood him to say that they the days were not going to be made up um so regarding the procedure of it I do think that um I disagree with msma because this isn't
034about whether we're calling a he's the superintendent's calling a snow day or not it's about what it's about how we're going to provide education to the students of Scar brro during snow days and I think that that's an entirely different question and that I do think is within the purview of the board whether we're involved in remote learning or iners learning and whether we're going to um what and that also impacts the the calendar the school calendar so for those reasons I I I disagree if it was about calling the snow day I totally agree but um um I I do think that this should be an action item um I knowing that the days are going to be made up now if they're a full snow day then I would support full snow day
035because I think that provides the greatest educational opportunity for the students and I also think it um it takes care of all of the other concerns um but even though my even though my um opinion now is consistent with sy's I still am as you know um a procedure geek and I and I and I do think that the board should vote on it and I don't know how how that happens today given that it's falls under the superintendent but that's my pitch for it so I I your point is well taken Alisha I do think that there is a difference between redefining what a snow day is and whether or not MSA was of the opinion that Sandy can continue to call snow days those are two you know different questions um and so
036really what we need to decide as a board is if there was a temperature and you're right if there was a consensus to redefine what a snow day was then that to me is what the board action um would require if we are all in agreement that Sandy um can continue to call snow days that will be made up to me it sounds as though we are not interested in redefining what a snow day means for this Academic Year um and therefore I don't I don't think that there's an action that needs to be taken Sandy go ahead I mentioned that the last time that we talked about snow days the state did put um a waiver in until like I'm thinking it's around January 25th so if we have a snow day up to
037again it's either January 25th or 27th January 15th that could be we but they have not extended that out into the full winter at all so I just wanted to clarify that and to that point um I do think that if we had an exessive snow days um or even if we don't even if we have two snow days um it's certainly within the board's perview to change the school calendar um to make those days up even if um the current status set you know says that we don't have to I think the board could elect to make those two days up up certainly if we wanted to so that's something that we could look at you know as the year goes on and and can be dependent on how many days we've had and
038and what the rest of the year you know really looks like does anyone else have comments okay um moving on to agenda item 5.2 is the K8 calendar update yeah so what I'd like to talk a little bit is about the calendar again it's K through 8 and um what Again part of I learning in this year is that uh we need time to to really plan ahead and so we um worked with the administration and and uh talking to the union union about the possibility of a K8 uh days where November 18th which was yesterday and December 2nd that they would have an opportunity to begin to plan for if and when we go remote um as you may have remembered this year the election day we did not have the high school students
039come for various reasons but you know security is one big one uh we didn't want students mixed in with the public and stuff like that and so and the the public really needs the space in the the high school to to do the voting so the high school um head that day for professional development and part of our learning again this year is that people just need some time elementary teachers to to plan for if and when we go remote so that was the intent to give them that time and I did reach out to the Builder principles today and I don't want to go too detail because it would take too much time but I just want to highlight if I could some of the things that the buildings worked on today to give
040people an understanding of the importance of this day and the day that we'll be added on as far as December 2nd um so again principls worked with their teachers to really look at resources that they can use when they're going to go remote again I say if they do I think it could happen at some point in time and that the staff was very appreciative at the time they worked collaboratively in teams and um the hybrid teachers were there and they were sort of the experts to work with our um on how remote teachers could could build in collaboration and resources and knowledge for all staff so that was a great way way to to have the hybrid teachers begin to learn about what remote learning could look like um because we have people who
041are actually doing the remote learning now um in one building they did a survey just to kind of get a pulse of how people felt about you know are they prepared to go to a transition of being fully remote and um it was good data for that building about 60% said that they agreed or strongly agreed that they're ready and then other people said you know we're getting there but we need more time and we need to have the time and resources to uh get to the point where they felt really comfortable about it um at another building that people felt very valuable about the essential learning goals that they wanted to cover this year and they were talking about analyzing the fall and Mathematics and reading I ready data but grade level in the
042content areas and how and they use that data to begin to learn about the resources that they have been using with a distance learning Playbook and it's a ability it's a way to pace and and guide the upcoming units and um again that particularly work was very useful with that building and um a lot of good conversations came out of how can we work we won't we and uh much of this work is trying to to learn from each other and another billain they mentioned how they went back to what the summer work was with the start team and the recommendations that came out of that plan and they uh again just kind of began to think about where we started with that team and that plan and where we can go and they really
043dug into the resources with distance learning and um it was energizing and it gave people just a time to really learn from each other which is as you know as a classroom teacher you're always on the go and there's very little downtime to be able to really collaborate and learn from your peers so people were very appreciative of this time um I think if you talked to any educator you know it was a good start in the perfect world if we had even more time uh people would find it even more valuable so I just wanted to highlight that because we we wanted to make sure people knew that we don't want people to get in a panic mode to think we're going remote anytime soon we don't know when and if that will happen
044but we need time for our Educators to plan and um they took good advantage of that yesterday and they'll be doing that on December 2nd that's the update on that okay I'm not seeing any hands raised for questions does anyone have anything okay I'm not seeing any um thank you very much Sandy for giving us an update and I know that that time is appreciated by our staff so hopefully everyone will feel comfortable um if the situation does arise Alisha I just saw your hand pop up sorry I couldn't find it so I was waving at you um for these days does that are they are the um waiver days only for snow days or is or will these be covered under the waiver days you said that again Alicia I'm sorry um these days
045these k through eight days will that count towards the minimum required days or is that in a the waiver period that you were just talking about with Sarah this is a waiver period it is okay I didn't know if the waiver period included these types of planning days or if it was just snow days thank you yep right okay I'm not seeing any other questions so I'm going to go ahead and move on [Music] um agenda item 6.0 is our professional contract update I will turn this over to our negotiations chair um Nick Nick you're un mute there we go oh good now you'll never know what I said um so I I just want to take some time to actually in in public and in our board meeting uh go over the four M
046us that we ratified at our last board meeting so um the board negotiations team worked with the sea negotiations team to settle and ratify what came to be four separate M us one for each of the four units that I listed here who are represented by the Scarboro Education Association um it was all kind of done as one comprehensive effort but in the end it made more sense logistically because each contract is a separate document andou is an official addendum to that collective bargaining agreement to have four separate agreements and they're all very closely related and so I'm actually going to go through them one by one but what's nice is that if we start with the professional teachers um and professional staff and teachers contract you'll see that that's the one that has the
047most comprehensive elements to it and then from there it kind of pairs down uh based on what's in the contract of the other groups and what's relevant to their positions I did want to also say that all of Theus will be available on the SPs website uh along with the current cbas in uh due course very soon next thank you so I I hate wordy slides I apologize for this but uh there's just a lot to cover so I I try to make it as legible as possible so this is um the first mou is for our professional staff and our teachers professional staff are folks for the people that don't know are folks like our nurses um our our clinical our social workers and folks like that um so I wanted to go through
048the the big kind of take-homes from the mou remember that theou as I said a moment ago is an addendum to the contract so everything that's in the contract that's not addressed here still applies for the duration of that agreement so um sick leave we did agree and you'll see this in all four to add 10 days beyond the the federally kind of granted emergency sick time that came out through the FFC um and this is an additional 10 days on top of that that the person can use if they have to take a covid related absence from work that's something that happened at a school so um there of course there are situations where that 10 days wouldn't be applicable in other words if somebody was exposed and had to quarantine because they flew
049to St Louis for a concert I don't know why I picked St Louis but I did they flew there for a concert something of their own personal choice then they wouldn't be able to make use of those 10 days and that's worded very specifically in theou but this is for you know a school related exposure and if they have to quarantine for 10 days um and if it happens more than once that first 10 days would be the FFC but if it happened again which you know with with you know CO's a scary thing right um we didn't want it they didn't really want it to impact their earn sick time and the board negotiations group did agree to that and we ratified it last week so you'll see that clause in all four of
050Theus talking about grievances grievances is something that's already in the contract however um there was some discussion about um adding a piece in about rapid response so uh what that came down to is that any concerns that are brought up related to safety or or issues around covid um well health and safety must be addressed within 24 hours and what addressed means is that there has to be a plan in place and that has to be clearly communicated to the person who expressed the concern of course there are going to be some things that come up that we can't just turn around on a dime and address it but there'll be a plan in place there'll be a mitigation strategy there and so that's clearly uh written in theou as far as work schedule um
051this really was to structure how requests for remote work will be handled and accommodated uh of course I wanted to make this very clear this is outside of ADA the America um the Americans Disabilities Act if there is a legitimate um disability Co or not we are required to give reasonable accommodations um to meet that so this particular Clause dealt mostly with things that are outside of ADA and requests for remote work and how those will be processed and handled a fair and consistent way uh differential compensation has to do with our stiens for people that run clubs Sports um you know if there's something that's canceled because of covid and there's an alternative way of doing it the amount of the stien will be calculated exactly as it's listed in the CBA and so
052if it has to be recalculated because the nature of the contact with the students the nature of the opportunity has changed then that would follow the stien that the stien rubric that already exists there is an additional piece in there that if there is a dispute that arises there is a a a clause to create an appeals committee um in the case that U there is a dispute between the parties about the amount that comes out of the rubric meet and consult is language you see all through many of the cvas and basically what that comes down to is that if there are changes to the Scarboro Public Schools covid-19 I didn't want to call it reopening plan because we're open So the plan as to how we operate and work in covid if there's
053a plan for that that the sea groups just ask this particular group asked thatly meet and consult and you'll see that in some of the other ones as well and just get the perspective of those folks before making a final decision technical support you'll see this in all of them basically if there are certain things that come up um as a result of distance learning or something that is related to covid that that impacts someone's um job or what they're doing we just ask the groups asked that they receive training for that and then the last piece is the most tricky and it was one of the ones that we had to work kind of really um carefully on and that is um pay so there was a lot of discussion about a lot of
054the additional efforts that have gone into preparing and continuing to accommodate um education in schools right now in the world of an evolving world of covid-19 and so what we were able to do is we were able to to access some of our covid relief funds and actually offer our our professional and teacher staff up to 11 hours of time time at the volunteer rate so that's $25 an hour regardless of your seniority or what your current salary is they can put in for that time there is a federal form for it um and they can receive up to 11 hours of additional pay for planning in the in the case that we go completely online um but also for just accommodating all the additional steps that everyone's having to take way outside and above
055and beyond to accommodate the world of Education as we're currently experiencing it does anyone have any questions about that one before I mean we can I can do them all or we can stop and people can ask about this one if you want but maybe hearing them all might be better I don't know what do you think April I'm not seeing any hands Nick so I would say keep on going Al righty this is the same ver uh different flavor of the same thing but you'll notice there's just one um that's missing and so um the really the change here is at the very bottom you will see that um because these are educational support staff and they're hourly employees um they are going to get paid not at at the um at the volunteer
056rate as it's stated in the professional contract but that their per DM rate for up to four hours of approved time that they allocate to assisting teachers the example that came up in the discussions was you know if there's additional photo copying that has to happen and that educational technician has some additional time or has time outside of their contracted work week they could use they could put in for this time and get additional pay for support that they're doing um to help teachers uh the rest of these read pretty much exactly the same next you'll see the list get smaller um and I I found a a picture of a female bus driver which I just thought was really cool U because I like putting pictures on slides because words are annoying um but
057all these are essentially the same um you'll see that U meet and consult is still here grievances are still still here technical support is still here um uh we did have a discussion about additional pay for the bus drivers and the group you're going to see in a moment the reason those Clauses didn't come in here is because um they're hourly employees um and actually add any additional hours that they're working they're already getting paid for um so the edtech one was a little bit special because that was specifically about helping teachers above and beyond their their standard job um but uh with with the bus drivers in the next trip you're going to see there was no uh reason to put an additional pay um but the rest of the Clauses are the same
058and then this one is literally identical except there's a picture of a female custodian as opposed to a female bus driver so I just wanted to go over those in public um and and um really it came down to the kind of take home for all of these was that we really kept them um streamlined to things that either weren't in the contract and things that were not covered by federal law or the CDC or the EPA all the different things that have come out to help us with covid we didn't want to had to replicate that language in the contract we really wanted to make sure Theseus spoke specifically to things that belonged in a collective bargaining agreement um that were relevant to covid all of these are set to expire either at the
059end of the current contract year or if we God willing before then go back to life preo and no longer have to be thinking about these things that's that's that's my update excellent Nick thank you so much for following through with those um and I also apprec appreciate your um thoroughness to from following it all the way through making sure they got signed and then also making sure that they got posted as well so all of those are publicly available and um you know that it's it's a result of a lot of hours of work I know so thank you does anyone have any questions before we move on seeing none uh agenda item 7.0 is the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium update um and for this one I'm going to turn it over to Shannon um
060as she was uh as she volunteered for us um at the last meeting to take the initial call sure absolutely first um thank you Diane for organizing this meeting I really found it to be incredibly insightful and helpful for me to understand and really wrap my arms around um what the midatlantic um Equity Consortium can do for us here in Scarboro so thank you thank you for that and thank you for allowing me April to to participate um the big takeaway I I had from this is that any programming or any um recommendations we get this is not going to be a cookie cutter approach here in Scaro what they do is they um they gather data points from three different ways that I'll talk about in just a moment and once they gather that
061data and they have an opportunity to look through it they would then come to us with recommendations for what we would need based on what they see in Scarboro so um for the questions of are we going to have a forum or should we do this or should we have an inservice day we don't know yet because they really have to go through the their process first um the data is collected they have a three-prong approach they do climate surveys um is part one or is one leg I should say not part one um those are based on are done via Survey Monkey they are sent out to four different groups um they break Elementary School students out um they start at grade three because they um the thought process is K to two just
062does not have the cognitive ability to answer questions of this magnitude so they they find that um grade three is where they really can start answering questions um so grade three to to um up to whatever we stop is what she said they typically run through six but as we know our grade six is is Middle School so it would it would run up from grade through one there's a middle school and high school student survey that is combined grades there's a staff survey and then there is a parent survey um I specifically asked if we can gear this more towards a community and her response was that um we could do that she said what would might what we might see is that community members that don't have a tie to the school might
063not see that there's a need for them to answer the survey so if you look at the um samples that I sent you there was one on there that said um it was a parent survey um we could we could manipulate that wording if we wanted to she just said to be aware that people who don't have that connection might not answer the survey so we might not see results there um the the other note she did say about the climate surveys um is that there is a worry because of covid that um some of the children that answer that what she has seen or what they have seen is that there might be a little bit more negativity than what we would see in a normal when we were doing you know business as
064usual and going to school and it's just a a a byproduct of the environment we're in with covid um the political environment she mentioned as well has added to that so she just wanted to let us know that that is something to be aware of and that later on we could even do another survey if we wanted to check the temperature at a later date that was possible so that's prong one um prong two is an equity audit that's done um and they are three levels of that as well um they are self assessed so it's a little bit of a different type of audit um one is at the building level one is at the classroom level and one is at the teacher level so again um just as a refresher from last week
065the purpose of um maec or why the why they um are here is to really be sure that there is Equitable education for everybody um everybody's able to succeed in school and um the purpose of the audits is to be sure that these that everybody has that opportunity in school to succeed and to do well with the same resources the teacher level is a self-reflection um that that they would do to examine their own practices that's going to be um an interesting an interesting thing to look at as well as at the building level um included in that are our administrators of course other teachers and staff and then non-teaching staff members and then the third prong is focus groups so that would be um stakeholders that we as the board would identify to participate
066in the diff in the focus groups um examples would include teachers parents uh students as well um to where they could uh this would be an opportunity for the uh Community to be heard so um that that is the the bonus there as well um so again they're going to collect that data and then um ma will make a recommendation as to what we need what we need so some examples that she gave she said we might find that we need professional staff training on how to speak up when a sta how a staff member should speak up when they witness bullying or witness racism um they she's found um sometimes what they find through the surveys is that they teach teachers are just unsure of how to approach the the topic so it might
067be something like that it might be that we have training on privilege that we base in the community so she said those are just examples but again nothing concrete until we go through this pronged approach and we determine or or they determine and recommend what they think um that Scarboro needs the needs for Scarboro um the other thing she recommended is that we create a steering committee the purpose of that would be to really um hear the programming recommendations from maec and and relay that back to the board um the group would be rep should be representative she said of the different communities and the different stakeholders involved um one question I know Alisha brought up last meeting was she wanted to know about the funding and we did talk a lot about that um
068it's this is run through the Department of Education and the funding actually comes from um title four the Civil Rights Act so um nothing this programming there's no there's no funding that comes from it that is outside of the that um Department of Education funding now if we want to continue on with them and do additional work things like a full curriculum review we would pay a fee for that so that that would cost us um money out of the budget but the the three-pronged approach I explained to you the recommendations that they would bring forth and the activities that we would participate in are potentially participate in are included in that that Department of Education funding um what I the other thing that stuck out to me is I don't ever I don't claim
069to be an expert I know um we're looking really at this group because they are the experts um our consultant I was very impressed with her experience she's had 30 years in education and law and Equity work so she is um definitely well versed um in this topic and in the subject matter and really um to me it it there's a good fit there I I appreciated everything she brought to the table and that she she told she explained to us I think we have a good opportunity here to do some listening and some learning great thank you Shannon does anyone have any questions Max I see your hand is raised yeah um first off I just wanted to say thank you so much for doing this um I'm really glad that our district is
070heading in this Direction um I really liked everything that you had to say I had a question regarding like the surveys you mentioned um could you give me any examples on like the types of questions that they would ask because I know you had said like um they don't survey like K through two because they don't really have like the cognitive functioning to answer those questions so specifically at like the third grade level and even at like the staff level like at all levels what kind of questions will I be asking sure yeah they had um at the lower levels it was questions like um I feel that the teachers and the school are want me to do my best I feel like the teachers encourage me to do my work I'm proud of my
071school I'm proud to learn in school um there were some questions as well is um I do I feel safe in school and it's on a um strongly agreed to a strongly disagree scale so they're just you know bubbling in on Survey Monkey how they how they feel um question about safety rules are in there um questioning questions about bullying if if my teacher sees bullying they they'll say something about it those those types of questions are in there um my friends and I feel safe we feel like we're respected in the school um so it really runs the gamut quite honestly that's awesome um you had said like there would be a lot of self-reflection for teachers do you know what kind of um Insight or like questions they ask of the teachers in
072that stage well we do have a sample about of the audit um the one thing we have to be careful of with that is that the audit is actually undergoing um a revamping right now process so what it looks like right now today is not necessarily what it's going to look like when it's our our opportunity to do it um so that is yes I've got one and I can generally say the questions are in line with um uh what I just at what I just told you um but the the survey the this Equity piece is going to really talk about does the school have policies what does my education programming look like how what does my teaching program look like what does my curriculum look like is it um do the hallways show
073Equitable um in regards to gender and identity are we showing Equitable pictures in the hallway and on the bulletin boards and are we making sure that we're integrating our classroom when students self-segregate you know it's it's really diving into um the minutia of what's happening in the school all the way down to the curriculum level so it's pretty robust um I just again I just um say that that piece of it is one we have to um we know is going to change I don't I don't anticipate that it's going to be a major change she didn't indicate so but it it will look a little bit different Diane go ahead and then Alisha you're up next yeah I was also just going to add I think you know Shannon's done a great job describing
074what that um you know conversation that we had with Michelle Nutter was um I think the other piece that I would just add is to take into account that these are surveys that have been considered reliable and valid because they've been used across the United States by the department of Ed on a regular basis so it's not a homegrown survey that's just being tested out and that we're not sure is going to get us the information that we need so I really loved that aspect of it as [Music] well Alicia go ahead actually dian's um statement was is related to my question that I thought that the questions looked really good the sample questions that were sent one of the concerns or that I were or questions I asked myself was about the context that
075the kids are getting these surveys and I was um a little bit concerned about that because um I just wondered if if they would understand the the reason for for their answers and why their answers are important so if if you were asked if you feel safe in a school today to a third grader they might think about covid for example and not that that's not obviously important and relevant but we're you know we've got a specific goal that we're trying to achieve and I just wondered if that was something that they discussed at all well that is definitely um in line with what she was Michelle was Michelle our consultant was saying um in regard to the negativity that they're seeing in the surveys right now now and that we can expect just given
076the climate that we're in um so yes we're going to have to temper the results a little bit under with the understanding that we are these are not normal times that we're in um and so the answers will reflect that she did say um that we could go back and do it again later do the survey again later when things are normal so that we can get a better understanding um during during a normal school year if you will we we could go back and see what that looks like at that time we could res survey I guess I just wondered if like the teachers give context when they when they give these surveys to the kids so like if a third grader gets that do do they have some context yeah and the only
077other thing I would add to that is remember it's an overall climate survey and so it's kind of just getting a sense of how does each person feel in the environment that they're in and then you know part of the disaggregation of the data has to do with how those um there's my dog again sorry um how those how those individuals self-identify right and so if I self-identify as a you know having a certain ethnicity my results get aggregated with that group and that's how we begin to start pulling apart you know do different groups feel differently in our environment thank you before you call in Gabby I just want to say we're testing out this remote sound system so you may need to give us a minute okay fair enough go ahead Gabby oh
078you're still on mute Gabby sorry okay so um thank you for doing this and also I I know Diane just mentioned ethnicity is a part of like the identifying is it gender or what other types of like identifying questions that's a great question yes it is it's um ethnicity it's gender identity um the school you currently attend would be on there your grade level um race and language at home okay perfect thank you do students say who they are when they fill out the survey or is it Anonymous um it's Anonymous okay yeah we would just know those um ident th that identifying Information Age ethnicity gender identity School Shannon thank you again for attending the call and for taking such um diligent notes which you know for for the Public's reference were typed and
079sent to the full board so we had a record of that call um last week even um and so we've all had an opportunity to review that um the next thing I think we need to consider as a board um is really for us is is this something we want to pursue um later on in the agenda there is an action item for us to enter into anou um if that is the direction that um the board wants to go but before we move on to action items and and whatnot I wanted to make sure that we had a thorough discussion um it sounds to me Shannon like the next step for us as a board might be to start thinking about forming the steering committee is that would you say that's accurate or do
080we wait and and form a steering committee later on down the line um I think we could do simultaneously the steering committee and um get started on the three-prong approach because really the steering committee is going to hear the recommendations from from the equity Consortium and um so there's going to be some laps in time for lack of a better phrase right because we're going to have to wait for the data to come in um and we have to we um would need to do our part in identifying who the stakeholders would be who we want to participate in the audit audits so there's some work for us to do as well um prior to so it would either be us or yes if you wanted it to be the steering committee but I do
081believe they could be simultaneously done or started okay Sarah um thank you Shannon for the breakdown and all the information I might be putting the cart before the horse here a little bit but I've just been like mulling Alicia's point about context and framing which I think is really important um and I'm wondering if should we decide to enter into a contract orou with them and move forward with the the three Prim approach so the climate surveys would it be and maybe this is a question to go back to them but I wonder if it would be in our interest to send some sort of communication out uh stating that we have entered into this mou with them and like why and what the goals of it are and that uh one of the next
082steps is that students will be receiving some survey just to kind of provide some of framing I don't know stop yeah I think that's a great idea and I think the other thing other piece of it is um uh the surveys would be optional as well so if if there was a student that didn't couldn't um you know cognitively understand the survey or didn't know why they were taking it or if it bothered them or upset them they would certainly not be required to take it so there's there is that piece too but I definitely think communication around it is a great idea Max is my hand still up it was not on purpose sorry I thought I thought it had gone down so I thought that was a new one sorry so in the
083past when we've um you know needed a a kind of popup committee we've discussed as a board a timeline um for getting something like that done we've put out a request for applicants to the community and then we could certainly um you know move that along and decide as a board what the criteria were for how many people we thought should be on the committee and what the representation was going to be um you know I'm looking at the calendar now and I want to set realistic um goals for us our next meeting is December 3rd which you know with the Thanksgiving holiday um being right smack in the middle of that um I think that if we were to put out a application for committee members that certainly a deadline that was more in
084line with our December 17th meeting um I think would give respondents time to apply um and then we could go from there um I'm certainly open to other opinions on how people would like to move forward if we do want to form a steering committee I just don't want this conversation to go by and then decide two weeks from now oh shoot we should have gotten started with the applicant process Sarah it um do we have a recommendation from them on who the steering committee how the steering committee should be form like what type of stakeholders should be on it um yes she she and she's aware of our um Civil Rights group and our our anti-racism group so her recommendation was we have representatives from each um board a board member two um Administration
085teachers and Comm a few community members so not not um she didn't divulge a number but certainly she you know that we have a cross representation essentially I think by the sounds of it you know if we did decide to enter into anou with them this evening um you know then they are there to guide us um and so certainly as we were forming our steering committee even if we just wanted to you know ask that question you know if they would be able to guide us as we as we started that process yeah she's absolutely I I feel confident in saying she'd absolutely guide us um this might be a dumb question but what does a steering committee do so the steering committee um well from this perspective I'll let April speak in general
086but to for this perspective her thoughts Michelle um our consultant her thoughts were that um they would take in the recommendations from the mid Atlantic Equity Consortium they would take them in from them and then they would relay them to us on the board with their ideas about the recommendations moving forward okay so like if you're going to put out like a request or like a um a way for people to apply to be on the stering committee would it be possible for it to be like stressed or like asked that we have a lot of or like bpoc appli like encouraging them to apply because I my fear would be that it would be all white people which I don't think is going to be productive I'm not sure how to answer you so
087I'm going to look to April for that and and and this is where I fully own that I don't know how to answer that either Max and I'm hoping that entering into an agreement this is where this is where where the experts come in right this is where we say how do we generate the best steering committee that we can in our community and they will be able to advise us on how to move forward I do appreciate your thoughtfulness Max I think it's I I mean I appreciate every I think this whole process has been very thoughtful and I think that's the right way to go about it so I appreciate it Sarah is that an old hand or new hand old hand does anyone else have any comments or questions they want to
088ask okay I'm not seeing any so um I think to kind of tie up the conversation um we can certainly use the information from this conversation to decide on our action item um once we get into new business um and depending on how that vote goes I think part of the discussion can certainly be moving forward now what's what would they say our next step is and and how to engage um and we can you know let them guide us as Max pointed out because you know I don't want to put together a steering committee um you know that isn't going to be that isn't going to arrive at the results that we're that we're looking for so okay so moving on agenda item 8.0 is a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to
0891ms 456d for the purposes of discussing collective bargaining agreements to return to public session so move second second Diane could you take a vote please Mrs gius yes Dr Gil yes Miss calones yes Miss Leighton yes Mrs Lindstrom yes Mrs Scyther yes Mrs Turner yes Mr Bennett yes and Miss gius yes okay everyone you have a link to the executive session um in your email it's 8:23 and we've been at this since 5:30 so I am going to suggest that we convene executive session at 8:30 please okay I'll see you all there and we will be back for those of you who are in the public e