DCPS School Board Meeting - August 24, 2021

001the motion to reconvene into open session and to adopt certification of closed session madam chair i move that we reconvene in open session and adopt certification of closed session second it has been moved in second that we reconvene in open session and adopt certification of closed session all of those in favor use the usual sign certification of closed session whereas the dewinner county school board has convened a closed session on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia freedom of information act and whereas paragraph 2.2-3712 of the code of virginia requires a certification by this school board that such close matters such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the gen winning county school board hereby certifies that

002to the best of each member's knowledge only such business matters as were identified in the motion convened in the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the school board jason f district one i serve better hannah district two barbara pittman district three i certified mary benjamin district four certified sherlin merritt district five i'm certified madam chair board certified one absent betty hainey district 2. thank you now we invite you to stand to participate in the pledge of allegiance with mr jay smith i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty for all thank you madam chair are there any amendments need a motion to adopt um the agenda i believe that we adopt the agenda

003as presented second it has been moved and second that we adopt the agenda as presented all of those in favor all right hearing no no's um closed session report madam chair i move that the personnel list to be accepted as presented second it has been moved in second that we have got the personnel list as presented we approve the personnel list as presented all those in favor use the usual sign i hear no no's the personnel list is approved student matters madam chair i move that we grant the parents request to release the following students from compulsory attendance based on religious exemption and that would be case number zero eight slash two one dash five case number zero eight slash two one dash six case number zero eight slash two one dash four and zero

004eight slash 21-3 it has moved and been second that we accept the student matters report as presented for and it's the compos what is it released from compulsory attention release from compulsory attendance all of those in favor all right hearing no no's it is granted work session um yes ms benjamin we have a couple of um items tonight that we would just um like to bring some information in front of you and then have the board to discuss that these are not for uh approval but just for informational purposes dr gurley is going to start this evening by talking to us about what student success has looked like over the course of the past year and the opportunities that lie ahead of us good evening again madam chair board members dr weston so um i

005am going to present to you each year we present our accreditation data before the start of each school year we do a recap of what happened during the previous year so this presentation i'm gonna so our presentation i do have a little overview for you and so what i'll do is i'll attempt to tell a little story because our situation of course as we know that every school division has been affected by the pandemic and most certainly we've not um so we want to talk about what has happened and then talk about where we're going to go from there so just as a brief overview i will we will look at our historical testing environments just talk about what a normal year would look like and then we will look at the school year 21

006data and then we will talk about the decreases and then i also will just give you a snapshot of what we are planning to do in terms of continuous improvement and then lastly we will talk about the public release of the information so just to set the stage for you under a normal school year normal circumstances we would have students in person five days a week prior to our previous school years we would have school students five days a week we would be building an an sol testing calendar that would support our students learning and when i say that we typically we would collaborate with our principals and we would talk about what weeks what weeks we want to do testing and on which days and how much time we want to unlock for remediation

007and things of that nature and then we would as we would go through the testing we would then provide our students with opportunities to do remediation if they qualify for expedited retakes and so expedited retakes are students who would qualify in the area of the who would score between 375 and 399. we would provide expedited retakes to those students and then lastly what we would do is as grade levels and departments we would unpack as as a measure to support students with the expedited retex what we would do is we would look at student performance by question and we would look at um the strains that students did well and then uh or did not do well i should say and then we would allow them so to be provided with some interventions and supports

008in those areas so that's what a normal what a snapshot of what a normal year would look like so as we go into this data what i will prepare you for is that this data is not the what we would typically see for denwity county public schools this data is much lower but i will also talk to you about why this data looks a little lower so i won't spend a lot of time on the on the numbers because i think what most of the conversation should be about is what happens um as we move forward so we did look at our data by school we have aggregated our data by school and what you will see is that um to keep in mind as we go through this is that uh set in order

009to um be in in a school year where we would look at accreditation to meet the benchmark would be the pass rate in the area reading and what you will see for all of us for all of our schools is that we did not meet the 75 percent benchmark but you have here then with the elementary and then you see the mathematics scores and we'll talk about the i know mathematics seems a lot lower um than the other um than the other subjects but we'll talk about why math is that low and then we'll talk also discuss next steps and then you see the science you see the social studies and science scores um midway elementary is the same we um every school all of our schools scored below the scored below the benchmark and

010use um midway is no different here um and they did have a glow um they did have a glow in the area of two gloves i'm sorry in the area of science and social studies south side the same the mathematics score being the outlier being the lowest score and really being the biggest outlier and you'll see that across our school division and you'll see that um as we look at the data across the state let me ask you questions sure at any point i'm sorry to say that i should have said that now i know this was during covid and uh what was a child who didn't test counted as a past or a fail or neither or so we were um so we were penalized we were penalized for students who uh were supposed

011to test but did not test so we we were penalized for for those students so if a student was uploaded so if a parent submitted a letter and said they wanted their child to be excluded from from testing we were not however some parents we were not in communication with and those families if the child was uploaded that child did count as a zero and so we'll talk about that that'll also be included in some of the discussion at the end but that is a very good question that is a very good point so as people see you know what cause that's the pull down of these scores you'll see that um sunny side um and i think you know um in light of you know sunnyside did um you know extremely well given the

012conditions you know while they did not meet the benchmark but i will say again mathematics is is their outlier um and you'll see that it'll be a lot of people's outlier settling the same we will but we do see though in the areas of fourth grade reading and fourth grade reading and fourth and fifth grade reading you see that they did meet the um they did meet the benchmark and um there are some things that contributed to that they did have to have a higher participation rate um for fourth and fifth grade which is consistent with having higher scores if the participation rate is higher then typically the scores are higher um so that is a glowing that is a glow for them so kudos to them as well um deal with the elementary school

013the first thing you see is that there's no history in social science score um that that's because the sample was too small in that area the participation rate was low in that area their reading what you'll find is that for us reading was much higher although we did not meet the benchmark in all areas reading was much higher at the schools in the area of but the area of mathematics um most certainly is the outlier uh dinwiddie high school same thing our students still performed a higher-end reading although we did not meet the although we did not meet the benchmark reading was much higher across the school division much higher for the school division for us you see their writing scores mathematics significantly lower than the then the reading score and then you see how

014our students perform for history and social science and i knew dr burleigh we don't have i know that we don't have um the graduation piece on here i know that we talked about that at the board of dance but um we did we did well in that area but of course we all of our efforts were on the seniors making certain that they had everything they needed to graduate absolutely yeah these um the high school ones that the reading and writing which was 11th grade english will they get the waiver like the yes so last year one thing with the high school um one thing that we should know with the high school that there were waivers for students so typically expedited retakes the range is 375 to 399. for the purposes of waivers the

015um vdoe granted students a waiver if they scored 350 to 399 so students who who were typically not in the expedited range so if you were a little bit lower so if you got a 366 those students did so you may have gotten a 366 in the area of reading on the 11th grade reading test you may have gotten a 366 but you went through remediation that student would call that student did qualify for the um for the credit account for the locally verified credit i should say but not for any of the other grade levels it was only for the 11th graders that's correct only for 11th grade in reading and writing what if they were in history or well yes every student uh every student this was the only this was the only

016school year that the waivers that we did have students who qualify for the waivers next school year that one well this school year that we're in right now going into now to protect the kids we're going to be seniors next year so they wouldn't be trying to play catch up this year that's correct yeah thank you so this is our performance as it relates to the um state performance data and there i mean this is just me i mean it's not a glaring difference i mean i just think across the state what it shows is that students were students in schools were impacted heavily by you know covet 19 and this what you will see is that it's a lack of you know having that face-to-face rich instruction which leads me to talk about our

017decreases so when we talk about our decreases um the first thing that you know we really should talk think about is that we had about 50 of our students for the bulk of the year face to face and so we know that alone when we have students when we have struggling learners we don't have the opportunities to pull them and do that targeted assistance so we were working with about fifty percent of our students um i looked at this number miss wind and i worked on this um this number is actually quite high um for the second bullet but we we said that in most cases we had 60 percent of or less of the students participate in our testing and in some areas i mean the participation rate in the testing was about 40

018percent of the students and so what you see is that in some of those areas the scores were reflective of a very small percentage of students and so that's also the scores aren't really a true indication of our student our entire student body all of our students that who are eligible to test we did have you know and we had parents did have options last school year um and so we know that our families who elected to be home there was a virtual test and we worked with our virtual families that was the virginia remote student uh progress test and that was for students in grades three through eight so while the sol test the participation was lower and that we had students who were participating in the vr spt we had those families those

019students who were participating in that they may have done well with that but those scores were those aggregate scores were not included in the sol test data and those and those scores will not be released to the um to the public as well um and so the um fourth bullet just really talks about uh we really when we were looking at last school year and we were working with uh miss smith tucker who was our um ddot our director of testing when we were working through that process we were really focused on work uh working with our students and preserving our instructional time with them and and one thing i will say is that if you've spent time in the school as it relates to testing there's a lot of testing at the state level

020the number of assessments that students have per grade level and so we really were trying to buy back a lot of time and so we didn't spend a lot of time with the testing and retesting because of the accreditation wave for this school year so we did not do the expedited retakes for students um we did not do those expedited retakes and at the secondary so at the el so at the elementary at the three through eight we did not do that but then we did not do it at the secondary because the waivers were afforded to our students who scored who were passing the course who scored within the 350 to the 399 so there were a lot of provisions um available for our students but what you what we know is that when

021you look at our historical testing data that our students do well and we do well recovering students through the expedited process because of the interventions that we um apply to for our students to our students and then lastly the um at we we talked about this already another thing that really was a factor in this is that students who were in that 350 to 399 range that those students we did not assess those we did not retest those students so as we move forward i just want to reassure you that we have a plan and that most certainly if you have any questions as i go through this and exactly what does this mean what does this look like so when we think about what needs to happen it's really about the acceleration of learning

022um you know no longer talking about learning loss it's really about how do we accelerate students and so we're doing that you heard me talk at our previous meeting about a multi-tier systems of support but this is really looking at how we provide high quality instruction to our students how we intervene with our students you know we've talked about we're bringing on math supports at the secondary level to support our students where there's some pockets where we need some additional support so we are bringing on using our algebra readiness fund repurposing some positions we are going to work very intentionally with our with those with our students because we do know that that math and i should have said this up there but the biggest reason why that math score was significantly different because the

023participation rate for math was low i mean in many cases in some cases you had only 20 to 30 percent of students take the math sol test and we know that what's required by the virginia department of education is that 95 of our students each year must be assessed so we were way beyond that we didn't even meet that threshold so we know that in but we do have a plan so for math we're going to make sure that we're targeting our student we're we are supporting our students the same thing as we talk about math and our teach supports really looks at the interventions and looks at supporting the whole child and giving them exactly what they need using our assessment data and pre-assessment data and assessing students along the way and then secondly

024we just had our kickoff with the science of reading and so for us we want to make sure that we are accelerating our students and we are using and doing the things that research says needs to be done to support our students we are getting teachers trained in letters which is evidence-based we'll see those things inside of you'll see those things inside of lesson plans when you go inside of classrooms you'll see centers that will be based on supporting students using those evidence-based practices and we just are just going to be very thoughtful and again this also lends itself to our tiered systems of support because we do have our full-time pals person we have our facilitator and then we have our reading interventionist who will be providing tier 3 support for the students most

025in need and then lastly just to circle back um no pun intended um we are spiraling our math uh mathematics curriculum and so what we do know is that instead of just giving them just this dumping all of this information we are going to break this information in chunks and give them these pieces along the way and we make sure that they constantly see this information because there is research behind that and so i will say i know miss hannan sent me a text message right before i came in she's still out in the schools with the teams they are doing some phenomenal work um i i believe that what they um what they are building that i know the teachers will be um very very appreciative of and they're doing these they've created these

026little notebooks where students will get to do these warm-up activities and just constantly see and it'll be their book it'll remain and teachers and whomever comes in the classroom to work with our students they will know exactly what what it is our students are having difficulties with so we are very excited about our spiral about the spiraling of the curriculum so as a next step um on tomorrow dr weston will be leading um the first of probably many conversations but it is a staff conversation as it relates to our sol performance because one thing that i don't want teachers one one thing i want them to hear from this is that they worked very hard they did an amazing job many of them you know teaching both virtual and face to face um they were

027they overcame a lot you know balancing their own homes you know facing the fears of covida and the like and so they were very resilient uh if i had to use a word they they did push through and so i just want to make sure that i do say that for the public record that our teachers did an amazing job and so um what dr weston will just be sharing with them is just our next steps and and just what this all means and then also on the 26th which is thursday the school quality profile and this is the website that houses our data as it relates to accreditation and not just sol data graduation um graduation rate teacher licensure things of the such all that website will be updated on thursdays so this will

028become public information on thursday so we did want to make sure that we did give our community members an opportunity to um hear this information you may hear questions about this and and i it was an atypical year and and i will say that it probably wasn't a it wasn't fair because you know what we see is not an assessment of 100 of our students it's an assessment of a small pocket of students and those that small pocket of students tried their very best but they faced some obstacles as well as it relates to um just you know there was some one time we were in school we weren't and the continuity just wasn't there so we do have a very strong plan and it begins with five days of face-to-face instruction and then we

029have the right people sitting in the seats to teach our students and then when our students don't get it we also have stu we also have the supports to provide interventions to support those students are there any questions i know it's a lot and it's a lot to process when you see those numbers but there's so many variables i started to come up here today and talk about independent and dependent variables because there's just so many things that really contributed to these outcomes and i think that um what i hope the board heard is that you know we had a long conversation about this i will say that um the superintendent's from region one we wrote a letter to dr lane to let him know that about um you know questioning why the release of

030this information because it's certainly across the state you're going to see that you know there's not a school district that doesn't look like this what our results look like and we just were really questioning you know you know right now where the morale is high and everybody's looking forward to coming back would this be the right thing to be pushing information out and is it really going to deflate some of that you know that we've really been working hard of the summer and um the response we got that it was a federal requirement that they there were no more waivers from the federal level and that although they were waiving the accreditation part that they were not going to waive the um information to be pushed out to the public and we just felt like

031it was really important i know we shared it with you all as a board at the advanced and we just felt like that we want to be very transparent with the families that we serve um but this is certainly um as dr gurley said it it's certainly you know it is a number and and it gives us one piece of information that will be coupled with lots of other pieces of information and it gives us a lot of opportunities to grow in the year ahead and i have no doubt that we have the right people in place to do this work we were already on track doing the work prior to this and we will be right back there come next year this time you're going to see i mean it's going to be quite

032amazing to see the the growth in our young people and i will think you know under these most extenuating circumstances our young people our teachers our principals our directors have really thrived on considering what they've had to endure the past 18 months um and so that's what i want my message to be tomorrow to them i want them to hear from me it's just a number i just it's the number and that is a number it's part of our story and we're going to use it as just you know just to move forward and we're um you know and we're just going to move forward from it and um but it in no way is any indication of the quality of the the people that we have working here um because um we have amazing

033amazing staff and they've shown themselves and i will say we were very intentional in the past 18 months to say what was most important to us was about taking care of people that we could get to the other part when we get kids back in school but you got when people you know trying to figure out how am i gonna get fed and i don't have a job and i don't those things have got to be taken care of first and those are the things we tried to take care of is that that is people in the last 18 months and um i think did a really great job with that and and we'll take care of this part of it um in the year ahead well i think something that it absolutely proved which

034we already knew was that teachers and face-to-face learning is the biggest indicator here and we had to do virtual because we you know because of the virus but obviously these scores are proofs in the pudding that we need kids in the classroom is face to face as much as possible absolutely absolutely well last year being a most difficult year as dr girler has stated i think that our teachers did an amazing job along with support staff and other people who worked with them and as ms pickman has just said we know face-to-face learning five days a week is best but in a case like this we did what we could with what we could and he did the best we could and this is what we have and this year prayerfully we'll have uninterrupted years

035that and we all try to stay safe and we can go five days a week continuously and we can kind of build up on some of the things that we lost last last year and i'm looking forward to doing it and doing the hard work and working with you so we're going to continue and we're going to move on up thank you are there any other questions or statements with dr girling okay we're going to do another one you're moving so the next part is i'm dr gurley and we started the conversation previously there and we've had a lot of conversation around this um you know consistent with our federal and virginia law i mean we we are charged with making certain that we have an educational environment here that's safe and welcoming um and

036free from discrimination and harassment for all students um as you know uh most recently the code virginia code has said that we need to have a policy for transgender students and has really clearly said to us as a school system here's what has to be in it and um and there are eight things that it said needs to be in there and they use the word and not the word or um and then set in the second statement there says each school board shall adopt policies that are consistent with or may be more comprehensive than the model policy that's developed by the department of education which they put out a very long document which we've provided with you as well so we've been really grappling with you know what's the right path forward for our

037school system and um so what dr gurley is going to bring to you today a draft of where we are relative to regulations and today is just about a conversation not about a vote because we still are gathering information um from families as well as from board members as to direction along these lines so dr earlier turn it over to you yes so dr weston is exactly correct so um virginia code 22.1 through 23.3 does say that we must adopt a policy and so the policy uh should include and so i did read the model policy i mean i read the policy from the attorney last last board meeting but it it should include things as it relates to bullying and discrimination gender identity privacy student identification dress code access to facilities and overnight trips

038and professional development um so that was the policy so what i am going to go through with you is on what that looks like in practice and and so one thing that i will say is that the benefit of having a forum such as this is that we do get to talk aloud and talk about what is in the best interest of all students and and so hopefully we will be able to use this this working moment that i can annotate as we go along and and gather some of your ideas so that when we uh reconvene in the month of september that it's something that um you know whether you feel like you can approve or you know if you totally decide to go a different way um that's at the pleasure of the

039board um so i will begin by um stating that we i just think that it's always good to have this opening statement some type of statement so that people understand um what it is that we um value and so we are saying that dimwitted county public schools creates a learning environment that is safe and conducive for all students and to that and these regulations have been created to support safe environments and support the developed needs developmental needs of its students and while these regulations are intended to support transgender students because we know that that's what the code says ultimately it will ensure that all students in our schools are safe developmentally and physically in all facets of the schools so this pos this regulation really rests heavily on us having a student success meeting and

040so this and just as a um a quick overview what what a student success meeting is this is not new for transgender students this is something that all principals um you know kind of oversee in their buildings when it comes to anything in their building as it relates to academics as it relates to behavior sometimes our families need some things and we just convene a team of people and it's not always the same people sometimes it's a school social worker and the teachers sometimes we bring in people from the community um teachers and parents so the uh the the concept of student success meetings that's not a this is not new to us so we are what we are saying is that when school personnel are made aware of um that a student identifies as

041transgender a student success team meeting should be held with the student and the family of that transgender student and so at a minimum we are asking that a school counselor the school social worker the principal or the principal's designee and the parent be involved in that meeting in addition to providing the in addition we also want to make sure that parents are aware of the policy and we will provide them a copy of the policy and so i think that this really sets the stage for our for our families to let them know what the rights of our transgender students are but also having this cross-functional team allows people allows us to have different types of resources at the table particularly our school social worker because they are connected to so many resources whether it

042be mental health resources and also our principal because the principal is responsible for ensuring the safety in the building so this is what the student success meeting um should include we're saying that all information at this meeting will remain confidential and so as we go through these letters you'll see that they these letters meet the thresholds also of the policy where we saw that the policy says bullying and and all of those other things so we will keep the students records confidential and when i go through this if you have a question you know feel free to stop me please um the next part is that we will explore wrap around services as needed and when we talk about wraparound services this means that are there some other services within the community that we should

043be connecting our students with whether it be mental health families with counseling and things of that nature because sometimes there are some mitigating factors that we are trying to support our families and then it goes on to say that students will because of the policy students will be permitted to be called by their preferred or chosen name as well as the preferred pro pronoun and students will we will place the preferred name into the student information student information system but when you look at d this d kind of tells us what we can do in terms of the legalities so all documents that are official documents must reflect the student's legal name and so again if barbara if john was born a female and john's um birth name um legal name is barbara then then

044that's what john then that's what the the reflect the the official document will reflect barbara jones um but if not so but if there has been some legal change then we can do that but all legal documents must have the child's um legal name um we can change the child's name after we've had some verification that it has been legally changed um and so and then it talks about what documents um what documents we can do that we can use to change the child's name we will um it does say inside of the policy um and in the code that if a student graduates and has had a name change they can petition us and we can go back and make a change to and re-issue for instance we can reissue transcripts and diplomas letter

045e says in the policy it talks about dakota it talks about dress code and we will just address um the dress code through the student code of conduct and i think that our code of conduct meets that meets that standard now and so we will continue to do that um letter f letter f talks about extracurricular activities well the biggest thing right now is that we cannot create anything that supersedes the virginia high school league so if virginia high school leaks um does not allow um if they don't allow transgender students to participate in a vhsl endorsed activity then we cannot create a policy that says that they can so that sports and all other activities that are vhsl sponsored those things are sanctioned by vhsl letter g uh letter g talks about the access

046to facilities and i know and before i i mentioned this one i know that this one is probably the hardest one for people and most certainly i most certainly i do to to some degrees understand why and but what i want to say before i go over this one is that many of the concerns that we've had you know when people have called in and have had some worries about this is about students going into restrooms when you know you were born a female you're born a male but now you identify as a male and they worry about safety those families worry about safety and i just believe strongly that this regulation will protect students and that without a doubt in my mind that it will protect students and it's because we have we have

047some procedures we know who our students are we can prevent those instances where someone who is born a male just wakes up one day and says i want to walk into a female's restroom we can prevent those types of things because we know which students that we are we are working with and so when it comes to letter g it says the student success team shall develop a plan um if a student requires access to facilities such as a locker room and restroom and it says shell because this is not optional you know when we are talking about students who are who identify as transgender this uh regulation that we're proposing is not optional the only that way that we can keep all students safe is if we have a plan and so what we

048plan to do is we will provide for we will the following will be provided for consideration based on students developmental and physical needs single stalled restrooms we many of our buildings do have single stall restrooms that are that one only one person can go in we um we do have that we do have access to the nurses station but then there is the option which in the virginia code says that we are required to provide as an option so this isn't dinwiddie county public schools saying well this is what the code says we have to provide the option for same-sex segregated restrooms and and so i know that that's the heartburn we we recognize that that is the heartburn for families and people within the community i just believe that this regulation controls who goes

049in and out of restrooms and you know we have had we've had instances before we even knew before we had regulations which we don't have right now but before we had procedures we had students we have had students and currently have students who have identified as transgender since i've been here without our knowing using the restroom and the students knew and they were going into the stalls because even in the male's restrooms the students use stalls you know as a school-based administrator you know as i go in to make sure that the students are safe you know i go into the male's restroom and then the female teacher goes into females but when i go in the male's restroom you know many of our young men are in stalls they're not at the urinal and

050so we've had students who who've identified as transgendered males who have been going into the same sex segregated restrooms but they were going into the stalls like their peers so it may be you know unsettling for some people but it was happening before we knew it was happening and when we found out it was happening we had to respond appropriately and i will say that in most cases those students once we had a conversation they either elected to use um the single stall with no other students or they've elected to go to the nurse's station and not to the segregated with their peers but you know there may be the day and i think that that's why we are talking about on what the next step looks like in all of this and then lastly

051um it talks about overnight um it talks about the overnight stays and so the principal and there's a typo on this um sorry um the principle will we will talk about so as a part of the plan what happens if the student participates in an activity that requires an overnight stay and we've been very good about this anyway i think i mentioned at the last meeting though that's one thing that you all always are really good at it what what does the overnight stay look like how many chaperones and so just working through a plan so what i would expect to see is is a very detailed plan to support the the needs of students but i do know that there are some parts of this um that are very um hard for people to

052hear and we are one responding to the virginia code um but ultimately as a board you all you know it's your pleasure what the outcome of this document looks like and i am willing to do whatever you like because i work and we work for you i would like to say that i mean to back up the fact that we've always worked with the students and we've had this um work with students who are transgender or not transgender and we've been doing it well with the success teams and finding solutions and finding in supporting students and giving them a safe place what we have to remember with this document is that it does apply to all students meaning that yes a transgender student can ask the success team about accommodations but what we have to

053remember is then other students who may be in the building who are not transgender can ask the same so what we will probably end up with is someone who feels the need not to be in the same sex segregated restroom if it ever occurs asking to use the single sexed gender-neutral bathroom with the single door or asking to have the pass to use the nurse's station so in other words when we say all then it means everybody can have that request so um and it to me it's um a little unsettling that the federal and the state give us this guide this document and say you must pass it and yet it is federal it is state and federal law um but so now our charge is to figure out how to serve everybody that

054student and everybody else and that that's the beauty of um our policy is that we already would we already had in place options for kids and we've had options for kids since the cows came home with a child who didn't want to change clothes in the locker room for whatever reason i'm not as well developed as all the other kids we gave them a place to change that was different we've had people that needed a different place because they were bullied we've had people that um are just shy and we accommodate them and we're going to continue to accommodate everybody who falls into the spectrum and those who do not fall under the spectrum and so i think that's what we have to do to be fair to everybody and and i have confidence that

055we will inaugurate miss pitman it's a shame that we have to label this as a transgender regulation when it should be just a student regulation you know i said all kids are entitled to the same you know maintenance we want to be safe and and come school and learn that that's our number one job so i mean that's i agree you know shame to the state and federal governments making this point out a certain population when it should be just all students in general um to your point um mr schnepden it doesn't have to be a standalone um you know and that's another thing we did talk about we could incorporate each facet of it into the existing policies for example um h we could incorporate that into field trips because that's about overnight stays

056and all um g i mean we can just pick out the different policies that it goes with and we can incorporate it so it's not a standalone and they all fall under the discrimination policy but it but it has all of these parts in it it would still satisfy the um the state and the federal regulations i think that'd be a great idea of what we could look into i can show you both ways and see yeah we can show you both ways to show them you know because we do care about all students we did talk about that because there are lots of you know groups of kids that we want to make sure that we don't miss anybody so i have a question for number i for letter i i'm sorry what is

057the process or arrangement that we have she's got a different one she's got the first version that we already have in order for um in place for someone who's transgender for overnight stay oh and so i think it's from what i could gather it's just been case by case um you know many of the overnight stays there are two students in a room um and so you know one thing that we talked about is that sometimes you know if if it's the comfort level of the student either way you know maybe the non-transgender student doesn't feel comfortable sharing the room then we would accommodate the students so i think from what i gathered that's been the bulk and i don't think we've had a lot of it when i did my research we haven't had

058a lot of it but i know when we talked out loud when i talked out loud about it um with various groups um throughout our division i mean that would be something that we could consider when we did a student success meeting [Music] we've had male female issues on overnight trips and we had to juggle for that like a female wrestler or female football player so we've already had to do it for a different reason and it was always worked out and to everyone's agreement well i i just commend you all for what you're putting in place now because and i hope my daughter isn't listening but she had a similar situation when she was in college and we didn't there was nothing in place like this and of course i call student affairs to

059suggest that they do something like this because as you all have said we're all are one our students they need to be respected regardless and i just commend you all for what you're doing dr girl i'd like to say that i commend you for the group of the committee for working on this because we are in the business of educating students and giving students a pleasant experience all students i shouldn't have to come to school and feel different from anybody else when i enter the door i should feel happy to go to my classes and feel good about my school and um and i think this for all the students will will um take care of that will make them feel happy and we can do what we're called to do is to educate the

060students yes i definitely i i left that part out i think the students should be educated on this piece and they need to understand it respect each other and move on as a matter of fact my daughter ended up being best friends with that individual because of things that took place there any other questions for dr girly so what i heard is so for next uh for next month when we meet on the first board meeting for consideration is that we unpack the um so we're going to unpack the regular yeah what i'm thinking is well we're going to i'm talking about policy the policy is the policy you can't you know but then the regulations that maybe would be embedded in or i think we can work through that and to see what it

061would look like attached to already standing policies we already have a discrimination policy that protects that where gender identity is already inside of that that that's been long-standing but maybe these regulations then are now that you know how at the bottom where miss golson references all the different um other the policies that are attached to this one i think we can unpack these regulations and instead of having a stand-alone regulations they would be inside but i think for purposes working purposes because i know one of the things that we want to try to make it easy for us for schools when they have to do the student success team maybe that could be like a one-pager to say this is how you conduct the student successfully well and that's what i was thinking that policy

062we can unpack the we can unpack the um we could unpack the letters but then we would just essentially essentially make this the template for the student success meeting when we're dealing with these types of issues so that way it's consistent from school to school you know we'll and i will say and thank you dr kelly for all this it's really um you know i think that we have been working with students um in this situation um and i will tell you that there are two things that really are on their hearts and that is really they want to be called the name that they prefer and they want to be called the pronoun generally all the other stuff is not something that they're as interested in i also will say that um you know

063i think our our schools the way our schools are set up haven't really evolved with time because i just remember being in gym and i dreaded going to gym dreaded before your time doctor when you just have to wear those things you had to zip up and i did not want to like i was so uncomfortable and i think we haven't really thought about locker rooms and privacy and i just think as we i love the idea when mr davis said as we're redoing these restrooms and these schools like thinking about that out loud like how can we provide places spaces of privacy just for kids i mean just you know i'm we don't all need to be in the bathrooms and maybe we would have to we don't have to watch bathrooms anymore like

064we do and so you know so thinking about how can locker rooms be different and how can bathrooms be different just to afford people an opportunity um you know you know to re redesign restrooms it would be the easiest way to go it just cost a lot of money yeah but as we're redoing schools yeah if we're renovating a school we need to you know think about that and have to have more single bathrooms and that that it's not a wouldn't we all love to have their own bathroom yes yes i thank you for your work with this dr girlie i know it's really been a it's been a it's been difficult how to navigate through all of it thank you thank you dr curley and we have forward map so we do have a

065few things miss benjamin that we do need to vote on during this work session um dr really is not leaving because he is the next thing um he does need to talk to us about attendance and um and some changes to attendance as it's related to go getting quarantines and things like that as we move to this new school year yes dr gurley you're all right all right and this this is really quick so this actually the bulk of this um 90 about 90 of this um 85 to 90 of this is the current policy i have highlighted in yellow be um some an area that we need to update and so i guess i want to just start by saying that as a result of the as a result of having a virtual option

066for students we are required to ensure we have accountability measures for how we take attendance and we report what a school day looks like specifically as it relates to virtual instruction so in that first highlighted area the only updated information that we have here is that quarantines will be considered and excuse absences so we will accept acceptable we will count that as an excused absence so that is an except acceptable excuse um so number five has been updated the rest the next two pages are the same but when we get down to uh when we get down to attendance when we get into attendance reporting the language here is just a little bit different now and so it just says the recording of attendance records of student attendance are maintained in our student information system

067and we do have an approved one and so we must report we must report all absences tardies etc uh the moving down this is where that new language from the recent superintendent's memo where it talks about state board regulations governing student accounting records so it says a teaching day is defined as a day in which school is is in regular or virtual session for instruction a student shall be counted present for in person only when he or she is present for roll call or attendance is approved or approved for participation in the school-sponsored field trips um activities etc a student reporter after roll call will be recorded present or targeted and that's based on the regulations in school the next part is the part that is required to address the threshold for virtual instruction a

068student shall be counted present during virtual instruction on when he or she fulfills the definition of meaningful interaction so that's our new language for this school year when we talk about virtual instruction we must talk about has the student had meaningful interactions and so the definition of a meaningful interaction is any task or in any task or interaction that promotes positive student engagement and learning that can be electronically documented to represent a student's attendance and participation and i know that that became one of the really big things last school year and we didn't have anything in place so as we go back down this road hopefully you know we stay healthy wealthy and wise and so we don't have to do any closing uh but in the event that we have like we do have

069some students who will be participating virtually this shows us that um it must be something that can be documented electronically is the key word it also talks about two-way interactions between a student and teacher that allows feedback and input on successes challenges and can be electronically documented to promote student engagement and then this but it also says that this contact can be done during school hours or after school hours so and i just want to make sure i say that out loud as i before you vote on it because that is one of the um that is one thing that is a little different when it comes to attendance is that this does not have to be traditional school hours because some of these programs um some programs are are um asynchronous there's some asynchronous

070days i know like for virtual virginia there's an asynchronous day so the key here is that the school day can also be after school hours as long as you can document as long as it can be documented electronically and and so they just um we just also provided some um other examples of what meaningful contact is and it can be conferencing with teacher participation and emails with the teacher class webinars discussion boards and so these are just some examples and are not all inclusive so these were the updates in in yellow and really the only update on the front was we added a quarantine if a student has to quarantine from school that that is considered an excused absence but the rest of the policy is the policy that we already have with the exception

071of where we added the um regulations governing accounting records are there any questions or any why's like why we have to do that dr girl this is to make the attendance um to make it better accountability yes ma'am and i know miss madison gill and i talked today and i know that that was one of the really big things last year that we spent a lot of time on because remember wednesdays we had students who were coming to us four days a week but then on wednesdays they weren't with us and so um we really struggle with well what is uh what's how do we know the student is present what are we counting the student present for and so this gives us some definition of what a meaningful interaction is as it relates to

072students who participate virtually because we may have some students who have to go out on quarantines and uh and still want to be counted present and things of that nature but it does require a vote yeah are there any any other questions for dr girly on this um student attendance policy now does the um does our system allow us to have someone who is in supervision of these children to check on it or follow up or fix it because in a lot of times our child fails to click it and we really want credit for them being engaged so absolutely so our students who are enrolled and now what we are referring to is cohort one of virtual instruction those are our students and virtual those are the students in virtual virginia uh they are

073assigned a mentor and those mentors um um so virtual virginia is required to take attendance and so um miss gibbs and mr weaver are the mentors at the secondary so i'll use that as an example they will have the ability to go in and check the child's attendance to see if they've been actively engaged and in the event that the student is not actively engaged they can hold a student success meeting they can get the parent involved and that student success meeting will look more like an attendance conference where we can talk about whether this is still an appropriate platform or an employer an appropriate mode of instruction for the student and the importance of this of course is number one for student engagement but number two attendance is part of our accreditation absolutely and

074you know we want to make sure students are are engaged but get credit for being engaged and how will i do this checking daily yes so the um so teachers will the virtual virginia teachers will take the attendance and um we can go in and just based on they can differentiate their support so if it's a student they see is attending regularly they may can check their attendance every other day if it's a student who is showing a pattern of some behavior they may want to provide a more intensive level of support and and do some more frequent check-ins and that information is always there whether they check in or not we can always yes ma'am find out yes ma'am it doesn't drop it or anything yes ma'am are there any other questions i make

075a motion that we um accept this into our policy second it has been moved in a second that we accept the student attendance policy as presented um there we're ready for question all those in favor use the usual sign all right hearing no nays thank you dr girl thank you thank you um and as the board requested last month you wanted to every time we came together to receive an update relative to our health and safety plan and i'm going to ask ms powell and ms clark to come forward i will tell you we're still monitoring the data that's out there virginia department of health has now put down data it doesn't match the cdc data some uh virginia department health today has us at 13.2 positivity but cdc has it says 18 positivity um

076it's basically it says that 1 in 12 people have been um have contracted the virus here in dunwoody county and we're but right now it looks like about 10 new cases every single day where the highest case was back in january 2021. so um miss powell needs to get you a little step stool we need to give his towels steps we have one for the spouse like please don't do this so one of the things that we updated in the health plan was a change of wording instead of no visitors limited visitors also we are encouraging groups who have been approved to use our facilities for our schools that they have to adhere to the same mass requirements [Music] schools will still have site-based substitutes to definitely help with future absences and we are going

077to continue with virtual eligibility meetings on wednesdays parents seem to really appreciate this and it cuts down on the close contact of meetings so that's a big help as well all right so another piece that we have been monitoring it seems like daily has been any updates to the latest public health order that was issued on august 12th and so it actually has had multiple um faqs that have come about since then even some newest ones yesterday and i have provided you a copy of those as well but we wanted to point out just a few things because we have been quite busy since the 12th working through this on what because we've had a lot of questions from parents and families so once again that this public health order reinforces current state law that

078was senate bill 1303 that was signed by the governor on march 31st that requires virginia schools to adhere to mitigation strategies outlined by the cdc and then as of july 28 cdc guidelines did change to include universal masking for all students teachers and staff so i still need to point out because there's still a lot of questions around this so this is the public health order which is completely separate from the federal mass mandate that applies to public transportation so we are working through two separate things and that's where a lot of confusion sometimes comes in so some questions that are very that we're we're highlighting um because some of these do apply to us do does the order apply during nap time at school so this mainly nap time would pretty much be our

079pre-k students but when students have nap time no certainly they would not have to wear the mask um and then of course other things would include during exercise when children are eating things like that things we already had in our plan does the order apply to all activities on the grounds of schools yes it does so just like ms powell just mentioned for people that want to use our facilities they still have to maintain the same requirements that we are maintaining and it doesn't matter whether it's before during or after school those things still apply does it apply to spectators at athletic events on school grounds so it does apply to athletic events on school grounds that so this time of the year we will have volleyball so it would apply at a volleyball game

080but anything outdoors like at the football game it it's not the same so outdoors is the is exempted from that now they do still recommend but not require um in crowded spaces that people um wear the mask so okay so the next part will change gears a little bit so questions regarding exemptions and these are the very questions we are getting every single day are there religious exemptions in the order yes the order includes an exemption for participation in religious rituals and religious accommodation requests should be made directly to the school division the department of health is concerned with protecting the health of students and staff during in-person instruction and local school districts are in the best position to determine what sort of accommodation may be made for religious exemptions to the masking requirement so

081one of the things that's in your packet that we are bringing before you tonight is we have two different ones so this has to do with a religious exemption then we're going to talk about another one in a minute so there is a form there's a one-page document for religious accommodation requests so this is for families that may request a an accommodation and it has to be related to any religious ritual for their family so it asks specific questions you have to outline it what accommodation are you requesting and then that would come before the school it will be turned into miss powell's office and student services and it will work through that process and it would have to go through an approval okay so just because someone writes a letter doesn't mean it's automatically

082granted so we are requesting this form so that's for your consideration tonight as well okay how does an individual request an accommodation for a medical or religious reason so now the medical piece the process for asking for a reasonable accommodation to the masking requirement is determined by each school district reasonable accommodations can include different options such as virtual instruction possible use of face shields increased distancing between students these are just some examples that have been provided to us so we have created a separate document for a medical accommodation request that would need to be completed by a physician so a licensed physician would have to document what disability or medical concern for that student and sign off on that so we have sent we have been in a lot of consultation with the school board

083attorney over what um is appropriate not appropriate um what are reasonable accommodations things like that we're not alone in this many school divisions are doing the exact same thing you'll see a lot of the forms look very similar in nature um so we have those two forms as well um so we do have those tonight so we're we will incorporate that into our plan so that would be in that section where we had about the face masks and ppe and things like that we would have to add this into our plan as well um and we just continue to monitor we know families have a lot of questions um and you know they've been very patient the ones we have talked with that have called in they're very understanding and you know it's been please

084be patient we're working through this it seems like we learned something new every day but we do have these two things for you to consider because to have these forms um you have to approve us to use these forms um if we if we as a school if you as a school division want us to um accept um these type of forms we would have to proceed with that so the religious form and the medical accommodation form would come to miss powell and um we have also been in consultation with dr joyner she's still here because part of that medical piece um you know if someone has a disability you know we want to make sure that we are providing appropriate accommodations and dr joyner's department is prepared in exceptional ed you know whether it's

085through an iep or 504 you know along those lines for accommodations they're prepared to lean into that and help us with that so if you have any questions we'll be happy to try to answer them um like dr weston said earlier you know we monitor the numbers i mean we're looking every day um and i don't know why the numbers are varying um we had a vdh call last thursday with the region and they came on the call and told us our percent was 10.3 well when i looked on the website it said we were a different number when i looked for that day on the vdh site it had us at an eight point i wrote it on post it because they were all so different and then the cdc had us at 19.7

086so we it was more than ten percent difference in that so it changes daily um yeah um i just i knew did you want to ask a question about that i just want to make a comment about the mask and about um the com about the limited visitors um you know we really are very anxious to get back to school um to we want you know school to be better than normal um our new normal is what we're working on um and so while i understand and do respect the fact that you know there are different beliefs and conditions where they prohibit adult even adults from wearing masks um we are still going to try to hold our open houses our back-to-school nights as scheduled and i'm you know i want to be able to

087assure our teachers that we work in a community that cares about people and that you know so that we can have that um we are going to ask the people that do participate in that we will have mask available if they can just for this limited time when they're coming in to meet the teacher making certain that we can uh protect the teachers and the other students in that in the classroom um so that we can continue to open our doors to limited especially to parents i want to be able to continue to do that um if that does become a problem we will we might have to you know pull back on that but we do want parents to to start coming back into our schools but we also need to keep our teachers

088and our young people safe in doing so service pitman were you gonna say no i was just looking at the religious exemption form and so it just requires that the parents request give us some reasoning and the parent signature it's not asking for anyone else to sign no because this okay so something else we have to note on this one so the religious accommodation the preachers were off the hook yes yes so no no we don't we're only requesting so this is just stating you have to describe what accommodation you're requesting right okay because this is about an accommodation for your child to participate in whatever ritual you are saying that it is in your belief that why they should not wear that mask okay um so that's what this is describing so is it

089do you need a mask break do you need you know whatever accommodation you're requesting it needs to be here and then if you want to provide any additional information there now so this the religious accommodation for the face mask can only apply to the public health order for the state of virginia not to the bus not to the bus the only exemption that we have found for anything related to transportation has been a documented um documented from a physician yes so if you like for example riding a bus is like riding the plane getting on the plane um it's you don't ride you don't fly on the plane without the mask and the only thing we could find anywhere was a form um doc it was this i mean it was quite an extensive form

090right um for the airlines to allow you to not have to wear the mask but the medical accommodation here if it's approved it will it will cover the medical can cover both for inside the building okay and if you have the medical signature that can cover the bus all right it can't it can't it can't you can't the medical can yes the religious does not what happened to being the same as the airplane you can't get on an airplane without with a medical with medical documentation you can't religion right [Music] that's at this moment in time yeah that's what i was going to say is was on august 17th and then updated again august 23rd so it could change so that's at this moment in time until the ink dries right we're used to that

091we we wear everything in pencil yeah we rewrite tear it up do it again are there any other questions for miss clark or mrs powell so um require my child to wear a face shield requiring my child to use a protective barrier around their destiny we provide all of that like these we have yeah we have plenty of that so those are just some more examples of some accommodations [Music] so it doesn't necessarily mean there's no match it means that that the mass might be not the mitigation strategy we use we use another one and you work all that out with the parent well actually these forms of make is make it a little bit easier for you so when the parent come in you kind of have a more uh idea of what they

092are the parents are requesting and and i think this is a good form because this way you won't have to go scatterbrain when they come in you count you can have the paperwork there make the appointment and it seems um i know they come to this pile's office but you have a two or three people that help you make these decisions i don't want it to rest on her shoulders alone yeah there will be a team that will protect the students are going to be so happy to come back to school and you'll be limited maybe so have any other questions we need to like you to vote on that to put that as part of a health and safety plan i make a motion that we accept these um forms as presented to be

093a part of our health and safety plan it has been movement second that we accept these form to be a part of our health and safety plan all of those in favor use the usual voting sign eye all right hearing no nays it's approved thank you thank you um along those lines i'm going to ask ms branch to come forward we have been meeting to talk about excuse me emergency leave and um you know what happens when staff have to be quarantined um you know we're trying to learn some lessons from some of our neighbors um and so she's got some proposals for you this evening good evening um as mrs clark mentioned just a couple of seconds ago this is a certainly a season in which we are constantly pivoting in response to the

094needs of our employees and our stakeholders in relation to covet 19 and you know we were anticipating uh starting the school year we hoped without um cove at 19 being too much of a barrier but as we approach closer into the school year um we do realize that there may be a need to re-implement the emergency leave regulations that we previously had earlier in the school year but we would like to make some modifications um to it and i'd like to be able to go through those with you briefly in the initial regulations that we provided we had asked that we'd be able to provide employees up to two weeks of paid leave for any exposures or quarantines that were connected to their work associated with denwity county public schools and then we had also

095covered lee for individuals that may have had cases that were not associated with dimwitted county public schools but as far as what we would like to update and have your approval on today is to just provide the lead for those instances quarantines exposures that are a result of contact tracing here at the lady county public schools and we would like those regulations to be effective tomorrow august 25th through the end of the first quarter which would be november 1st 2021 one of the areas i would like to highlight that is also different in the revised regulations is that we had previously allowed telework to be an option in lieu of the quarantine last school year after being able to review you know how that worked out for us overall i do you know think that

096it is in our best interest to remove the telework option just so that we can be able to manage the work that needs to be done and primarily because the majority of our students will be in the schools in person and so many of our positions the the job requirements are functions that would require them to be in person uh to be able to fulfill those roles so um this you know would basically just allow person if they are subject to needing to be quarantined because of something associated here at work then they would have that leave time to do so we will also give the administrators an option in front line to be able to select emergency leave that previously wasn't an option before but we'd like to be able to do that to

097make it easier on them when those cases arise so i will turn it over to you in the event that you do have any questions so go back to the emergency leave that um [Music] so that if the person is exposed to covet with us it can be contract traced back to school yes ma'am they they won't be using their own leave it will be correct so up to 10 days would be provided through us okay but how does that explain the emergency leave piece well that's the name of the regulation that we've used previously was an emergency leave in this case you know the emergency is covet 19 but um i believe the name was chosen so that in the event emergency leave needs to be reinstituted again for a different situation a different

098crisis then you know we can modify the regulations based on that well don't they already have i'm not even right okay so there's not a category that's already called emergency yeah yeah oh you're talking about the policy so um can you go ahead and re-ask your question um we have family leave or we have sick leave and we have but don't teachers have a category that's already called emergency leave where they get two two days a year it's personal yes ma'am yes so um through december 31st 2020 there was initially the family's first coronavirus response act and that was mandated by the government that we provide the leave to employees but then when that expired we came to the board and asked you to institute a localized leave here for the employees that was from

099january through february 28th so um of course um considering the fact that we are um seeing an uptick in the cases um within the community depending on which number you look at but um we still think it's in our best interest to um reinstitute a form of the regulations again just to add a an additional layer of protection for our employees and for example we've had over 50 new teachers to start with us just on monday and you know i would um hate for one of those individuals to be in the instance where they became an exposure in relation to work and then they not have enough leave time to to cover that they could easily be wiped out you know within the first two weeks i think you know this leave only effects to

100this contract trace to the school or school sitting correct yes sir not in that community just school yeah and they've changed um the manner in which um people go out now so before it would be you know if i you know have coveted and i've been sitting next to to miss benjamin here you know we've been here longer than 15 minutes and so we ought she automatically quarantined but now there's this other layer that says there's more questions that says okay miss benjamin have you um been vaccinated so if she says yes then the next question would be are you having any symptoms if she says no she doesn't have to go out to be quarantined so there are some it's a little different now than it used to be where it was automatic but

101we just want to protect employees if we can for things they can't are beyond their control um especially in a quarantine situation yes so do we need a promotion i wouldn't need your approval um since this would be a paid lease it would be paid legally for them madam chair i'll move the wheels up the motion has grown as a has read it has been moved in second that we accept the report coming from um mrs branch on emergency leave regulations all of those in favor use the usual sign there are no nays thank you mrs frank thank you dr weston um this is our first time doing the work session like this right so we didn't put the sheet out but we just wanted to provide an opportunity so we have some nice faces

102here tonight that we don't normally see so if there's somebody who would like to speak and okay just want i want to provide the opportunity to yeah i don't want to put anybody on the spot but i i just have some um questions but yeah we'd be happy to listen to you you know normally we do put the sheet out and um this is our first time doing a work session so forgive us blame it on the head not the heart i've actually been in the meeting oh welcome we hope it won't be your last time i watched it on the youtube okay and i wasn't sure if i could actually come so i decided to just show up and not wait oh yeah 27 6 or 6 perkins and dinwiddie um [Music] i had

103some um questions about the um the masking mandates with the schools i understand that it's part of um the state but i i've talked to i've got uh kindergarten coming in next year and i'm really excited about him going my first um grader is going into second and i've talked to him and he's he doesn't mind so i'm not worried about him but my kindergartener he doesn't he never did he doesn't want to do it and i don't i don't want to force him and go through all that fiasco um and i don't feel that it's good for a you know young child to do that anyway um and i was wondering if there's what steps i could do to see if there was a way around it or other options for parents well you

104know and normally um i would say that you know what you heard tonight are that we have a medical you know option um for kids i will tell you and i'm not sure what school your child's going to be going to but i looked at our kindergarten numbers today and the class sizes are very very small um and i know that the teachers are working very hard to make it so that they will not be wearing masks for eight hours a day so it'll be wear a mask we go outside we so it's not like that um so i think the options at this point might be um working maybe with your pediatrician to say you know this is what we're dealing with right now and and having that person help you with that and

105then um or um after you meet the teacher and kind of get the lay of the classroom and see that it's maybe not going to be it's not going to be a seven hour day wearing of a mask um you know especially with kindergarteners who have never had an experience in a school setting before um the class sizes i know some of them were at 13 and 15 kids which is very very small um and um but i mean that's where we're at at this moment those are the two options that you might have is that you might see when he gets there and he sees the other kids wearing me i say hey i might wear a mask you know this is kind of a not a bad thing to do but we're very

106hopeful that this is going to be a short term mitigation strategy that we have to employ because that we were really moving in a very different direction um two weeks ago we were making them optional for families is what we were recommending until the order came out um so we're very very hopeful that we can get on the other side of this so we can get back to the off the um optional but i think right now with us being at the high we're at a very high transmission rate and not knowing uh what we don't know and certainly where people that are going to abide by the law that's the only option that we have right now for but i'm i'm happy to come and sit down with your child and you'll you can

107walk through it and try to figure out i would get a really cool mask that um is it a heat yeah we can get him a really cool mask and maybe that'll be the that's what we did the older one last week we figure it out you know but i do understand the apprehension and you know of a five-year-old especially with this being the first experience but i will tell you the kindergarten teachers are ready to make it a really neat experience for the young people okay and um maybe we could help offer him the forms that's what i'm saying if you wanted to talk to your pediatrician you know about what you know here's what his worries are and it you know and work with your pediatrician um that's another option as well okay

108um you know because medical documentation comes in all different kinds of forms so um you know not knowing your particular situation that might be another thing you want to discuss with them right okay would those be made available online or yeah are we ready now yeah we're ready to go with them as soon as we can get that yeah so we'll be right online and you know and we don't even mind making you a copy you can actually you can have my oh no i think i might read online i wrote online what i was going to do here's mine you may have my puppy i did not write on my own so here you get it fresh off the press i appreciate that absolutely okay you know whatever is easiest for people to get

109them here but i see you know all the elementary principles are here this evening too i would say you know to connect with them they're all wonderful about understanding when children have anxiety about things like that and and they're all parents and they certainly can help you work navigate that as well i think you might be surprised they're all here right now all the elementary principals are here right now so dude they're all waiting i didn't recognize that so i don't know which school was uh dinwiddie elementary school he's right there mister there he is mr robertson i don't even recognize and actually his class sizes are around 13. he's got some very small class sizes in kindergarten over there he's trying to keep it a secret so we all know how small they are

110yes so he could work with you and work with the teachers to kind of help you know ease that anxiety with the mask okay i appreciate that thank you absolutely thank you for coming in thank you thanks for coming back we're going to take really good care of them i promise you they took care of uh my older one last year okay great well there you go thank you very much thank you thank you yes i will entertain a motion to adjourn ma'am chair i knew that we adjourned a second it was moving second that we adjourned thank you for coming have a good evening and a good weekend mr roberts is going to talk to you