001okay okay everyone they said that they got the live stream ready so we're gonna go ahead and get started um we have a lot of public comment forms so just um we were just clarifying some um logistics and things like that let's see i'd like to call to order please the board of education meeting for february 22nd 2022 at 6 30 pm in saline middle school welcome if everyone could all please rise for our pledge of allegiance our flag is over here on the stage i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much and again welcome to celine middle school we're happy to be here and to allow some
002some additional room for spacing for our audience i just wanted to do a quick call out really quick for public schools week and thank all of our staff in saline area schools for being proud public education servants thank you very much um we are going to start with the ceremonial oath of our newest trustee dr david howard hayward i'm sorry dr david hayward if you could please approach betty and we would really like to invite david's family to join him yeah and if we could that's a that's a good idea um if we can kind of light that area a little bit more if that's possible that would be great or if you want to move in closer to the the middle so as a notary for the state of michigan i'm honored to be
003able to administer this oath to our newest trustee that i will support the constitution of the united states [Music] of the board of education absolute area school welcome county michigan according to the best magazines thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you very much betty and a warm welcome to you david and thank you to your family for being a part of this being a board of education trustee is a lot of work and and definitely comes with that need for family support so thank you very much for coming and welcome to the group i'd like to now move to the first section for public comment please a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note
004that students will be given priority to speak on any topic so if there are any more yellow forms in the audience if you could please give those to betty that would be great the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into consideration the rules of common courtesy the public the public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make attacks make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student i do have quite a bit of public comment i wanted to thank you in advance for your professionalism and your courtesy and allowing
005each member who submitted a form to their full three minutes if they would like to have that full three minutes uninterrupted i know that we have a lot of a lot of passions around our topics tonight and we want to be respectful of every single individual that comes up to our podium particularly our students who will start us off so i'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules and extended public comment beyond the usual 30 minutes to allow that all members of the public speak be able to speak before them before proceed proceeding with the meeting okay susan would like to make a motion we would need a second to discuss and then for those second candice thank you oh and one one thing we were going to try tonight too especially in
006this large space um if someone's making a motion or a second if you can kind of yell out joan ii et cetera that would really help me and i know betty betty's over there um as recruiting secretary as well so so thank you so motion made by east up uh second by jones um and would anyone like to have a discussion on that on that point just to get a sense of how what we have in store for us how many uh statements do you have or cards do you have at this point um i can count these i think we're at about 20 and betty has a staff over there betty do you know how many you have okay so we do have some folks that did request to go second public comment how
007many of those do you have right okay so we have a three in addition and let me count these so we would only take everybody who submitted those forms because we're all already at the point um so it would be the ones who wanted to speak to agenda items only i thought about 20 we have 19. um so i'm sorry susan were you saying then anything that the individuals that did want to go later would go later and that we would also take additional public comment like you normally would throughout the time until betty brings those to me for the second public comment or are you saying to negate second public comment no we would absolutely continue second public comment okay i just i just wanted wanted to be clear on the procedure so it
008would be our current forms that we have up here okay all right understood so the motion on the table from uh trustee e step is to read allow public comment for the 19 individuals that i have in my stack here and the second was by secretary jones is there any other discussion okay let me take a vote all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing non-motion carries seven zero okay so we are going to start with two students lorien laurie and see if you can please approach the podium lorian c s i e h lauren i hope i pronounced your last name correctly it's been a long time since i saw you i think preschool or thereabouts um so you're our first public speaker so there's a button right on there and if
009you hit the push button it'll um illuminate to green and that means your mic is on you want to give it a try okay um so this is secretary jones and she's our timer so what happens is you'll have three minutes to say whatever you'd like to say when you see her put up a yellow card that means you have 30 seconds left so you'll want to complete your thought and then when you see the red card you should um you should finish your sentence and you'll be all set and then you can just toggle the um the mic off when you're done okay are you all set yes okay go ahead whenever you're ready hi i'm a soy student and i want to address mandatory masking in the schools as someone else people all
010around us are at risk including close friends and families many who have to attend the schools every day are at risk by putting us in an environment where we have to be close contacts with unmatched people you're taking away our choice to be safe especially since we no longer have contact tracing it makes it unbelievably easy to unknowingly get or give coping things like assigned seating which is impressive which is present in nearly every class of mine and group work don't allow you to distance yourself and make yourself different from what i can engage at least a third of students in my classes and in the hallways don't follow proper masking guidance if masks are allowed to come off then even with special accommodations there will be no way to avoid being near unmasked people
011if the student wants to do so i know i don't speak for every student and there are many that feel different however for many of your students taking away mandatory mastery will be scary with or without loved ones at risk we were scared when the cases spiked in january and this could be successful the pandemic's been hard we all know that in the fall many were concerned about the spread of copics so you took cautionary messages expectations are right now higher than they were in the fall why would you remove well thought out and recent coded perfections i know it can be hard or uncomfortable for some kids to wear a mask but i think that each and every one of them can hold out a little bit longer to protect those around them coping
012may not ever go away for good but until the cases can reliably stay at a manageable amount we should stay on the safe side the existing plan is reasonable based on statistics and numbers and based on statistics and numbers which are the most dependable and informative so keep them asked do this for your students for your people to keep them safe thank you lorien you're very you're very brave we always appreciate having students at our board meeting um our next student um is our little hornet lyrial and lyrial you can you can adjust that microphone down and you can stand on the side so we can see you if you'd like whenever you're ready hi i am another reason why we need masks is that and many other people would feel very unsafe without masks
013like imagine if you were doing group work with five other people who may or may not have some super contagious coveted and they were breathing all over for you and your work i don't think any of us would like that so we should keep masks also it's not that bad to wear masks anyway so why not change something else to add on covet is especially dangerous for some kids like me and my brother who whose immune system doesn't make all the antibodies that it's supposed to make we also can't social distance at school because because of group work and partner work so masks are the best choice to protect us i love my new in-person class and i don't want to have i have to leave it hit just because some people are letting people
014decide if if they were masks please is just make a plant and that protects us most of us well so that we can learn and then be with her friends without having to worry [Applause] thank you thank you lyria it's very very brave to go to the podium and and do public speaking thank you very much that concludes our student forums that i have um our next our next community member that would like to speak is our arlita greer former parent and committee member of the saline area schools d-e-i-a-c and our letter um the same rules apply to lorien and lyrial and you moving forward thank you very much if you just toggle the mic on whenever you're ready dear celine area school administrator and school board members as saline area school reviews its continue
015to learn plan ctlp the saline area schools diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee the deiac advises the district to first and foremost consider impacts on the most vulnerable student and community populations the deiac is charged with ensuring all students have an equal opportunity to safely and fully participate changes to the ctlp could disproportionately impact the full participation of certain marginalized populations such as students and staff with medical vulnerabilities students with disabilities students in lower socioeconomic status and black indigenous and people of color in the educational community therefore we recommend any plan changes consider the potential physical and mental health impacts on those students staff and community populations that are known to be disproportionately at risk that public and mental health data and recommendations are taken into consideration when reviewing the ctlp and that mitigations and
016accommodations are provided such as k-95 masks spacing and other recommended supports for groups that are known to be disproportionately at risk we would like to applaud the district for the successful development and implementation of the ctlp as we have seen over the course of the past year this plan has successfully enabled our students and staff to safely return to and remain in the classroom we advise the district to continue making decisions based on the best and most current available science including federal state and county health department guidelines and recommendations the centers for disease control the michigan department of health and human services and the washington county health department continue to strongly recommend universal masking in the k-12 educational settings we again urge the district to make these decisions with strict consideration for an acknowledgement of
017the district's stated commitment to equity and inclusivity we thank you for all your hard work and thoughtfulness as we continue to support our students staff and the community through this pandemic sincerely the saline area schools diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee all right thank you very much for your comments next we have corey below parent oh okay so asking for a heads up on deck there we go kevin sulak parent is on on deck never been a sports announcer here you go corey whenever you're ready i'm sorry cory is your mic on um well it was now it is okay thank you you can restart whenever you're ready okay i'm cory below and i am here to read a message from a parent who was unable to attend tonight hello superintendent and board of ed
018members i apologize for not being present for this meeting i am i am unable to attend due to child care and being honest i am just not that brave please forgive me maybe it is wrong of me to ask you to be brave for my kid when i am not i hope that doesn't make me a bad person i am a single mother of a very sick son he has multiple disabilities and medical illnesses he is severely immunocompromised my son loves school he does very well in his classes and with all the supports he has in place if he is no longer protected with masks at school i have no idea what i will do i work full time around my son's school schedule i am his sole provider and caregiver if i can't work
019i don't know what will happen to us my son's reality is terrifying on the best of days when i spin out of control it helps me to write i write poems while they're not written well written by any means it helps me i wrote this one for all of you it isn't very good but it is how i feel what will you do if my child dies will you look to the sky and say fly high what will you feel if he never again opens his eyes will you grieve with me where will you be if my child dies will you attend the funeral what will you say if my child dies will you apologize shh don't answer instead you say to me what will you say when we help your child live i will
020say god bless you please protect my boy signed a cowardly and desperate mother thank you okay um corey thank you for your feedback i i i did want to um point out because i had a discussion megan gunnerson are you still in the audience okay excellent um so we were having a conversation just to kind of bring everybody up to speed over here because on december 14th of last year niola passed down a policy change to a public comment policy that disallowed individuals to speak for other individuals it can be seen as item d on the public comment form so we were having a conversation with megan because she had registered for a friend so we had a conversation when corey filled out the form corey you filled it out for yourself and i i
021didn't know or i would have had a conversation with you so because we allowed corey to do that megan we're going to allow allow you to do that as well um and so we'll just kind of kind of note just just to be equitable we'll note for the team that we did have a change in that policy on december 14th so in the future we'll be sure to maybe flag that ahead of time for individuals who might not know that so corey thank you for your comments uh kevin sulak is up next hi kevin and adam davis is on deck kevin whenever you're ready oh there we go good evening esteemed board of education members and superintendent lodge please protect our children the actual guidelines from the michigan health department state that they are to
022assess each county and districts particular circumstances our circumstances are that we are a high transmission area please protect our children currently our numbers are plummeting masks are one of the reasons why if you decide to remove them too soon you risk the numbers jumping back up please protect our children i ask you to consider the health and livelihood of all students parents and the whole community please protect our students please follow the recommendations of science and health professionals i will keep it brief i think the the last speaker really hit it on the head as far as what will we do when somebody else's child is deathly ill or worse thank you kevin um we have adam davis up next and ondek is raelyn davis adam whenever you're ready thank you am i allowed to
023remove my mask up here ah sure thank you so much all right the longer this goes on the more i have to say so i'm glad that i'm able to get this out now the board does not allow anonymous contact comments and i request the board emphasize that where the form says required it represents the person whose words are spoken in front of their public body so if you're going to allow individuals to speak for others please require them to provide the name of the speaker of the person whose words are being spoken or to submit their comment via email where their anatomy anonymity is allowed okay so thank you for your time and congratulations to david hayward and historic addition to the saline board of education superintendent latch has repeated every month for over
024a year something to the effect of i'm paraphrasing terribly and feel free to correct me on your own comments later we are not health experts we will follow the guidance of the health experts in particular the washington county health department they have now lifted mask mandates for schools and this has been done at multiple levels of the government if you now choose to ignore their expertise and leadership i would ask that you clearly explain what skills and knowledge you've recently gained that demonstrates your expertise exceeds theirs if you further decide to afford masking i would ask that you stop using county numbers to drive local decisions secondly who on the board now represents me i can count on one hand the number of times out of the last 100 board meetings where a trustee is
025expressed explained and defended my position on a controversial topic right now the board seems inclined to agree rather than debate the more difficult questions about a topic topic about a given topic are not brought forth and there is no such thing as vigorous discussion demonstrating that you have a good grasp of all the facts positions perspectives and that your positions have been thoroughly vetted it feels like an echo chamber you may in fact have all the facts and have thoroughly vetted your position however you do not adequately represent that your during your discussion and therefore it's not clear to us that you are making an informed discus decision i therefore have a hard ask for you in addition to your own perspectives will each of you present and represent perspectives that are not your own
026during discussions will you be what you might consider to be the devil's advocate and make sure that all perspectives and positions are voiced and examined vigorously your vote represents your own decision and that's yours at the end of the day that's it but prior to your vote your voice can be used to great effect in making sure that everyone's perspective and position is given due diligence it's hard to present explain and defend positions that you disagree with but i guarantee you that it will only improve your ability to lead the school and this community thank you for your time and effort and may the wisdom and love that should prevail in these meetings be present tonight adam um adam thank you for your feedback uh what i'm going to do is i'll follow up an
027email to vice president mcveigh who is our policy chair and see he's i see him making notes and see if we can have a conversation about the edition of item d that was added on december 14th and that policy can have a conversation around adding a required name per the form so thank you for your feedback raelyn thank you and on deck we have amy sontag harryland whenever you're ready all right um i don't have planned remarks like my husband but i will ditto what he said along with that i would like to share our story as you guys well know we had coveted in january my high schooler who was vaccinated wore a master school wore a master the basketball game came home and brought it home to the family i have a variety
028i can a survey of the unvaccinated vaccinated boosted partially vaccinated we all caught covid the masks didn't help the vaccines didn't help if you're looking at personal stories here at this point there's very little reason why these masks need to be in on our students the current varieties are not the vaccine and masks don't do what they're advertised to do last year and so i am fully aware that at this point they should be gone we should let the kids breathe we should let the parents choose we should let the kids choose um do what needs to be done i ask you to prove me wrong back here when i stood at the high school stadium in august i predicted that you would never take these masks off these kids um and and people didn't
029believe me and here we are now almost into march and they're still wearing these masks we will never get down to that one percent uh out of this transmission that you said we need we need to look at local data the our own celine has said we've had what less than one percent of the kids have been catching it we need to look at local data and take these masks off these kids when you chose to wear masks i chose to keep my kids home because i don't want my kids masked and that's at this point the parents who are don't want to are too scared because other kids are not masked when even though their kids are vaccinated and their kids are masked let them make the same choice you can send choose to
030send your kids to school in the environment that you're told it's going to be at or you homeschool or switch your kids out and give them the same thing that i had to choose as far as choosing this you guys also recently said that 280 students have left saline over the last two years two or three years since we've had an active group of parents saying we don't feel represented we don't feel you're making choices that we can even feel heard half the time i can personally name 40 students who still live in the district and and don't send their kids here that's almost 15 percent i can give actual names it's not just because we have a lower birth rate i know more kids who have homeschooled we need to find a way to
031have us feel listened to and to be able to combine this and not keep just poking the stick with the fire and saying who cares i'm sorry but more people will leave um so i'm saying do the right thing don't look at your own biases but vote and do what the community wants and the community has expressed thank you thank you ray lynn um amy sontag karen oh hi and uh on deck we have uh help me if i mispronouncing this name lissa morgan thaler jones i hope i pronounced that correctly amy whenever you're ready okay thank you good evening i hope you are all doing well my name is amy sontag i have three children in the district and i am grateful for all who touch their lives daily in a positive way imagine
032a day the sun is shining and you glance at your neighbor of opposing views and think to yourself wow bruce you take such great care of your lawn i am happy that you are my neighbor imagine a day when you are grabbing your groceries from the store and you see someone wearing a shirt that goes against what you believe and you smile and say good morning imagine a day when we believe in one another instead of fearing one another imagine a day when we respect each other for all of our differences that day needs to be today the guidance on masking has been so unclear how can it be trusted one moment no one needs to wear a mask the next you need to wear two and now only certain masks work when will this
033end i don't see an end in sight if we continue to follow this path so blindly who will be most impacted by this you or me or our children i definitely believe the latter our children the most precious things on this planet need to be given a loving safe and fearless environment to thrive in an environment that lifts them up and doesn't hold them back i believe that masking our children is holding them back i hold my children in the palm of my hand so gently and i would do the same for yours i asked my children how they feel wearing a mask to school these are their responses i don't like wearing a mask mommy i can't breathe i feel upset i'm not sick mom why do i need to wear a mask i
034feel sad i would like to see my friends and teachers faces these responses break my heart it is time to give choice to each individual and each family here's the thing though all situations all of our situations are different our situations are what makes this community a beautiful place to live in a community where our children are our number one priority and we would do anything for them we need to start looking within ourselves and demonstrate respect for one another's differences it is time to make that change our children deserve that many measures have been implemented to help individuals feel more comfortable in these past two years providing choice in this matter gives an opportunity for all parties to continue to do what works best for their family time has not healed us over the
035last two years time has divided us stripped us from seeing the goodness each and every one of us has within within time has caused the teachers to stress the children to fear each other and our community to lose track of what brings us all together amy i'm sorry it is time to let go of what others think or do and do the right thing the moment is now please give choice back to each and every family thank you thank you amy i hate to interrupt i i do want to make sure i'm respectful of giving the three minutes to every individual so thank you for your comments um so let's is it lissa legal name gay morgan thaler okay thank you very much for uh another i'm sorry if i could um just announce jamie
036mcelvery um i believe it is on deck all right whenever you're ready thank you i am a mother here from chelsea i was asked to attend i congratulate you for having the students first because little ones should be able to go home to bed after speaking their piece and i love the fact that little ones were speaking here it is generally known in the community that most of the school districts have asked the washington county health department for cover so that you all could mandate masks may i suggest that if you are one of those school districts we have an abominable school district you might be better than ours that you then asked the washington county health department why they didn't tell everyone to wear goggles because any virus and that includes covid can enter
037through the eyes i have 20 years in biotechnology i'll give you chapter and verse if you wish the second issue of course is children they respire faster than we adults do in their masks they can build up carbon dioxide levels well north of 5000 parts per million which makes you kind of sleepy and dopey the smallest children will build it up to a level of 25 000 parts per million you die when it's 40 000 parts per million may i suggest that you ask your county health department about that and as a third item you might ask them why the heck they didn't recommend ivermectin hydroxychloroquine quercetin ecgc which comes from green tea all of which are excellent zinc ionophores all of which will secure you of cobit in the early stages you you will
038understand and some of you already know what i'm why i was asked to come here and what i'm here about i suggest you create pods for your immunocompromised so that they may be safe in certain parts of your school and for those who wish to breathe freely more oxygen then is supplied by 5000 parts per million carbon dioxide set them free we in chelsea as you know some of you are emulating our neighbors in oakland county who have filed a lawsuit against the wash the washington county health department their own school district and their superintendent we are doing the same thing with ours that lawsuit is likely to be filed this week if you are good people and i hope you are your people here will not wish to join our lawsuit but if they
039wish to they are welcome i suggest you listen to yours to your citizens all right thank you for your feedback uh jamie thank you and on deck we have um uh so your community stakeholder jamie mcelvery thank you and nikki snyder is next whenever you're whenever you're ready jamie yeah is this nikki nikki okay i'm going to move her to thank you i'm going to move her to the end yeah no no it's okay uh yep jamie mcilvery am i pronouncing that correctly close enough okay all right whenever you're ready james okay i am here as a representative from the founder of let them play michigan and we have filed 30 lawsuits in the state of michigan so far against schools health departments for not doing what they are elected to do which is to
040take care of the children's welfare and their safety which they continue to say that that involves wearing masks and protecting from covid when that is not what you need to be focused on anymore you need to be focused on the mental health crisis that is happening in the state of michigan right now that is the safety and welfare that you need to be taking care of with these children the revised school code also says that the parents are to be allowed to be a part of their child's education and we are not being allowed to do that anymore so i am here to let you know that we have plaintiffs we have the money and we have the lawyer we will immediately be filing lawsuits against the school district if these masks are not dropped
041thank you jamie okay i'll pause for a minute but we want to we want to get through all of these thank you jamie for your feedback um so danielle gillespie is next is danielle here and then on deck we have megan gunderson danielle gillespie parent whenever you are ready hello good evening i'm back again not wearing my full coverage gear though um first and foremost january 14 2022 cdc says cloth masks do not prevent covert transmission if we are people of science and education here why are we still wearing cloth masks and if everyone is so concerned about keeping masks on and preventing viral spread i sure hope that on the sr funding survey that air filtration was their number one pick which i can guarantee it probably wasn't and air filtration is the only
042mitigation strategy currently deployed that actually reduces viral airborne particles also if we require masks we only encourage fear and anxiety in the students as well as obesity i know that sounds silly but can you do full cardiac work with a mask on probably not in gym and outside probably not kids see masks all day they're probably scared they're in the back of their mind they're thinking of oh virus i'm going to get sick i'm going to get grandma sick and guess what the top two most significant comorbidities with severe covert disease and death were fear and anxiety and obesity any time in the hospital over 70 percent of the patients on a ventilator were obese why why are we kind of not preventing that in schools let the kids exercise freely with their masks off
043and let them be able to see their friends let families have the choice of what's best for their kids and to say that there isn't a mental health crisis would just be ignorant we need to address these issues the kids are not resilient i know that's been the top line we've heard kids are resilient they can wear their masks they're fine they don't even know what they're doing well we put a 12 year old in a body bag a couple weeks ago at work and that was a self-inflicted wound and kids are not as resilient as we think families need to make the choices for their kids and some need the masks off and some may not but let them choose thank you danielle next we have megan gunderson karen and we have james stewart
044on deck megan whenever you're ready so i actually didn't write anything there's just a couple notes i just want to point out that everybody talks about this being our second year this is our third academic year it's the third year it's way too long i am the crazy mom because i work in healthcare when this all hit the fan wash my groceries in the car my kids didn't leave the house they weren't allowed off the porch it was miserable and then i took a breath and it looks like the health department has finally taken a breath too and i would encourage you as you said all along we're going to follow the science and those people in front of us who know more because i'm not a virologist or an epidemiologist and having read the
045board cvs neither are any of you so i would just encourage you to follow what is being laid in front of you is we know more i have stood before you had a lot of board meetings specifically about return to learn which is on the agenda of course today and my my concerns remain and there are many of them but my main one has been the question all along how are we doing early intervention to close this learning gap the superintendent said last year we're going to focus on positives or what we're doing well and we'll get to that well we're not getting to that in september we had an 18-month learning gap over 16 months of time and from what i can tell online what's published we have not narrowed that gap we use
046early intervention with children all of the time in various disciplines and we've missed the early intervention window and i'm asking you to show what we're actively doing to narrow the gap chronologically we move forward i need the kids mine included to come up and narrow that gap i thank you for your time and i would really encourage you to just take a breath and thank thank you megan next we have james stewart and we have carrie grove hi okay it's the constitution of the united states of america thank you and the declaration of independence and yes you guys need that also i would recommend because my time probably hasn't started till i get to the microphone i feel like the people should be higher [Applause] manchester okay my name is james stewart on september 7th
047our kids walked into manchester high school and masked a lot of them regardless of what the media says hundreds of millions of people seen our video not because it was bad but because it was amazing because we stood up against tyranny all of you on this stage right now have sworn an oath one person particularly today did his oath to the constitution to uphold it i am begging you to uphold your constitutional oath because you will be held accountable i don't need comments i'm making statements today you need to hold your oath dear you are violating the oath to the constitution you are medically masking these children you might need to reconsider public health and understand that there's something called individual health first the idea that we are in this together only makes us all
048victims people get victimized every day you have to choose daily to be a victim and with a virus that has almost a hundred percent survival rate i don't choose to be a victim and i never give up freedom for fear it's time to end this you will be held accountable i have a lawsuit going as well in my community and other people are going to have lawsuits coming against you for constitutional infringement did you know that there's jail time with that if we prove that you violated the constitution you will go to prison your bonds won't protect you there's up to a hundred million dollars in fines if we can prove that you violated the constitution and prove damages we don't need to prove the damages we only need to prove that you violated the
049constitution ask yourself right now are you violating the constitution this isn't your job it's not the board's job it's not the teacher's job to enforce masks your job to teach curriculum it's your job to teach math science reading not covid not to enforce covid i understand that one of the board members wants to punish the students all the way if they don't wear the masks well i'm going to tell you right now board you will be held accountable your teachers that you're forcing to enforce these masks will be held accountable because you are not upholding your oath to the constitution it is a parent's choice parents if they do not give you the choice back they don't have the choice to unmask our kids they don't have the choice to mask our kids take your
050students from this school we need to leave these schools these indoctrination camps and get our kids out of these places your time of power is at an end it's at an end i'm a father and i am off of the couch you have awoken me i don't fear a virus i think that you guys need to fear that parents are not going to we're not going to do this anymore thank you james [Applause] um carrie grove sorry i was trying to announce that you were next um but you you heard me you are next and uh on dec is a lauren gold md parent uh kerry whenever you're ready thank you for taking the time to hear everybody's comment today before you start making decisions that's really important and i've heard a lot of well
051thought out statements and what i'm asking you to do today is don't dismiss the harm that masks are causing these children are already suffering higher rates of depression anxiety suicide drug use as of february 7th the cdc changed its developmental milestones so the expectation now is that children at 30 months of age should have 50 words before two weeks ago that age was set at 24 months they've caused a six-month delay in speech that means that those kids aren't eligible for school speech services for another six months so as a school board you should be concerned that our youngest learners are at a disadvantage now that you have a chance to make masks optional you can set an example for the rest of the community it allows parents to talk to their kids in public
052and those kids can see the mouth movement form the words and hear the articulation that will develop speech and learning patterns it impacts their lifelong learning at this young age so i have asked the board to consider lifting the mask mandates and walking in step with washington county health department and as the continuing to learn plan has been demonstrated meeting after meeting washington county has a vaccination rate of over 75 percent and that doesn't include natural immunity so i think this is a chance for you to come together with what the community needs thank you gary uh lauren [Applause] and next on deck we have clayton eckert warren whenever you're ready where's the button on this it's on okay oh it is on thank you um i'm just pulling up a letter i am a
053parent in the district and also a pediatrician i am speaking for myself and i hope it's okay but i'm reading a letter that was signed by eight fellow pediatricians from here in the community who are also parents it's actually a pretty interesting group i don't think that we have all really talked about much of anything and i really sent out a message asking for people's input to see if there was as many people have noted here tonight any uh difference is an opinion i guess about whether or not the district should continue uh the policy that was laid out which i have said to parents in ann arbor i think our policy here was very reasonable it had very clear guidelines this sort of green light yellow light red light situation it had very clear
054guidelines as to when we might make changes and i have always been sort of proud of the response so this is the letter that we wrote uh we the undersigned are a group of celine parents and pediatricians we are writing to support continued use of masks in saline area schools as both parents of saline students and pediatricians as general pediatricians pediatric emergency medicine specialists and pediatric hospitalists we've been the forefront of this pandemic for the past two plus years after reviewing the available data and information put forth by the cdc we agree unanimously that is too soon to completely lift masking requirements for students this is also the clear policy outlined by the american academy of pediatrics most recently updated on january 27 2022 and linked here for your review and this has been provided
055to the board and dr lash we are very grateful that saline area schools administrations prioritize in-person learning for the past year saline students have been able to safely learn in person this entire school year due to the policies that the administration put forth to minimize risk to students teachers and staff this has been extremely successful in keeping students safely learning in school to date there have been no covet outbreaks in the middle school in high school mass had been shown to mitigate the spread of airborne illnesses including kokova 19. recent surveillance data by dr andy hashikawa suggests that masks and daycare are effective even for children too young to be vaccinated we fear that prematurely lifting the mass mandate will increase the spread of potential i'm sorry and increase the spread of kova 19 unnecessarily
056endangers students with risk factors for severe covid and will potentially increase staff and student absences additionally we are making the classroom less safe for children with special needs who are at increased risk of copic applications and for whom in-person school is perhaps most important current cdc guidelines state that immunized individuals with coven 19 may return to school and may end their quarantine i'm sorry on day six of illness as long as they are improved or improving if they are able to reliably wear a mask in public i'm sorry if you can just complete your thought uh okay for three minutes um i'm going to try to be fast if the mask mandate is completely lifted students will have to go back to a 10-day quarantine period or that there will be no enforcement of mask
057wearing for students referring from isolation the studies that support the uh limiting of quarantine to a five-day period were based on individuals reliably masking in public that may keep kids out of school i'm just going to say very clearly that our policy is not or in indefinite masking we're asking you to follow the first policy thank you thank you seeing you lauren um and and thank you as a reminder we are asking that everyone stick to the three minutes so we can hear all of the public comment and get to dr alacha's presentation clayton eckert you are next thank you very much and um sarah fabian you are on deck also so my name is clay eckert i'm also a chelsea dad well maybe not also i think it was a chelsea mom that spoke
058earlier i know her um first chelsea dad i was also asked to be here so thank you for the invite i'd like to thank the moms the moms that brought this to the attention of the dads like james and i that have been on the couch you know why we've been on the couch because we go to work we come home and the last thing we want to do is come to a board meeting rewind i bet two years ago there were two people out here and i bet they were both women so thank you um jimena loveluck you might want to think about why she has not sworn her oath at the health department you might want to ask your attorneys indoctrination i can tell you right now we're tired of it the masks
059they've got to come off this is just the start when my wife got me to go to the first board meeting i couldn't believe the things that i was hearing it wasn't even just the masks the survey dads if you're not familiar with the m-i-p-h-y survey look my facebook not my facebook i don't have facebook sorry look get on your wife's facebook and look up my meeting at chelsea i read some of the questions disgusting the schools receive money for this all the kids have had it with these masks you're installing fear into these children i do not raise my children with fear nor should anyone i feel terrible for the kids that are scared the masks do not work you know how they don't work because the best masters that i've seen have all
060covered oh and they're also vaccinated don't we all feel a little bit lied to two weeks stop the spread slow the spread two weeks we're masked up two weeks for the mission that was over two years ago we're done with it the vaccinated unvaccinated it doesn't matter you can still catch it you can still spread it so your views on vaccinator unvaccinated do not stop you from catching it and do not stop you from spreading it it does not so when every time anyone references the little kids cannot be vaccinated they can still catch and they can still spread it and it's not an approved vaccine the lawsuits are coming these are not threats these are promises thank you for your time tonight i encourage every saleen parent that is excited about other parents showing
061up to go support milan's meeting that's tomorrow night [Applause] and maybe instead of fighting the board constantly because life shouldn't be a constant fight the only thing we want most of us that work hard every day and work five six days we want our kids to be successful in life maybe we should all get together and start start the best charter school at the boundary of celine dexter and chelsea all right thank you for your feedback clinton uh next we have sarah fabian parent and we have uh claire or megan good night or good good evening i wasn't actually planning on coming here tonight but i sort of felt compelled to and i want to say that moms also work all day and they show up to board meetings i was really relieved back in
062august when i came to my first ever board meeting my son's a first grader at harvest i was very nervous then very nervous now speaking publicly i came prepared with a statement urging you to require masks and i didn't end up having to make that statement because throughout the course of the evening you announced a plan that was really well thought out i was so relieved to know that i had my kid in a district that was making really reasonable decisions right before i arrived here tonight i received an email letting me know that there was a positive case in my son's first grade classroom that's not uncommon for us right now but the dashboard for our district also reports that there were 25 new cases at pleasant ridge since thursday i don't know if
063all of you know that but that suggests to me that there were some outbreaks in classrooms and i can only imagine what that would have been like if there weren't masks in place i think what the doctor who was speaking earlier was trying to get to is that i'm not urging you to keep a mask mandate indefinitely but i do think that the plan that you laid out in august is really sound and it is really based it's based on metrics that are measurable and we're not there yet we're close and i think we're getting there but we're not there yet so i would just urge you to please maintain your current policy thank you very much for your time thank you sarah and if i can remind everyone to please afford every speaker student
064or guest or or selene community member support and respect that would be great um megan whenever you're ready and our last one is nikki if she if she did come back go ahead megan okay thanks as said i'm reading this on behalf of claire white dear board it has been two years that our children have been forced to wear masks for eight hours a day the burden has been placed on them people are walking around all over this town this county the state and this entire country with the option to wear a mask i have not witnessed any altercation amongst anybody with differing opinions this virus has turned into something that is manageable we are not going to prevent any illness in this world just like we were never able to prevent the flu the
065common cold bronchitis or norovirus life needs has to move on you as a school board had consistently said that you were going to follow the guidelines the washington county health department well now those guidelines are all caps mask optional for schools children and teachers are vaccinated they are boosted as chosen anyone who has not chosen to do so that is their choice and same should be for masking it would be hypocritical of you to go against the guidelines of washington county health department and force our children to continue to wear masks when all you've done this entire time is to follow the guidelines of the health department please do not be hypocrites also have you ever thought if you remove the mask mandate that you might actually get staff members to stay or to come
066back and not lose student enrollment thank you claire white [Applause] all right megan thank you for reading that um and did nikki come back into the auditorium no okay i'm going to save nicki's for the second round of public comment and and let her form join that group thank you everyone i appreciate you you having having respect for others and letting us get through all of those and we look forward to the second public opportunity for comment response to public comment we have read each and every email that has been sent to us and we have also been been given a copy of the survey feedback from dr lotch thank you so appreciate hearing all of your views it's it's clear we have a divided community on this topic but we appreciate all of the
067submissions to that there were quite a few so thank you for for providing that to us let's move forward i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed items may be added or deleted from the meeting agenda and or the order of items may be changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent the agendas must be approved before proceeding further um can someone please make a motion motion kirby kirby thank you support mcvay mcfay thank you all those in favor please say aye aye hearing nonemotion carries 7-0 julian uh we have our student showcase if you would like to introduce your guests all right so we have lizzie clark and josie selingrad presenting on behalf of shs key club um thank you guys for coming unfortunately i
068told you guys you'd be presenting in the first 30 minutes but that changed a little bit obviously so thank you for coming looking forward to hearing about key club if you can just make sure the mics on yeah there you go if you guys can't get that testing testing yeah thank you hello everyone my name is lizzie clark and i am a senior at saline high school and my name is josie selenrad and i'm also a senior at saline high school and josie and i are both co-presidents of celine key club and today we're going to be discussing a little bit about what our club does for the high school and our surrounding communities so key club is just a fun volunteering club it provides students with enriching volunteer opportunities that promote leadership and that
069builds character we participate in acts of services that directly impact the lives of others within our local regional and global communities which we will further elaborate on our common services that we do around later in the slideshow so i'm just going to briefly discuss some of our quick club stats so key club has over around 65 active members and we're one of the largest clubs at saline high school and collectively our members gathered over 1035 hours of service we participated in 118 service events over the last few years and we have three monthly partnerships our first is with pb j outreach our second is with focus hope and our third is with saline area social services and we're going to be discussing those a little bit more in the presentation we also have three affiliate
070programs associated with key club the first is celine kiwanis which is the key club version for adults we also have selene middle school builders club which is the middle school version and then we have circle k which is the college version we have three focal areas that we focus on for volunteering the first is zero hunger the second is good health and well-being and the third is quality education and these are all un goals so we wanted to recognize some of our top club service leaders um spencer lynn a junior excellent high school has over 100 hours of service um lizzie and i over have over 50 and ava schmidt has 48 hours so we always have our merit award so okay so our first event is focus hope and to give a brief little
071synopsis focus hope is a monthly volunteer opportunity that our members normally go to in detroit and pretty much we prepare food boxes for low-income seniors in the detroit area and we pretty much make these by adding food different food items to an assembly line and there's boxes and each individual person is assigned a food item to load into boxes that are then delivered to senior citizens so there we have some pictures of groups that have gone out and volunteered and helped focus hope service organization so another common event we do is food gatherers it's in ann arbor michigan and they rescue several tons of food a day that has that us as volunteers process inspect and sort we generally sort through the food that we can give to those in need instead of letting it
072all go to waste we will sometimes help with stocking pantries for canned goods helping wash damaged products and repackaging bulk items so just a bunch of like saving food and repackaging it for to give to those who need it so those are some pictures of us so another service organization that we volunteer with probably the most i would say out of all of ours is pb j outreach and pbj outreach is a non-profit organization located in detroit and pretty much what we do is we get up pretty early most of our members get up around like 5 30 a.m and we meet at a church in plymouth michigan and there we make pp j sandwiches and we sort different like clothing donations and toiletry donations and other food items that are donated and we prepare
073these and then we go out and distribute them to different sites located within the detroit area and we pass them out to homeless people in that community and it's a really heartwarming experience getting to sort of interact with these people and help them out a little bit so some other events we do we work with motz children's hospital and arbor meals on wheels in huron valley humane society so with mott's hospital we do a lot of like making tie blankets um in our morning meetings um that will go to like for to the kids at mott hospital for ann arbor meals on wheels we do like drives for needed items that they deliver to those in need and we also make a lot of holiday handmade cards for them to be passed out to those
074that may not be as in good health or those in need and also some of in our early meetings we make thai knot animal toys um to give to huron valley humane society for the animals there as well so um we just do a lot these are our main activities but we do have like other dispersed activities throughout the year as well so yeah this upcoming spring we have a lot of volunteer opportunities for our members one of our biggest and most josie and i are very excited for this event that we will be participating in is called the student leadership conference and last year we were unable to have this event because of covid and student leadership conference is a really large event where all different groups of key club from around the state
075of michigan meet and they spend a huge day participating in different service activities and there are competitions and a lot of fun interacting activities that we're able to do so we're looking forward to having some people go to slc this year and represent key club and we're we're looking forward to a very fun and service-filled spring hopefully kova doesn't interrupt that so thank you [Applause] thank you ladies and thank you to all of your members that's very very impressive um would any trustees like to and ask any questions or make any comments yeah jenny i just wanted to say thank you for coming and sharing your club with us i know key club has a lot of different activities some that i didn't know about so i appreciate when students can come to the to
076the board meetings and share some of these experiences that maybe we didn't know the full picture of um thank you for coming josie special special special student there for me and also um recognizing ava to proud of proud of the work that you've done i just wanted to mention that my one of my children participated in the pb j project through key club but also through capstone last year and it was a remarkable experience and inspired her to continue her civic engagement this year in college and actually a special note for students who are participating garnered her a nice scholarship also so those volunteer hours not only are meaningful for the um for the work that you're doing to better the community but additionally um it's something that you can look for for uh scholarship
077applications so congratulations to the two of you and we are wishing you all the best as you graduate this year yeah susan thank you for presenting this is one of my passions i worked at the university of michigan in a program called project community and we had student leaders facilitating the class and also students going out to i think we had over 32 sites for volunteering so they were able to connect that curriculum to so the service learning i don't know if you have a learning component so that's one question and also with volunteering opportunities is it accessible to all students i know of course the university of michigan had transportation available and so that's just a question i have to make sure if you need support or how that works i don't think so
078is the light on we can hear you [Music] only key club members can come and volunteer we like to we do a lot of collaborations with other clubs just recently we partnered with students against racism and we're going to be doing some projects for women's history month that's coming up so all members of all members of the high school are encouraged to come and volunteer with us so thank you about the the learning component yeah um so i guess like we so each and every other week we have meetings early in the morning and we kind of like talk about like service opportunities and like our impacts on like our communities around us so like that gives us a learning component around it we also advertise our clubs in many different ways so like flyers
079social media just to spread the word on what we do and like to give people an idea of like how they can get involved into what we do and helping communities around us so we do a lot of that like with social media and stuff i also feel like a lot of a lot of the learning comes from the hands-on experience that students get from going to these volunteer opportunities because if you're doing something virtually you're not able to get kind of the full experience versus while you're there and you're interacting with different different individuals it's really an eye-opening experience for a lot of people especially people from saline so thank you awesome thank you any other comments or questions for these ladies thank you very much we're very proud of your servant leadership and
080giving back thank you very much um we're going to move on to our first schedule report of the evening continue to learn plan 2021 22 school year including mask mandate information from the wchd dr lodge just so the team and the audience knows our plan is this presentation and conversation might take just a little bit so we're going to plan on taking a recess after the continue to learn portion and then we'll dig back into esser funding after the break just so everyone is aware dr latch whenever you're ready okay thank you and i want to thank everybody for coming one thing that's clear to me is regardless of your position on masking that's obviously a big topic tonight everybody in this community has shown one thing for certain and that's that you really do
081care about your kids our kids and so as i approach this presentation i do want everybody to be thinking of that because i as a superintendent and proud of of that fact that i know that everybody in the community regardless of their position really cares about students and that's very very important okay okay here we go so we're going to start by looking at data we're going to look at both washington county data and we're going to look at some of our own saline schools data if you look here we do see a significant drop in cases across the county and positivity rate and so forth so that is trending in a positive a direction drop as well in daily new cases as you see a a you know extreme rise and now an extreme
082drop and with that said as people have pointed out before we are still in that uh high phase so we're we're certainly not in the moderate phase as of this point but this data is showing a significant drop in terms of our own local data and i want to put this in perspective that what we are doing is on a daily basis we are monitoring new cases that come in both for our students and our staff and we are also monitoring the number of students and staff that are in isolation and as mentioned previously we are still certainly in a pandemic and we are seeing certain buildings disproportionately impacted as we move through as we move through the pandemic last week it was harvest had a disproportionate number of student cases and this week it
083is it is pleasant rich as mentioned previously so what this shows us is we certainly are in a pandemic and we're going to have to manage mitigation strategies potentially differently based on the building and we will we will do that we're fortunate to have a really strong nursing team karen harvey wendy portwood are really outstanding and are doing a tremendous job managing this from a student and family perspective throughout and we talk daily about our processes and procedures as we move forward but to put this in perspective this is a fairly low number of overall student and staff cases as we look at less than 5000 students in the district and about 650 staff this is a pretty small percentage of our district that is currently either positive or in isolation how have we approached
084the continue to learn plan at the very beginning of the school year in august the return to learn plan and now as we move forward with the continue to learn plan here's what we have been doing we've been looking at local senior schools data we've been considering mitigation strategies we have been heavily relying on the washington county health department look at our nurse guidance karen hervey who's been michigan school nurse of the year before with outstanding outstanding work we're looking at it with a lens of equity we are looking at community feedback previously we had sent out a community a community feedback form and we have a lot of comments and i have a summary slide to share with what those comments reveal we're also looking at board of education feedback administration and staff feedback
085and ultimately uh the development of the plan basing on based on changing metrics and guidance that have been consistent it's been consistently that we've been adjusting to changing guidance so that's been important throughout so in terms of the community feedback we received countless number of emails and we received a lot of feedback from the community feedback form and here's some summary points of what was said those that preferred math to be highly recommended but not required said these points strongly recommended but don't require that would be consistent with the latest guidance from the washington county health department second bullet point allow parents and families to choose what's best for their child third to be responsive to the sas community transmission rates next availability of vaccines should weigh in which it does some said masking is
086ineffective and harmful others said inconsistency of mask wearing mandates and settings across the county in the area and then the need to return to a sense of normal said multiple movie mass times will positively influence mental health early literacy social interactions and skills now for those who had comments about performing that we continue to require mask following guidance where nasa worn and high transmission people referred to our initial plan that was color-coded that did talk about having mass required up to the point that we moved to moderate or low transmission another point was keep mass safeguard in place for families who have high risk situations we spoke earlier about medically fragile students the current high transmission rates in surrounding areas that we still are in a high transmission phase that our youngest population those under
087five can't get vaccinated at this point and need additional protection the benefits of masking outweigh the cones we heard a student speak about that tonight use the mass mandate until the lowers or number or the lower the numbers become lower and after spring break end of the year and with those higher vaccination rates and then concern about increase in absences and impact to in-person learning we do know that the community has been adamant and so have we all about keeping in person and learning throughout the school year and up to this point we feel like we've done a good job with that element so here's what the washington county health department and the michigan department of health and human services say about the recent rescinding of the mass mandates top three bullets are washtenaw county
088health department points washington county the orders were issued in september 2021 and prior to this new variant while they were set to remain in place based on cdc cova data tracker of substantial or high conditions have changed enough to warrant rescinding them so when people say well why are they rescinded why are they rescinding even though we are in a high phase washington county health department has talked about how they have conditions changing enough in their opinion that it has been rescinded as of february 28th second point that the vaccination rates as mentioned earlier uh are really high in washington county upwards of 75 percent which is it which is a large number and that masking is one strategy but there are multiple strategies for copenhagen protection third bullet point we're in a different place
089now that we can offer greater flexibility on the way we can continue to provide guidance and then referring to the michigan department of health and human services that the discussion is that based on current conditions the department is expiring the public health advisory and masking in indoor public settings include including school settings as well so now you both have the washington county health department and mdhhs backing off on that guidance so salinar schools will follow the washington county health department guidance an effective february 28th max will be highly recommended for all student staff and community members and indoor settings within our schools now i do want to point out there are a number of reasons why we are moving in this direction but we also want to talk about the equity concerns that do need
090to be addressed when you look at our y area we do have these high vaccination rates that we spoke about transmission rates are dropping rapidly our local data looks good now with that said there could be these peaks and valleys and i will say this that because we are following the washington county health department guidance if for example after spring break we come back and there's a massive spike for example and they are requiring mass again we would follow that guidance as well now when we look at other mitigation strategies in place we do have strong ventilation within our buildings uh rex clearly our buildings and grounds director has done a tremendous job of verifying that that is the case in our buildings we checked that on a regular basis still um you know working
091through hand hygiene or moving into a warmer weather phase and we really need to double down on the screening that means that the community has been tremendous with keeping kids home when they're sick we really need that in place more than ever moving forward and and thus far we've all been very impressed with that in fact so much so that when i'm talking to nerd district nurse hervey she does talk often about we don't see kids coming into school with colds and um you know coughs which used to be very commonplace and parents have done a tremendous job of being um you know screaming that self-screening that we need to have happen and also we recognize the social emotional toll that we do see that masking fatigue and masking enforcement is certainly challenging and we
092also see that by the washer county health department coming forward and in making this a signal that we are moving in a pandemic to an endemic phase and then finally mass would still be required on school buses now the equity concerns that are really important to address which we are committed to addressing is that students under five who aren't vaccinated in some of our early childhood special education programs and so forth that all staff will be required to mask in those programs medically fragile students includes kids who can't tolerate a mask or have other health concerns now one of the things that we've been doing for years is individualizing care because even before the pandemic we've had plenty of medically fragile students that we have to develop individual plans to keep them safe we're going
093to continue to do that and provide options with parents again a nurse really does a tremendous job of working closely to analyze each situation and talk with parents and families about what their kids need best and that will be the same thing here moving forward there's other things we can do for medically fragile students work through greater spacey um contact tracing in those specific specific classrooms that medically fragile students are in and that's we're not contact tracing anymore but this is a strategy that we can put in play for our medically fragile students ongoing communication better masks for those you know students that want that want them and need them and so forth so we are more than prepared to work closely with all our families that need that additional support now here is a
094very important part that we are very aware needs to happen i've met multiple times with our administrative team on education around this idea that we are moving into a phase where some people are masking some staff are going to be masking some students are going to be asking and others are not and we need to make sure that we are educating our kids and our staff and working towards that line of empathy where we can understand that there are going to be different approaches here and that we we don't want kids bullying each other one way or another about wearing a mask or not wearing a mask because we are going to be in experiencing this moving forward and i'll just give an example i was at an event on saturday a charity event there
095were about 200 people there we were making meals for people less fortunate and out of the 200 we had about half wearing mass and half were not and we were working well together and we want that same same thing to continue within the school district moving forward so this idea that we will work together with this notion that it's okay for people to be masking if they choose and and if they don't choose to do so now again we are still highly recommending mass be worn in indoor settings so we will continue to message that and again we'll be prepared to adjust to guidance based on what the washington county health department is directing us so with that said that's the end of the presentation i'm going to come and have a seat and we
096can have a further discussion about it thanks steve that podium is a little low is it different than our usual one thank you very much i mean clearly this has been a very challenging a couple of years for for our staff and our families and our students first and foremost appreciate the care and the collaboration that you you took in this um i wanted to thank you and i want to thank karen harvey i ran into her today and made sure i detailed how much appreciation i have for the very very difficult job she has had in partnering with you on this in a landscape of ever-changing guidance i guess i would say so we'll have a discussion but for me you have my full support in this plan and i look forward to hearing
097comments and questions from the trustees would anyone like to start okay candace go right in i'll start i i have a question i'll start with a question um you mentioned getting staff feedback and i know we've heard a lot from the community uh today and and also via email not as much from staff so i just love to know from you what that feedback has been like and what the plan is for professional development or supports around those talking points that you mentioned there at the end in terms of who's masking and who's not and and how they get support for how to manage that in the classroom right that's a good question trustee jones yeah the the feedback's mixed um you know there are certainly staff members that would prefer that we continue requiring
098mass there's certainly others that prefer that we move forward with with that choice there's no question about it um in terms of the overall feedback from the thousands of comments uh it is exactly down the middle but there there is um a divide on on opinions and and um perspective on this moving forward that there's no question about it i think we just consistently though have talked about following the washer county health department guidance and therefore want to continue with that approach now as it relates to the education part of this laura washington our principal at the middle school coordinated the start of this by meeting with the other administrators and developing an educational component that talks about what students should expect when they come back on february 28th what staff should expect actually having
099conversations with the students about it and also giving those students who are anxious or nervous about it the who the go-to people are that they can get help um or or support initially when when that transition happens so we do feel that that's an important part of the plan and we'll be very aware that we're going to have a mixed reaction amongst our student body and staff as we transition to this path this transition thank you david yep sorry i'm still getting used to this thing um sure i just have a couple of questions i'd like to kind of interject if i can um first again i'd like to amplify what jennifer had to say about thanking you for doing such a great and um thoughtful job of working with um you know a really
100difficult set of conflicting guidance from from different levels here um you uh you and your staff have just done a great a great job of um doing the impossible here and um i'd especially really like to go back and just applaud um the plan that you came up with at the beginning of the year i mean it was going back a little bit but um at that time there was even less guidance to work with and um you know in looking into and doing my own kind of due diligence to look at the current state of the scientific literature one of the things that i was especially interested in looking at was what's model policy for mass use in k-12 settings and something i found was an article that was just published in january 2022
101in the journal of school health and what was proposed there by a team of pediatricians and public health professionals was a policy that they called dynamic masking but it's really almost identical to what you guys came up with at the beginning of the year at the beginning of the school year and they described it as a metrics based approach to masking that is flexible and practical enabling school officials to adapt quickly to the pandemic landscape in their communities independent of political pressures unquote so i was really impressed by that and i think that you and whoever else in your office works to develop that idea deserve a huge round of applause for being ahead of the curve there i think you probably almost deserve co-author credit on that policy paper and i understand that the
102landscape has changed and you know we're going in a different direction now but i i hope to see that you know even as that current decision is being made that same spirit of using um metrics those metrics going forward will still kind of remain part of our operational decision-making process um and i'd say that it's worth noting that based on those current trajectories that we were looking at even as the transmission rate remains high right now it's likely that you know that current plan would would have resulted in masking becoming optional within the next few weeks especially if there is as we're expecting updated um guidance from the cdc on on transmission um metrics which we're kind of expecting at any moment but anyway getting to my questions and you addressed um some of this
103already but i'd like to just dig a little bit deeper we're kind of threefold so first talking about protecting vulnerable students staff and families we've heard before about how celine has a big population of special needs students compared to other districts in the county and that that population is really well integrated with our general ed population which is great and we also know that some of those kids are the most vulnerable to um to having negative outcomes from coped like kids with down syndrome um and lots of other other kids in that population are the ones who aren't able to wear masks so um i was just hoping to get a little bit more detail from you about the kinds of options that we're going to have to offer those kids and their families who
104are worried about sending um you know i know you talked about personalized options but what are those personalized options going to look like to keep those kids safely and in in-person instruction because i know that a lot of people who are worried about well does that personalize mean my kids are going to be doing remote learning because that's not an option that they are wanting for their kids and i know that that's that's definitely something that that you don't want to see so i just think it might assuage people's fears to hear about um what kind of options people might have right now it's it's a good question and that's where we do rely on the care of our nursing staff and so um i'll just give you an example in previous years when medically
105fragile students have been working through whether it's um a flu outbreak in the building or any other um thing that happens to be taking over a classroom where you know seven or eight kids are getting a cold and and a bunch are out in the classroom it's talking to those families about is it increased spacing is it making sure that the teachers are providing additional supports and making sure that they are more aware of who's out and when when we talk about increasing our contact tracing again we're not doing that now but one of the things that karen in particular is ahead of the curve on is if one student is absent in a classroom that may trigger to her okay now we need to enact a little different plan with that medically fragile student
106because we're trying to make sure that that environment is more controlled and then it is working directly with with the parents and trying to determine if do they need different spacing within that classroom that wouldn't normally be there but but we would for that student to make sure that we are providing that accommodation because i do think it's important that although some parents may want a virtual option or homebound services for a potential period of time the goal is that all students should be able to come to school and be safe and you know we when we went into greater depth with that that that was her response that that we have always worked directly with families to talk about their specific situation with their specific students and then develop very individualized plans based on
107that that might mean that the cafeteria environment looks a little different for the students so that they can have increased spacing so it would be hard for me to give an exact scenario for every student but what i know we're committed to is working directly with those families and not doing sort of a one-size-fits-all approach for any of the medically fragile students that's great um so my second question was kind of in the same vein the policy that we've been using has been really successful at keeping everybody in the classroom unlike some of the neighboring districts both in the county and in neighboring counties both with more restrictive and less restrictive policies who have either gone remote or been missing school days so i was just wondering if you could talk about a little bit
108about what other tools um you know since we're backing off of masking what other tools does the district have at its disposal if we start to see an uptick in new cases i know that you said that if wchd were to bring back a mandate we would obviously follow that but you know what happens if we start to see movement in cases within the district is there any are there any plans to do other things um you know to use other mitigation strategies that we would step up at that point or um or what other what other tools do we have in our toolkit well i think the um you know the situation at harvest and pleasant ridge are a good example that as we move to a phase where we would say that you
109know mass are highly recommended in the school buildings yet if we know that there uh you know is a cluster of cases at a specific building we are communicating with families so that they are aware hey this really is a time to still be masking because transmission rates are higher in a particular building at a specific time and so it's the communication it's the greater awareness and that of course you know we're still saying now that you know highly recommended but not required but i think it's also important to make sure that our parents are aware of the data in the specific buildings you know for example the report that you know there are zero cases at the high school right now okay that's good information to know if there's a significant number at a
110specific building we want to make sure that that information is out there too so that we can suggest um and and say that hey this is a time to be wearing a kn 95 mask continued masking because the transmission rate may be a little high although low in the district it's higher in a specific building so i do think we need to be react to that and be proactive well proactive and it's reaction but we're being proactive by making sure that families and staff are well aware and that we're able to work through that together and just finally um i know that in the wc wchd's announcement they stated that they would be consulting further with um school districts of the 28th approach have they done that consultation with our district yet or um in
111in the press release that the health department made they said they would be doing more consultation with school districts as the 28th approach have have they reached out to to you guys yet to do more consultation yet or is that something we should expect to see that's it's a little bit problematic in that okay the county health department has said that they're providing more guidance on the 28th on the 28th but okay you know but we'd prefer to have it before the 20th right but once we get that additional guidance because we're following the washington county health implementation we'll make the adjustments whatever those are great thank you very much and again i i i i realize that this is uh you've been put in an impossible situation with with uh what's uh what you're
112being asked to do and you've done a great job and uh been a very thoughtful and thorough uh job of looking at all the evidence so thank you very much thanks david great first meeting huh and join us thank you anyone else and julian i don't want to put you on the spot although sometimes i do but we're always welcoming of any feedback or comments that you have as well uh i've quite a few things written down for my board update so i'll just include it then so i just also wanted to just reiterate what trustees have already said before and also what some of the public commenters said um it's an impossible situation that we've been put in um especially you dr lodge and so um i want to just reiterate that that we
113aren't health experts not not a single one of us we sought these positions and we're elected to these positions to to focus on academics and so with the governor's office and and the michigan department of health and human services and now the health department um you know kind of tossing this down to school districts it's it's really not the um it's really not fair so so i applaud the work that you have done to research and and to find a plan i will i will say for the record that i am i am by nature risk averse i um i think a part of that is that in in our family i am often the only parent home and so um i don't take a lot of risks because if mama goes down the whole
114ship goes down so i think as i've gotten older that has become more the case and i understand that that there are a lot of people in our community who who also feel that way so for that reason the plan in the fall felt safe to me the plan in the fall felt like there were metrics and that i could wrap my head around that but like with anything that has occurred over the last as megan stated three school years we get comfortable with one thing and then things change and and we have to get comfortable with another thing and i saw this happen when teachers and students started to return to buildings i was in the first wave in my building to return and i was nervous and and then once we got in
115there it felt okay but every wave that came after i saw that fear in my colleagues and and as someone who had that feeling before i did my best to assure them and to support them and to do what i could do to make them feel comfortable so if my office window needed to be open or you know whatever i needed to do to help them be comfortable that's what i did as they were coming back too and so i am pleased with the education that that is the talking points in the education that is going to be happening for teachers and for students so that we can support one another because there is no policy there is no mandate that we could set that would that would ensure kindness and would ensure safety for
116everything we can't make a mandate to force other people to care about other people so by educating as amy said respecting one another we can we can hopefully move forward i will [Music] i will say my one concern is that separate is never equal and so i am concerned for students who before had to make the choice to stay home for their family's beliefs and i am concerned about families now who are going to be having to make difficult decisions because of their beliefs so i that is one thing that i am concerned about um i'm wondering if we can support some of these families i know one of the students who spoke tonight was talking about how spacing is difficult so is that one of my questions is is that a part of the
117education can we please can we help support students who might feel more comfortable with more spacing at least in the interim i think the only other thing that i would say is that we've heard from people on both sides and we've heard from people who are concerned because their children are immunocompromised and and my heart really has has been torn because we've also heard from parents who um who have expressed concerns and have shared stories of of some significant mental health issues that have occurred because of the pandemic and so when we're thinking about you know what is the best choice and i i've always i ran when i was campaigning i thought about um i said that i would always think with whoever is the most vulnerable in mind and it's almost impossible for
118us to even see is it a student who is immunocompromised is it a student who is suffering from mental health it's impossible it really is a difficult balance so i my last question in addition to spacing is because karen is going to be working to individualize plans with teachers with families with students is it possible for us to consider using some of the esser funds to support to support karen and her and additional nurses to individualize those plans so that students in vulnerable situations can feel and their families can feel safer so in summary i guess i'd like to know more about potential spacing mitigation and esser funds to support um individualized plans for our immunocompromised students okay well i'll start i'll start backwards so yes we we certainly can use more funding for additional
119nursing support or anything that karen and our team may need and we've been trying to do that throughout the pandemic you know whether it's hey we need to bring an additional person in temporarily to do contact tracing for example so we would continue to do that if karen and her team felt that there was a greater need now a lot of what they've had to do dropped off when the contact tracing and all the phone calls regarding that went away now again february 28th comes along we're going to get additional guidance from the washington county health department if those things change and we need additional support for karen and her team we can certainly provide that as it relates to spacing yeah i mean i guess take a student that is in a classroom that's
120immunocompromised i think this is where there is that empathy element of your you're talking to the peers in the classroom to talk through that situation and provide additional supports i do think that students certainly understand that at any age and will help support the health and safety of any individual student within the classroom along with the teacher so if that means that there does need to be some greater spacing i'm certain that the individual team can work that out and again i don't unless there's a specific scenario given to our nursing team i don't want to speak on exactly how they would play that out but i know they're committed to make that work so that students can you know participate in in-person learning i think i really was just hoping that maybe we could
121for the for the young child who spoke tonight and was worried about spacing and group work and partner work can we can we just make a statement to her that we're going to do everything that we can to support her and her safety through individualized plans with her family and nurses and parents you know whoever is involved yes yep we will do that for a student who spoke tonight which i do will we have a couple students that spoke to my laureen and muriel that we would be providing individual support for really any family or student that needs an individualized plan as it relates to safety protocols related to covet or really anything within the school district i think is important and that's something that karen stressed with me that we've been developing these individual
122plans for as long as she's been a district nurse in all the years that she's been doing this she's been in this role and we will continue to do so even though we may have to use some different mitigation strategies that we haven't used before for example here well thank you for this plan and thank you for listening to all voices and trying to make the best way forward for our community sure i think brad michael had motioned and then we'll go we'll go down there if that's okay michael you want to go ahead and refer to brad okay [Music] well here we go well dr lost doesn't need to hear me say this but uh i i support this plan so i uh as you know as i find myself thinking about things over
123the last year i i think about four tenants that i've used pretty regularly when analyzing policy thinking about decisions so for me those four things are number one i want i want to provide strong educational outcomes and environments for students number two i want to be legally compliant number three i want to be making good and exercising good financial judgment and the fourth one is i value expertise so those are kind of like the four things that are important to me so when i think about each of those four things i have some questions that are mixed in here here's how i got to feel comfortable with supporting this plan so number one we do have vulnerable students and i agree that we need to maintain an equitable focus on them but i believe as
124a teacher myself that school staff and leaders have been personalized education for students for years through ieps 504s parent-teacher conferences partnerships and so i guess i would say that our staff is top-notch at providing equity and good solutions for our students and so i trust that uh i trust that they'll continue to go to the extraordinary lengths that they've always gone to for our students so i'm satisfied on the first tenant if you will i know our administration unions and and our our people are going to have you know have good relationships and they're going to continue safety conversations and and i think those things are important so now when i think about number two i it's you know i i think about being legally compliant and we have been legally compliant with the lawful
125mass mandate all along and so i believe that with the changing guidance i'll get to that in expertise so financial judgment so we have esser funds and general budget dollars to operationalize the plan i think dr loch has put forth here tonight and i hear in his presentation he's dedicated to supporting our students and he's going to use funds and i'm hearing about personalizing for first students and so so i find that satisfactory to me i think our community has put us in a tremendous position with safe warm and dry bond funds to be able to have facilities that can support the educational environment our students to do this work to do it equitably and do it well so i i wrote this down and it's funny jenny you would have just asked this because
126you usurped me as i said you know i was going to ask you i hope or recommend that we could continue to have conversations about how we might utilize those at us or funds dedicated in a dedicated manner to support those students and families who need that personalization and individuation and you've satisfied me and i believe that we'll do that and then the last thing for me is expertise right i considered our our educators to be the expertise in their classrooms i consider so as such we followed the experts at the washington county health department the michigan department of health and human safety services have we've followed them along as they've had this mandatory mass mandate for schools this is and so for me this is what they do and uh i will tell you
127that personally just you know like this is fast for me a little bit like personally for me this is quicker than i would have preferred however i'm i'm not one of them i'm not an expert who looks at the amount of data and looks at the things that they look at and so because of that i i'm inclined to to believe in the experts who are saying we can do this and so that also makes me support this plan now dr lotch this is the question i have about that so you have engaged in regular uh conversations i believe on fridays or friday mornings with the washington county health department at minimum you've been in regular correspondence do you anticipate that those conversations will continue at regular intervals and that we will involve our stakeholders
128in our different parts of our schools so that we can so we can do this yes for sure the um we've been meeting on a regular basis with the washington county superintendents and the health department um sometimes you know every other week and when new guidance comes out on february 28th because what trustee hayward was saying is that yeah they're rescinding the mass mandate but they are also coming out with additional guidance around that on the 28th so we're going to need to engage right away with the washington county health department on how do we you know enforce or implement whatever it is that is new to the guidance if there is anything new we're not sure about that either so yeah we we're in regular contact and you know i will say this the
129washington county health department has been very responsive with individual queries that i have made about various things related to quarantining last year for example i had a lot of questions about that i would ask individual questions and get responses quickly so yeah we're engaged on a regular basis with with the county health department all right well thank you and i guess the last statement i would make then is as long as we're doing that we're being continuously mindful of our data our safety our personalized situations for our families then that's why this has my support oh i'm so glad you went before me brad you i could check off some of the boxes on my list anyway um i just wanted to say i was listening for a few things i don't have a question
130so you can relax a wee bit but um i i had been listening through the plan for a couple of things one of them was a clear recognition that we're in a period of transition that as we as we get to the point where the virus is the pandemic is more manageable uh finally and it's not going to happen with the flip of a calendar or the flip of a switch or a flip of a finger it's going to take some time there's slide three which you don't have to call it up but i obsess over that graph every year every day i look and see the numbers i look at wool world odometer and compare country rates and states and it's it's an unhealthy obsession i've had but i'm delighted to see that the
131numbers are finally heading in the right direction i wanted to say also several community members tonight addressed offered some very good points uh sadly a lot of them have headed out but i wanted to note that some of the suggestions uh were focused on our most fragile kids in the schools the amino compromise special populations special needs populations students those who were medically fragile and i also was delighted to hear time after time talk about ventilation filtration hygiene spacing all of these issues i know you're addressing them in the schools so let me wrap up by saying i absolutely trust the teachers in the classrooms are going to to to treat the students the way i heard a couple times up here with respect for their wishes one of my favorite comments in the 3500
132was the mother who said my kid will throat punch anybody who tries to take the mask off her it's a classic and i trust those teachers and i also dr latch i trust the administrators that you've been training and supporting uh they've been extraordinarily cautious and supportive of all the kids in the schools the all the that they have and i also greatly appreciate the metrics based approach that and thank you for referencing that dr hayward i appreciate it the journal of school health so um we're on the right path i think so far and i know that we'll pivot and adjust and tweak as we go forward to address the needs of those most vulnerable students that we have so thank you sir any other comments susan yes um so i guess a couple
133questions and comments um so i don't know if i should just do that all together and you'll kind of want questions first or so i'll just go like um so back in august we made the decision and families either agreed with the decision or we possibly lost families who did not want their children masked and we also had families who decided to allow their children to come because they felt safe and allowed their children to be in person which is one of the things that we've pushed for i think everybody in the community pushed for with having our children in person just looking at pleasant ridge today with the high 20s and 30s that that many people children aren't in person and i know we had a commenter who said um what if we don't
134have mask those that that will be larger um another um so in august we also used this was before the washington county health department even came out with a mandate we also used in addition to washington county and the michigan health department guidance by cdc a lot of it was cdc and the american academy of pediatrics i'm interested in what they are saying now [Music] another question is i think there hasn't been a lot of research done about the emotional impact of this optional masking so with the mask children who are choosing to wear a mask or their parents are you know choosing for them not to wear a mask how would that impact have an emotional impact on them for one children who have lost family members to coven who have an anxiety have
135anxiety with with others having the mask off for example our immune compromised children we're taking half of their safety away really um so you need there's that transmission between both of them so when you have one not masking or however many kids not masking we're still compromising them and then i'm concerned about singling out i know we got some emails about this as well parents who have children with conditions that we are singling them out for their medical needs so whenever we accommodate and possibly you know those are the only two who are masked or whatever is there ada issues and hipaa issues with that with the perception um also i agree with a lot of the commenters who said cloth masks are providing the best protection and that's absolutely why we need to be
136masking and using a better mask and so i'm wondering if we are providing that for our students so masks that are in 95 and k and 95 for our students just in general i'm worried that parents will not allow their children to wear masks and maybe those children do want to wear a mask i want to make sure that it's accessible to everyone even not requiring them to ask for it but it to be in an area where they can grab it if they want um okay i did read a lot of the student feedback and you know it was like that 50 50 split right um and all this data like it's you know hard you can't capture everybody but some of their comments were um worrying about the the in person um not
137having in-person classes if there is um you know a breakout and and so that that was a concern [Music] trying to think there's a concern over concerns about emerging variants long haul i mean death the pandemic is not over um people are still dying in fact my children's grandpa died in january i mentioned this last time not vaccinated never masked and so it is not over i'm trying to think whatever so i do not support this plan and i do not if we have children who end up with conditions or currently have conditions or you know who die i will not be responsible and hold that under me so um i do not support this at all i think we should be waiting until the washington county health department brings it out in february 28th
138um i think you know students brought up after spring break why aren't we waiting until after then and also um byron why are we not just going to carry out the next few months as is um so yeah that's kind of yeah that's i got everything in probably not but okay i tried to write down to the best i could some of those questions i'll start with the pleasant ridge situation so um i think it's it's an example of we are going to have some waves of cova in specific buildings we've had this before with flu where there have been certain buildings impacted in this situation with pleasant ridge so i met with the staff today we talked it through as it's clustered in a few different classrooms and we we spoke about the possibility
139of you know as we monitor the next few days of school if we felt that you know there were additional cases popping up that we would be making sure to let you know the pleasant ridge community know that hey as we come back on february 28th yep we are rescinding the mass mandate but here's the situation at pleasant ridge we strongly do recommend uh masking for the next week um that that we'll have um you mentioned kn95 mass we have those on order for students we have plenty for staff and that that would be an example of us trying to react to the situation at a specific building and then make sure that everybody is educated because you know yeah we look at low transmission rates throughout the vast majority of the district but there
140could be some of those popping up in in certain areas in harvest it was the week before that kind of moved through pretty quickly and now has dissipated but we will be monitoring that closely as it relates to the cdc and american academy of pediatrics and what they're saying i mean we we do know that their guidance is highly recommend mass indoor setting but i still will go back to the washington county health department um when they released their new guidance it didn't say we would like schools to require masking it did say we highly recommend mass and i think that that nuance is important that they they specifically we that we are following that guidance as we have been throughout the pandemic and feel like that we need to be consistent with that and
141we talk about students you had asked about students that would have anxiety that's what i was mentioning on the education slide that's still up there that we will make sure that in every building our students and our staff for that matter have support for coming back into a transition phase like trustee mcvay said in that students are going to react differently to it so is the staff and that we want to make sure that they do have people to go talk to about this to to get greater support as it relates to that um you had asked about singling out kids with medical conditions um that is a valid concern uh and it's a valid concern every year because we we have often had students who have whether it's a let's say a heart condition
142or something related to breathing and and that we often are needing to talk to classmates about the condition and that yep we do the best we can our nurses our teachers to make sure that we're not singling out per se but it is bringing awareness to the other students and and often um parents in the classroom that we do have potentially a medically fragile student so although we are trying to make sure we're assimilating and being cognizant of that there certainly is this element of making sure that that people do know so that they can make proper adjustments to demonstrate that empathy and care that we know is important um you had yeah so kn 95 mass on order for students we expect them here very soon and that there there have been people that
143are worried about not having in person class or whether that's in-person activities at the end of the year though those are important concerns i do know that the community does want in person school and that again that's where you know if guidance does change from the county health department based on wow all of a sudden there is and i say after spring break because last year we did have a spike after spring break now we were still in per we were coming back in person and we but we did have more students out during that that spike will that happen this year um we don't know we have a we have a much higher vaccination rate it'll be warmer weather but the trend pattern has been that when we have a longer period off that
144there are greater cases when we come back so we will have to monitor that closely and then i think the final question freshman again is something related to why aren't we waiting for the washington county health department to what provide additional guidance um well we're just we we are being responsive to their their current guidance and their current guidance is effective february 28th that the mass mandate is rescinded and what we are confident of is that regardless of whatever new protocols procedures quarantining isolation that they are communicating to us on the on february 28th we will be able to follow it so we're feeling like there isn't the need to wait we would need to wait if we felt like there was no way we were going to follow whatever guidance they they put forth
145but we feel confident that we can and it triggered some other questions thank you for your responses a question about if we have to go back into masking required i don't know if there's concerns with that about um allowing allowing the students to you know for it to be optional and then how that's how that's going to look if you know in less than a month we're going back to required masking i just have concerns over over that as well well i mean i think we've had concerns about the changing guidance all throughout the pandemic i mean somebody alluded to earlier you know at one point it was that that you know everybody needed wearing at least a cloth mask and and then it was double masking and then it's kn-95 mass and i do
146think the reality is we'll be able to respond to whatever does develop next now you're right it's probably more difficult to you know have the option of not wearing mass and then have to go and you know require that again but um based on what we've seen with the community because we are messaging the consistency of following washtenaw county health department it wouldn't be inconsistent for us to go back and say the county health department is now requiring mass and we would we would follow suit thank you that's i think that's good for everybody to understand that that possibly may happen thanks for yeah julian go right ahead um so this was going to be part of my update but if it's more now i've heard a lot of you guys talking about just how
147it looks in school so so far i think i can confidently say that in general um we follow the rules of like wearing masks in class so it hasn't been a problem so far from a rules standpoint so with or without the mask i think you know again students are respectful and have respect for rules which is unlike what we see in some community areas and again students respect the rules and guidelines of school administrators so whatever rules are put in place again with or without the masks and this is mostly in the high school i'm referring to because that's where i am five days a week but so i think in general there will be you know respect for rules and what administrators and what the board is putting in place today and then
148with east up with providing masks in school in the high school right now obviously they're required but they're still they're still available there are boxes located pretty much everywhere in each classroom it's always right by the door and then in the cafeteria there are numerous boxes scattered all throughout as well as in the library which i would hope would stay and i'd anticipate that those masks would just stay there for people to grab so there are an abundance of masks throughout the school that students can grab and i've found myself going to those boxes all the time when they rip or whatever and then again i can't speak for every one in every situation but in general and from my four years in the high school um with like the exclusion and bullying part despite
149how polarized uh everything seems lately you know evident by numerous school board meetings it is not that harsh in the high school and that's kind of where we're also having those discussions i i'd be surprised if first graders were talking about all this stuff but in the high school in general like the the conversations we have in class at lunch in the in the hallways that i that i often hear because most of the time i'm included in those it's it's respectful they're calm it's more of kind of understanding what everybody wants and it it all seems to work out in the end and again i can't speak for every situation i know some some things you know escalator whatever but in general students i believe insulin are respectful and that's what i've seen and
150experienced so that's when it comes to controversial matters so ultimately mass gone or mask off i mean we're always resilient the the students always seem to overcome whatever's thrown thrown their way and we've made it this far in school so again mass gender mask off i think we'll be able to you know continue to thrive for the rest of the school year and into the future i continue to be so proud of our students i'm really glad that you chimed in there because i worry i mean i was i was reading the the survey feedback yesterday and i saw a lot of anger and fear frustration fatigue and a lot of division so i think we we have a ways to go as a community overall on kind of building bridges and and things like
151that i'm really glad to hear that the students are are getting along and and modeling that great behavior and working together i'd like to see that continue a lot of that feedback talked about fear of bullying for children who may not mask or may mask on both sides so definitely don't want to see any student or staff member have anything negative come out of this this plan i really think we should continue to stay flexible and the pleasant ridge conversation or harvest or whatever whatever school i really like working to empower decision making for unique situations in individual buildings or classrooms and so i would thank the staff and the families in advance if we need to be a little bit flexible in some of those situations but the largest thing i saw coming out
152of that feedback was everyone has a love of children and i think they appreciate the staff so let's keep that at our heart and move forward and thank you very much for um the presentation so i know you'll you'll uh do you want to talk about next steps like what what are you doing with the community or faqs or will there be an email tomorrow sure we will send out a email tonight through school messenger stating the plan moving forward and provide that to media outlets too and then the building administration knows to implement the educational plan tomorrow and or into thursday because we do want to get in front of that before february 28th okay thanks steve i think we're being cued that we we should entertain a motion to recess please uh can
153someone please make that motion miller so moved miller thank you derby second kirby all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 um we will take a brief recess do we want to say 10-15 minutes 10 minutes all right so we'll see you at 9 15. uh if you guys can all toggle your mics to off and we'll be back in 10. okay we're going to return from recess at 9 17 and move forward with our second scheduled report sr funding presentation and budget amendments assist assistant superintendent owsley okay we have our sr3 funding kind of review passed our last meeting that we had a public forum and did some surveying data so if we can go to the next slide so esser you might have heard that in the
154news and other times that we've used that acronym and this is what it stands for elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund this is federal money that is allocated to public schools to provide support through covid one of the things it might not realize is that it does start at the federal level then goes through the state level then finally gets guidance to schools and then specifically what and how to do to get the funding so even though it is federal money we see that a lot of the timing plays out very differently throughout throughout time next slide so this is just a recap of where we stand for esser sr1 funding was about 76 000 and really we we finalized that back in june of 2020 at that point in time we didn't really
155know what the next piece would be bring and there was talks about cuts to school funding and we utilized that money as quick as possible and drew that down and that was finalized back in like i said in june of um sr2 funding is about the 369 000 as to 3s 830 000. and the the reality of where we are today in sr2 funding some of it was released in last fiscal year but as it flowed to the state that got tied to some other things and only partial of that funding got released to schools and they tie barred other pieces to parts that whitmer had vetoed so it kind of went through that state level and then got caught up for a little moment as well and then really we in november they started
156coming out with a lot more things about sr3 and then found december due dates and some february due dates that we found out as just all unfolded so if you're on the next slide um so one of the things with all of the yeser funding we really can go back all the way to march of 2020 when covet started and all the way up to next fiscal year 22 2023 and with that we still have to have plans that are approved through a portal a grant portal that we use with mde and so even though the their past expenditures we need to get those approved and then be able to allocate those expenses then to those approved grant programs before then asking for those funds go ahead and next slide so part of the stipulations
157in sr3 was a requirement that they stated needed to go for learning loss in for the pandemic and that definition up there was slated as the school district must reserve at least 20 percent of the funds to address learning loss and implementation of evidence-based interventions and ensure they respond to students social emotional and academic needs suggest the disproportionate impact on underrepresented student groups and so that's us straight from the michigan department of education their definition and so with our essay 3 funding allocation that 20 percent represents that 166 000 number you see on the screen go to the next slide yep thank you very much okay thank you very much miranda appreciate that so miranda provided an overview i'm going to talk a little bit about allowable uses and district vision so one of the
158things we've been looking for is you know what are the allowable uses for these funds and on the right cut the right side column it talks about how we are looking at those allowable uses to better support our strategic goals so we're connecting with strategic goal at the top ideas ideas related to academic professional life skills for current and future success that that's um you know goal our goal number one and then allowable ways in which we're planning to do that or have already started to do that and then the second one related to strengthening family community and school relationships and some ways that we are already doing that are looking to do that in the near future third goal ideas related to social emotional wellness and mental health and then some connections that we
159are going to be are doing now and or are looking to do in the near future and then finally finances and how we're trying to address that with these allowable uses of the esser funds next slide please so really we've met multiple times one during a finance committee meeting where we had an sr specific finance committee meeting and looked at possible uses of these funds and then another was a community forum that we had recently we did that through zoom because it was on inclement weather day but it was very productive and we had a fair number of participants give us really good ideas in addition we did have a survey where we asked the community to more or less rank out of the 12 allowable uses that we put forth in front of the
160community and these were the three top responses overall number one continue to employ existing staff and or hire new in order to maintain quality of services that was number one number two was providing mental health services and support for our students and three was addressing learning loss amongst our students so now next we're going to get into the details of that so we can go to the next slide and i'd like to introduce cara davis she's our teaching and learning team lead and she's going to talk about how this all will come together so after we've looked at prioritizing both from the community perspective our district admin perspective our student perspective weighed in it was really interesting within those three priorities and then the other categories as well to see a lot of crossover between
161some of the things that we have previously had in action and had implemented programs structures routines um that came up in some of the suggestions or themes of the feedback that we've been getting and so something that i was really thinking about was oh so even though we are talking of course about esther funds tonight one of the things i think our stakeholders are really looking for is how are we supporting students and so you'll see some um ideas here that are ones that we have an action that are not all supported by esther funds necessarily but might be funded differently through the school and then i've also highlighted some that we are have earmarked with us or funds too but i really wanted everybody to be able to see the connections so previously at
162a board meeting i had mentioned that we were really well positioned as a district to support our students before the pandemic and then throughout this pandemic and as i was wrapping my head around how to best share some of the systems that we already have in place i'm going to credit caroline stout our district mtss coordinator for this diagram we actually built this in 2019 as a way to show how we've humanized the school system in addition to our strong academic programming and inside of it you see a lot of the things that we already have in place in saline area schools to support students in both their social emotional wellness inside of their behavioral internal and external behaviors and then connecting and empowering them and so this is a very complicated interactive drawing that
163you can actually click on the in the slide deck itself it takes you some descriptors of those things but these are pieces that we had in place already that we are either leaning into investing more time and energy into or even leveling up to meet students needs it's important to hold on to this because some of the students are some of the stakeholder suggestions we're actually calling up some of the pieces that we already had in place so what we've outlined is looking at those three priorities it's not to say that we aren't addressing the other priorities as well it's just we thought that highlighting these top three some of the surgery suggestions and the ideas that were either moved into action or are moving into action as well as where some of the presser
164funds are tagged would be really helpful so just to give you a quick understanding of how this diagram works so the priority is up in the left upper left-hand corner the response trends are from the 500 participant responses that was a combination of staff students and community stakeholders and those were some of the suggestions they made and those i wrapped in a general category and most of them were fairly general versus specific suggestions of how to get to those pieces and then in the yellow is moves that the district is making in order to be responsive to those trends or had already moved in that direction based on previous feedback and then the highlighted green ovals are the ones that we've assigned esser funds to that make sense all right all right so in this
165first priority area continuing to employ existing staff and or hire new to maintain uh quality of services some of the survey suggestions really centered on compensation being competitive having high compensation rates being fair their retention and hiring felt really important staff mental health being a huge component of us keeping our staff in the schools given the trend that we've seen in staff leaving various public education environments and then hiring specialty positions to take the burden off of the existing staff there so those were some of the trends that came up in the feedback that we received some of the things that we've put into place superintendent our assistant superintendent ellis worked this fall with the sca as you know to really look at our wages for our staff throughout our district and making those more
166competitive and having a great compensation package for them we increased our hourly cover compensation for teachers who were doing double duty and covering their open positions staff mental health supports our district administration and building teams have been working really hard to provide supports for teachers whether it is in the luncheons that we hold or providing an hour of coverage to have an additional planning time or an admin covers or to do some fun get togethers wellness wednesdays there's all sorts of examples how teams have come together to support staff and their mental wellness the esser funds in this particular category that we have tagged and we are funding a portion of the literacy tutors that we so hiring knew and funding that the additional nursing services that steve mentioned earlier and we are putting in
167an additional counselor at heritage at the 4-5 building of contracted services continuing to maintain the quality of the virtual learning for our students who are currently virtual maintaining some of our digital tools the one within the esser funds is zoom because we are still utilizing zoom to be really flexible i'm in order to give staff access to that for their own use and also for us to be able to run meetings in a much more flexible way and then also we have hired three student sel coaches or behaviorists and we've settled on sel coaches as the title for those so instructional staff are our coaching staff that will work specifically on social emotional wellness with directly with our students the second priority is providing mental health services and support and here you'll see some repeat
168ideas there was a lot of overlap between the suggestions and categories so in this one the new ideas are targeted sel lessons so social emotional learning lessons as well as mentor and advisory time from the ideas moved into action you can see the three that there's some crossovers so the counselor there the student sel coaches and the staff health supports are crossing over into this one as well as impacting the first priority in addition this year we have as you know a culturally responsive consultant who's really working with our professional development model to reach our teachers and teach into strategies to help all of us better meet our individual student needs create a culture of belonging acceptance safety inside of our classrooms a number of pd has been a number of opportunities for professional development
169has also been around social thinking we started the year with trauma informed strategies we're coming back to listening sessions for our community those academic coaches again i'm sorry that's a new idea on this one the academic coaches we are working with engage michigan and graduation alliance is a possibility to install academic coaches for students in need specifically at the secondary level and then as needed on other grade levels as well and then also additional advisory time so for example hornet time in the fall we're going to increase the amount of time as a transitional space i'm going to think about rescheduling and working with our schedule in such a way that when the students come back in that transition time that will be increased hornet time for them to get to know their mentors a
170little bit better we're also looking at a celine middle school advisory time as well and then addressing learning loss among students is the third area the third priority so you can see that retention hiring comes back in this one so keeping our excellent staff that we have and then other trends in this response category summer programming intervention remediation and then a number of people mentioned that social emotional strength so from priority to social emotional wellness indicated higher academic success and so it was really important a number of people noted the fact that our students will do better academically if their social emotional needs are addressed so in thinking about the ideas moved to action in this one the literacy tutors as mentioned before retaining our staff steve and miranda did a presentation prior to this
171board meeting about decreasing enrollment numbers so keeping our staff numbers in the places where we wanted to maintain the services that we are providing increasing numbers of students available in the high school academic strategies class as an example we also have something that's called best fit when our team time in the various buildings which is intervention time for students with specific skill sets addressed during those times specifically literacy student success meetings our staff does work hard in each of the buildings to meet regularly to talk about student needs based upon the data they are seeing both behaviorally academically socially including absence attendance to determine what students need supports and how they're going to best support them we're also going to begin integrating individual tutoring using both a contract from an idea we got from the
172community from great lakes so we were able to meet with them and set something up for this summer so we're in process with that as well as hiring our own teachers who are able and have the bandwidth in the space because we know that our own teachers who have connections with our students can have a really positive impact i'm in pain a stipend for that and then incorporating our academic summer programming which has historically been strong but continuing to hire our teachers and our staff in order to run those summer programs to meet student needs and then the academic coaches is an idea that comes up on this one too that we had in the other one and i should mention that while those are all ideas the esser funds ones that are highlighted are
173ones that we wanted to indicate and point out because that's specifically what's in the application and then the other ideas again we're using either different funding or they don't have a cost and those are not exhaustive there's lots of things the district is doing to support our students during this challenging time and we will continue to be responsive and look at the data specifically the data that's coming in this winter this winter from winter benchmarking our nwa cycle to see what do our students actually need and how can we be responsive to that so we've got scaffolds in place and are ready to respond when we get that winter data back too thank you thank you kara and steve and miranda um though we've lost a majority of our audience this is extremely important and
174and i appreciate the um the quick action in taking that feedback and really using those monies immediately for supports for our students does anyone have any questions or comments from miranda steverkira yeah jenny i just wrote down a couple of things and i don't know that they're necessarily questions just things to um highlight from the presentation but um i think it was slide six when we're talking about um except the slide the the one that talks about me retaining staff and offering competitive wages and i know while that falls under operationalizing operations and not necessarily the board i would continue to um i don't know i would just continue to encourage the board or encourage the administration to look at the competitive wages for literacy tutors and i know that we heard a little bit
175about that earlier this year but being that that is a field that i am engaged in regularly i have explored some wages in neighboring communities and wonder if we might be able to consider that as a part of this since it is on the slides here tonight um another thing that i noticed was um the name coaches a couple of times through this and um there's an important distinction coaching versus consulting so paying i guess specific attention to the training that the people in those positions have so that they can support the work that is being done for students in ways that um honor adult learners in in their um in their roles versus consulting where it sometimes feels like things are being put like another thing is being put on a on a teacher's
176plate and i i just i really uh i wrote down here the sel equals higher academic success and that is something that i know that i'm seeing firsthand this year so i appreciate the extra attention um for the social emotional component when oftentimes the only thing that's published you know locally and statewide and nationally are our test scores we know that those for the for that whole child to be considered we have to pay attention to those social and emotional needs so thank you for this presentation you're welcome and just to clarify the coaches as referenced in this presentation are student direct student coaches not adult coaches so the sel coaches would be working with students who are maybe struggle are having trouble integrating into a classroom with behaviors that are conducive to both their
177success and their peer success and so they might get assigned that particular sel coach to help them work through some of those things oh great yeah yeah that's that's an important distinction and then the academic coach what else is working directly with students that we identify who have maybe utilized all of the different resources that i showed you in that diagram and now they need an adult mentor while we've prepared that person to be inside of the district if we are unable to satisfy that because human capital is a real thing um then we do have a company that we can contract with so that that student has if they opt in has a mentor with whom they can touch base work get academic strategies help and or tutoring or get connected to local resources
178okay thank you i really appreciate that distinction because i've read that differently you're welcome great thanks anyone yes susan so i had a couple questions is there like an overlap of funds with the esser and ida like funding because i know some of this you know with the literacy tutors and not necessarily that but working with specifically the special education population yeah i will defer to miranda to answer that question sorry miranda i'm making you walk all the way over here so the district does utilize ida funds for special ed services and we use a lot of times a salary for those funding and so in general when and when layering in these federal funds is is one of those things that we have to be very careful that we keep with all the rules
179and things like that there is discussion that there might be semester fun or sorry some ida extra funding that kind of comes down from that but it's one of those things we've heard talks about it and it will flow through an isd role and we don't know if what the use is and what those uh what our allocation would be because of just as has it played out we haven't gotten all of those things for that so and some of that it's really extra tricky because we also have to worry with special education and how that funding works and maintenance of effort it's kind of something that we continually always look at and how that those legal rules play out thank you so it's as well to not only special education students but general ed
180support correct yeah i mean in general we have a lot of different funding sources that we always leverage as best we can for all of saline area schools and that's one of those things that we do get more funding for special ed students on a regular ongoing basis so most of those things even though they're eligible to put in grants i might not put it in a grant because i would lose out on other funding in a different source so we kind of are always weighing all of those options as these come down in the rule different rules that play or may or may not stay in place or given waivers for kind of concepts so it isn't always an ongoing thing that we're taking into consideration the bigger picture of our whole funding source
181as well and not to leave any money on the table that we could you know gain awesome thank you no problem and um i guess one more question um which would have you so with the programs some that we've already had in place and increasing programs as well i know some of that included like summer academic programs so i guess my question is will this increase the amount of students that we're supporting um and are we just kind of maintaining and supporting with funds are we expanding so like that maybe that middle student um versus the ones that we've identified at a different tier yeah i think what you're asking is can we support more students with the additional measures that we're putting in place yes like so for example the counselor at heritage will
182be able to support the social worker who's currently in the building it is a large student body population uh it's a transitional point both into fourth grade and then again to sixth grade so from fifth to sixth grade um and we've identified some behaviors there you know specifically as related to some of the behavioral things we've seen in other areas that haven't had the capacity and that will really help the teachers the administrators and the social worker who's on staff there so if i actually i'd like to add on to the um our upper level kids more at our high school level we've already um we're already looking at expanded tutoring options this summer with a contract with great lakes tutoring to provide those options and also the wave program the virtual program even though
183we're not necessarily doing it virtual they have additional staff available this summer that we've been talking about using so we're going to expand to another 40 50 60 students that really need that support at the high school level too great thank you any other questions or comments all right thank you very much thank you everybody thank you moving on to our section for action items i'd like to please entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the february 8th 2022 closed session for the purpose of review and consider the contents of an application for employment so moved miller honey thank you second second kirby thank you brad all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed abstain abstain thank you um and just so everyone knows obviously david joined us this evening as a
184new trustee so he wasn't present for that closed session on february 8th for for those who don't know um secretary jones will now pass out six copies of the um the closed meeting minutes we'll take a minute to review those we'll pass them back she'll tally them to make sure that she has all six and she'll shred those and give betty yankee thank you very yankee one copy to keep on file for one year year which will be sealed um so we'll just take a minute to read these all right candice just let me know when you have all of them back all right excellent um so we are voting to approve those as read motion made by jenny second by brad all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstain abstain all right
185thank you very much um i'd now like to please entertain a motion to approve the design and development bid as submitted by millennium energy company and lakewood partners for hvac project at celine high school as recommended by director of operations rex cleary motion gerbie support mcvay michael's support thank you very much um dr latch any comments on this one just real quick we have believe it or not the high school's not that old but these are pushing on mechanical controls that need to be replaced it's using really outdated software and it's a necessary component of the series 3 bond that we're in okay great any questions or comments for director lodge susan should this have an amount on it at this point or not yeah the the amount is on the front of the in
186your packet um limit millennium energy company 46 200 and like holy planners 36271 to help provide support for a project that's going to range between 1.2 million and 1.9 million in in some phases so ultimately this is for the cost for the people that are going to conduct the work okay i didn't know if it needed to be identified um within the motion okay in in the past we have included it so um if we can have the the minutes reflect the amounts that were in the board packet all right sounds good all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 on to our first discussion item of the evening school of choice dr lodge okay so all of you should have a handout that says draft uh
1872022-23 school of choice guidelines i'll give a general overview about what's different from last year it are you finding it okay okay ultimately we've had a similar pattern of saying that we have minimum of 10 openings at the various grade levels with the exception of sixth grade and ninth grade we've upped that to 20 minimum and the rationale there is that these are transition points for the district historically and we do want to signify to families that that this is a a generally a good time to enter enter the district not like there was a bad time but that we've we've seen students that were in different elementary programs come to the middle school in sixth grade same thing with students that may be in private schools up through eighth grade come into the high
188school in in ninth grade and so those are some of those natural transition points where we know we can sustain some additional enrollment but we're also at the younger grades trying to sort of stabilize the size of our classes so we may not be taking as many kindergarten students for example as we've had in the past but ultimately we will you what you do here is you take all the applications in and then we will go through the process of looking at numbers and what we feel that we can support and then it would follow on the second page it talks about the the window of time where people apply would be between april 4th and may 3rd with a lottery drawing occurring on may 9th and then students that are notified would need to
189accept through the lottery and be enrolled by may 27th so that would be the timeline around it all questions oh and i will say this is discussion so the next meeting we're talking about action no no action being taken okay yeah thanks for the clarification susan yes um i know there was questions about it maybe earlier this year or la no last year about the um cap and i know we had looked at policy around that so i didn't recall if that if that was um regarding like working with the unions or do you recall that 10 cap and what that's where that came from right the 10 cap was something that we have had listed in the past it's not really a policy per se but it's something that we've been um working towards
190within that range and last year we talked about not necessarily including that and we could revisit that you know there is this balancing act of where are we at are we at you know eight nine percent ten percent and so um last year we said that we were going to flex that so that it's around that area but not have that specific hard cap we could revisit it if um trustees felt that we should it was more guidance it wasn't it wasn't really in other words we had we hadn't enacted it in any policy at that point thank you i think that's good to clarify because i know that came up from community members and stuff so that's helpful i think he was looking down here at me he said that um maybe not but
191i um i appreciate the 10 cap because i in as much as i uh would love for us to um you know welcome welcome students for a variety of reasons to sling schools i also want to be mindful of the deficit that it creates in many of our neighboring districts um especially those who um you know it would leave a lasting impact on the students who who are staying in those districts and we've seen that already in our in our county so the 10 target i guess is is something that i'm comfortable with and if we were to you know change that drastically i would hope that it would come back as a discussion for us so i'll echo those exact thoughts so i would i'm comfortable with the 10 uh cap as well but
192i would like to see us being mindful of our of our neighbors and our surrounding districts and our programs and making sure that our students are you know i want i want saline schools to support saline students as much as we possibly can right so so that's that all right oh yeah candace go ahead yep quick question about how we um advertise the schools of choice so i know we put it on our website but are there other ways that we get the word out about um about our lottery process yeah it's a good question we really haven't advertised very much in the past we have had some discussions about you know whether we should advertise more however you know that's that's where you get into the whole cat piece we're kind of hovering around
193that eight nine ten percent anyway and i mean if we're advertising and potentially encouraging a lot of people to apply and then a lot don't get in it may be worse that that we're kind of insinuating that we have all these openings that we don't really have but so to answer your question we haven't advertised in the past so this would be i think a greater conversation for a future year that if we really were looking to expand here we'd have to opt out of that cap and kick up advertising so even right now we're not advertising and we're kind of hovering around our calf i guess is what i'd say to that that's helpful thank you sure yeah susan um can you clarify the lottery process and how um i know there's some perceptions
194um about that and so um i would just like like you to explain that yeah to clarify that it works we do have something called sibling preference that that's one thing that i think is important to mention and that would be that okay so let's say for example a school of choice family has a third grader in the district but also now has a kindergarten coming into the district potentially we're trying not to get into this thing where we separate families in that regard so that that kindergarten student would have preference first within the lottery before the general school of choice kindergartners get get selected so there's that element but there's also the element of the lottery means you're taking kids in order of how they come in and whether they um whether a student
195is um has a an iep or you know they're still treated in that order they they come in the one exception to that is if if students have been suspended or expelled from another school district we have the right not not to accept them coming in so that's generally the process and what happens is we we take all the students names and we literally pull them out of a hat and give them a number in order and then when we tell mandy rocky our enrollment secretary how many specific students we're going to take for each grade level she looks at the numbers on the you know cards and then contacts those families and we'll say you have until x date to enroll and for those that do not in theory we give those spots to
196other people because there is you know capture rate means that there are people that apply to multiple districts for their students and um you know traditionally or historically we've captured between 60 and 70 percent of the students that apply but it's definitely not a hundred percent and so that's that's how that whole process works yeah that's helpful um i do see um that there's a lottery drawing um which is you know may 9th and so families could go to that and it's a public transparent process yeah it's public transparent there um there was one year that we did a zoom live i believe i'm trying to think back on this but historically we always have it in person in the liberty board of ed room and um i would anticipate we're going to do that
197same process again unless it was like some big coveted spike potentially would move it online but we haven't done that unless we've had to thank you okay seeing no other questions or comments let's move on to our second discussion item on policy committee update uh vice president mcfadden thank you the policy committee did meet today we don't have a lot to announce but to the rest of you i want to share that there are the wells fargo wagon has arrived and we now have neola updates thank goodness and we'll be reviewing those over the next few days and then getting you know performing a bit of triage and figuring out which ones have to get before the committee uh the policy committee today reviewed policy 2340 field and other district sponsored trips based on revisions
198proposed by president seven we'll talk about those at a future meeting uh we are still waiting on administrative guidelines uh manual from neola and we are also going to be we put a pin in several policies that we want to look forward to aligning between the policies and our board operating procedures and those are uh the the way we fill vacancies the process for onboarding organizational meeting that happens once a year superintendent evaluation committees especially ad hoc committees and once again we're going to have to take a look at some of the elements of the public participation policy thanks to our public participators the next meeting will be march 22nd unless there are birthdays or things like that coming up i'm not picking on anyone in particular but you know we'll we're aiming for march
19922nd and i've got a lot of homework to do and a lot of materials to get to the committee's hands before then so looking forward to it all right any questions or comments for the policy committee susan so um the birthday um that michael is referring to is my daughter turns turned six today so [Music] but we um we had a birthday weekend we made bath bombs yesterday so i made up for it so happy birthday ariana happy birthday where's the cake yeah i like cake and i'm hungry okay moving forward julian we respectfully released him so he could complete homework and get on with his his high school life um administration updates okay three fast ones great job for a middle school science olympiad team this weekend they were at university of michigan and
200they compete in all sorts of different competition areas but the ones i saw some videos of were they they made these really cool electric planes and they were flying them all over the various buildings at u of m and so i'm lisa spencer's the coach there she does a tremendous job and they actually don't have the results yet but she did pass on that they had a wonderful experience at the university of michigan this past weekend also want to congratulate our middle school student shila smith who will be with us at the march 22nd board of education meeting to talk about this but was one of two just right michigan junior contest winners for her creative words and written expression so we're going to hear more about that which is exciting and then finally just
201want to thank the continuous support from the foundation for salinary schools that again has supported 31 grants this past year for 99 650 which is a credit to the foundation and the wonderful support of the community right excellent any trustee comments tonight yes yeah michael i i for the rest of the trustees i want to amplify the message that you received uh about the threat assessment protocol uh the washington association of school boards is is doing a zoom session that's for all of us i'm sure the superintendents know about it but it's a just good to be up to speed and learn some new terminology and find out more about it kelly haviland from the wisd is going to be reviewing that with us and i'm looking forward to that this thursday 7 pm zoom
202all right anyone else yeah brad i have one item i'll try to be quick so um i don't know where our masking conversations will will go as we go forward but uh i want to take a moment to acknowledge the toll that mask enforcement has had on educators over the past two years and especially this year i know what you've been through i'm only one voice i'm only one high school educator but it has not been easy our work is not done and i know that we all have done what we've had to do to do the best job we could to keep our students safe and but i know that for me personally enforcing masks has been an immense challenge and it's been something that has been hard on me and so i can
203imagine it has been on my colleagues you know i have a five colleagues who quite frankly i i'm no longer friends with because of masks um you know there are families who have 18 years of established relationships and those things are severely strained now and guess what i would say is this i just want to acknowledge your that this has been difficult i want to acknowledge that it's been hard for you i want to acknowledge that like you know that in our profession you have done the things we've asked you to do and i'm thankful for your commitment as a as a board member and as a human being and uh you know and i i want to just say that and i want our equity you know groups and our various groups in our
204community to to continue to engage with us and continue to engage with the washington county health department so that we can and and with our state and our local officials so that we can know how to best personalize them better best know how to understand your experiences in our schools and i just wanted to acknowledge that quickly thanks brad happy public schools week to you as an educator jenny and i know everybody working in education be nice to staff agree anyone else with any yeah candace go ahead yeah last week i had the opportunity to participate in the national esea conference and it was excellent it was my first in-person conference since uh the pandemics started so it there are a lot of ideas and i look forward to just bringing those back to the
205various committees finance committee and wellness great ideas for for sel staff wellness for utilization of esser funds etc so lots of ideas from across the country that i look forward to sharing with my colleagues and um also just wanted to to comment on on some things that have been said online about me and my family there there were some comments about whether or not what i shared during the last board meeting was true in terms of what happened to my son being called the n-word and yes it is true and and there was not more to the story there were comments that were saying no there must be more to the story or we don't we she didn't give us the full story that was the full story my son was called the n-word it
206was corroborated the child did admit to it um so i just wanted to to state that to clarify for the record and um there were also comments that said that my one of my children was the one that were passing around the the n-word pass and which happened at the middle school several months ago that was not true my child did not do that my children did not have anything to do with that neither did anybody in my family or anyone that was related to me so just wanted to clarify those two things i think it's really important that um you know if you have a question or you're wondering something about me or my family feel free to reach out my email address is jones k2 celineschools.org feel free to reach out i love
207to connect with our community and answer any questions anyone may have that's it thank you candace we support you and hear what you're saying and while we are elected officials our children are not period and so appreciate your comments thank you very much anyone else yes susan yes so um quick update about the wellness committee there was a meeting recently so i'm getting david up to date because they are joining the wellness committee and i'm coming off of that but they are creating a survey and so especially with the students finding out who their go-to person is right and so we had talked about what other surveys have been done to see if they can collect some data from you know pre-pandemic and to you know what's going on the two and a half years
208so i thought that was really great that they're developing that and then still waters counseling is wanting to partner with the school for different programs which may be you know professional development for staff working with and supporting students mindfulness series so a lot of different options thrown out there so i'm excited to see what comes out of that great who knows david you want to say anything you're you're first you don't have to i i may as well once again thank you to everybody it's um a delight to be here and i'm looking forward to working with everybody and getting up to speed on all my new committee appointments um it's an exciting first meeting to be on the board thank you all right thank you moving on to our consent agenda the following are
209offered as part of the consent agenda the motion noted will allow for the authorization of all listed items without discussion unless a member of the board requests that any one or all be considered individually i'd like to please entertain a motion and move to authorize the following items as part of our consent agenda a approval of the board of education regular meeting minutes for february 8 b approval of the board finance committee meeting minutes of february 8th 2022 see approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable february twenty second twenty twenty two in the amount of seven hundred and forty one thousand eighty three dollars and fifty four cents d receive and file our human resources report and e approval of overnight and or out of state field trips as submitted by superintendent lodge
210field trips number 83 high school baseball tournament columbus ohio may 13 through 14 2022 number two field trip number 82 high school baseball tournament indianapolis indiana march 29th probably march 29th through 30th i'm assuming item 3 field trip number 84 high school rowing sarasota florida march 28 through april 1st 2022 number four field trip number 81 high school wrestling competition detroit michigan march 3rd through 5th 2022 and field trip number 85 science olympiad competition allendale michigan february 25th through 26 2022. um could i please have a motion so move mcvay thank you michael second support susan thank you susan uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 7-0 in closing dr latch any items on our next agenda yeah we will have a literacy report and then continue to
211learn update with the updated washington county health department guidance and then school of choice action item okay and we will be back at our boardroom home for that one this is our second opportunity for public comment please a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting i do have one student form i'm seeing fewer people in the audience so we might call a few names i'll call it if they've left for the evening we'll understand and move on to the next uh caroline panjillian i hope i pronounce that correct i don't know if we have any students in the audience um seeing none we will move forward megan gunnersen parent and megan that mike might be off
212so just toggle it on thanks and you know the cards so actually i just have some questions or some feedback because i was so happy when i had asked for a little bit of feedback more publicly than through an email and then dr latch was kind enough to like give stats because i fee or numbers because it gave me more confidence as my kids went back to school every day so i thought maybe if i asked it here i might get some somewhere i do have a question when you write your letter tomorrow i couldn't understand if you said about the young fives or the preschoolers if the staff has to mask or if the little people are off also masking and so i just wanted to reiterate um a speech pathologist wishes who couldn't
213be here tonight and i totally agree with her little people they need to see our lips to see how we make that the f sound and the th sound and those types of things so i know that there was some um as we always talked k-12 k-12 but these little people they need to see your mouth and i've had four kids in speech before so by no means am i a speech pathologist but i'm really good at like over enunciating so if you could just maybe put that in your letter if this includes the little people and if you have any gray area maybe talk to your speech pathologist and then i had a question um directly related to um the meeting makeup so back in the day when we were all locked in our
214houses um we were able to use forums like zoom and others where there was a chat function and people could like write in a question and i see that there are five members of the team here that aren't directly related to the board and maybe one or two of those people could present those questions for people who can't be here i really do think it's a it's it's you know we use this for equity all the time people can't get here because of transportation they can't get here because of child care their ability to come just time management and and their age their own general health perhaps you know i know you live stream on youtube but maybe we could reactivate either the facebook chat one or um i can't remember the other one but
215i know that we've used it we used it um just two weeks ago with dr latch when we talked about what to do with esr funding so i know it's it's a possibility um and then my next um statement would be you know the surveys that come out especially this last one like they're kind of confusing and i use surveys all the time in healthcare um mostly i'm on the receiving end they get sent out by third-party um companies and then we get them back um the colors are brash the the questions are difficult and there's no numeric like we always try to use a one through four so you have to make a decision you can't sit in the land of three um and then always some room for a narrative down below which
216of course we read and take in too but i really feel like as we're talking about surveys here and we've used them before and then the last board meeting or last month's board meeting where we talked about all the points on the star everybody who came up was like we're going to survey parents we're going to survey parents well maybe we need to look at how those surveys are going out and how speedy people can go through them because we write our surveys at between a 5th and 8th grade education level and i know that this is a very genteel suburb and you know everybody here is you know considers themselves highly educated and we use great vocabulary words with our kids we need to maybe think about the general audience thank you miss jones
217all right thank you megan um next tiffany alexander parent there we go hi so first of all i want to start off by saying i really do respect everybody as i don't agree with your new plan mostly because i don't see where there's any details to this plan for me to agree with but i respect that everybody here actually does care about the kids at least up there i don't think that's reflected in the community in the room at all and also when you are listening to the community we keep hearing over and over again this thing that listen to your community listen to your community we are also the community people may not want us here but we are also the community and there are to a point that was just made that i
218actually strongly agree with um i don't know if there are resources for it but a great many special needs parents wanted to be here today but they felt it was futile that their it was not gonna matter and they don't have child care they can't just call a babysitter so that that is one thing i think people should take into consideration so on this plan i guess what i really mostly have are questions one is i'm confused on how everybody's phrasing uh the washington county health department's mandates it did i the washington we were not in line with the washington county health department washtenaw county health department was in line with celine you guys created that plan and mandated masks inside the school before they did well before they did so that i i don't
219see how we're in line with them no they were in line with us now the medical recommendations haven't changed what they've said is we're not going to legally remove cause you any problems but we still really think you should do this so following their guidelines means are we we're following the medical guidelines and the medical guidelines still strongly recommend masks so that that part is confusing to me now moving on to being responsive in this plan because if we can be responsive and flexible which is what i understood about the other plan and really liked about it then i can see like not right now the number's so high but going mask optional when we have an ability to be flexible i don't see where the flexibility is what was stated this is my understanding
220if i'm wrong i am glad to find out otherwise that it is going to be strongly recommended for them to to mask okay but in the case of like pleasant ridge where the numbers are really high so now we're going to communicate to people make sure the education people that these people are right everybody already knows we already know and everybody's made up their minds so but then the response was going to be we're still going to strongly recommend that's not adjusting that's doing the exact same thing as was already stated so i don't understand that r is the plan that we can reinforce masks or we're just going to strongly recommend thank you all right thank you tiffany next jennifer scarpati parent so i had something to say but i gave my time in
221the beginning and obviously things have changed with the mass but actually the director of the mdhhs elizabeth hertl has said individuals and families should assess their own risk for coven 19 exposure and transmission and make choices about when it makes sense to wear masks so i agree that we should not be making our children wear masks which would be a parent choice i'm a former teacher and when i was in the classroom i relied on my partnerships with parents because i understood that parents know their children best i also understood that our partnership and my respect of a parent's place in a child's life helped me be a more effective educator in the lives of my former students as a parent now i ask you yourselves do you know students better than their own parents
222do you know their favorite food their favorite color their dog's name i just have to keep track of dogs names do you know that they love dominoes or magic tricks with cards you don't so it has we have to stop being oppositional and start partnering again it will be rewarded in academic gains i know this as an educator true educators not agenda followers know this so again thank you for taking the mask off our children and letting them breathe and allowing us the choice masking should be that choice and whether someone chooses to mask or not that choice should be respected period when the masks come off march 1st let's all be mindful of each other's choice and practice being kinder than necessary at all times that said mr mcvay you owe this community apology
223any promoting of violence with your throat punch comment is not at all acceptable we just had a horrible fight in the high school and violence for any reason is never an option or an acceptable response think about what you say because words matter thank you all right thank you jennifer our next public comment is holly fillet blade i'm not sure she's here okay uh holly valade okay all right yeah no no sorry no no hallie and hallie left for the evening is that right okay okay um i'm gonna say not present um next is kevin cevich okay i'm gonna say kevin's not present um moving on connie creech all right not present moving on corey balot and crea you'll be our last public comment for the evening so you can just toggle it off whenever
224you're done whenever you're ready cool all right so um this is my statement and i did have a statement prepared for earlier but after listening to the seventh grader say everything i would have said and she said it better than i would have been able to say it i chose to read the poem instead because i felt it was very powerful i felt everybody should hear it i also didn't realize the rule changed in december so good to know um anyway i am a white middle class age heterosexual cisgender woman and i am on the deiac and i am on there because i have really good intentions i want celine to be a better place and so with that in mind i am very interested in the education plan that we have are going to
225have about the masks and respecting others as we are yet to be successful and teaching kids in the middle school to stop calling their kid classmates the n-word so with that in mind how do we think that we can educate and expect kids to respect those who are either not wearing or wearing masks and so therefore i hope no i expect that the education covers all forms of bullying and hate speech thank you thank you corey our next meeting the next regular board of education meeting will be held on march 8 2022 at 6 30 pm at the liberty board room i'd now like to please entertain a motion to adjourn the board of education meeting for february 22nd 2022 at 10 23 pm uh miller uh we'll make that motion thank you jenny second
226e-step support all right second yeah all right thank you susan uh all those in favor please say aye opposed hearing non-motion carry 7-0 we are adjourned 10-23