001um i would like to start by saying that we are we do not have an official swearing-in on our agenda today um normally in january we do a swearing-in of our new members um because it's via zoom i am just going to welcome them um verbally to the board uh we we did officially swear them in december that normally happens after an election the january public swearing and is usually just the formality of of of welcoming them so to today i'd like to welcome melissa baldwin heidi fortress and don rice to the board for your first meeting lots of things to address today but just wanted to i hear a little delay hopefully it's not too bad on your end um okay so um let's go ahead with roll call these atkins here nose here
002here baldwin here fortress here hinton yeah rice [Music] here thank you sorry i'm muted all right we'll go on to the pledge of allegiance um we i would like to remind you to aim your your camera up as we stand and say our allegiance all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which [Music] thank you um i would need a motion to approve the agenda motion to approve the agenda is written support any discussion roll call nose yes hinton yes baldwin yes fortress s right yes [Music] i'm not i'm sorry i'm not hearing the roll call because of that and [Music] so who do you need to hear from debbie okay could i hear um slack and adkins again please yes yes atkins okay
003thank you all right so we'll move on to a public comment if you are wish to speak tonight um for public comment please go ahead and enter your name into the chat indicating you wish to do so i do was contacted by one person so i know we're going to have some public speaking so i'm going to go ahead and share our our guidance so the hazel park board of education values public meetings not just meetings in public we welcome public comment on school issues comments should be stated in three minutes and the board respectfully asked that comments remain focused on the topic or issue and not on specific personnel we welcome your comments but cannot discuss nor debate items not on the agenda when asked to discuss non-agenda items we can share facts but
004not engage in discussion we need to follow the open meetings act regarding the public notice on issues that involve personnel or other community members so that proper notice may be given all right so i'm going to go ahead and i see a few popping up here i also want to say that after public comment is over we will shut down the chat um for the remainder of the meeting so let's go ahead and start with evan evan you please um start with your name and address and go right ahead uh yeah my name is evan veration and my address is benjamin avenue uh number four royal oak michigan um so good evening my name is evan veracion i'm the participant supervisor for our post high program at edison uh the edison career center i'd first
005like to thank everyone on the board the administrative teams and our union representation for trying to maintain integrity and empathy during what has been a tumultuous 10 months i would first like to address the fact that as a union member and someone who understands the historical value and significance of organized labor it is nice to see so many people representing the union here today however i encourage all of you who have the title of hpea united to consider what that means to you if we feel collectively that going back is not the safe or pragmatic decision for our colleagues students and communities then we should be united in that and have the appropriate means of rationale to support that position and demonstrate safety and integrity in our own personal and professional lives as we work
006remotely if it is decided that we return i hope that being united means being united and practicing the expected protocols and safety measures that are in place to keep us safe both while at work and when you are in your respective communities with over 350 000 lives lost and counting the stakes are too high to approach protocols with indifference i say this not to pass too much judgment but to demonstrate the immense importance of getting it right this time around especially if the decision is made to go back if the decision is made to return and we are to return in a scaffolded manner as described in the plan i feel as though it is only reasonable that those staff teaching support janitorial etc who are returning first should be prioritized for any vaccination rollout
007at the county or district level with vaccinations slowly becoming available i would hope that the oakland county health department and the board would understand the importance of prioritizing those who are in person first and have a system to ensure such a protocol occurs it is vital that these procedures and plans are organized thoughtfully executed and done so in a way that is logical and most of all thanks i also have a school board okay uh it seems unfair and frankly illogical to have people vaccinated who will be staying remote longer while others might be asked to return in person without being inoculated i say this because it seems that the current system for vaccination rollout is not accounting for this based on what i've heard and read it appears to be a first-come first-served process
008across the county our plans for return in my opinion should account for this finally i want to say that whatever decision is made i hope everyone understands that any decision made tonight is not without human cost i have my own perspectives and opinions about what decisions should be made but it is not my decision to make agree or disagree i have to move forward with a plan it has been a terrible 10 months for so many people in our community our state our country and the world the important choice is not whether or not we go back but whether or not we can set an example for our young people on how to respond to adversity in a safe dignified and professional manner now is not the time to throw our hands in the air
009or to feel as though this year is a wash so i implore everyone to move forward with empathy regardless of the decision that is made all right thanks evan uh we're at three minutes i appreciate your comments and that will be discussed later in the agenda the return to school all right next i have rachel can you please introduce us with your name and your address um hi yes i'm rachel savanovic i live at 55 east myers hazel park michigan uh yes i would um so i am i understand that everybody's having a hard decision with this the board our superintendent i appreciate all that you guys are doing i know that you guys are in a tough spot i am a mother of five children four of which are in scattered grades i have
010two junior high two elementary and i have a two-year-old and i understand that it's you know teachers want to be safe and i've heard from elementary teachers who they're all about going back and i understand that it's harder for junior high and it's harder as you get old in older grades i have students with 504s and ieps and they are not getting the quality education and i understand that it's going to be different even when they do go back but they're not being able to get the services that they're required as as they should via via a screen i really loved the way things were handled when we went back the first time i understand that when there was covid and it wasn't like we were having mass outbreaks in school because how quickly and
011swiftly our our staff was working to make sure to mitigate that um i understand that teachers have concerns and parents have concerns and i just in my heart my my kids are suffering and i feel for the kids that you know don't have somebody to speak out for them um i've seen it a lot um and i just really either way i understand that it's a hard decision and not everybody's gonna be happy but i i really hope that we'll be back soon all right thank you rachel thank you all right next up is sue humpel hi mremple1203 stays um i know that you're going to be voting on the premier uh the premier am i on here still you are but we don't see video but we hear you okay i just i know
012you're going to be uh voting on the covet preparedness plan um but i have concerns about i'm hoping that you might delay your decision to go back uh next week uh when we were back in what was it november when we were having discussion we were at a grade c we are now at a great e and discussion was that we wouldn't go back until we reached that c great again i don't think that we should be going back until the vaccines have been issued today on the news they were saying there might be a three-week delay i have heard parents wanting kids go back parents that don't want at this point i don't feel i want my kid to go back because i want the teachers to have the vaccine so that my child
013doesn't bring it home and pass it on to others because kids don't get it adults get it right so with that being said i know you're not using the grade level anymore um i've heard that in the public that we're not using it but i don't think that it is fair to the ones that we told that we would wait until we got to the sea level um yeah i think the teacher should have the option to get the vaccine before we go back so i'm just asking you i think the kids need to be back in school but i think that you should look at delaying it until the everyone has an opportunity thank you all right next uh we have candace dean candace hi there we are um i too agree that the
014children do need to go back but i do not agree that they should go back at the end of the year like this if they go back in march for those of us have seniors and other children and you know we've been out all this time to go back prematurely the vaccines are not all out they're not all available to everyone i just wonder if you know like in my household i have people with underlying conditions so if something happens and any of us get sick and anybody out there in the world not just my household but you know that puts a risk of them not being able to end the school year due to being sick with this virus so it's like why not just finish the school year instead of going back in
015march to may or june depending on if you have a senior or not um and just start fresh in september and not now i don't think it's feasible it's not going to change anything if they go back in march to finish out the end of the school year when they can just start fresh at the beginning of the school year and finish out at home it's just we've been wearing our mask we've been hunkering down at home we're literally going crazy stir crazy cabin fever all of that and then to turn around and go back to school and jump back into this at the very end to me and my family does not make sense i think we should finish it and get these vaccines and start fresh at the beginning of the year as
016safe as possible i don't think it will be as safe as it can be doing it in march it's still very new and not everyone can get the vaccine just yet that's it all right thank you and your feedback thanks uh next i have deborah jewell i am a parrot over at the jury run program i live at 1467 eastmere and um one of my biggest concerns about going back is the community that i work with personally uh they don't understand social distancing if they don't understand keep your mask up it's something we do we're dealing with autistic adult men and women that slobber on themselves when there is no coverage uh that they punch they bite they hit we understand all that we we know that as part of our job but it is
017kind of concerning and then we were one of the first i was one of the people that was quarantined before everybody i was with somebody that had it the case i never got any symptoms but i was quarantined for a month because that's the way they did it and now i don't want to lose my vacation days because i have to use vacation dates because i'm quarantined with no symptoms that doesn't seem fair to me that's it all right um thank you debbie for your feedback next i have nicole dunlap are you there nicole to share your feedback your comment i can move on and come back around um next i have kayla alcated so i know i'm a child and i just wanted to voice my opinion as a child that's in school i'm
018a senior and i get that we're in a pandemic i'm a healthcare worker so i know a lot what's going on and i know that if we go back to school not every single person is going to get the vaccine either and as far as i know i took precaution face mask hand sanitizer i've yet to get sick and my heart goes out to like people that have gotten sick but i honestly think um high schoolers should go back especially seniors because in a mental state at this age being online for some kids is really really hard like an a plus student could drop to a c and that's going to affect them because applying to colleges right now it's going to drop they're not going to be more likely to get accepted to those
019schools nervous i don't know why but um i honestly think that i need to be back in school as a senior like yes children are gonna pull down their face mess but we know better and i know better um what else is gonna what's it gonna say um i love school and i wanna be back and i miss all my teachers are all like i wanna come back i wanna come back so i know it's not the teachers that are like no but yes i'm around patients every day and i think we can prevent it to the best of our ability while being back in school and one more thing we're in grocery stores we're in public all the time but i think that if we're in a class with 20 kids socially distantly socially
020distancing it will be less likely to get covered than if you're walking around in a grocery store or anywhere else so that's all thank you kayla i know it's nerve-wracking i appreciate hearing from students though we appreciate that all right next i have pam hey laura yes down in the comments it looks like uh that mrs dunlap or miss download would be able to speak actually our microphone wasn't working but she said can we try again oh sure sure is nicole dunlap is your smite is your mic working now i can't see her on my screen so it's hard for me to kind of roll no no sorry okay okay um i'm not sure what we if that we have any options around that um is pam curry there hi it's pam curry 915 east
021pearl hazel park michigan i used to work for hazel park high school i've worked for united oaks and i am now at edison max i think it's been a horrible horrible scenario of a pandemic the children that we work with at the max program have no clue of a six foot distance trying to make them wear a mask is just very very hard they don't understand it they don't want to talk through it a lot of them have breathing issues they say they can't breathe they've come in with doctor's notices that they don't have to wear the mask and then they fake cough on you they think it's funny to hang out with a bunch of kids after school all not wearing masks and then come to school and talk about it and then when
022we ask them to put masks on they don't want to do it and i understand there are kids that miss school i totally get it but i'm not only speaking as a worker but i also have a granddaughter that's going to be going to web and i don't want her back in a class with kids that don't wear masks after school that hang out together then they come home and they pass it on to their little brothers or sisters who in turn will be passing it on to other kids in school i don't think there's been enough vaccines given to make a difference at this point not saying that in time it won't but i don't think it does right now and i just think it's detrimental not only to all the workers but to
023the kids as well more and more younger kids now are getting it than there was before i just think it would be a big mistake that's all all right thank you pam for your feedback uh next jamie green hi it says i can't start my video um all right my name is jamie green i live in the district 1600 east wilson i am also a substitute teacher for the district as well as the parent of a third grader at united oaks and i just wanted to put my two cents out there um i um i agree i don't feel my daughter is getting at what she needs from me on remote i mean she's getting good grades but i know with her being an only child in this house she's missing just even social interaction
024and i see what it's doing to her and before i came to the district i work in you know a group home with people that had mental illness and health issues and i just wanted to put my concern out there because i'm seeing a lot of i'm sorry i'm like um kayla i'm a little nervous um but um i'm just worried about our students mental well-being um it's i i just wanted to bring that to everybody's attention as they think about this as well because i know people are still getting sick and i know that there aren't enough vaccines out there but my daughter i know the staff were fantastic at united oaks um with the way they dealt with the students being back in school they had no reported cases when they were in
025november and i just wanted to um and i just wanted to but that you know i'm sorry my daughter's sitting here and she wants to talk all right i'm done all right thank you jamie all right next uh kathy ryan hi everyone i just my input is that i think we have a lot we lost a dear loved one who worked in the district daley worth i the count today once again is very high i do have a lot of concerns what if these children don't follow protocol where does that put us uh what will you do do we have to take a leave of absence if we don't feel safe and we don't want to come back just for safety reasons because we're taking up care of family or we're taking care of our
026parents that are older etc and also i know you guys are just like we are we are all concerned we're all nervous but we really got to think this through and i know the parents are getting frustrated i'm working with some kids after school on some of their classworks because i volunteered my time for some of the kids that are having problems um we just got to really think about this clearly in the safety not only of the children but staff and the elderly people that we all take care of our mothers our fathers our aunts our uncles whoever it may be i mean we really have to be open about this that's all i have to say all right thank you kathy for your feedback um let's see i see uh nicole dunlap think
027she hasn't figured out you want to try again nicole yes yes yes i do yay where are we here hi you can hear me yes wonderful okay hi sorry new computer trying to figure it out i am an uncompromised mother of vanessa at webb jardine uh she's kind of at the west end and um jardon mixed at the moment um i have been locked in my house since march 11th for my safety and for hers um my child is actually thriving i don't know i am with her eight hours a day sitting right next to her doing classes and i'm sure if you were to ask any of our teachers they would tell you that i'm their present and she has been thriving in all of her therapies and all of her classes so i'm
028on the other end of this um i have to for my safety keeper home and i'm hoping that you will still make remote an option for the sxi students and um yeah that's about it um it's not been easy for every parent i fortunately have been the position that i've been able to be here but i'm also a parent you know i have to sit there all day with her and i have to help her through all of this she can't do this on her own and sometimes that's what it takes to get through these remote classes and she's thriving from it so um yeah that's about i needed to say that i just hope it's still an option to stay remote all right thank you for your feedback after trying a couple times all
029right next i have robin are you there rob [Music] i agree with kathy ryan in them it's too soon there's too many things going going on uh my our kids at edison you know the way they do and bringing stuff home to him i'm just really nervous about going back so soon that's all i have to say right thank you um next um i'm not sure i'm not pronouncing that vedia cook my name is vieta cook as i live at 548 chestnut hazel park i have three children um that attend the school district and i'm very um optimistic about them coming back uh my younger child go to web yes he wants to come back but i'm also afraid for the teachers because if the teachers catch it or if the teacher don't feel safe
030coming back i think there would be a pro i know there would be a problem with my younger child because he's looking forward to seeing the teacher that being on with him which is mrs um hi um what's his name heinz been on with him the whole time so if he have to have another teacher yes he will adjust but it would take something for him to adjust and he's already adjusting to just being on zoom and the other part of that is he has asthma and he has bad asthma we've been in the hospital of twice but since we've been out he has no asthma no symptom no nothing so and he would be my thing is is is really hard for me because it put me in the middle because if the school
031go back my kids are going to want to come back at least two of me the junior had she said she has adjusted and she just want to stay out until um it's over with but then i have a high schooler who wanted to come and then there's kyrie in elementary so it kind of puts me in the middle but despite what they want to do my concern is for the teachers in general and i don't feel that the teachers should be forced to come back if they don't feel safe but at the same time what do i tell my um six-year-old that your teacher don't feel safe he's not gonna feel safe either that's all thank you all right thank you for your feedback uh next i have eliana roaring if you could start
032with your name and your address um i'm a kid also and my name is eliana robrink and i live at 636 east meyers and um i feel like we should go back because uh i'm doing good in school on virtual but it's like really really frustrating because my my computer cuts in and out every like five seconds and i it's just better in person for me and i don't know but i would like i know that some people were in like middle school i think that some most people would keep their mask on and like follow the rules but i don't know i feel like we should go back but some people probably would disagree i don't know all right thank you for your feedback um all right um next i have aaliyah dean are
033you there leah hi there we are um i live on 319 west haze hazel park um my opinion on the matter is that i just don't think that at the right time i don't think that we should go into school i'm a senior as bad as i really want to have my senior experience and i talk about it all the time about how i wanted to have a prom and a homecoming and be able to do what a normal senior does and experience those things and have a memorable high school experience it's just not going to happen especially after the fact that we've been online this whole time um it doesn't in my opinion make sense to come back for only two months granted that we've been on line so long it just i have
034a priority to make sure that if i go somewhere or if i make a decision that my family is not going to be in jeopardy of the decisions i make and if i go somewhere and i make a decision to go back to school and i'm interacting with other people it's not i don't think it's worth going to school and getting my family everywhere it's not my opinion i i just don't understand why i would want to go back to school for two months granted only two months to have there be a chance of me coming home and now my family is in danger because i wanted to come back to school for that little amount of time to try and i don't know but i'm not doing that bad virtually my little sister isn't
035doing bad virtually and i feel like that extra two or three months is really not that bad considering the fact that we've been online this whole time i think it's not worth getting other people sick over and risking the spread being worse especially what happened on our capital um and those people are going to come go somewhere and they're going to come back here and the situation is just not not getting as better as we want it to as soon as we want to so it's just not worth it right now and i feel like personally it's not the time that's how i feel about it all right thank you for your feedback um it is nice to hear from students we appreciate that all right next um janine norris yeah hi my name's janine
036um i reside actually in farmington um 27998 uh gaines milwaukee farmington my son is at edison and for me the biggest concern is not only a health issue it's a mental health issue my son has to have me constantly with him to get the work done and i know that most edison kids need that and as a you know not a parent and not a teacher i'm struggling to keep him focused and stable mentally and i just agree that yes covet is scary and yes that there is great spread but to me i just want to keep him out of hospital and not from covert you know stay stable and we can't get any of the services that we need we cannot get a paris sitting in our home next to us helping our children
037yes he's doing great because you know he is somebody one-on-one but it's it's a struggle it's it weirs everybody out and we can't keep doing this i understand you if you have a choice to keep out of school keep out of school but if you've got a kid like my son we need the services and i can agree that half of edison need the services so you know give them some hazard pay help the teachers get what they need but we need our kids my son back in school thank you um i am continuing just to kind of write down the names as i get them and i promise at the end i'll make sure i didn't miss anyone because there might be one or two that i'm getting some feedback on um next laura
038muhammad hi i'm laura mohammed i'm a teacher at webster early childhood center i teach the preschool academy so three four-year-olds this has been a struggle going back online with my students um getting them to stay online um and sit there for 15 20 minutes we do different parts of the day and we give them different options but those connections and them asking us when are we going back to school it's just heartbreaking they need to go back and in my classroom and most of our classrooms at webster i would say 98 students had their mask on they were doing the social distancing our classrooms are prepared and open so that we have the space and materials available for our students to be able to come in and do covid i really hope that we would
039be able to return back um because our students really need it it's it's very difficult to be doing these zoom classes online and trying to keep kids who are having emotional breakdowns because they have grandma or neighbor who's watching them and um to keep them focused on zooms so i'm really hoping we can open up or at least give that option of parents who want it because i know a lot of parents need to return to work and they need their kids to go back to school so thank you for your time for your feedback next i have gabriel miller um yeah so i work at edison also and i know we kind of have experience with it now because we went back sort of early the last time and it worked for like three
040weeks maybe people start getting sick um so we sort of have experience with how it works um there and staff was amazing and the kids are amazing but i think the reality of the program is when you have kids who are violent or about to throw a chair or something there's not it's not practical to expect that teachers can um suit up and put on their protective gear so that's one thing the other is just i'm not sure why there's talk about um whether the kids need to go back for their learning stores are going out of business everywhere there's you know hundreds of thousands of people dead of course things are stopping that need to get going but i don't understand all the things about people's sort of opinion and i i want to
041go back badly i don't want it's about the pandemic so we're at a level e and i just don't understand the science behind why it's not dangerous now but level e a month ago was so we had the experience you know we did the experiment and it failed last time and it seems like now it would be even worse so i appreciate that people say you know my kid would rather be in school i think that's true for all of us but i think we have to consider the pandemic and people um dying and stuff like that that's all all right thank you for your feedback uh next arcadia sandoval hi um this my granddaughter is acadia sandoval she goes to the junior high we live in hazel park um i don't agree with them
042sending them back at all um it's different when you have a grandchild that lives with you then she's endangering the people in her home too her grandfather her father um i don't care what to say that you guys could keep them separated six feet apart they're not going to do that so as long if they could figure out a way to let the the kids to want to continue the remote learning and the ones that want to go back to school that's fine but as far as making them go back no i we're not going to allow her to until this is done or we all get vaccinated or whatever however is going to go so thank you thank you for your feedback um hi i live on cousin street i'm a sophomore at the
043high school and speaking on behalf of my experience being in remote learning um i can't speak for the little kids i can't speak for the junior high or the elementary school but i can speak as high school students that we can be safe we can keep ourselves safe we know how to social distance we can keep our masks on we're mature enough to do that and when we get back to school if we get back to school obviously there'll be precautions made and we can abide by those rules like we abided by the rules that we had when we were in person you don't know the circumstances that people have at home you don't know what their life is like i know that a lot of my classmates aren't in remote learning i don't know
044what they're going on with at home and who knows what's going on maybe school was their getaway and people need to go to school it's easier to learn that way i know i was an excellent student when i was in person i was pulling straight a's and now being at with remote learning it's hard to sit at a screen for six hours a day and not get distracted by what's going on at home or learn to the best of my ability it's a hard switch for all of us and i think that we can make that switch back to in person safely as a high school student i can't speak for the little kids because i'm not in those schools anymore but i think as high school students we can be safe and if you
045don't want to go back to school you don't have to go back to school but i think there should try to work out an option for the people that need or want to go back to school to have that all right thank you kendall another student that we've heard from next katie oakes i don't know how to say that start with your name and your address hi my name is katie oakes um 1169 player troy um i just wanted to voice my concerns about returning back to school um i have a child that attends edison and i also work at edison um in my household i have moved in with my parents as their primary caregiver both of them have severe health issues going on as well as my children and i am very concerned
046about um heading back into in-person school um i fully understand that a lot of these kids need it um especially kids you know at edison and my my son needs it but as a safety aspect i'm just really concerned about um him attending school and possibly bringing something home to my parents and them getting sick and like gabe said you know i'm not really sure how being on level e you know a month ago was worse than a level e now um so i'm just really concerned about um you know the safety and and i get you know kids want to go back parents want their kids to go back but i really think that we really need to sit down and think about what's best for children and staff all right thank you for
047your feedback um next uh rachel i didn't get the last name sorry um it's fun all right thank you i live at 36 east bernhard i have three kids in the school district two of them are on ieps and it's really hard for them to they get their services and they do a really great job the teachers do but to get both of them on to zoom and to get those services i then have to jump back and forth and it's really hard for them to be successful with that so they really need to be in service to get that speech and ot and physical therapy is almost impossible to do via zoom for my youngest um so we're we're pro in person they know how to wear masks the youngest is three she keeps
048her mask on grocery shopping she can keep it on when we're in public so there's no reason that they can't keep it on in school that's all thank you for your feedback all right um next i have um nicole nam namiata hi my daughter is a student at webb and i also work at edison max in the post high program um it's kind of like a catch-22 for me i am a single mom and it's hard for me to sit with my daughter online all day and help her she is struggling in school she's an only child she's super lonely um she misses her friends and cries for her teacher every day after school and she you know she doesn't like being cooped up inside but i as a mom you know i missing the
049kids in the halls and my students but as a mom i'm i don't want her to get sick and i care for my mom who has underlying conditions and when we went back in person i was afraid all the time that i would bring something home because at edison like many of my co-workers have said already they don't understand how to social distance and especially when things break out and they can't suit up and and and run in they just have to run in and that's not safe for them and we don't have enough ppe and the numbers are rising and so many people got sick before and the numbers were lower and now especially after the holidays they're so high and more and more people are dying and getting sick and our teachers and
050our staff are not safe and our students aren't safe and as much as i want to get out of my house as much as i want to see my co-workers and my students it's just not worth it to me and i know a lot of parents feel that way my daughter cries daily to go back to school she's the only child and she's super lonely but it's just not worth it it's hard to explain to a six-year-old that you know it's not safe for her to go to school but i'd rather keep my daughter safe than then be back in person because let's face it we're all going to end up going back home and going virtual before the end of the year anyways it's it's just not worth it that's all all right thank
051you for your feedback um lisa stubble hello um i'm lisa i work at the sxi in what's the middle sxi so we're car part web and part jardon i think that um this is a logic versus an emotional argument i think emotionally all of us all of us teachers staff parents students all of us want to be able to go back to school it's been rough being at home you know no matter how dedicated we are to virtual it will never be the same experience that it is being in person but i do believe logically if we go back someone will get sick be it a teacher or a staff member or a student and if they get sick and they have i mean it's a deadly pandemic there's the potential for mortality and i
052think that while emotionally all of us want to be able to do everything that we can for our students and for each other and for you know our children that logically right now it is not safe thank you all right thank you lisa for your feedback um did i skip over barb merrill is that someone wanting to speak yes all right please go ahead and introduce your name and address and go ahead um i'm barb merrell i live at 23098 davey hazel park um you want my video it's not required it's up to you um i work at jardin and we were one of the first ones to open up and do the pods and everything last you know in september and we were also one of the first ones to start getting the kovid
053and i know we all and we followed all the covert things strictly and we were very good at it and we still are our staff was and custodial were very strict on it and we still were getting the covid i think um if you come down to it i think um we all want to go to school we all want to go back we all want to be with our students education is very important but i think living is very important too so i think we should not go back because i think we all want to live our life a little bit longer and like she said we're going to end up being shut down again because the numbers are just too high right now they're higher than they were before then we got shut
054down and i just don't think it's safe for the staff or the students because if the staff all get sick again there's not going to be any staff for the students anyways in my opinion if a staff gets sick like they did in the web they closed that room down and all the kids got sent home so what logic is there in that all right thank you for your feedback um i just want to say that you know this this item is on the agenda the return to school and at that time when we get to that point we will have a full discussion on on all the data that we have and all the consideration that you've said so i just kind of want to say that blanket is there anyone that i missed
055um in the chat that wanted to speak did uh did robin felt get her microphone fixed i had a note next to her just trying to track along with you i think robin spoke felt oh because i see her commenting and so i'm wondering if there was something wrong or she'd like the opportunity to speak i saw her name up underneath kathy ryan's name wasn't that robin uh rachel that you were that already spoke yeah spoke already thank you yes a lot of speakers i'm just trying to make sure everyone i got checked off my list oh you're fine so much youtube all right is there anybody else i'll pause one more second here is there anybody else that we could have missed if you could put it in the chat or let us know
056all right um seeing no one we will no see no additional speakers um we will go ahead and move on to um our special order of business so thank you everyone um for your feedback um all right so special order business so every year in january the school board has to have its organizational meeting so a lot of the items on here tonight are around that it's done annually so we are going to start with an election of the board offices um and so we will start with i'll take a motion for president i'd like to make a motion for laura adkins as president um i heard christie's first but i did hear two motions so um debbie do we proceed with one first and then go to the set and then if it doesn't
057pass or how does that work okay what we um first of all i did not hear i got the echo i heard laura but i did not hear the other one i made a motion to uh for above hinton okay and so mrs adkins you can take them in order of the nominations and if one carries once there's no make sure there's no more nominations and then if the one carries then that would be the elected officer all right i want to make sure everyone understands miss atkins may i just suggest everybody needs to make sure they don't have anything else turned on in their home when you unmute if you're listening to it taped live or anything like that you're going to get feedback for everyone else and we can't hear you so if
058you're you got to make sure you only have this on you can't have your phone on or youtube or anything else on that's why we're getting the feedback one of the board members is giving us feedback yeah don we're getting some from you i think um yeah all right so i don't want to show bias i mean it kind of all came at the same time so i don't know if um rachel you feel like you heard a motion over the other one i i don't know who heard what because i i i did hear the motion for you laura um just being unbiased um we have in the past we have done both nominations uh letting them both go to roll call and then deciding from there um we have done that in the
059past so if you'd like to have debbie call the roll call for you and we do a real call for bev uh just to be fair since they were so close i would like to pitch that to the board if that's what they so choose to do but i i honestly did hear christy over heidi you know could i say something absolutely uh because some people don't know me aren't familiar with me um and they're going to be voting i'd kind of like to give a little background about myself well let's get the motion supported and then we'll go to discussion okay so do we have support on both motions one was for me for president one was for beth for president i'll support both thank you all right discussion beth go ahead okay um
060i was a preschool teacher in hazel park as a parent involvement coordinator for the head start program i was the chairperson of the student success committee at the high school the only person ever not to be an educator on that committee for national accreditation as community rep for 12 years here working with families reaching out helping them with things that aren't academic for their family and their children i am currently the chairperson of the hazel park youth assistance and have done been on that committee for 12 13 years i have a lot of leadership background i was pta i started the senior all-night party in um 1990 there was the first uh drug-free uh senior all-night party that i started um i served on the lansing pta and tri i mean the michigan pta and
061traveled to lansing so my whole point here is i have a lattice leadership background and i just wanted to share with those who don't know my history i grew up here i have four kids they all went through hazel park schools and i guess that's about it i would like to have the opportunity and understand however the vote goes the vote goes so thank you thanks for nominating me heidi and i will assume that based on that discussion about that you accept your nomination i do i want to make sure i ask after everyone so i will accept the other nomination for myself for president um let's go ahead is there any other discussion at this time all right um debbie can you proceed so rachel you're saying we've done before we just proceeded with
062roll call for both motions then is that or we have done in the past when the motions have been really close in in a tie um i know that during my time on the board we have we have done that so uh if that's how we want to proceed or um all right i we have done it so i just don't want to can i can i just get some clarification now because we have done it both rachel we can do each member and they can vote for who they want or we could take each nomination i have laura was nominated first we could see how her nomination went and then we could do that will of the board it might seem easier or simpler and i would appreciate anyone else's feedback i mean if
063you just say who you would prefer to be president so we don't have to go twice down a roll call list um that might save everybody your time too debbie uh because i think everyone uh knows who they're probably gonna vote yes or no for so if it's already a couple months that makes sense you're just gonna state who you vo who you're gonna support all right debbie couldn't um for a minute couldn't we laura was nominated first just vote if she has the majority then that's how it goes and could be vice president if laura has a majority or would there be a nomination for vice president there would be a nomination for vice president but by doing them one at a time it does allow us to modify who we want to potentially
064run for those other positions all right okay so that was saying maybe we should just vote for for me first since we heard it first and then the other one still let people pick who they want and i'm i'm trying to be fair i don't know anything i'm just frustrated because you know as a new board member and being virtual it's kind of hard to get in the car it is very hard and it's nothing my nomination is nothing against you laura you know i think you're fabulous i just i think the uh voters wanted change we have three new board board members so i'd like to see what bob has to offer i think i think the easiest way is to go around to the board and have them say who they would like
065to be for president okay okay all right debbie go ahead okay that's good okay so in this case then i will do laura i'll do laura and um bev at the end is that correct okay i just kind of want to make sure here we have christy made the first motion so we're going to start with miss schlock and is this how we're going to do this i want to be clear correct okay miss knowles i support laura and nothing against this baby's timing miss baldwin mrs atkins miss fortress baff hinton please miss rice mrs hinton me myself mrs adkins i will vote for myself as well have four three for mrs atkins okay um thanks everyone for bearing with us really there's a lot of work to do no matter who gets elected um
066so let's go ahead and move forward so um next we need a motion for vice president well uh bet patent for vice president i'd like to make the motion for rachel nolan's vice president have it go the same way again folks all right let me get some support for both motions hey we're experienced now we are laura is correct we still need a support on the motions i'll support both thank you all right discussion i think we should proceed the same way we did with the first one now that we've set precedent any other comments or concerns at this time oh okay um debbie please proceed with the vote similar to last time vice president and i apologize if this is a little um a little confusing here so miss fortress beth hitton mrs knoath
067mrs hampton myself well i'm sorry yep okay sorry about that miss rice i guess you have to say yourself right i have to miss adkins all right still not okay so i have four three mrs nels all right thank you that keeps rachel as vice president um can i get a motion for secretary i'd like to make the motion for bob hinton as secretary support any discussion or additional motions at the rate we're going [Laughter] sorry all right um uh did we get support yes yes christie's motion any discussion yes no yes i feel like i should say a name though baldwin mrs hinton this is a nomination for mrs mrs hinton i understood that i'm sorry oh that's okay [Laughter] miss fortress yes miss hinton yes miss rice i didn't hear mrs rice mrs
068adkins yes all right i need a motion for treasure i'd like to make a motion for heidi fortress as treasurer support any discussion this heidi accept the nomination we forgot to ask that laura sorry yes does he accept oh shoot we forgot to ask bob too i know did bev accept that i did i do whatever i forget i'm darn it we really know what we're doing when it comes to not board organizational stuff folks and i'm not writing this really well with my arm so okay so we've got this mishlock yes this is nose yes is baldwin yes miss fortress yes this is hinton yes miss rice laura mrs atkins yes okay sorry i got the static again i couldn't hear you all right so we're good on that um all right so um
069thank you board um you know i know with the new voices on the board that you know that that we will have lots of um good discussion and we have lots of work to do so i'm looking forward to continuing that um next is committee appointments so we need a motion um so let me just say that you know i i spoke with everyone we feel we as we considered who to put in on which committees um so if everyone's um comfortable with what's on the committee list we can have one motion that approves all of the committees and then i can kind of go through what there is during discussion so do we have a motion i'd like to make a motion that the committee appointments are passed as in the attachment support thanks
070all right so let me just go through what they are um so for discussion here so on the finance committee is myself bev and heidi on the building rounds is christy heidi and melissa on personnel is christy rachel and dawn on policy is bev melissa and dawn on open enrollment is christy melissa and dawn um for committees of the superintendent for community engagement i have myself and melissa for the ruth geisse i have rachel and myself for camp hazelwood i have bev and heidi for honoring hp contributors i have christy and melissa um this motion also includes the local appointments which is for our oakland county school board association so oc sba it's kind of a mouthful there are several um positions so there's a government relations committee melissa has agreed to do that oakland
071county liaison melissa hazel park youth assistance liaison we have don we of course know that baba's chair as well so we have good representation there um district leadership uh myself and melissa and the diversity equity and inclusion committee the dei committee that they just started from on behalf of the oakland county school board association we have melissa and heidi so thank you guys so much um for for agreeing to cover all this this good stuff um does anybody have any other discussion on these items i do can you go back to the committees of the superintendent i think it might have been mixed up okay which particular um who do you have for community engagement you and me okay that's i didn't i didn't think i heard that i'm sorry and then ruth ruth geis
072geese guys guys is rachel and myself okay and then you have cam hazelwood as bev and heidi yes and then honoring hp is christy and myself yes okay thank you yep so um you know the honoring hp contributors is a new committee that um we've gotten some requests on how to honor some people that were long-time um supporters of the district and this committee is being set up to you know think about how how we can honor those and to also respond to some requests we have and we thought a committee might be a good way to do some brainstorming on that as we have some decisions to make so i think all the others have been existing any other discussion all right roll call laura just one quick question we did mention about committee
073of a whole are we going to talk about that more on saturday yeah yes okay i'm good thanks slack yes nose yes baldwin yes fortress yes hinton yes rice atkins yes all right moving on to the 2020 business organizational items um so this includes um reauthorizing a whole bunch of things and we can kind of go through them if we're comfortable with improving the entire document then we can do that in one motion can i get a motion please make a motion that the board approved the 2021 business organizational items as presented support all right any discussion on this i would like to um b7 under newspapers to add the madison park i think that makes sense i mean i think this is just our formal ones but um i know we use madison park
074a lot and so i know that um i guess i've been told we can still advertise in it but this would list them as an official one so do we just add that as one additional one that we would do in terms of formal notices yeah those are just for our formal notices my rationale for that is our budget hearing does not go in there and it's free to every home that newspaper yeah people aren't getting the oakland press um you know they may still be getting the tribune i don't know going online i don't even know if they have paper copies but everyone will get a paper hard copy of the madison budget hearing yeah i don't know that everybody will right they've cut down their uh where they're going but uh a percentage
075of our people will right so i think putting it in there is fine i think that makes sense right not a significant i already spend a fair amount of money advertising i i guess i don't i think i'm i can see the rationale for adding that i'm sorry somebody else trying to talk is there a reason to keep all those in there jason i mean those were in there well before we were here i'm just wondering i agree is there anything that we'd want to take out bob what do you think i mean should we just add one more or do we want to take one more i would take one out it would be macomb daily we're oakland township so if we're taking one out that would be my recommendation jason is there a
076reason why we're in macomb daily i i at this point amy i don't i don't know um what the background was um for having the macomb daily on there hey um it could have been because we had the open borders to warren over there um but i'm thinking oakland press because the tribune and oakland press are pretty similar i think is the same company that prints those papers so my suggestions oakland press to remove oakland preps are we doing when you do the um all of them jason no we only advertise and i believe the oakland press um it only goes out in the oakland press and then it gets posted on our website and on our entranceway so that was going to be my question yeah i would we we only we only advertising
077the one um again you know this is you know the cost of advertising isn't isn't cheap um it's expensive i hear the board asking to put it in our local newspaper jason yeah i don't disagree i mean and maybe maybe that's maybe that's the only place we put it in is if if that's the if that's the paper that everybody's getting um but again this isn't just with the budget hearing as well though this is i mean you know we there's other advertising that we do um it's just it's just a matter of we're required to advertise it in a local paper um so you guys can make a decision to to you know eliminate all but one and make just one artificial paper or you know have give us the option to um you
078know do the publication in in multiple but i think i think doing it in multiple is is a bit of a bit overkill so then um what i'm hearing you say is we could just add uh the madison and we would that would just be fine and we don't have to we can leave those as options if we need something right i think madison would be the most direct route to our um residents [Music] what would be the the pleasure of the board i think that the madison park is probably the most directory to our residents as well so we leave the other ones and just add madison is fine with me and then we use the madison park as as where we're publishing all right okay everybody comes with that i want to make
079sure we don't have any other changes before we amend any the motion um so for the one i'm sorry let me make sure bad did you have anything else uh no i'm good um the one uh law firm um the point and butler i i was kind of looking at these and i and i don't think that one's still in business is that something we're using and i just couldn't find them no they went out of business last year butler has opened up his own law firm special ed law firm in lansing however so the point butler went out of business three years ago and i thought we removed them but butler has reopened now in lansing very limited so is it unlikely that we'll use them um we could use butler he's really good
080special ed firm but we'd be more likely to use clark hill you know if we got in real deep with special ed we might turn to butler but so we should probably keep him there as a just in case yes but we might want to take a point out she's retired so we'd have to modify to the new spin-off or new whatever he's reopened at yeah he was at clark hill and then he for three years and then he has retired uh down to a very small firm okay all right so that was the one thing i had um and then i know i know we're in the process of changing bait accounts so i would assume that next year we might have one less bank account on here but i assume that all of
081them stay on here until we're done cutting over banks that sound right jason or matt yeah i think i think we're fair there i think you'll also notice we added another architectural firm um as we are utilizing this architectural firm to help us think through the pool at this time as also a trial basis to see how he does he's a former graduate of hazel park thank you anybody else have any comments on this [Music] all right um so whoever made the motion i think i guess we just want to maybe um do we want to amend it so that we go ahead yeah i was the one who made the motion i'm fine with bending the motion to approve the changes for the business organizational items as the board has discussed i'll support that
082thank you did that be are you clear and we yes an emotion yes okay all right let's go ahead and throw a call nose yes baldwin yes fortress yes rice yes all right moving on to item c um board of education calendar can i get a motion please i'd like to make a motion to accept the 2021 board of education meeting dates calendar as presented or heidi glay how do you have it oh thank you all right so this sets our calendar dates for the year we can note that the february meeting date is a week earlier due to winter break so normally it's the third monday of the month um and january of 2022 is a week earlier due to martin luther king day as it typically is as it is this year as
083well any other discussion or comments on these dates i do um i know that we have another person more tax season just like rosie don i know it does that april 19th affect you in any way you don't think so okay because i know last year we missed it and it happened to fall on on tax day and rosie asked us to change it and so i wanted to make sure that you're you're good on that one all right if there's nothing further we go have a roll call black yes fortress nose yes baldwin yes hinton yes rice miss rice i can see you saying yes but i'm not hearing you so i just want that to be known just can you say that again yes okay in case there's any question on it thank
084you adkins yes all right moving on to item d it's school board recognition month so dr cooper you have anything you'd like to say well uh this this evening for information there's a beautiful letter put in here by an anonymous person every year an anonymous person does a donation to you to make a wish foundation at the children's hospital um this year of twenty five hundred dollars uh in your honor um i also believe that you had some goodies that were sent to your home today um in honor of you as well um i don't know that people realize how difficult the job of a board member is i know that this weekend you spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about preparing for your first meeting getting up to date especially the new members
085with all the work we've done on kovid thinking about this return to school because on friday night your superintendent sent a letter out to the whole school community and i said as i called you wedding get ready to be barraged um because this is a tough decision right and so this is one of many decisions that as a board you make for children for your staff and for the community so kudos to all of you you do it while making a tremendous amount of money of 25 a meeting that many of you donate to wonderful causes in hazel park and i know you all do it because you have a considerable amount of care for kids for hazel park uh the school district that many of you went to or live in and that you
086really care about and so while some people may see you on different sides of the fences or voting for three that is because you really care about the place that you have decided to spend many hours together doing what you all think you really care about so thank you for all you do normally we have a dinner and we break bread together in my office that'll have to be a different time maybe a barbecue outside in a park somewhere this summer celebrating each other but thank you and i know that the school district all thanks you as well yeah i'll echo some of that thank you um to all the board members um this is um there's this we work year-round there's a lot of um a lot of effort put in and it is
087out of the love and care and you know thank you to um for the donation of 2500 to make a wish on our behalf i think that's um really really cool and i and i i enjoyed my surprise delivery today so hopefully everybody got that and my dogs were happy to welcome the person who might not come back to my house because we're like mom there's a random guy here with an hp hat on thank you for making that delivery i appreciate it well he's one of our best i have to tell you that that always gets it done for us i could thank debbie too and on another note and another time we'll tell you what we went through to get some of that done today ah well thank you it's appreciated it was
088a little fun all right um so let's move on do we have a promo zone update today is is brandon here uh here can you hear me uh we can go right ahead all right the video is still muted but i'll talk uh hello everyone and uh welcome veteran board members and oh i don't have anything to share i just need to undo the video for me i think that's brad working it all right there we go hello everyone hello hello veterans hello new school board members welcome welcome i look forward to giving you all updates and of how we're supporting the district and getting our students to and through uh college so for our uh new folks who haven't met me heidi has emailed me before so i i know her and melissa i
089think we've emailed once i believe so hello uh so welcome again so i just want i have five things i would like to update everyone on about uh how we're supporting the district so we onboarded a new college advisor when we came back to school uh this last past fall her name is desiree quinn she's working remotely as we all know supporting our seniors as the best she can to ensure that they are still thinking about college and navigating to college as well she's from warren michigan and so she has friends who went to hazel park schools that she was right down the street so it's great that we have someone that's partnering with us who knows the community and the good news is uh despite all of the distance support that she's doing she
090plans to come back next year so each americorps person can do a max of two years at their destination and so uh we uh so say a prayer or meditate that she comes back because she's already working with our students now uh the second thing is our fafsa update so right now uh we are at about 44 completion for fafsa this time last year we were at 53 percent so that's not too bad but i definitely want to see those numbers increase obviously we do have a smaller amount of students as considered seniors this year but we're still working to increase those numbers for our new board members last year we won governor whitmore's financial aid fafsa contest for having the biggest increase of fafsa year over year so she has other things to worry
091about other than fafsa right now but if we do uh hear about an award we're definitely going to apply for it uh god willing uh we are also launching a bi-weekly college corner uh newsletter via mailchimp and so we are having issues around engagement with students and engagement with parents so the good thing is about mailchimp you can look at it and see who opened what who's reading what who's reviewing and then we're going to target those individuals who are not engaging with us at all so we can increase those financial rate numbers and make sure that we have those year-end numbers that hp can brag about uh the third thing is we all know that covert 19 has impacted all of us tremendously but we did implement two programs to support the graduating graduating
092class of 2020 to ensure that they don't just uh there's a phrase called summer melt where they don't just melt away over the summer and never go to college so we did implement two programs over the summer to ensure that they were successful the first one was a through a covert 19 emergency grant that was released through the united way we were able to purchase 47 laptops for individuals that were transitioning to college over the summer so i gave out 41 of them so i have six more in my basement waiting to be given to someone so i will pass those out as the need occurs second thing was we implemented a math boot camp over this summer and we had about 26 students participate in that and they were able to come on board
093and work with a math tutor and actually get paid 25 in a gift card uh to study math so if you think about the timeline of last year uh we had students become everything kind of came to us screeching hope around march and then now we're gonna say okay kids go learn collegiate college level algebra good luck that's a long time between march and august or september to uh learn math so we implemented that program just to blow the dust off of their brains and prepare them for college college math rather second thing fourth thing is actually myself and musa trudeau who's working exceptionally well with our senior well graduated seniors now college freshmen so i just want to give you some numbers for the class of 2019 uh the graduating class of 2019. we
094had 137 students enter into college either at the community college or at a four-year institution seven out of ten of those students actually persisted through their first year of college so that's around 95 students the number is actually higher than that if you just say which students made it through the first semester of college that's around 100 and something but we're about 95 that made it through both semesters and so it shows you how time flies those students are actually in their fourth semester of school right now so uh i'm getting younger i don't know about anyone else i'm getting younger um so just want to give you that and so we are working with a class of 20 20 students right now so i imagine this time next year we'll have more data around
095who made it and persisted from the class of 2020. the next thing is uh i want to talk about the promise zone scholarship dollar amount so this is not the class of anything this is just the calendar year so the calendar year of january 2019 to december 2019 we paid out 102 scholarships to 102 students at community colleges and four-year institutions in the state of michigan and that totaled one hundred thousand five hundred and fourteen dollars uh so uh that's how much we paid in the calendar year of 2019 and then the calendar year 2020 we paid out 94 tuition balances for kids and that total was 100 267 so over the past two years we spent over two hundred thousand dollars in scholarships and so uh scholarships as you know is only for resident
096graduates of the district uh so that's per state law so we can't do anything else about that so that is uh the end result numbers for that so the good thing is we now are tracking our data a bit more aggressively now so i'm able to paint a picture of what the promise zone is doing and some of our impact we're having on students uh the good news is i just texted dr croopy earlier today so one of our grant partners uh sutar foundation allowed us to reallocate some of our money around that they grant us every year and so we're able to purchase a college spring s.a.t curriculum for our juniors and so we need to connect are we going to do that this year or i'm leaning towards next year but we'll see
097so we'll be able to focus on our junior sat scores and hopefully increase some of their attainment actually going directly into the university level and qualifying for some of those extra big dollar high dollar scholarships so that's great so please stand by for updates for that and then uh the last thing is our fundraising dinner is on march 18th it will either be at 6 30 or 7 o'clock i'm still debating on which time to do it but the good thing is i think tickets would be 30 bucks for one person or 50 dollars for two people and then the perk is if you purchase one or two tickets you will also get a pick up your meal from one of our two of our hazel park small business restaurants that we have so we're
098still ironing out some details so it really be pick up your food between this window and then bring it home and and break bread with us as we celebrate some of our accomplishments for the promised zone dinner uh so shout out to uh dr crouppy and ed kobusher from the city of hazel park for working together and ensuring that our small businesses can make a little extra coins during this covet 19 crisis so those are the five six things actually i wanted to update everyone on and i'm open for any questions but if not i will be back soon to update everyone again thanks brandon board do you have any questions for brandon i have one can everybody hear me okay yep yes um i think i saw somewhere that fafsa is getting rid of
099the parent contribution element is that a thing yeah so i was trying to peel through the literature around that they are i know they are eliminating that very weird number that they give you by assuming that everyone's rich and that everyone can contribute to college so like i know when kids are filling out their fafsa they would get a number that says zero zero seven six seven and no one knows what that number means um and so they're eliminating that um archaic formula that says what parents could do but i'm still trying to figure out uh what does that even mean so i'll have an update or clarification on that soon but we won't see that contribution formula anymore going forward thank you i think that will be helpful yeah i've seen that number when
100it's like your family can pay this much and you're like expected family contribution and and so i think it's good to change the terminology i'm sure i think they were going to call it something more neutral right something like you want me to pull that much money out of what what pocket you tell me which pocket so exactly um you know i'm just going to say on a personal note that i have a 2019 graduate who has benefited from promise zone and um you know it's really really helpful so i think the work we're doing is important i think it's great to hear the kids are using it um i i'm a data person so you know as you have more data you know i would love to see it from year to year and
101really understand you know how how the program is doing so but thank you so much for the information today absolutely thank you and welcome to our new members i uh look forward to seeing you yeah all right thanks uh mentorship program oh oh plug so we are definitely recruiting for that as always so if you would like to partner with any college students now uh send me an email hazelproductpromise.org that's my email on there and we will definitely pair you up and board members always welcome as well it's one of my enjoyments i love meeting with mine perfect thank you for that shout out yes the mentor program is great so yeah if you're interested let them know and i think that um you know seeing the different things you've tried for engagement is important
102because i know how hard it is to get that engagement kids after they graduate and and that connection might keep them through so that's that's important all right thanks brandon you're welcome take care guys take care okay and now we can move on to our consent agenda can i get a motion please motion to approve the consent agenda as written support roll call nose yes black yes baldwin yes fortress yes hinton newton yes [Music] yes all right um now we can move on to our unfinished business so we are going to start with um our preparedness and response plan review can i get a motion please this is atkins i have the hvac assessment update and billing summary oh that's right it got suspicious isn't it is that is that correct yes i believe so
103sorry i didn't refresh my agenda um yeah let's start with hvac assessment and billing summary and make a motion that we approve the hvac assessment update and billing summary as presented support all right discussion who's going to speak to this uh mr furnaces this evening we have um sid bloomberg from uh cave kvs um i keep wanting to say uh ksv or cbs uh whatever um sid is sid still here i know he was here earlier yep city he's right there yeah can you find him he's here jason he's unmuted to speak okay good good take it away okay so do you want me to review the last reports i sent or do you have questions or how do you want me to do this um maybe just give it overall assessment of our buildings
104um you know where we stand today um the board would probably like to know what um what work has to get completed um and any any additional items that you wanted to add uh regarding the uh the progress of the assessment would be great alrighty excellent let me pull up a let me pull up a list of your buildings so i don't miss anything so it's been uh very exciting and uh a pleasure for me to work with your guys's staff and your buildings you have buildings that range from some of the most modern uh nicest heating and cooling systems that you could possibly have in a school district to some of the oldest and still running systems in a school district so both are just a are a nice thing to have buildings like
105your uh junior high is now i would consider fully functional and and uh both it's ventilation and it's hvac and should be in the comfort to your uh to your kids that i think there's just one unit left that we're going to put a variable speed drive on to improve its uh ability to run consistently and its efficiency you have united oaks which was done about the same time as your junior high which is another one that's just a fantastic building and that one's been through the checkout and it's fully functional uh you have uh your edison elementary or your edison building which is a brand new building we we're still working to get access to that but i went through and did the visual checking on all that equipment that's a very new building
106and has a very good promise the hoover elementary is a building that we went through and made all the repairs necessary to that again that's a building that has kind of a mixed system of some real brand new stuff and then some stuff that was done in the 2000 years so it's all digital building that's a great building uh some of your older buildings like jardon and webb you know when we initially went there honestly a lot of that equipment was pretty not runnable and and uh you know as soon as jason and i and uh and your superintendent talked they immediately jumped on that and started fixing that equipment so you know my last time through jared on the web all that equipment was runnable and bringing in ventilation and again you know that
107equipment is is 50 years plus old in some cases so you know the fact that it can even run it all as a testament of the care that's been given to it and you know and the situation that was in was just a typical situation for that type of older equipment and uh and again you guys have made a lot of repairs to that and now you should have some good workspaces for your teachers there a building like ford is in the same same boat there you know a lot of older equipment and it's going through repairs right now and i'm just trying to think if there's any other ford webster's another building that's going through repairs and it's got the older equipment in it and you know it seems like after repairs are made
108that you know all that equipment should be fine and you know we we've worked with your filter supplier to update your filter list to get you up to merv 13 if possible some of your equipment especially the 50 year old plus equipment just wouldn't be able to move air through that type of filter so we've made it direct we made recommendations to get you up to the best filtration as possible and uh you know that's going to improve the environment for your for your uh people and i guess my did you know the one thing to take out of this for me is that your digital buildings there's a lot more we can do with your uh digital building management systems not only to ensure that you're providing those good work spaces with a lot
109more trending and alarming but uh also save some money because you know these higher ventilation rates are costing you a lot of money and you know saturdays and sundays would be days when the buildings were closed and and we want to make sure that those systems are off and and you are using schedules very limited limited but it's just because of the access to the system's tough because of its age and hasn't been updated so that's something we're working with jason jason on and it's not going to be a high dollar item to get that dealt with uh are there any questions for me how far out are we with getting most of these repairs completed you know i i'm not in charge of the repairs to the to the uh older unit ventilators i've
110been watching their progress and i would have to say probably within the next month or so but in defense of the contractor you know some of that older uh equipment parts is extremely hard to get because not many people use the old pneumatic technology anymore so you know getting parts would have been tough without the kovid and with the covid and the shipping and stuff like that a lot of those parts are just being made on a very limited basis so you know it's it's going to be probably driven more by part accessibility than labor accessibility in that case but uh you know i would say probably in the next month or so those older units should be online and working and those correct are the um ford and webster correct yes yeah jordan you
111know kind of came in early and that one got done right away and like i said those not making any excuses but even myself i would we would have a hard time getting parts for those older unit ventilators and i did have a discussion this morning with um our contractors in there the alternative or the um the alternative ed side is is completed in ford and they're now working on some of the easier units um within the administration side and they're going to go directly over to webster to make sure that the buildings are are the units in classrooms where we have individuals and students are going to be operational for their return and then they'll go come back into administration and finish up our area and then go back to do the other areas
112that are not essential to education right now so we're trying to prioritize their work um you know given the fact that it has been taking some time to get some of the parts it's just um it's an old system unfortunately but it still works uh sid um you know again maybe said you do you want to speak to the i mean your assessment of the quality of the air or or can you make that assessment again as for the equipment is is is bringing in the you know amount of air that it was originally engineered to on the digital equipment we went through and made sure that all those settings were as it was engineered and the fact that the systems are running are you know there's no doubt that that's happening in the older
113unit ventilators sadly back 50 years ago energy wasn't a big cost so they're really good at bringing in ventilation sometimes too good and so you know once you get those older unit ventilators working again it's going to it's going to have a good ventilation turnover rate for your your kids in those classrooms also as long as the fans are running so you know one thing about that old equipment they've had years and years of of turning it on and off trying to maintain comfort into the room and lost faith in a lot of the controls because they were in shambles and now you guys have invested the money to get the controls back in and it's going to be a learning curve for everyone to keep that equipment running especially when there's kids in the
114room so so that's one thing and then the filtration you had in the units was like a merv 10 which you know before the coven was considered a fairly good ventilation or rating for filters so i would expect that you know anything running the merv 10 the merv 13s if you were guys were bringing in air quality people depending on what they were looking for you're going to have probably cleaner air than it is outside just because it's filtered you know so so i mean you know in this time of covid and in the uncertainty of everything and you know there's lots of hocus pocus stuff going on you know throughout the years dealing with just the natural flu seasons and stuff like that we find that running equipment and just having good ventilation helps
115out you know as much as possible great thanks sid does anybody have any other questions typically on this person i guess i wanted jason to speak specifically to what we're voting on in terms of what we need but so so is there an air quality report for each building no we didn't do in like an air quality report we just did an assessment of the equipment operation so so heidi we went above and beyond that so air quality in is a test of the inside and outside air right and that's um what you're doing is saying is the outside air uh how is that compared to the inside air and that's just um that's not nearly as good what you just had done um you're just testing you know like we do that oftentimes for
116mold our buildings are old and our equipment's old so i'm concerned with the air quality in the buildings well that's what we just did we we upped the that's why we spent over 150 000 to take care of all of our equipment and that's what you just had done we upped that by many times over and then your filters were taken care of for that air quality testing is um i can i could have done all of this work and and didn't do any of this work and just gotten an air quality test that showed you that the air quality inside was better than the air quality outside and then went like this we went above and beyond that and improved upon that report yeah you guys have i mean this has been a big
117commitment on the district of getting all this equipment back in shape and running and doing it in such a tight time frame it's you know you you're you're providing a great space for your kids now you know if you have concerns of mold or something you know that you're you're hunting for in the air quality stuff then you know obviously you got to get the people in testing for that but you know there's no testing for covid and there's no testing for the flu and there's no testing so you know i guess take comfort with you know fans are spinning you know that air is being brought in from the outside you know that there's air changes back in your buildings and you know that equipment's actually running in and there's been a big commitment
118by your district and your people in the district they've learned a lot of new things that we showed them about how to run some of the more sophisticated buildings and that you know you are uh you are in a much better place than you were before i met you and before they started this project you know if you're still you know if you're you're uncertain and you feel like an air quality test will will make you feel better i mean that's something that you'll have to decide but you'll have to like send these people hunting for something you know the lack of having kids in the building to try doing co2 or anything like that everything's going to come back looking so phenomenal without having the buildings loaded down with kids and stuff you know
119stuff like that so you know you would have to like specifically send somebody hunting for what you're looking for in the air quality so it's better to have the kids in school to do an air quality test well it all depends what you're looking for right so you know most of the time we get involved with air quality tax is because you know you have a rash of kids that are you know have allergies or something like that and you're looking for mold and you're looking for black mold and you're looking for something that's causing it you know an effect to a great amount of kids right so you know the other thing you can test for an air quality and you know one of the things that people try to cheat on all the
120time and energy is that if you drive the co2 rate up in a building you that means you're bringing in less you're bringing in less air and uh you know in and part of that is you know a lot of people trying to save money cut back on those ventilation rates which really in your digital buildings we found nothing changed from the original engineered data that was was in the prince so i don't see that someone's come in and done what i call like a junior jedi energy project where they're trying to save money and they're cutting back on ventilation rates it's just the pure commitment of keeping equipment running and you know you had some of the most clean physically clean equipment i've seen in a like a first time go through of a
121building so you didn't have problems like i would have i would have thought of not taking care of equipment in the summertime and cleaning it and and yeah we found some filters that needed to be changed but you're getting on a completely different filter program so a lot of those those types of things you guys either didn't have or you're changing your ways and you know with this covet thing everybody's learning on what new gizmos and you know uv lights and ionization stuff and all that stuff but you know in the end ventilation is the key to keeping a building healthy and you are running ventilation in your buildings now and those are reports that the building management system could create for you to where you can see you know damper positions and you know
122if if anyone questioned it they could run a simple report and prove to everybody where those dampers were and that there's no monkey business going on stopping that ventilation rate oops it has uh we have provided the the reports it has finalized for the buildings um there in the board packet in the past we've been bringing to you the costs of the repairs currently we're sitting we're looking for board approval this evening for a total of um just under a hundred thousand dollars um and that is uh the cost of getting the functionality back up um in in in as well uh sid did mention you know we are looking at the filter replacement program sid has has gone through with aerofilter and identified the either merv 10 or merv 13 filters that have to
123be replaced sid's recommending three times a year um the the cost of the current the filters currently one set of filters for the entire district is 17 just over 17 um and given the fact that we're it's it's two to three months lead time on some of these things um i guess maybe we can you know if we if we're gonna make a motion to approve those costs maybe making a motion as well to approve the the initial filter replacement program as well sorry we didn't get those numbers to you at the time of the board pack it was prepared jason are they those are not in there uh at this point are they i thought you uploaded them to a later part of the board packet debbie i know i forwarded them i'm not
124sure if they made it to the board packet or not are they not in there if not i haven't seen the 17 000 but i have everything else yeah this yeah the 17 000 came in late i think it was thursday or friday um after we had published so um we can get that but this this motion is just for the hv assessment jason okay debbie did you put him later in the packet i did not receive anything on the filters that i recall maybe we can wait till uh wednesday or something or saturday yeah yeah that's fine with that so the the 99 000 is what we're voting on looks like it comes from the cares funding um anybody have any other questions or concerns on this motion or on hvac update jason did
125you say the filters need to be changed two to three times a year um sid is sid is recommending that we change them three times a year and and those three times are based on um again when students enter end of fall i believe said uh just just some key points in the year but he you know the um i'm going on the experts opinion on on how often we need to change those so when do they when do the repairs are going to be done i know most of them are already done but when's the completion that's all that's all predicated on on what the what the availability of the parts are um again i think um you know we're working through i think ford is i'm going to say over 75 done and
126then we're going to get into webster real quick here um you know i've had that discussion that we need to prioritize those classrooms as quick as possible um so depending on on what um what the situation is we'll we'll have to probably you know give you an update on that possibly wednesday if i can get um that you know the contractors in there to look at those units in each of the classrooms and uh occupied spaces okay did you say because i didn't see anything on here on jordan and webb in the package did you say those were those two schools were completed they were the first ones completed i believe say maybe speak to that yeah that's where um jordan webb were initially gone through and then you know you had your contractor come
127and fix the pneumatic stuff and i did a recheck on those so those are completed and i apologize heidi those reports were supposed to be forwarded to you today and uh jason will get those to me tomorrow and we will get those forwarded to all the board members that didn't get them that was supposed to happen today it did not and i just i just assumed they were completed and he just gave me verification that they were yeah we'll get those reports too so i have a question the the total amount that hundred and thirty six thousand six hundred and eleven dollars is that taking care of web and forward that's not complete yet or are we going to come back for more money we will put additional billings on those two buildings there'll be
128additional billing okay correct and the um it says the sinking fund or cares money i thought cares was gone and if it is we're just giving you permission for sinking fund then so as of right now i'm going to say that we we probably we have there is there is the second round of karzak dollars which is coming in we we don't know what that amount is yet um but it's going to be larger than the dollar amount we received primarily or initially so at this point i would say let's you know make the motion to charge to sinking fund with the intention that if the cares act money is allocated to the district we then reallocate those dollars against the cares act funding and preserve our sanctuary fund again it's you know just like
129when we did our budget amendment in june uh and and we received the funding announcement uh from the state it's it's you know if i could wait three or four days and and present a budget you know i mean currently it's it's not it's not allocated to us yet we don't know what our allocation is so i i can't i can't technically spend the money i don't have um but i'm sure tomorrow morning amy and i will receive an email saying you you were rewarded x amount of dollars and i'm going to say great i'll do another budget next meeting so you know it's coming it's coming it's just i i i have to i have to i can't spend money i don't have so i gotta say sinking fun now cares that money later
130unfortunately sorry i have a question yeah exactly what is there i missed part of this conversation because i was having technical stuff going on what exactly is our sinking fund balance right now um give me a minute i'll look that up thanks i just don't want to overspend and count on money that's not there yet that might not be there no i i mean our balance right now is i'm going to say um more than a million dollars um even though there are projects ongoing we we still have uh funding available and could you tell me again what the amount was that we were spending um that we're approving this evening it's just it's like 99 000 [Music] um 99 okay i'm good thank you any other comments or questions all right thank you sid
131thank you jason let's go ahead with roll call nose yes black yes baldwin yes fortress yes rice yeah atkins yes all right um moving on to our next item would be the preparedness and response name and i get a motion i make a motion that we approve the preparedness response plan review as presented do i have support all right discussion i do i have a presentation that i'll ask uh to bring up um and as always before we even uh get going i just first have to say i think um you know this is probably a really difficult conversation and discussion for you as a board to have especially new board members for your very first meeting this does not come without knowing that this decision made heavy on you weighs heavy on our staff
132paras secretaries custodians but it also weighs heavy on the heart of our students and our parents this week as you know the governor had a press conference we knew or last week we knew what was coming so we had some time to talk with some individuals about their thoughts some people are for some people are against we are not going to please everyone what we do know is that we have the virus that is in front of us it's not going away anytime soon there's a second round that's coming before us we know that many of my peers are already back in session and are moving forward because what i believe we're faced with in education is that we're going to go into the next school year with the same kind of situation and opening
133and closing is going to be what we're going to be looking at probably for the next year and a half and looking at a new way of education for a while masks are going to be a thing that we're going to be looking at we're going to be doing and the vaccines we have no idea when michigan is going to get them and even when we do get them we are all going to realize that we still have to quarantine after we get them we still have to wear our masks we still don't know when our students that are 16 or up are going to get them and we are not in control about how they roll out absolutely right as adam said this evening i believe that we should be giving them out to
134the people that are here first our secretaries and our custodians have never left they've been here every day meeting with parents um greeting students when they come up in our health i mean our food uh service people have been greeting students and family members when they come up and get food shouldn't those be the first people that are getting vaccines um there's so many conversations that we've had and had calls to the state department we were on with legislators this morning they too don't have an idea when the vaccines are coming but we have kids that are struggling we have kids that are not learning and the governor didn't say it but really what she was saying is that the president has spoken and he wants schools back in session and you see all the
135other states doing the same thing it's time to come back to school how we do that is a decision that you get to make is award what i did because my job as a superintendent is speak with my peers my administrators and we went through and we talked about what would this look like how do we think that we can do this in a way that makes sense in a way that we felt was the safest to move us in i spoke to the health department and talked with them about how this would look um if you could bring it up brad i i know that uh many of you i heard many people say uh well we're in a we're in b we're in c there are no a b c's and d's and
136part of the reason they found out is because when you looked at one metric you were in an e and when you looked at like percent of positivity you were in a b and so that they realized the metric that they had developed didn't want to do more for them and so there is no a b c d e there is no phase one two three and four they've removed that and as i said to all of you as board members from a person from the local health department and from the state department it is all based on local measures now and on your plan which our plan has been approved by the health department so it depends on what you're going to think about today after we go through we don't take this lightly
137and people are going to catch the virus and schools probably at some point may whether it's next fall or now may close down um there might be times when we don't have substitutes that's going to be everywhere and guess what you have a winter break a mid-winter break that you have chosen to keep in and you do shut down schools and we have a spring break that we shut down schools and we have a two-week christmas break that we shut down schools so we do disrupt students education but we do know that we were successful when we came in and kids thrived i was at united oaks when kids were jumping up and down i also was a part of that when i had to close schools and i heard the sigh of relief from
138the teachers as well as for myself um because i wasn't sleeping at night knowing the stress that was under everybody so this is a tough decision so i'd like to turn to the first page so the governor has requested us to return k through 12 by march 1st and it's not really a request it is we need to get our kids into school by march 1st it's some sort of education we need to get them in by march first and this is a discussion that came to us from our superintendents group and our lobbyist it also is we met and we discussed a plan and i have clicked on that so that you can look at the letter that allows us to return in a manner that we feel that meets hazel park our schools
139around us have returned um madison's meeting tonight royal oaks meeting on thursday lampears meeting tonight uh schools all around us have started returning in oakland county and over three-fourths the schools in the state of michigan have been in session all along they have never left being in session our center programs i sent that to you this evening as well all the center programs are in session some sort of time and we need to remember in hazel park you are representing the 28 school districts you are not representing hazel park in our center programs so while that is hard and we can talk about that we're representing all these other individual people so when other districts start opening up we're servicing these children and the reason that we've agreed to take on center programs is to
140service the most difficult children in oakland county our cases are declining whether we believe that or not and today they said they're higher when in october 31st cases were 240 per day and when we closed they were 801 per day right now they're 158 per day so while it feels overwhelming that is just not accurate and we have been declining for the last 52 days and while it feels like a lot it's eight percent positive test level now what does that mean well the eight percent positivity rate is only depending on how many people are taking the test so that positivity rate that we were all looking at will only depend on if i go back to a day and determine the same number of people were taking the test right that are getting positive
141so that positivity rate really just doesn't mean anything which is why they've taken away all these other pieces but the amount of people that are positive on that day mean something that's what we were comparing there's way more many people in hazel park there's 52.5 cases for 10 000 today that was yesterday and 25.2 for 10 000 in our school district just three weeks ago there were a hundred and ten per ten thousand in hazel park it is declined by in october in the very beginning in august when we were here it was under 10 for 10 000. they also are strongly encouraging us to allow child care and after-school programming to occur in person in buildings in order to provide support to our families we are strongly encouraged to get back to school we
142are no longer using the road map or phases a through e we are moving to local base decision decision-making and we're using it with the approval of the health department and i will say again our mitigation plan was approved several weeks ago and our plan to return has been approved by oakland county our cases in the area and our pro our protocols are in place with positivity now does that mean that um that people won't get sick no it does not what that means is is that we have every piece in place we have i heard earlier there that we don't have ppe that is absolutely not accurate we have a hundred thousand masks and more if i had jason come in here we went over it today we have hand sanitizer to last us
143months we have so much ppe that um you know you know i went over that with him today ppe is not our issue for sure will you change the next one so our suggestion is as follows and i think it's really important to listen and i think the parents that are still on here children with special needs because um we treat children in self-contained classrooms i do want to go on to say that i know that there are lots of comments going on parents still have the opportunity to choose viking virtual if they choose i'm sad that we have teachers that are making statements about viking virtual that's not appropriate and not fair i know that we have outstanding teachers that are in viking virtual and we have supplied paraprofessionals in viking virtual as well
144as substitute teachers and viking virtual to support our individuals parrots still have the opportunity until the 25th to choose viking virtual and if and when you choose anything today we will share that with parents tomorrow so that if you choose to return at all they will have an opportunity to choose to move to viking virtual if they don't want to come back to school that's why we made those options so people have choices i do know that there was a survey that was done by teachers we did a survey as well of parents a very quick one and we had over 600 responses 60 of your parents want to come back i asked for viking virtual teachers not to viking virtual students not to take it there were some viking virtual parents from their comments
145that did take it it seems that more elementary parents took it then upper parents took it so it's a 60 40 split about wanting to come back i didn't want to do surveys because i knew this is what would happen teachers would say and staff members that was just teachers i don't want to come back and parents would say i want my children to come back it is what is happening all over with my peers their teachers are saying no and parents and parents are saying yes because we know that parents are struggling at home with their children they're afraid but they're struggling their children are having social emotional concerns and difficulties so here is our suggestion our suggestion is that we roll this on a weekly basis and the reason that we want to
146roll this on a weekly basis is that because it was encouraged that we move special education english language learners and our young children in as soon as possible and we believe that that is the best movement that we should do as we met with as an administrative staff we know that these are the most vulnerable students that we have students that so our choice would be to move k2 in on the 19th for four days and edison k8 parents that attend edison do not have to come back they have the choice to remain virtual or to come back face to face and of the 10 parents that were in a self-contained classroom that responded to the survey eight of them wanted to come back that's not all of them but michelle will call from edison
147school and ask her parents do they want to remain virtual or do they want to come back self-contained parents are not made to come back if parents want to pod learning would be would begin for special education students at the junior high in high school and el english language learners k-12 parents aren't made to at the sxi level at elementary parents would have the option of coming back to the sxi classroom or remaining at home many of our sxi parents will not return this year with their children due to their very vulnerable needs and some of them will come back they'll have the option and jordan would return with friday asynchronous days the reason that they've chosen asynchronous days is that many of their parents now have set up many of their medical appointments and
148their other appointments that they have so they would come back monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday would be asynchronous for the second week we'd bring back k5 back but monday tuesday wednesday would be asynchronous this would give us a day where kids are at home asynchronous and we would have a deep cleanse of the building jason and greg met today to review those deep cleaning issues and concerns that they would be doing to make that clear to the building principles and also for the teachers to be aware what those are and then thursday friday the students would come back edison would come back completely as a building they would be off on wednesdays as well asynchronous and early child which would be our great starts and our three-year-old program would come in they are off on
149friday so we would not do wednesday advantage elementary would come back and pod learning may begin there may be students that don't want to do pod learning jardan would be already in session in our sxi as well oh can you change that brand sorry i can't move it the following week we would bring sixth grade into the junior high advantage three through eight and sxi k-12 and again sxi parents do not have to return their children they have a choice to be at home but the sixth grade junior high would come in at that point in time they would also have wednesday asynchronous the following week junior high six through eight would come in and then we would finally have the full junior high end but they'd have one day wednesday asynchronous as well getting
150to february first with the junior high gives us time also to collect all of the forms we need to collect from the junior high parents saying that they'll take temperatures at home putting all those processes in place the next week is winter break and the week back if you change it one more page and the week back we wouldn't change anything this way we know that we will have some high school students the week of winter break even some that were today on my advisory that are doing college visits and such this gives them home for 10 days before they start on march 1st so that if they've picked up anything while they're visiting on their winter break away that they have 10 days at home then they start on march 1st which is the
151day that our governor said that we needed to have k-12 in some sort of education it was our original intent to have asynchronous days on wednesdays it was discussed with me to potentially do it on fridays therefore i've left it as to be determined so in the meantime the high school could have some further conversation as a building about whether to have asynchronous days on wednesdays or fridays of course the kids today when i was talking to them said that they would prefer to do it on fridays because they don't like to start thursdays over as a monday again but that's a discussion to have with the high school staff so again jardon parents don't have to come in they can keep their kids at home and do it remotely we work that with the
152teachers i want to note that we've already had to close a classroom at edison because we haven't been opened their kids have gone elsewhere or not been referred here so that's a really important piece these kids are having to go other place to get the supports and services that they need that means next year you won't have referrals either because they've gone somewhere else so what i'm looking for you today is a couple things for you to be able to ask questions decide a return date and if you aren't approving this return date then give me a different return date or a different way of returning so that we get everybody back successful by march 1st in some way or shape or form we ask you to do this because we believe that it's better
153for our nurses our administration and working together with a team to do it in this roll-up way it brings our young children in first which we believe they're the ones that need to be in here the most it gets our high school kids in by march gives them the opportunity for second semester to be in person and to enjoy not everybody wants to come back they don't have to people can make the decision now to go virtual any questions uh i have a question in the event that we do vote for return why wouldn't we just make it district-wide friday asynchronous days the purpose of the wednesday day was to give a chance to clean on wednesdays and then they can clean it again on friday and if we have some breakouts that are occurring
154we can bring our guys in on saturday and clean again deeply so you could do a deep clean on friday and you could do a deep clean on saturday and if we found that our guys felt that they weren't doing a deep clean enough uh we could hire some other guys to clean on saturdays the key is deep cleaning wednesdays saturdays maybe fridays you know we want to make sure we have a really good deep clean in the middle of the week i get that i just i'm concerned about if there's families out there with older students high school students watching younger siblings and having an asynchronous day in the middle of the week um doesn't feel like it's going to work for this district good good conversation have one of the things that i'd
155like to think about is that on wednesdays our paras would not have something to do and so perhaps having a um in the gym have the ability six feet apart for those families that maybe don't have child care on that day they do this in a lot of other districts to have care in the gym where they could be in there working the parents could be working with them in the gym on those days we will have paris that don't have work given the fact that they're asynchronous right i have a question amy can we talk through some of these staff contingency plans um can you can you explain further absolutely so we had what we had back in the fall where we had questions being shut down and teachers not available to cover uh
156or pair pros not able to cover certain classrooms or different supports coming in i just want to make sure that if we do have to have classrooms go down that we have appropriate staff there to be able to support our students successfully and safely well there has been a change in the law that anybody can substitute besides paris and um so psychologists social workers any certified staff can certify can substitute we've already had that in there and of course they also changed the law nicely for us that retired teachers can come back now um we did giggle a little bit with that because none of our retired teachers want to come back right now and substitute um but bless them for thinking about doing that for us um rachel it's going to be hard it's
157hard in a non-coveted time to cover our classrooms but that doesn't change the fact that i might have to go substitute or stephanie or carla might have to go substitute because our kids need to be back in classrooms so nick has hired our fourth long-term sub and as we're moving back up we're going to be you know working hard to get our subs back in place what is the plan if we don't have enough and these kids are back in school and you don't have enough to cover it well often times we don't have enough subs to cover dawn and we make it through principle sub i will have to sub um that is the reality of schools nowadays before we had kovid we were all stepping in and subbing that's just the reality of
158schools even before covid we were all subbing nick and chuck are going to have to do some hard work doing some more recruiting and they've got um they've got weeks to do it have we had discussions with all of our union teams yet to know what their plans are if they know how many staff are going to actually come back through the doors uh they would not know that that would go to being vaccinated because currently i mean 1a is still on a waiting list and 1b i believe is where our folks fall and they're and they're being waitlisted they're not even being wait listed rachel that's that's the issue uh it may be well into summer time before people are vaccined after speaking with the individuals so um you know no and we're being
159directed to bring kids back to school i mean they're going to test the reality is is that the state is going to test and we have to bring kids on site anyway so you know we we have to bring kids back we're going to test and and testing has to be on site even for our viking virtual academy yes viking virtue will have to be on site to test as well so unless our new president which we're not hearing that i can't promise you but i can tell you if we test state test viking virtual and everyone has to come on the site amy can you talk a little bit about what the cohort sizes are in the different grade levels um you know we're off the top of my head if i can try
160to pull this up quickly because they've changed and if it's been updated um you know they are depends on a classroom and it depends on the classroom size so some classrooms could be 12 some could be 17 in the elementary tammy could speak to her size i know she's on here could speak to her size at the junior high she said some are quite low yeah we have about 17 families that's our highest class we have classes our smallest one is nine our smallest cohort and then our largest um actually has 21 but it's uh there's a couple kids that only join special ed students that come for specific classes so they're not all 21 together the whole time it's just remotely right now so we'd have to look at that but minus that the
161largest class is 19 and that includes our algebra band kids and our smallest is nine right now but we are a few virtual kids coming over so i think our lowest will probably be ten as of if we come back on the first and i believe that um we need to send out clear documentation that allows parents to transfer to viking virtual and then we will also need for the subs that we have in viking virtual bring it back and then provide extra support so i had that conversation with jason today that we're going to need to utilize some of the new cares money to support and if we have more people come over then we have more people come over we need to give them that opportunity but we have a guys we have
162a lot of people that are suffering they're not attending and they're not attending because it's difficult for them um it's difficult for them to be online and the spotty internet is is a reality it's not just a reality here at other places and we we're missing kids we're losing kids um because they aren't online and they won't do it online and they don't have parents at home to help them online um so we need to be able to provide those opportunities and and yes i will fight for vaccines i have been every day i've been online i was on the line with southfield today uh working with jennifer crane trying to get an idea for us to try to get it through ascension but the reality is michigan doesn't have the vaccines because the federal
163government's holding it up right now and i understand there's some in kalamazoo that are just sitting there right and they're just sitting there they haven't been released here so i can't control i have asked again i asked with our legislators this morning i said this is silly um we you should come to us like kent county did and say how do you want your vaccines and i'll say on campus for my teachers so that they don't have to leave the classroom all day long so that you can just come to the school and give them their vaccine at school that makes the most sense to me that's not what the health department here is willing to do so we're trying to push that up higher for some support um but right now they don't have
164those vaccines for people but when they get them they still have to social distance and if you get exposed you still have to quarantine for 10 days and i did write to andy levin and i am on a call with him tomorrow about pushing for the federal care act again to where those days are mandated by the federal government if somebody gets sick so while we're bringing our kids back and fighting for our kids i'm also going to fight for our staff a hundred percent do you have a question the when is the testing is it april march well i'm sure stephanie's on here as well but um so yes but there is uh testing that's starting soon stephanie yes i am on so i ready testing is scheduled to start the week of january
16518th and so it will run uh probably the last two weeks in january in the first week in february and then el testing yes so uh weeda testing is scheduled to be given january 27th through april 9. this year to try to accommodate some of the the social distancing and the changes that we're trying to navigate they've extended the wida assessment window normally it's the second week in february until about the third week in march and they've expanded it now as i stated from january 27th all the way until april 9th so and the i ready they they're able to do that over the computer right because they they've already done a part of that yes they can do it they can do it in home uh using the computer it is very challenging we
166had a lot of challenges uh as we try to support parents who are again trying to navigate something that's not really familiar with them it's a little bit difficult sometimes being at home taking that test versus being in school so while we can do it it's really not the most opportune environment for our students to be testing and we are hoping that if you agree to the dates we came back that we'll be able to test them then we will be able to respond to our mandatory february goal setting so our idea is that we will put up some sort of goal until we get the real results and then we'll put those results up because they won't be done by the february second deadline um because of the timeline right so we'll put some
167remember our growth was to move forward in math to move forward in reading and um there is no death there is no test data other than the iready well we can bring them back and if you remember we also shared our kindergartners and our first graders had very high gifted data so we really would like to have them back so that we can really get a sense and also support them through the summer with some kind of summer programming as well and then the m-step is when m-step will be it's slated as it normally is for april and may and so then they will have that testing option option in april and may and we don't have exact test dates but it's always centered in those months okay so i have a question it's about
168subs um you know when we closed last time it was like we needed 11 in in one day um is there can you guarantee uh you know what happens if it goes over 11 we couldn't manage 11 um because having kids come to school and then having kids not come to school and this back and forth is not the no consistency isn't good either so what's a plan like i i know people filled in i know bored people went into classrooms and everything but um if we couldn't do 11 what are we going to do is there a guarantee that they're not going to be sent home in two weeks again nope there is no guarantee that people aren't going to get sick there is no guarantee that even if covid wasn't around that we
169were going to have subs um you know and if i said that to you bev in in a month uh if the strand gets to us which somebody said to me today that strand is in michigan it is not in michigan yet uh i think there was one in colorado or something or indiana but it is not here but it will come and people will get sick and unfortunately people are going to have to quarantine and i can't stop that but what i can say to you is the more that we keep kids home um you know we're gonna have an issue too um but that is not for me to decide all i can do is give you the data to say it's it's reducing and vaccines are coming but they're not coming next
170week and just because they said they gave them on monday listen guys they at 10 o'clock at night they released that information and they had told some other people in the morning and they had already gotten all those shots and only 25 percent of the shots they're going to give they're going to give to teachers from the health department unless the state does something different so they're not there's 13 000 teachers in oakland county and that's not including our secretaries our custodians our peers everyone else it's going to be one we just heard uh 27 people um you know i'm thinking about them a lot of them do not i i don't i think there's more people not wanting to come back but i think it was close and i wish out of that 600
171100 people would have came and spoken to to help the other side out because i heard more people not wanting to come back than wanting to come back because i did not purposely make this a um i did not want for you to make this a uh a scene so i did not send it out to the parents i did not encourage the parents to come i did not make negative comments about it i put the information up here for you to make a decision i only decided at the last minute because i understood what was happening uh today so what i chose to do was to grab you a quick survey and now it's 614 people there are comments in here there's comments for and there's comments against there's comments where people are afraid
172there's comments where people are saying please there was one that said please get this child out of my house that was literally the comment and um and uh which made me giggle right and there's people that says i'm fearful to send my child to school they don't have to send their child to school no but we're requiring our employees to go back to school correct yes i have a question amy yes you had said that the health department is telling us that it is safe to go back to school but the health department is always also telling us that we should be vaccinated that we should have you know the teacher vaccinated you said that within a five-minute span so i'm a little they just tell us that we should have teachers of course they
173want everyone to be vaccinated but they didn't say we have to be vaccinated before we go back their schools their schools open hiding all around us but listen this is not my decision but i can tell you that there are schools open all around us and vaccinations certainly is an issue but vaccination is not going to happen for some time if you're waiting for everyone to be vaccinated you are you are not going to be fitting the mandate of opening by k-12 by march 1st i didn't hear that as a mandate i did not either it was a suggestion it it is it is exactly i don't care about strong recommendations we i didn't hear a mandate okay i was encouraged strongly encouraged and if you don't think that that's to get back to school
174there's no doubt that anybody sitting here right now having this decision wants the kids back to school that's that's not what i'm saying i said if you don't think the governor wasn't telling us to get back to school no because then she would have said i'm mandating you to get back to school she can't oh because we don't have to no she can't do that at this point in town by rules but she was telling us then with the michigan department of health to to come back to school but you as a board get to make that decision and i certainly understand um where the teachers are coming from i'm here every single day so i think i've given you the the numbers the numbers are not where they were parents have an option teachers
175have options too oh i would like to ask that amy i'm sorry to interrupt you um when the teachers are and let's say they do come back and they have to go out into quarantine how do they get paid they have to they have to use their sick days just like everybody else does now and i'm and i mentioned that earlier that that was one of the questions that i sent to andy levin's office and i'm on a meeting with him tomorrow and that's one of the questions i'll ask is if at the federal level if they will do any changes just like any parent that has right now that that law changed and if um any other person you know a daycare worker or someone in a factory or someone in a business if
176they get sent home they have to use their sick days too so i am asking if they're talking about that at a federal level his aide today said she was going to look into it but we're on the phone with him tomorrow superintendents and i'll ask if they're considering extending those again thank you yeah if i get sick i have to do the same thing so if they don't have sticker vacation days left if it's a new new year and they don't have that banked so the option for them is no pay well the the the union has a bank the union has a bank that they could ask the union to draw from the union has a sick bank which they're asking other teachers to relinquish their sick time no they have a bank
177they don't relinquish anybody's sick time it's a bank that you give two days to per the contract when you come in and if you leave then you'll have to pay them back it doesn't take anybody else's days from them it's not how it works but you need to be a union member to use them right that's the kicker that's part of being in your union we have already rolled out the elementary k through five so we got i kind of have a good understanding on what their day looks like can you explain to me what the junior high and high school day would look like sure i i will let uh i will defer to tammy since tammy is the principal tammy so the students would be in cohorts in one classroom throughout the day
178and the teachers would be on carts moving from so from class to class so the kids have advisory and first hour with the same teacher and then there's a five minute transition the teacher would move to the next class so the kids would have assigned seating in one class stay together and cohort and then at their lunch time this the class there's two cohorts there's a red and a blue for each grade level um with the same set of teachers and then at lunch time they would go down one cohort would eat in the cafeteria one cohort would eat in the large gym and then they would go back to their other classes and they would stay with their cohort the whole time um coming in we would have lines separating the grade levels socially
179distance apart and then leaving we would we would utilize the exit doors from all around so that students that were walking or getting rides could be picked up in different places to keep them apart so the five minutes in between the switching left alone well we would have to we have the teachers are going to be set up or the pods are going to be set up so that there's very minimal movement for the teacher so the same cohort of kids will be within the same pod so the four pods will be utilized and the hallways as like their own pods so they really won't the teachers will all be right there together moving to the next classroom so that the kids aren't left alone because the teachers are literally moving from one door to
180the next that's more supervision probably than when the teeth when the kids move uh themselves why are you laughing joan it is right so is this space in the lunchroom three feet or six feet how is it are you going to use the round tables that you currently have in the lunchroom we're going to be utilizing both we're using all of our round tables spaced out with two um students per table and then we're going to use six and eight foot tables in the gymnasium with one at each end so they'll be minimum of six feet apart but the eight foot tables would be eight feet apart spaced out in the gym and they'll have a signed seat i i failed to mention that in the cafeteria and in the gyms they'll have assigned seats
181so they'll have the same spot every day and we have one-way direction going into the gym to be seated until they get their lunches and then when they get their lunches it's one way down the cafeteria socially distance from the closest table minimum of six feet so if you're visualizing like the auditorium doors there's a one way that goes from the cafeteria line straight down along the auditorium doors back by the stairs and back into the gym so there's no contact with the kids that are already in the cafeteria so basically the socializing is very minimal for these kids that want to go back and socialize with your friends you might not even keep with us the whole day perhaps they'll be with their cohort the whole day well no i don't there's it it
182doesn't take away socialization you're going to be with your cohort then you're not running around all over crazy but you're going to be with a cohort of children my daughter has been back to school all year five days a week and she sees the kids in her cohort and you know if you want to socialize with other children you're gonna have to wait till after school but she socializes with children and cohort not anyone inside her school has been ill all year long junior high is very socially awkward you you may not have a friend in your cohort and you might be isolated well they've been together in these cohorts all year on zoom so they know each other very well because they're together all day every day and zoom they know the kids that
183they're with right now very well so good to know and we and we had a committee from march on that worked and studied how to develop this to develop cohorts to make them as safe as can be because that is the best practice um is to put them in cohorts and we worked really hard to put this process in place and what about the high school what the high school day again looks like well dr pastel is here and dr dell can speak to that so i'm here but i don't know is ken here to be able to speak to more of the details of the high school as the principal or no i didn't see him come in so what i can share is what i know so some of the details that i
184know he probably or for what i understand has been working on you may want to follow up with him but um as dr koopie mentioned we over the summer both junior high and high with the we focused on trying to cohort and obviously at the high school level that's not necessarily um an option just because of the number of students and so that's where we landed on the um blocks and so each hour excuse me is a 90 minute block with hours it pretty much they would be following the same schedule that they have now so it's the monday tuesday wednesday and thursday now but as i heard a little while ago there is an option where the asynchronous name asynchronous they may be different so it's pretty much the exact same schedule it'll just
185be face to face and that was the best option that we could have for other high school students as far as cohorting although it's not cohorting but trying to keep the students in smaller groups and trying to have students in and out of the hallway fewer students at one time so the students will be changing classes on their own yes but just if you look at it it's like they're coming in first hour then they switch between second hour it's lunch and then you're out the door because third hour after third hour you go from lunch to third hour you're leaving so you're only switching three times if that third time is leaving and then they oh go ahead i'm sorry how's lunch gonna look like at the high school level so that is where
186i said i was hoping that uh mr motor was here but what i do know what we decided or discussed prior to the last closure was there was an additional lunch added so that helped to reduce the number of students that would be present at lunch and again the third lunch was added and it was based on the number of students that had been enrolled to be remote so it wasn't going to be an overflow um because they were going to be using utilizing not just the cafeteria but the atrium so that it would be social this students would be social distance they also have to have assigned seats as well these we have to have assigned seats for contact tracing and they have to eat with their last class so i know some of
187the kids said to me today we have to have signed seats yep you have to have assigned seats that you sit in every day and that's where you eat every day and come back to so and that's how everyone else is doing it too unless some school districts have chosen not to have their electives and kids leave and it's done a little differently but we've chosen not to do that um you know we've done things the way that's kind of best for our community you've got to think local based our families travel here and they work and then they pick their kids back up again and so we're doing what's best for our community about how our community needs to function and oftentimes then they leave and pick their kids up their siblings up from
188elementary school or junior high so we need we have to get our schedules how many kids are in a lunch room at a time it depends on a building and they're using a classroom at a time so before speaking to high school i'm sorry i should have been more clear um well i don't know how many he has set for this upcoming school year because i haven't seen his breakdown but it has to be only a classroom at a time in a section of the lunchroom so he can have a classroom uh in the in the main area of the lunchroom then he has to have a classroom in the back area of the lunchroom so you have to separate them by classrooms and cohorts thank you what day are they but if the classrooms
189are moving anyways in the high school level and they're moving from classroom to classroom why do you have to keep the cohorts together because then you're keeping people together all day long that are together yeah because when you're in the hall you're not 15 minutes face to face right you're not 15 minutes face to face you're moving and with those people you're you're with those people and so if you're just mixing the lunchroom up now you're shutting down the whole lunchroom right you don't want to shut down the whole lunchroom you're with those same people you were in your class with now you can shut down a class not shut down a whole school if you learn that one person it goes to three different classes in a single right but again they're going with
190those same three classes not with the whole school and now you've affected a whole new group that can go to the same group high school is a really tough tough one to do but at least you're with that same group on that same day we studied everything that we could and some of the things you could do a little differently if you chose you know some school districts aren't doing any specials some school districts are only doing core classes and that's it and they got rid of they took all their special teachers and put them in different spots we chose to try to keep all of our classes in place i have another my i have a couple more questions um you have the sixth graders coming in separate from the the um seventh and
191eighth graders and i'm assuming that's just to give them some time to get acquainted with queen get acclimated with the building yeah they didn't even get to go to open house you know they didn't they haven't been able to go to anything right but the upcoming ninth graders are in the same position you can't separate ninth grade in our high school because they don't just have ninth grade classes they have all the classes together so unfortunately we talked about it it doesn't work and also a part of our union agreement is teachers that won't be teaching online and remotely so they can't separate their kids so it doesn't work we we certainly wanted to do the same thing can you walk me through the situation where if a parent is doing on online learning like
192what they're doing currently and then they switch to viking academy with the different curriculum how is that going to work how is how is that gonna what's semester time so it's semester time they're done they start online for second semester that's why for the high school it's now so the parents would have to make a decision by when by the 24th if they want to switch and they don't want really the decision should have already been made we've tried to make those decisions but because we're doing that's why we're saying everything needs to be done like now everything needs it's semester time like now if parents want that virtual we will send stuff out like in that's what we'll be doing tomorrow is we will send information out for the junior high in high school
193and say listen this is what's going to happen these are the dates and it's semester time right now spinal exams are carla final exams are oh sorry it's the twenty dave's gonna tell me yes and so after they take their final exam then they start their new semester and so they would start their new semester in viking virginia yes yeah february 1st so they'd switch before we did this brought them back so that they could you know not come back if they don't want to come back but viking academy is just what math no no everything you can take latin you could take you could it's everything it's everything lots of people are doing it lots of people love it and then some don't some for some kids it's really good and then for some
194kids it's not is that just at the high school level where they get a variety of classes or is that elementary and junior high level two everything k-12 that's why we picked what we did but it's not easy you know what we said to parents was this for those parents that are on when we picked k-12 um we said it's not just something that you can just say okay my kids are gonna do it it you're supposed to have a learning coach you're supposed to have a parent at home we picked it because it had books and curriculum to go about it our high school one is a do alone on your own but still if you have a child that struggles you can't just say oh go over there and do your work i
195mean you've got to make sure that they do it and finish it there's some accountability in your home when you have a child online and that's part of the problem too by some i mean we have some children that have been getting all a's and are on viking virtual and are failing everything you know because the parent isn't uh can't support them they're working what have you or it's just too hard for them so um being online in a cyber and i think that's why cybers aren't always successful cyber the cyber virtual is is hard it's it wasn't meant for us to teach them face to face it was meant for them to read and to have support at home and work on it it's it's not easy but they're at home and that peace
196of mind for many people is enough [Music] it's you have hard decisions to make and and uh listen i i my job right now is to give you the options as a superintendent about what i think we need to do to roll it back and um it it doesn't feel good i know that there are teachers that are afraid i responded to every email that i received i received some yay i'm so excited and i received plenty of i am scared i received lots of emails from center program people but we have an obligation to center program children one way or another that's what we signed up for by running center programs and um you know the other kids are different but centers are different right i mean centers that's that's what we signed up
197to do that's a little different um those are the most fragile trials of gradual and parents can decide not to send them back they can they can have and then some of those staff members can remain online that's megan and michelle working through that um and and i know people are afraid heck every day i'm here too i have just as many concerns going home and taking care of a spouse that has concerns as well that i'm taking care of every single day so i washed my hands changed my mask washed my masks every day you know make sure that my room is 362. and so um i get i get it it's not easy and i don't like to disappoint anyone i don't want to disappoint my staff i don't want to disappoint my
198parents and i certainly don't want to let down the board of men i have a question uh have our nurses had a chance to kind of assess the schools and the procedures and what is the take there yep they are there with us um and they also doing the role allows them to be on site and also allows them to uh communicate with the parents so they've already started making sure the website's updated they will meet tomorrow um i would i said don't do anything until the board said until the board makes what their decision is going to be and then we will roll from whatever your decision is they'll be with us 100 of the way and we'll do some um depending on what you do we will we will respond back to the
199public from what your decision is tonight is she frozen melissa okay i just thought she was looking at me no she still had a question i guess what i wanted to know is if if um they had an opinion on this plan or the procedures they were a part of it they did i don't know if they're here tonight sean or jasmine are you here nope they're usually here they're not here this evening and if they were they're gone um i knew they had been a part of it on the uh moving forward committee i was just wondering as as this new plan and sort of a summation of the procedures and what if they had a recommendation or a thought also yeah they were with us on monday or friday night when we went
200through it they were a part of the decision-making team we'll keep them close to our sides through all of this other questions comments from the board well to go keep heidi oh go ahead i'll wait for you i was just kind of summing up everything from saturday morning when i heard about the plan i've been back and forth and up and down on this thing and i was four going back i like the slow uh lead-in i like the hybrid part then i'm back to uh if there's not enough subs it's not consistent for children that you're in a week or two and then you're out again i think that will go on for some time but we don't know i thought about the vaccine a lot i don't know maybe in two weeks the
201vaccine will be here it's like this changes by the day in a lot of different of these areas it's like i'm kind of like maybe we should wait to see if that happens or see what the new president does with the money i'm we got a great article from dr crouppy today um you know i only read on my telephone which is tiny but it had a lot of information that i wasn't aware about and i get this at two o'clock i kind of like to see the surveys you know some of the comments if there's 600 people saying yes are they saying yes just 600 didn't say yes 600 people responded 60 percent yes said no and then i turned it off okay i i it was a two question survey it asked your
202grade level and asked if you were coming back and you could repeatedly take it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again sure that somebody didn't do that but um i don't you know normally you see that but uh yeah you could repeatedly take any survey heidi um that's why i said it's a quick one turn on and turn off i know but it doesn't i don't think the data is very accurate i took it 25 times i did it multiple times just to see when if it if and when it would ever stop so i think you took it 25 times that's too bad that that you would take a survey that we're trying to get a sense on teachers 25 times i did it to see the
203consistency of it and how accurate the data would be and if one person could take it multiple times well well sure we we don't cut people off because then you're collecting you have to collect their emails and we try not to collect uh people's emails so that they feel more comfortable so in order to only do it once you have to collect emails and i don't do any surveys with emails i don't do that with my staff and i don't do that with the public that i take online from things or one time they say thank you when you're done well we this is free google and in order to do google once you have to collect their email and so we don't collect email and i also think giving a survey at 4 30
204when the board meeting was at 7. well um i did that to do some quick survey because the teachers had done a survey unbeknownst to me and i said since that was completed i did one because originally i shared with the whole entire staff that i was doing this so that i was up front and open if i had wanted to do a survey i would have done it i didn't do it with the teachers because i knew the teachers would say no i didn't do it with the parents because i knew the parents would say yes parents are saying they need to come back and educate their kids we've had children go to the hospital guys threatening to kill themselves so we know we have both sides we have parent teachers that have emailed
205me saying they're terrified to death and they didn't email me once they emailed me in the last 24 hours like four and five times the same person and i know this person is terrified i know who i know she was i knew she'd be one of the first persons to email me oh and i care about this person very much so it's suicide it's a difficult conversation it is a difficult conversation well i'm just thinking of um teachers do want to be with kids you don't go into this profession if you don't love children and have a passion for that takes patience and and a lot of different things so they do want to be back and like i was saying i just i would like to wait a couple weeks i would like to
206see some of the surveys i'd like to read that article that it was going back to school in a new way or something that you sent and um it talked about uh president trump giving a billion dollars for cares money so how much will we be getting i think we would have more facts in two weeks i love the slow rollout i do think kids should be back i just for me i just like a little bit more concrete information i guess uh what what do you want to know what what difference does the money make for you we know we're going to be getting about 3 million dollars of money that money isn't going to change our return so i i don't know how the money money what the money is for us it
207can't be used like for some of the sick pay for staff that wouldn't be in or um i don't know i guess that's the biggest thing i'm thinking about is salaries something what what they call hazard pay you know there could be a portion of that 3 million put to hazard pay so they wouldn't have a sick money but they could have a an additional hazard pay or something well you certainly would need to go to go to the negotiation personnel team to decide if you wanted to give hazard pay but sick days don't cost anything you would have to determine through negotiations if you wanted to give them free sick days that's what you were doing that doesn't cost anything free sick days don't cost anything you would be giving them sick days for
208free but that's a negotiation piece that's not a determination for going back that would be a personnel that would be entering into negotiation okay okay that's you know what i mean that's that's entering into negotiations here in public i gotcha rachel are you in yeah i'm on i was just waiting for you i want to hear a very good input last last time when we pulled the kids out um i just like to kind of hear what you have to say okay um so you know this is a public health crisis so lives are more important to me than the bottom line um so i think i've held that pretty close and dear to my heart so i'm kind of in the role where i'd like to see where the funding is going to come
209through and like to see what senator levin has to say about um this rollout of protecting our staff with some additional covid sick days i'd like to see that option for our staff so they feel comfortable coming back to school i'd like to see where we're going to be with the vaccinations in a week just because everything is changing like we've all said numerous times day to day i know that a couple other districts um i spoke to even with my pharmacist today as i was picking up my prescriptions are looking at the february first start date around us um i know christy shared with me the other day that berkeley is one of them um i know that troy was looking at february first date i'm not sure if they still are um i
210don't follow them as closely as i we got our own stuff to do here that's shaking your head um so she heard that too um but i kind of was looking you know if we tell parents that we're really looking at february first date then that might be give everybody a chance to determine and and i i really am looking to parents tonight to take a little bit of ownership and really take some inflection in and saying are you what's best for your family is it putting back kids in the classroom or do you wanna knowing that we are going to have to eventually move that way um with the president's push and with the governor's push it's only a matter of time before they do make it an ugly mandate for us even though
211they're strongly suggesting um but it's politically fueled right we know that so i think that that if we wait a couple weeks we look at that february first date of being like we're gonna for real turn this on i know amy that might bump us down a little bit on your plan which i think is a good start the phase implant i think is great um giving us that building for a couple extra weeks might be exactly what we need to let people swallow this large pill that we're going to have to go back if this is an option for your family and if not to be able to sit in judgment and reflect about what is best for your family and saying do i want my kid to go back knowing that they're going
212to have to socially distance they're going to have to wear a mask they're going to have to do this staff wise to be able to say what do i need to do for my family if i'm not prepared to go back and us to be able to build some more contingency plans around staff if we actually know they're willing to come back into that classroom yes or no hard for certain and then the other thing is is to say if you're not ready to do that then we have the viking virtual academy and you need to sign up asap so that's just where that's where my head is just wrapping around all of this just kind of since friday night at seven o'clock taking this all in i just really think that if we if
213we wait to that february first date it might give our community the time to go and then put everything into plan i have to tell you that well not the the one piece that won't work is the high school the high school uh return by contract we are not allowed to let the high school students start after first semester so that is a contract agreement that you guys have already come up with um so the high school students it's um we would need to communicate something with our parents uh to just simply say that the date is sometime in the future that if you think you do not want your children to come back um that you would need to make that decision before the semester starts what was high school sorry we we weren't
214going to bring back the high school until march 1st anyway correct right but we would have communicated to them when we were coming back so we would need to communicate that the board um just something the board they would have to because we would have communicated to him this week uh some kind of bring them back march first even though we are doing a phasing with everybody else to still bring him back march first who says that we need to delay it two weeks into march just go ahead and bring them back if we're ready to roll out in the last group that cohort that we're going to bring is our most complicated high school cohort and we and we have to be quote unquote hardly suggested to be open by march 1st and we
215are doing well in our our lower risk cohorts of our elementary junior high then roll it march first to put the high school in roll it if we're ready by march 1st and we are doing good roll it that's just where i'm at let's not give the nitty-gritty of negotiating all that stuff if the kids can go back and we're ready to go go what was the semester and for high school again the dates it starts february 1st second semester okay yeah can i offer a suggestion if we do need to push us out for two weeks can we do this start k1 and 2 and at the same time start the sixth grade because they're separate buildings and then in the second week we start three four and five and we start seventh and
216eighth grade right we're still separating them in buildings but we're not pushing this out some you know and then march first we're still at the high school level right i hear you both saying we want to wait a couple of weeks um is that something that would be i i just don't think a couple weeks is going to get it i i'm i'm first starting after break i know that's still pushing it out a little bit further but it still gives paid it gives everybody not even just teachers everybody who's over the age of 65 and at risk capability of at least getting the vaccination and you don't know and nobody knows what the biden administration is going to do they could come in and say you know what we don't see anything this new
217strand of virus is coming we're shutting the whole country down again you're right we don't know we don't know i i i think we do know i think we do know his his 100-day plan is everybody's back that's where he's coming from he has a 100-day plan out that's why you're getting your governor's telling you you know as well as i do and not to be confrontational that his 100-day plan can be put down the sewer if this string comes in and he's going to close down the government i think that's exactly what heidi was saying is that let's let's be let's be for real we have no idea what kova is going to do to us tomorrow in three days at the end of the week we could approve this plan today and then
218by friday we're shut down that's exactly what we're saying sure so i i think i think biden has a good tentative plan 100-day plan to get us back i think governor whitmer is mirroring that because she has to by progression and she's pushing that down on us the political group absolutely so so we have to sit here at the local level with no guidance from the government instead of saying here's your date get kids back in school which we would love love love to do so for me i mean i i'm for a couple weeks heidi i hear you after break i mean it makes sense um the only thing with break the only thing with break is that i worry about with break is that we're introducing another time where people are going to
219be co-mingling and and we're not going to have no you can't roll it then guys we cannot um we can do whatever you say to start that way but then you're pushing everybody in at one point and you've got to let us roll you're doing it who is you just said all the other districts are doing it but that doesn't make it right to do it that way we've given you the way that we feel is the best way and that we were successful so you've also been complimented correct me if i'm wrong from the health department i'm rolling it out in a stage to restart yep and we did it in a way that we were able to redo the pbis routines with our kids and we were doing it in a way that
220our our administrators who are experienced recommended it the educators recommended it to you in the way that it should be done so i'm putting them right after break and the break gave you the 10 days of rest and not changing and uh special ed needs to get back guys all the centers are open we're killing our centers we're losing kids we're killing them i honestly fear that if we don't start opening we're going to lose other kids to other districts we're going other places right because that because at the end of january open enrollment closes which is why again we said to start so you you if you're saying february first we'll we'll write that up you guys need to vote and say if you're saying february 15th we need to communicate to our parents
221if you're saying you want to re-meet again then we need to say that and communicate to them about open enrollment finishes at the end of the month i'm not sure what i'm writing february 1st february 15th well i think i think there's a there's a couple options on the table at least correct me if i'm wrong everybody that we're all brainstorming here and thank you for the 192 people who are participating and going through this impression with us so here's what i heard i heard we open up we go with the plan that you have so graciously put in front of us amy option number one option number two would be to open up on february 1st um and do that and do the and bump and do the rollout plan the same just on
222a looking different delay and having the high school start on the march first so we don't get into that weird stuff the third option i'm hearing is also to open up there's actually four here so open up on february 1st but open up the elementary school and the junior high at the same time so so then we're working at opening k through two and then sixth grade and then that three through five and then seven through eight then our fourth option would be to look at after midwinter break opening up and potentially pushing us at moving us at a more rapid pace where we couldn't walk it with the nurses those are all the positive and and pro negatives that i could possibly put into those four arguments so i hope that kind of helped
223that's from my brain what i if you want to know rachel's opinion my opinion is i want to send them back on february 1st um and i'm open to the idea i'd like to hear everybody else's idea of what christie's idea is it's just to look at opening elementary and height junior high at the same time i think that might be a little easier on families who have dual households with elementary and junior high kids that might be a break for parents who are looking at that option and also giving our parents that two weeks to decide if they're willing to come back and also the staff the option to say am i willing to come back that's i'm i'm off i'm off my proverbial soap box tonight three options oh wait maybe there's four
224options there's always a fourth i'm just going to jump in and my two cents i i really i like where we're heading with doubling up some of the buildings that christy mentioned i think we can compress the the phases by having different buildings opening up still in a somewhat staggered but maybe not all at once um and i think that a february first would allow us um allow two more weeks to to make sure to really make it crystal clear to parents that this is the semester switch we really need people that aren't going to come back because i think we can say we we are going back it's a matter of you know um it's on it's on the board they're gonna go back they made the decision at the beginning of the year
225as it was right when you chose remote that if we went back to school that was face-to-face was an option but if there are others that i think you're going to see switching both ways i think you're going to have people that vba that wants to switch and back and it will give us a little more time to acclimate there so i guess i like what we're circling around but yeah certainly well i think february 1st what i'd like to do is allow edison and jardin and sxi to make their decision how they open the principles um whether it's all at once or break it up i'm going to guess that they might want to go february 1st february 8th you know like half and half not full but i'd like them to make that
226decision based upon some conversations with their buildings i mean that that's fine because you're going to have to have individual conversations with those parents about their individual learning plans which we know some parents might not send their kids back in those in those in those types of programs i'm sorry heidi if i cut you off just another respect of the people that were talking there was a edison and employee and parent and she was all for coming back she doesn't think that as i understood her she would just like the opportunity to get the vaccination if she got the vaccination or had the opportunity she would feel a little bit more safer dealing with those children because even um who was the first evan that spoke so sometimes it's a defiant and take their mask
227off i don't think evan i don't think evan mentioned that i think evan was asking his peers to wear their masks um well maybe i understood it from somebody else i think someone said it i do yeah i think someone said i think evan was saying listen we all need to be on the same team here yes i think i think rolling out after winter break it leaves gives our employees our community and the people that have concerns the opportunity to get the virus because who knows what's going to happen after the 20th i know you're looking at me like i'm crazy no i'm looking at you because you said get the opportunity to get the virus vaccine look at me please don't get the virus they're gonna get the virus and i thought well
228sorry i am blonde you know so going it out giving everybody the opportunity to get the vaccination even though it's i mean i want the kids back so badly yeah but it's just a logic thing to do for at the community for our our teachers and staff and our parapros that they just need that sense of security and i think we need to give them that opportunity to do that and i think starting starting after winter break and maybe doing instead of a six-week rollout do consolidate it to a three-week rollout heidi i i have to tell you it won't we we won't do a three-week rollout it's not uh it's not going to be you may think that looks easy that's not going to be what this we will do we're not going to
229do it halfway we've been praised for how we've handled it and we will we will violate our governor's order by not rolling out we will do it the right way you know unless you order us to roll it out in three weeks we need to be able to have our staff on site we need to be able to have our nurses there we need to have our central office administrators there and we've got to do it right and so i've seen my peers roll the whole thing out and that's great for them but we did it and we felt good about it and i want us to feel good about it and take a deep breath so if the board votes to do it after break then we're gonna roll it longer because we just
230need to breathe right we we need to breathe we need to feel good about the move the administrative team you need to feel good we need to feel good too the administrative team felt good about how they we were rolling it it did work and i you don't want me to go through why it didn't work it did work i'd like to weigh in yeah i never liked it from melissa or don or bev i haven't i haven't really heard i'd like to weigh in if i can um i've heard all the arguments what i haven't heard talked about is that covet actually kills people and i am not sure i'm willing to take a chance on one of our teachers or staff members dying at this time i would like them to have an
231opportunity to get the vaccines for sure if that's what they choose i think they need to assess why they're here and if they're willing to come back i think we have to listen to them i'm sorry for the parents very sorry for the parents i want the kids back in school too but i just think this is bigger than what we're talking about right people are dying that's all do we want to be the first ones to have to explain to our kids that your teacher died because they got this i don't know i'm not sure i'm willing to take that chance there's just so many unknowns right now too many variables i'm all right with starting in february after the break depending on where we are at that point yeah we can't keep telling
232our parents that we're going to start depending on where it is our parents are angry they're upset with us we told them we're going to start here so whatever it is guys you need to land on a starting date for these families they're losing their jobs you you do work for the parents too i work out i agree we do work for the parents and i'm very sorry for the parents but i'm very sorry for the people that are going in not knowing what's going to happen to them that's scary well i mean the k5 has already been in school we've already tested our plans um so i think that while there's concern and valid you know those teachers have already committed and have already been back in in for a few weeks before we
233close back down so um i know i know the staff is concerned but i do think that a lot of them have already weighed this in and have made their decisions um we did give opportunities to staff to move to vba and teach this year early on in august and some of them chose to do so right away that had some conditions so um we have tried to accommodate those um front that had some issues i'm just kind of throwing in some history there so um yeah let's hear from some others if they're you know that we haven't heard from is there anybody else that feels like they haven't gotten the chance to fully weigh in melissa bev i i haven't heard a lot of your your opinion and i and i think it's important
234you know i i want to comment um what laura said about the teachers um i wrote down today because i read the covet report uh that we get every weekend it's really the teachers ages um kids get it yes and the numbers are lower like 20 or so you know i mean they're lower and then all of a sudden at age 30 and up you the numbers were going up 158 in that age bracket so but i wrote this down today when i was on the michigan site that there was two cases in march the first death was march 19th we've had 519 082 cases in michigan in that amount of time 13 354 deaths out of that 519 000 cases it's just the speed of it that's that's what the numbers mean to me
235is the you know i mean it just hooked on and it just runs crazy so um you know i i'm thinking about the after break but we would have to do it i dr kirby's right we can't keep saying we're going to do it we're not doing it i'm concerned kids will be back two weeks and they're going to have a break and there's the consistency right away two weeks they're in the routine and then we have a break so i'm kind of leaning into more that after the break but we have to go back i don't i mean the numbers would have to be like through the sky not to go back after telling parents again uh you know i mean so i guess i lean more towards um that time i want to
236throw in um you know that there the spring break is actually the last week of march i think so um if we face this in march we're gonna just run right into spring break um just to kind of consider that and i um i agree with what you're saying bev i think you're right though with the numbers right like we have to have a plan to go back we need to say what we're doing and we need to stick with it um i know it's it's been a challenging year but i do the parents are looking probably would prefer to have some real dates and that we're going to stick to and and i just want to i i have to do this side because you guys talked about the dust of staff don't forget
237about the deaths of students and that parent spoke from edison and we have had several students go to the hospital threatening to commit suicide and some of them taken in ambulances so we're talking both sides of this there is no right answer whether it's the death of a staff member or a death of a student and the emotional social emotional piece of that and so that's why you know you have to remember both sides of this as you're thinking through it um and i and and it's you know i suffered that same piece when we had a loved one that was brought up here very much so that had health conditions and several of our staff members who lost family members not here that had extenuating circumstances but that's why it's also so important we
238wear our masks everywhere we go we wash our hands and do all those things as well but i can't take care of a child that's at home and so depressed about being behind that screen i can't help that um so i think i'm ready to weigh in um there's some talk about you know having the opportunity for the vaccine um that may or may not happen for us um so i feel like you know if we wait another week another week there still might not be the chance that you know a majority of our teachers um and staff and sports are going to be able to um get the vaccine um i think we're ready without it i'll just to be honest the committee and the administration has done and the and the um custodians
239have done can you all hear me okay can you hear me okay yeah just a little lag uh-oh okay i'll continue and we'll work through it um they've done so much work uh to get ready for all of our students and staff to come back and as far as i know the data shows that the infections aren't spreading in schools and i think that's why the governor has strongly recommended that we open schools and people are complaining of course restaurants and this and that can't be open um but there is data behind that so i'd like to point that out too um i agree that it's maybe scary for some people but we have done it and it has worked i understand the concern about going in and going back out whether it's for vacation
240or a jump in the numbers um in my opinion i feel a few days back are worth it yeah i think that's that's i also want to make sure i thank everybody that um commented and shared their opinion whether it was with me personally the board individually and here tonight it's our job to educate these kids and if we're not doing it to the maximum potential then we are underserving our students and i think that's not fair that's all thanks melissa uh good points i'm glad you weighed in on the moving forward committee because i know they worked so hard all summer and we've gotten periodic updates i know i haven't uh i've only been able to participate once or twice but i know that you you've been a member of that um and that
241committee has put a lot of thought and work into this so that's helpful to hear that insight um can you also tell me okay yes yeah i i do know of and i will get emotional because these people are close to me um i do know of a couple students who are suffering from not being in school and we can say that that's not our job to you know maintain their social health or well-being that's that's on the parents um but as our students that's a part of development and part of growing up and i think that's a huge part and i feel like every time we extend there's another opportunity you know for dissension as you know we can't get the vaccines well nobody was saying that before it was level c before um
242with or without vaccines so i don't i don't think that that's what we should base it on i think we should base it on all the hard work that we're done we've done in getting ready for our students and the need for our students to be in schools all right thank you um christy yeah i don't think it's been any secret that i think the kids need to be back i thought it wednesday in the coming in the going coming back to school committee um i'm supportive of whatever plan we can get together to get these kids back in school i like this original plan i like that we're rolling it out i agree with melissa the vaccine might not come in two weeks it might not come in two months we can't we can't
243wait um my nine-year-old he went into fourth grade he was there for two and a half weeks i saw the kid that he was last year in school and not the kid that he is right now um my kid is on the verge of tears all the time he misses his friends he wants to be in there with his teachers um he just misses the whole thing about being in school my oldest although they're both doing fine academically i can see they're withdrawing i can absolutely see that they're withdrawing they miss their friends they miss just leaving the house every day um i don't know when this vaccine is coming you know and and i have concerns my mom's a school employee she's also 65 and older she's on two lists and she doesn't have
244it she doesn't have an appointment but she's worked this whole time she wears her mask she takes precautions she does all the things she needs to do and she's worked this whole time um you know i work in an office where people have been in we've been wearing masks the shop has been in the shop's been wearing masks it works right i know kids are a little different than adults but sometimes when you work in the shop maybe they're not so different than adults so you know people people just need to do the right thing i i can't see us delaying this much longer for these kids i'm the number of 13 000 kids missing out of the school counts in the state of michigan kills me every day there's 13 000 kids in the
245state of michigan that weren't accounted for this year when the school counts rolled through how many of those are hazel park kids how many of those are kids that we're out of district kids i mean i don't i don't want to lose anymore i know that there's kids suffering and and you know what it's unfortunately fallen on the schools to support them socially emotionally that's just how society is today and as far as i'm wearing masks in school i didn't even care my youngest he's like i would first date i thought he'd come home crying and complaining about he's like no mom it wasn't bad at all i think it wasn't bad i didn't mind it so it's not you know i think the kids will handle being there a lot better than we're giving
246them credit for so that's all i have to say all right so i think um everyone has a chance at least to share some thoughts i think now we need to firm up our direction so i think that if we review the options that um rachel attempted to to uh you know encapsulate for us you know i think that most people are in favor of february let me start with that and so i think we've heard february first and then we've heard after break at february 22nd um i think the feedback we got from dr crouppy was that if we came back after winter break like a memory on the right day february 22nd yeah um that you know that that rollout could not she she had concerns about whether we could roll out how
247quickly we could roll out so february 22nd really only gives us two weeks to i mean it's february 22nd and march 1st in terms of meeting the goal of having you know a school offering so i think that was probably the biggest challenge with that particular start date um those are the two i think we're circling around um please help me if you have other ideas or if i haven't no i i think you're right laura and i think if i think the other option would be if we looked at the february first date was to give direction on if we wanted to do the elementary and the junior high in uh in sync that that would be the only thing february first date i guess i was assuming that the end date would be
248march first like if we could get it done in a phased rollout in those four four weeks of school one week off um and i guess i'm um would look at dr crouppy on whether there's details in that compressed format we might need to work out but if that's enough guidance or whether you want to actually should we go through each week and talk it through so if you uh give me the start date then we will do the finished date but i'd like to give the principals the ability to come together and make that recommendation we can take out the um yeah i'd like i'd like them to come back to me with the recommendation and you just give us the start date if you would do that with the end date of march
2491st for the high school so whoever made the motion for us to enter into this discussion would have to amend their motion with those with the amendments that we've kind of kind of talked about oh our amendment it was me i think yes it was it was a long time ago but we need to go with the first why could we have to agree on a date is it they're going to be the first to give or is it going to be the 22nd after break just think six weeks is a really long time i don't think like the idea of february first um myself i think that um we can still get a communication out and get people switching at the semester and help them feel the urgency of it and then get done
250by march first so i guess i like that it would still give us a few weeks to roll out and still meet the intention they strongly recom the strong recommendation from governor and i do think that other districts in oakland county are all working towards that date and i i really would like to be in alignment there i'd like to see a vote because i'm i'm strongly pushing for after break i am too i really want to see what the new biden administration brings in the vaccine is there it just needs to roll out and i think for the citizens of our city and for our teachers and staff who are so dedicated to our students we just need to get we've come so far we've come so far and i'd hate to go back
251for two weeks and then have the problem where we have 11 teachers out again and and we have to trickle back again i just rather have a confirmed date and have everybody have the opportunity to take care of what they need to take care of and then say okay this is what it's going to be you you know heidi that um we they need two two of them and that they still have to quarantine even when they come in contact and so unfortunately we're gonna have some issues even when we get the vaccine which is which is part of the problem with all of this is that this solves nothing for us yeah the body administration will come out and say okay we're going to do similar to the cares act and give the employees
25210 days quarantine time they have no plans on doing that we are have to push that i mean we've had these conversations with them there is no plans to do that at this point one person in the whole united states making that decision i just don't i think it's logical that we need to give people time i i i would agree it's logical and i want to i want to talk through a couple other ideas that just are floating around in this head of mine if you will um so if we go back february 1st and we roll out elementary k-2 and we do the junior high sixth through sixth grade and then we do write amy i don't know what your plan is so forgive me if i misspeak and then we look at
253three through five and we do seven and eight in those two weeks if we're going to have problems or if we're going to see spikes in cases or if we're going to look at our schools really rocking and rolling almost k through eight and there's going to be issues we can at least catch those in the two weeks have a week off to address them look at cleaning measures retraining anything that we need to do with our staff and then bring them back that week after maybe with additional supports and then look at bringing in the high school and to be rocking and rolling that was kind of where my brain was going was kind of saying let's get up kind of at half capacity if you will those two weeks see how we kind
254of operating and we're gonna see where we're gonna it's not working you know we're having staffing big staffing concerns big big big i mean like huge we're seeing spikes in cases we see exactly what you're talking about that joe biden comes in and he does something that something really wonky and weird we've at least given ourselves where we have a natural break right in between but we're not losing we've at least put ourselves up in this competitive nature that we unfortunately are in with all the other school districts opening up around us to not have kids jump from our district to another district and potentially lose now now let's move i know for people in the audience paying attention i'm moving off of people right now and i'm going to talk dollars and cents it
255and which is the business part of this if we don't get ourselves in line with other school districts are doing around us we do lose the risk of losing a student at 82 in some change hundred dollars and at a district that's worked so hard these past five years i would hate to see yes look at at a potential to lose we lose 10 kids is 83 000 so i hate to look at and focus so much on that because i want to focus on exactly what you're focusing on vaccines and public health stuff i think this is a strategic way to kind of see if this is going to work take an inside look at it let some of the nurses guide it and do it in a slower fashion which is what amy's
256kind of asking us for and maybe maybe by some grace of god we may get in there and educate some kids i don't know it can all change tomorrow but i'm trying to put together some a suggestion that kind of makes sense and makes sense to parents and our staff that this is coming from this is coming from an internal struggle just to say yeah i want every single kid back tomorrow because that's where they belong so that was where some of my mind was if if that helps any at all yeah but you're still i mean you're still giving the elementary staff and and they're whoever they're in contact with less of a chance to get the vaccine than like the high school students and or high school staff and people there yeah so
257if i i do i i do hear you but i also have to agree with melissa on the fact that nobody knows nobody's telling us anyone this stupid vaccine is coming in i don't want to wait too much longer and then you know um on the news the governor showed boxes and boxes of the vaccine right here in michigan that's up in a freezer and she said we just need it to be released so maybe after the 20th with the new president it may just like get released they showed it on cars wheeling around all that vaccine sitting there because the current president's not releasing it so it could hit the it could come out like immediately i mean it could be fast and you know i do i research you know got that i
258read a lot and i read all these schools and that's why it's shaking my head over troy because i've been looking the governor just said she urges us to be back by march 1st so i didn't see other districts were going back i didn't even see it on their agendas to be discussing their plan like we're discussing it so you know they're meeting next week about because she urges you she didn't say we must you must be in by march 1st it's a must i do really i i really feel for the kids out of this whole thing i really really do um and the biggest problem you know if they is the substitutes we didn't close because people were getting sick and i do believe our schools are safe we have mass we have
259shields we have hand sanitizer you name it our teachers have been trained our custodians are fabulous we have all that but if people can't come to work because they got exposed if they get the vaccine they can come to work they're not gonna get exposed so it's it's not that we've done a bad job and kids aren't safer there i mean fauci says they're safer in school because we have taken all those precautions it's if somebody come can't come in and then there's no subs or they bring it in and they give it to a child or a child gives it to a teacher but i don't think that's the main thing happening in schools i mean people are in stores you know i mean they're out there so i don't know it's just it's
260just really really difficult bob i agree with you there are many of the districts had already had their plans in place to return to school before break and they didn't change them based upon this because they were already returning i have a list of superintendents uh we sent our lists out to everybody before the announcement was made we meet regularly we meet on wednesdays and thursdays as a superintendent group but unfortunately if staff members and others decide to go out and they don't wear their masks or they get exposed vaccine or not if they come to school they're going to have to sit out and they are going to bring it into school the vaccine will not and um automatically cause you to not get sick and that's what they're going to do i can't
261see what they're going to get but i can tell you that um every day since the vaccine announced it we've been meeting and trying to get it and we will continue to try up until it gets here to get it into our teachers that's our number one thing we've handled we've done the second yeah i feel i feel as if we're all kind of particularly talking and i know we have we have some new business to handle um and i i i guess i'd like to hear the amended motion and that's put into a book please all right christy you said you made the motion yes i did can you can you amend it so i'd like to amend the motion to have our school start date be february first with the rollout determined by
262the superintendent and administrative staff uh who supported it i'll i'll support it all right um i i think we have had plenty of discussion so i think we should probably go ahead with roll call at this point and if it um fails then we will have to have another motion i have a quick question is it going to be hybrid no bev uh we don't doing hybrid it doesn't work for our kids it's going to be monday tuesday wednesday off thursday friday our parents come here enough time picking their kids up in the middle of the day or at the end of the day the middle of the day and our class sizes are small enough we don't need to do that for all the schools sorry i didn't need to start a discussion i'm
263sorry yeah we're still it's time for discussion emotion we determined not to do hybrid uh uh back in march so i think right now we're saying they would be back four days with one potential day since day there's some detail around the high school to be determined but we know in elementary i think it's wednesdays is that fair i think heidi i think that's what you're asking was junior high having asynchronous also or just uh okay just making sure okay everybody everybody okay all right can we move forward with roll with a roll call here let's do that black yes north yes baldwin yes fortress no anton yes rice no atkins yes all right um dr croopy i expect that you will um circle around with that guidance and provide the board the plan and
264then it will go out to the masses to the parents okay thank you everybody i know that's a long discussion i know it's really hard um but we are still in unfinished business so we can carry on with some other stuff and hope to get through is that i'm sorry doctor herbie did you have any other questions are we good no okay all right so the next item on under unfinished business was athletics and we intentionally put this after the plan so that we knew what our plan was um i think this was really regarding winter sports um yes yeah so i don't know we need emotion i i guess i thought it would be informational item at first but yeah we can do informational first if that's okay then you could make an emotion
265um so this really was to talk about what your feeling was about winter sports and what you wanted to do with sports dave is here so we can answer any questions for you about our winter sports um we cancelled all our fall sports and i'm sure kids are waiting to see what you wanted to do with winter sports and dave if you can be here for any questions from our board i am present actor mylon sorry go ahead no i was just trying to i wanted to pick his brain about the last mh saa uh guidance which was that these sports need to be outside right if you could just confirm what our winter sports would be and then yes if you go over the m8saa guidance currently and then i'm also going to know
266what other districts okay um i will share we had a junior high league meeting this afternoon uh that was lengthy and there are only i believe five or six school districts uh in our area that are going to have we have two winter seasons for junior high sports and we're approaching the start of winter season number two there is uh only five or six school districts that are going to go ahead and offer volleyball which is part of the winter two season uh the other sport that affects us is wrestling there are no schools that are going to offer wrestling uh this season at the junior high level so that's uh one decision that you'll have to make is whether or not we will have winter sports for our junior high at the high school
267level we have um boys and girls basketball bowling swimming competitive cheer we also have a dance program and wrestling as well at the high school with the current orders as they are written are set to expire the winter sports are able to start on january 16th which is this upcoming saturday um and that's again if the orders are lifted in full and nothing is extended with the first date of competition being next friday january 22nd there are several people administrators around the state that are leery of starting so fast when kids have sat around for three months and have had no conditioning you have had no team practices some schools aren't even in school yet and we're going to have sports and potentially have kids injure themselves for not being properly conditioned so do you
268have an idea of high schools that are going forward with these winter sports in our area of the state uh i'm not i have not heard of any uh anybody that has canceled stuff but most people have their board meetings this week um i know there's other areas of the state east lansing some of those uh areas out in the lansing area school districts out that way and i believe there's some down i don't know if it's ann arbor but there's a couple school districts down in the ann arbor area they had already said announced at the beginning of the school year that they would not have sports for the entire school year um you know you know that's something that's you know you have to think about as a school board what you know
269what you would like to do and the scene would run through when end of march is that what i heard um it depends which sport uh most sports would be done um middle to the second third of march around the 23rd 24th i believe is the last that any of our sports would would go spring sports are scheduled to start on march 9th so they're uh you know potentially the mhsaa may look to push back this spring season a little bit um they still have not come out with any updates with that regard yet we are actively looking for a bowling alley because madison park bowl informed our coach that they are not going to order or open until all of the orders are lifted they can start serving food they don't have any leagues
270signed up so our coach i believe was in contact with universal lanes and we would potentially be bowling there our pool is inoperable i have made arrangements with a neighboring school district we will be using their pool however they have had some work done on their pool and they can't get anybody out to inspect the pool for it to be opened as of yet so lots of little obstacles that we keep working on so i think those would be worked out if we decided to go ahead and offer athletics during the winter that's really the i think the decision at hand for the board in terms of providing direction on winter sports so if we are going to let the winter sports um proceed and dave will of course work through all those obstacles he
271mentioned then i don't think we need emotion um but if we are going to um not proceed or not want sports on some level i think we probably want to vote on that or at least be clear on direction so i just have one question for um dr [Music] are they practicing outside nobody no winter team is allowed to practice right now okay but when they're allowed i saw that they have to practice i'm only asking because i have a college student who is an athlete and they have to currently practice in a tent outside once the orders expire um teams can practice inside uh starting this saturday that's only if the orders expire on the 15th though right dave yes that's only if the orders you know are lifted as as they're written now
272so this kind of seems like it's in limbo should we wait we've we have waited on this because it's kind of been hanging out there um i think that if practices can start the saturday that he would need that we we need to provide the direction this week um so obviously if an order got extended on the 15th mhsaa would probably react accordingly i think and then we would it would be taken out of our hands but if it does lift i guess we need to i just we wanted to make sure where we're at on that so some of my initial thoughts we're starting school back right we just voted for that so we're going to start school back we're going to have cleaning protocols in place to do right look at heavy duty
273cleaning on our a-secret is today wednesday hey heavy-duty cleaning may or may not happen on saturday when you have extracurricular sports going on they get some kind of gets in the way of the cleaning process at least i can only imagine um i don't know winter sports are inside i think right now my focus is on making sure that kids stay healthy enough to be able to go into the classroom successfully and safely and not giving them another mode to congregate or co-mingle with people outside of their regular scheduled programming cohort on a daily basis so um i mean fall force got canceled or cut short um so i am up for making the motion to cancel winter sports um if if i have support or if how i don't know how everyone else is
274feeling i just don't i just don't think it's safe right now and my priority is is focusing on making sure that people stay safe in those classrooms and not giving them another way to commingle um so i don't i don't know that we cancelled all fall sports um we did cancel the sports there was no sports at the junior high for sure though right um that was just clarification thank you um i think that we let fall sports go because they conditioned all summer and we didn't know if we were coming back and yada yada something it costs um i could think we were fortunate that we didn't have any honorable with covet outbreaks on our teams um but you know we know that in some of the high context sports like football it's obvious
275there was there were plenty of other cases where that happened um you know i think the the concern with winter sports is um some of these are high contact um and i um i don't know how these are ranked on that high medium low contact sports but i guess i mean we just may need to make a decision i'm i'm torn um i'm a big advocate for um sports and i feel like these kids do need to get moving and so there's part of me that says if the parents want to let their kid participate let them let them do it and be as safe as we can but on the other hand you know i know we're not in school and i feel like we're trying to ram in a winter season pretty quickly
276and um i feel much more optimistic about spring spring sports because those will be mostly be outside and i feel like i'll have less concern there so um i kind of see both sides of this um that's where i'm thinking so interested to hear from others laura i feel exactly the same that you do i think i'm torn because i want these kids to have an opportunity but at the same time i'd rather have them in school and healthy i'm sorry go ahead i was just gonna ask if we're starting high school sports that would really only be basketball and dance right or was wrestling there's boys and girls basketball and cheer swimming wrestling uh cheer and dance okay got it um those would meet before we started the kids back in high school then
277the if the orders are lifted they would be able to start this saturday just wanted clarification thank you you're welcome i think um dr kirby made a point about mental health and how important it is and i know that having sports and kids lives gives them some kind of out to release some of that stuff so i mean if we're starting school back i think that sports should start back to them all right do you anyone else want to weigh in bev don nope i'm good okay i don't have anything all right so at this point i've heard some pros and cons are are we comfortable with because we are going to return to school that we are going to allow them to um start back up pending the lift of the lift of the
278whatever you want to call the things sorry the guidance that will expire on the 15th is that junior high as well it would it sounds like well uh yeah he did say junior high that um volleyball i think was the only thing that was really in play i don't know that he said there was no other schools doing wrestling actually so um that probably would not make sense to do i think for me i agree that since we're starting we should start but with it being of after school um i would just kind of like some peace of mind or i guess assurance that all the same protocols will be followed or covered guidelines i think uh if dave dave can agree with this there's uh other guidelines that are held for the sports and
279cleaning protocols that have to be put in place especially for wrestling because that there are uh guidelines for each sport specific uh you know maths are worn at all times even during competition going back to the junior high the schools that were going to allow volleyball the few that were having volleyball uh all communicated that they will not allow spectators at the games it will only be the athletes the mhsaa has not given any guidance on spectator policy for the high school sports until it was a little bit of a chore of monitoring kids and getting kids to wear masks during the fall season um but there are are guidelines that the state expects you to follow for each sport that there were issues so i mean i've seen it i live right across the
280street from high school i football players not wearing masks all the time and whatever or any sport i shouldn't just specify football but um it's the coach's responsibility to mandate that isn't it yes okay so can we reiterate our coaches and our participants that that you know it is mandatory and unfortunately as uncomfortable as it is when you're trying to run that you know we have to abide by the world and we bought them under armour masks yes the expectations are communicated daily to our coaches and athletes um so they even had a visit from the superintendent saying they weren't going to play anymore if they didn't yeah there were some pep talks there i know um yeah we i've stopped games during the fall because players from both teams and different sports were not
281adhering to the expectations i mean it was very difficult yeah i can imagine all right so um it sounds like since we were going back to school that people are inclined to let the sports move forward so if that's the case then if there's no other questions for dave we can move on um so this might have set a record for the longest time in unfinished business but the good news is we can move on to new business now um we don't have we we do have some we have new business so let's go ahead and keep this morning i guess um did we have to vote on that we only have to board i was only going to propose voting if we were canceling if they're going forward then we don't need a motion
282all right the agenda said action item i thought we needed to vote sorry about that all right so uh noobism new business first um we're gonna go through our personnel recommendations we don't have many this month we do separate those to accommodate our board conflicts as applicable so we'll start with i need a motion on the custodial union yes baldwin yes fortress yes hinton yes rice yes atkins chain do familial conflict um moving on to item b the teachers union hpea can i get them completely make a motion we accept the hpea union changes as presented any discussion yes hampton yes north yes baldwin yes fortress yeah rice yes atkins yes moving on to the professionals can i get a motion please i make a motion that we accept the hppa union recommendations as presented
283discussion baldwin yes fortress rice yes atkins yes all right um this is a really bad time to have this discussion i know about five minutes you're losing them uh a budget amendment is a really important topic it is a lot 10 after 11. um so um i i will take guidance from the board if there's another way we want to handle this otherwise we're going to have jason from seed nathan how long do you need i'm looking at probably two and a half to three hours on this show you you can get a you can get the fast version or you can get the slow version your directory on how you want me to go through this um you don't go slow come on poor doc and kirby still have to drive home today the
284other option is to start your meeting a half an hour early on wednesday night i'm in for that and i like that idea i have to be work at six tomorrow yeah um i i i i would be fine with that i would you would learn you would adjourn this meeting debbie thank you this with me for a minute we'd adjourn this meeting until wednesday can we adjourn this with with with more than 24 hours can you table this until wednesday adjourn this meeting to be to be completed on wednesday no i mean the easiest way i mean we could do it that way or we could do it where we where we yeah we just we just table it to wednesday's media we select what agenda items we want to move to unfinished business
285um you can table the rest of it and then take it to wednesday in that half hour i i can't speak without double checking i do believe that as long as you decide when you're going to have the meeting we would be fine i'm not sure half hours enough when it comes to budget right like an hour before you have a quick meeting on wednesday it doesn't take an hour to do this no we um what time the meetings are at six or six thirty wednesday six o'clock um all right 5 30 is fine i didn't realize it started at six so glad you said that i don't know i mean i do think it's realistic to say we might not be done in a half hour i mean i think we have we would
286just i assume we would just start the evaluation training a few minutes late if we run over yeah i think we can just table it but yeah i mean did did we want to table the rest of the agenda are you just talking about tabling the budget presentation and just kind of going through the rest of it the only other item is the auction isn't it yeah oxygen super superintendent update that's going to be long go ahead jason [Laughter] so debbie for brook keeping we're going to table items b and c to add to me to start at 5 30 on wednesday and do we have a motion you're making the motion rachel and do we have it yep i make a motion that we table items b and c until wednesday's meeting that we
287would like to amend to start at 5 30. i'll support that any of the discussion all right we have to roll call that we can do that just so we're going to go north yes slack yes yes baldwin yes fortress yes rice yeah adkins yes okay all right so we're gonna move quickly through what we do have left um so we're going to item d the auto shop auction can i get a motion make a motion that we accept the recommendation for the auto shop auction materials as submitted suck in it this is for mr ernest this long yes so we so we are we are proceeding with the auction uh we're asking permission to proceed with the auction to sell off the surplus equipment which includes some vehicles a dart a tow truck a
288bus a dump truck various auto shop paraphernalia and equipment and we're looking to use bitterge as our auction company they're going to come on site they're going to take pictures they are going to perform the auction online they will advertise it and then their cut is 20 percent of the proceeds and 400 charged for coming on site um i know we've we've run this auction at fitzgerald twice it's very efficient they take care of everything and it's a very easy way for us to dispose of the excess proper property efficiently and effectively any questions for mrs ernest i personally am glad to see this come up we've been talking about the need for an auction um for some time so um thank you for pulling this together and it sounds like a good plan to
289me so any other comment all right we'll call uh nose yes fortress yeah baldwin yes hinton yes rice yeah black yes it can yes all right let's move on to the superintendent update so dr krupi so we do have our attendance report in here right now we're down 97 students that's the number we shared with you before this is the time right when students are leaving and re-enrolling in other places so we have not had them knocking down our doors to enroll but we also did not do all the you know hundred thousand dollars uh we're gonna try to get everybody to come in right now in this time frame right putting all the ads and everywhere else we just haven't done that uh in the middle of the covet so um uh hopefully that
290we can keep everybody here um as far as taking attendance there is something that is not right inside the mystar system so our attendance is a little lower i know that cheryl is working with uh oakland schools to try to figure out why it's not picking up the proper attendance on viking virtual at the high school as well as advantage so hopefully that that'll be up a little higher next time these are the twis which means that the two-way communication the teachers are having to do a tremendous amount of work over time to take attendance this year when we're in a remote situation every time they contact students they have to go in and enter in the conversation that they're having with the student as it engages to uh homework uh when they are in
291a virtual situation if they're not taking daily attendance so it's way over uh the amount of work that they have to do to take attendance but unfortunately it's what we have to do to collect state aid so that's the attendance that we're collecting it's not students day-to-day collecting it's uh it's the two-way information that's being picked up by the computer we need 75 percent to get our state aid so we're just right over that the last piece of my report is uh kudos out there for uh youth assistance um that i was just a nice letter that came out here that talked about all the wonderful things that youth assistants did in 2019 i believe that you guys got this as well i just thought it was really nicely put together especially since the nice
292event that happened out in the community as well so usually there's a lunch and i've not been able to attend but it just was a really nice uh put together about all the things that has been happening in youth assistance and that they uh raised 806 last year in cass um in oakland county so just really a nice uh document that's out there i have nothing else to say okay any questions for dr kroopy based on that okay let's go ahead and wrap up with board member and administration comments um rachel okay uh what a haul that is not normal um i think that um that is not normal for us but i think it was worth the conversation to have around covenant how each of us felt and how much time and energy we
293really do put into trying to figure out what's the best options for educating students keeping everybody safe and also our financial commitment we've made to our district so when you look at all of these many different things that we have to look in this is not a hard decision you saw seven eight people grapple with that decision tonight so hopefully the folks that are still on here and the 200 or something people and uh the people who made comments tonight they didn't fall on deaf ears i think that we're all thinking the same things um and that we truly truly um want to make sure that people are safe and that they can make decisions based on what they want um before the meeting before i got really long um i did have um a
294quote from albert schweitzer that came across in my feed earlier this week and um and i'd like to share that with you so at times our own light goes out and it is rekindled by a spark from another person each of us has caused to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us so as you're sitting around your table i encourage you to think about really who in your life is that light and those who you need to maybe reach out and give a little extra gratitude or make you understand what this life's really all about which is just having character and being kind to those around you so with that have a wonderful night and we'll see you all go all wednesday at 5 30. good night thanks rachel
295love love um first welcome uh don and melissa and heidi and looking forward to working with you and just wanted to mention that you got initiated last tonight like um laura and me and rachel we had the deficit thrown at us and we had to eliminate 160 positions so um hopefully that's it for the next four years you guys um anyway that was your initiation tonight um was nice to hear the people tonight i was happy that they came and spoke we i i'd like to see more of that but that was very good to hear their viewpoints promise zone report i thought was really great we never hear how much money is going out to those graduates so a couple hundred thousand dollars they do need to fundraise that's a lot of money um
296and then the nice gift packet thank you for whoever was responsible for uh the goodies in there the car wash and the juice uh certificates uh was very nice um and that's it have a good night see you wednesday thanks bub christy um first i wanna say happy new year secondly i wanna say i do miss did miss having that january dinner with you guys because that was always something really fun i also missed the december thing um i do also want to welcome melissa and don and heidi um you know welcome to your first meeting and um congrats on making it all the way through um i also want to say thank you to all of our speakers and everyone who joined tonight especially you guys who are still around you don't even have
297to be here and you're still here so thank you for staying um again also great news on the promise zone thing i think it's a really great idea they're doing a virtual dinner and that's awesome i'm really excited about it and lastly i want to take really take the chance to thank our staff for the commitment to our district and our students um look i know it's not easy uh it's not easy for any of us um but you know you guys have been there and you continue to be there time after time again and um i i can't really thank you guys at all so um with that everyone needs to make good choices and be kind and wear their masks and um have a great night thanks christy um all right melissa yeah
298um yes thank you for that hazing um but i i'm assuming that it's probably a cakewalk compared to what you all went through um with that deficit so um thank you for being understanding and listening to all of us and just thank you for the participants tonight for speaking up um i know that can be scary um especially for those young students i was really happy to see that they were brave enough to talk to um adults who were just watching them um the gifts were very nice thank you so much that was a nice surprise uh i i didn't hear it come so that was kind of cool um thank you mr glean for that update i'm really excited about that that math that math boot camp um and heidi thank you for uh
299mentoring i feel like that is such a good fit for you um so that's really cool um and thank you also like christy said to our teachers um and our support staff for um just working with us and um i just also asked that everybody just stays diligent through all this we don't want to pull our kids out um and that's kind of why we're here we want them to stay and that's what we want for our kids i don't want to forget anything but i'm sure i am um but thank you thank you all right thanks melissa uh don i'd like to thank everybody for voted me in and getting me on this team i'm really excited about it um thank you for the little present today my dog's got a little workout when
300the guy came to the door [Music] and that was a really tough decision tonight it's hard to please everybody and keep everybody safe thank you guys for totally talking to me and picking up the telephone every time i called over the last week and rachel especially for all the tips on how to schedule myself and that's good i'm good thanks thanks don heidi um well thanks for the first night it was fun um i love the fact that even though we don't see eye to eye on everything everything comes together and works out the way that it should i'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason i'm excited that the kids are going back to school um thank you everybody who voted i appreciate it second time around it's a charm um i
301want to thank dr croopy and her staff for doing amazing job and getting us in back into school and um making it safe and i look forward to the future thank you everyone dr thank you heidi dr kirby well first i want to thank the board first time out and i think i've talked to several of you and i said what is my big work and my big goal is working effectively with you guys as you come together as a board and um you know as a my first couple years the board really smoothed together and i think that's what we want is a really smooth board that does exactly what you did tonight right really you can talk it can be hard and then in the end you just come smooth together everybody goes
302away happy and um and feels good that you made some tough decisions and everyone was hurt so what a what a good night and that was a tough one um but more important thank you to the staff i know that um you know i hope that everybody hears how much i really really care about the staff and some people may not feel that way tonight after hearing uh the push to come back because people have some strong feelings but do know and i think you do know that too that my push was for the students today and now my pushes for all of you as i go strongly for the next two weeks working on that vaccine uh back to work on making sure that we try to get that vaccine here for you and
303that that environment is a 100 percent safe and that we're working on all those protocols for cleaning and that jason has them all out in front with all the custodians and that we're communicating and making sure all those protocols are in place especially in the high school where we know that's a really rough place for protocols and that we're really clear about what those expectations are communicated to parents and to the students about when they walk in the door in march i appreciate and adore uh hearing those comments from teachers today paraprofessionals emailing me and i hope that you will continue to do so because we are listening and we will continue to listen and i will continue to communicate every information i have so thank you uh the gifts um the car wash was
304from tammy and the drinks were from me um so i hope you enjoy the smoothie place um and try it out uh and thank you to debbie because you worked hard on going out and getting those today and again i'll tell you the story a little later um when we're not in in a public place so it's it's a little fun and we left pretty hard so thank you and thank you for staying out so late tonight my daughter has been facetiming me constantly are you coming home yet so have a great night and welcome to the board i really looking forward to to this week it's going to be a fun week thanks dr creepy all right i think that you know between all of us there's been a lot of thank yous around
305and i and i just i i don't want to duplicate too much so you know welcome to the new members i'm sorry that your first meeting was really intense and grueling but i you know i really appreciate everybody listening um i know that everyone spent a lot of time thinking about this since it came down on friday and we had to kind of react figure out what we're doing and i thought that everyone really showed dedication to what's best for the district weighing these pros and cons and it wasn't easy so i really appreciate you guys working through that tonight um i thought that you know are working together this week we have a lot of time planned together so wednesday night we have our training for miasp for the superintendent evaluation tool we are
306bringing in an asb instructor um so we have tacked down some time before that and then we have a couple hours of training and then saturday we have a retreat um and i thought that was gonna be our quality time but you know i think i think a five and a half hour meeting or four whatever counts as uh four and a half hour meeting counts as quality time too so um i lower to a little bit more casual conversation some of our other meetings this week i know we have a lot of things we want to cover and a lot of things to talk about but this was priority for sure um and so i just yeah thank you everyone appreciate appreciate your time so with that i need a motion to adjourn and
307have chuck hempel here so someone else let's do it i want to make it i make a motion to return what else are you saying thank you now it's you heidi you have to show up to every meeting no i just went all right good