001hello testing one two three tell me when i have to stop talking how's that hello can you imagine how much i love you miranda um good evening i'd like to call to order the board of education meeting for october 27th 2020. please please rise for the oh no not rice in a minute shortly in a minute public comment for uh so the first thing we will skip the pledge of allegiance right now public comment students first do we have any students i don't have any thing here no call-ins no students all right then now is the time for the rest of the public comment and as a member of the pub a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes a request to be scheduled on the agenda of
002a future meeting please note that students will be given priority to speak on any subject 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 participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student so if people are calling in you might want to call in and get in line we have two public comments right now brian bosey bose bose sorry thank you brian next is kerry grove hello so my item might not be on the agenda it's
003a comment from something that happened two weeks ago is this appropriate okay so i i want to give an alternate opinion i heard last meeting that there was some concern about the school resource officer and some issue about some fear there i need you to know that i have a student in the schools and a graduate in 2017 my daughter made a comment in the second period she said it to her friend quietly it was overheard and misinterpreted by fourth hour it like gossip does in the school and seven students over the internet threatened her with bodily harm she found out about it was able to go to the school counselor and the resource officer at that time it was officer need he immediately contacted us and the other parents involved we're given the option
004of pressing charges against those other students so i value the resource officer and i want you to know that there's a purpose there and he stepped in and saved the consequences of those kids that might have had really different experiences right now so thank you do we have any call-ins we do not have call-ins okay so we're going to move to administration board updates i would like to so good evening everyone thank you for having me i thought if we have to do something late at night i might as well put my bit emoji up on it so have a little fun with that my name is kelly hanson i am one half of the quote unquote the kelly's that's how we've been referenced lately so i thought it was important to come up here
005and put a face to a name i am the saline area schools pack rep pac stands for a parent advisory committee this is special education driven and i have another special role of i'm actually the chair for the wisd version of this so that means all of the districts in washington county send reps to our meetings and we talk about things that are going on through the districts we bring information back we bring up things that are happening that maybe we can resolve we talk to different districts about topics i thought it was important to share our mission statement just so that the board can understand where we're coming from so our mission statement is the washington intermediate school district wisd pac advisory committee consists of parents of students of special needs we advise the
006wosc concerning planning and implementation of special education programs and services we work to ensure student success by strengthening the local schools families communities through collaboration use of best practices technology and a wide variety of strategies so you think okay kelly how did you get this role how did you get here so my day job is i'm a school social worker so i i deal with both sides of the table which puts me in a unique situation i understand what the schools are going through right now and it's tough really really tough and then it's really tough for special education kids to go through this right now too so i want to draw the attention to the celine seak email that is for parents to reach out to me and kelly van single who's the other
007half of me to help with concerns help with figuring out who they need to talk to or just having a friendly person to say hey you got this is there any questions i appreciate it thank you any other um administration up there just to just to echo some of the things that we've heard over the last couple meetings the staff and and families continue to to work very hard at making sure that the the kind of the fragile environment we have continues to progress and i really do applaud and thank the efforts to make sure that the students who are coming the virtual students all have the opportunities to access the curriculum and access education uh to the best of our abilities none of us intended on being part of a pandemic however we will
008continue to push uh to get as much academic content and social emotional support for all of our students and again i i am very proud of the efforts that we are making and want everyone to understand we will continue to push thank you um board updates we're going to start with our student rep please hello everyone um so i'll start with uh sports um they're wrapping up and moving farther into the playoffs soccer is playing in about 15 minutes for regionals cross country did well at sec reds and football has their first playoff game against pioneer on friday and finally field hockey plays for the state quarterfinals tonight so go celine and all of those um with clubs uh science olympiad placed high and had some individual high place finishers at the recent competitions culture
009appreciation club wrapped up its month of talking about china with a lantern art project and student council is doing a pumpkin carving contest for halloween clubs are there's a lot more happening with clubs i just mentioned a few but they're finding creative and interesting ways to continue doing what they want to do for the my things i'm still working on setting up a feedback loop and hope to have that done by the next meeting for kids opinions on covid and hybrid learning there was a survey sent out to all the students at the high school by the administration and i got to look at some of those results the results pretty much fell in line with the conclusions that i reached by talking to a few people two weeks ago there's some varying uh opinions
010lots of positive some negative and some things people that other people like some people don't like so just trying to find a common ground there um and finally uh the most probably most pressing thing on everyone's mind uh the election is next week so at the high school we're doing uh a few things for that uh shioni bandio pattier the senior class president sent out some voter registration invo to the lucky 18 year olds who get to partake in this election for the kids who don't get to actually vote the mock election ballot was sent out to all the students at the high school so the results will be announced next wednesday and then finally i'm lucky i'm 18 i'll be voting and working the polls however most the students in the district are not
01118. so on behalf of all of those i urge all of the people here who can vote to go out and vote thank you so much okay we're gonna start before we're gonna have two quick things that i forgot one is i wanted to announce that brian bowes will be speaking again at the end of the meeting with uh update um his audio was not on and i know some people have indicated they're interested in hearing that and then secondly the um i did want to announce the data related to zoom one of the things i want people to know that since september 1st we've had 23 128 zoom meetings as a school district with about 667 0007 participants encompassing 1.8 million minutes of zoom time so when we talk about what's going on educationally
012whether or not we're providing time we're worried about screen time but i will tell you there's a lot of content being delivered digitally so just wanted to share the information troy wiznink and our technology department pulled that for me that's as of a little while ago superintendent could you repeat the first number 23 108 is that what you said 23 128 meetings since september 1st that's through october 22nd okay we're gonna do board comments we're gonna start down at this end jennifer do you have any comments yep and i'll go quick because i saw kids so i want to get to that um last week i attended an masb sponsored webinar on mental health and stress management i thought it was very interesting it was done by a school social worker and it was mostly
013talking about staff i was talking about students but it was talking about staff and i thought it was really interested because a lot of times we say cliches like we're all in the same boat but we have to remember that in different individuals students or staff have different needs and i thought she did a really nice job of communicating some tips and tricks and found out later from scott that the training that was mentioned on the webinar was being done in our district the next day so that was very good dennis nothing to report for me i just want to remind my finance committee members will have a meeting next monday so the day before the election tim so i uh joined um the friday night light zoom on uh friday uh the foundation of
014senior schools had and i just want to commend them and all their hard work i mean they put together a really good friday night lights presentation and and uh stuff and then this weird environment wherein they uh they pulled something off and were able to get people together paul hi last week we had our cqc meeting we had a really great presentation about dementia and how to make celine dementia friendly town so i did get some soft copies of the presentation so i'll send those out to everybody and the police department has remodeled part of the basement into a weight room so the officers can get some relief so if anyone has any used equipment that they might not be using get all the chief heart and see what they still need they still had
015a couple things that they're missing michael i really don't have a lot to report except this week as you know i was working on trying to build a slate of representatives from across washtenaw to serve the washington association of school boards and i think we're getting close so thank you susan yes um so i wanted to second what are what noah talked about which was vote next tuesday it's a big election so be sure to turn out if you haven't if you have an absentee ballot make sure that you don't mail it um and take it to um your township your city um where um yeah we're where you're uh registered to vote so um let me see and then last week putting on mom hat and board hat at the same time heritage they
016had their nwea testing we have terrible internet at home so uh that was interesting but i was able to get secure um internet so my son could take his test with with no issues um and um i just wanted to um just seeing how his teacher is navigating everything and constantly troubleshooting and um you know being a far like from afar she had to like um you know uh accept um whenever the student would register to get them started so it was like you know with 30 some students right you're you're navigating all that and some students can't get in so in addition to do doing all of the preparing of lessons and you know helping with the students helping to navigate um they're they're doing a lot so um it it went well all
017the students um so uh yeah that's virtual completely virtual sorry thank you that could be in person but yeah you know i i just want to thank the the all the teachers all the parents you guys are all doing an amazing job at making sure we are engaging the kids as much as we possibly can it's a difficult time right now but thank you for everybody's efforts in in what we're doing next thing is our response to public comment and we want to thank you all for the comments from last week or last couple weeks we appreciate the feedback on the school resource officer position our return to school plan and the efforts of of the staff to provide some normalcy in the midst of the pandemic we really do appreciate the feedback that we're
018receiving and we're doing everything we can to try to respond you know to all the the feedback that that we're receiving so continue to communicate with us we do appreciate that um next on the agenda is uh any revisions on the agenda or a motion to approve the agenda as printed move to approved by michael seconded by tim all those in favor say aye aye oppose the same motion carried seven zero um next is scheduled report now we have the kids good evening my name is kenyatta hughes i am the proud principal of pleasant ridge elementary i'm here this evening i have some of pr's brightest and best virtual learners can you wave guys oh they can't wave right now okay they look cute though right okay um and we are here this evening to
019showcase some of the great things that are happening in our virtual settings virtual classrooms with our virtual learners um i would like to say that we are living in a largely um unprecedented time and i would like to say that our staff teachers and families are doing a great job of stepping up to meet the evolving needs of our students the pandemic has created some new challenges if you would agree and they forced upon some demands to be more creative in adaptations with students and i would like to say that i'm very proud of mrs caldwell along with other staff members who are rising to the occasion to meet these challenging times without further ado mrs caldwell hi everybody thanks for having me tonight first graders can you see me can you wave to me
020yeah can you hear me okay touch your nose if you can hear me touch your nose if you can hear me yeah there we go okay it's set up a little bit different so i'm trying to figure out how it's going to work tonight so give me just one second i'm a virtual teacher at pleasant ridge so this is a new experience for me i'm still a person that carries around a paper calendar so this is it's called you are new um i i'm not thanks ethan um do you know mr j do you know why that's happening he says i'm on mute he can't hear me oh yeah ethan can you hear me though i don't think he can hear me austin can you hear me give me a thumbs up if you can
021hear me i don't think they can hear me anna can you hear me you are new anna can you hear me anna take yourself off mute take yourself off mute anna they can't hear me okay sorry i know you guys can all follow my signs i can't hear her name um we can hear you but what you but you're you know you hear that so you guys have been so patient and i'm grateful for you to come tonight we're going to show everybody a little glimpse of what we do in the classroom are you guys ready all right so i'm going to share my screen just like you would in the classroom and can you guys get your boards ready and show me what to do so today you're supposed to draw a picture to
022show how you are feeling it's off it's off and write one word to go with it okay can you guys hold it up to show me [Music] they're all muted i see happy awesome who else can show me a lot good job you guys let me see it hold it up a little higher emma good work lots of happies tonight ashton i love to see you work good job all right put your caps on your marker put your sock down and let's stand up and say the pledge would everybody join us um let's see do i have a volunteer to say the pledge for us tonight it looks like caroline's not here anna you want to do it for us and mute yourself i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america
023and to the republic one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so each day we have somebody different say the pledge for us and on constitution day they each made their own flag so let's do this sorry about the sound first graders we're going to show them how we read some poems together so even if you're not a reader at this moment i want your eyes and be reading with us so all right and i'm going to have cruz read the title eva you're going to do the first line maggie you're going to be scarecrow 1 camden you'll be scarecrow 2 austin 3 winnie 4 mj5 and emma you're going to finish for us remember friends and mute yourself give me a thumbs up if you're oh ready okay cruz here we
024go fire says ear crows five soft scarecrows in the cornrows the first one said go away crows the second one said i am very small it told one said i am standing tall winnie or four the fourth one said on my head i wear hats the fifth one said by my feet runs a cat five star scarecrows in the cornrows moving left and right as the autumn wind blows nice job friends good reading all right can you do me a favor and we're gonna switch to math and we're gonna show them how we practice patterns and count by fives and we're gonna play freeze are you ready so i want you to write the number that comes next and you need to unfreeze me by putting down the right number here we go 0 5
02510 15 20 25 [Music] help can i have a volunteer to count for your friends all right anna go for it nice and loud now everybody listen and it's gonna freeze 5 10 15 20 write the number she's frozen oh make sure your numbers don't get invaded by that backwards guy check it i see one backwards number all right put your white boards down good job ashton anna do you want to call on a friend anna okay emma i mute yourself 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 so we use slates a lot to get immediately put a zero first austin double check good job you're unfrozen emma good work all right these kids sat a long time did you guys wait a long time to get in so do you think
026everybody needs to do a movement break with us all right so naomi can you ask everyone to stand up [Music] tell them to stand up and naomi what are we going to do jumping jacks how many ten okay you count for us here we go one two three four five six seven eight 9 10. ashton could you tell us what to do what's our movement going to be ashton what are we going to do uh how many how many ten ten like an elephant here we go one two three four five six seven eight nine ten good job thank you for participating first graders you did a great job can you say either wave goodbye give me a fist bump or a virtual hug and you guys are free to go go get a good
027night rest read a book okay good job see ya and i'm gonna bye guys i'm gonna show you one more thing as many of you talked about there's some um different things that come up with virtual learning and the host can actually get kicked out of the meeting and it's fun when kids are left alone so and it turns into a great writing opportunity so this is olivia's writing that she wrote and it just came back it's just one page but i'll share it with you let me see hold on hold on one second all right here we go see if it works fingers crossed you never know once me and the kids were talking was confused she goes on to write a little bit more but that's just a glimpse of it turns into
028stories when that happens so thank you and thanks friends you guys may that's just a go of what oh oh sorry um it's all the computer stuff so um and so it's been great we're on the same team and i'm so grateful for that and finally the team at pleasant ridge and throughout the district my first grade team has been amazing we have worked hours and hours we plan every week hours to figure out how to present it in a way to get them engaged to figure out a way to get feedback and i couldn't do it with all of them each week so that's been the one really big thing that i've walked away with this year so thank you just a little glimpse anybody have any questions thank you daddy yeah i just
029want to say hi i'm smiling i'm i'm smiling at you huge underneath here and great job and um you're a fabulous teacher thank you i appreciate it tell ryan and sydney i said hello thank you so much [Applause] okay uh next on the agenda is the um action items these may be new items or those that have been postponed from a previous meeting to this specific meeting or require further action i would like to entertain a motion to approve the audit report as submitted by assistant superintendent osley dennis and i sorry was was it you okay and paul um any comment um i would like to invite jeff higgins forward i'd like jeff to bring his auditor via zoom and then if you can just come forward jeff do you need the clicker um good
030luck topping miss caldwell tonight [Laughter] sorry well thank you i will not not try to top that in fact i'm still trying to catch my breath i'm a little winded from the jumping jacks but but thank you and uh and good evening again my name is jeff higgins i'm with plant moran we are the district's independent cpa firm here to present the results from the audit for the district's year ended june oh i'm sorry no okay that's fine might make make it easier to understand i suppose but but again i'm here tonight to present the results of the audit from the district's audit for the ju it's year ended june 30th 2020. there's three documents that come out of our audit process the first one is the financial report with supplemental information which contains the
031district's audited financial statement there's a separate federal awards supplemental information report which is our separate audit of the federal programs administered by the district and thirdly there's a report to the board of education which provides information on the audit process and results as a district's auditors it's our responsibility to express an opinion on the financial statements based on an audit conducted in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the united states of america and the standards applicable to financial audits contained in government auditing standards issued by the comptroller general of the united states and i'm pleased to report here tonight that based on the result of our audit procedures we've rendered an unmodified or a clean opinion on the district's financial statements so that just basically states that in our opinion the financial statements are
032free from material misstatement this is the highest level of assurance that we can present on a set of financial statements as auditors and tonight we're here to present some of the highlights from the results of the audit the activities of the district are recorded in various funds to show how the particular expenditures of the district are spent and the various revenue is used we're going to focus on the general fund tonight as that's the district's primary operating fund and where most of the activity is recorded the first slide presents the balance sheet of the school district for the years ended june 30th 2020 and 2019 for comparative purposes you'll notice that the assets are primarily comprised of cash which is approximately 6.7 million as of june 30th next there's about 10.7 million and receivables and
033then about 3 million of other assets which would represent enter funds prepaids and inventory primarily the key item on the asset side to keep in mind is that included in your 10.7 million of receivables is approximately 7.4 million due from the state of michigan for the july and august state aid payments as we'll talk about in a couple of minutes the majority of the district's funding is through state aid the state actually pays that state date in 11 installments the first of which is in october and then it actually continues on through the following august so what that effectively means is that roughly 18 percent of the district state aid is received actually after the end of the district's fiscal year end all districts are funded in the same manner and it's just important to
034keep in mind because it does create cash management challenges for school districts again given that they receive such a significant portion of their state aid after the end of the fiscal year end so where that will come to light is then the liability side of the ledger you'll see there's roughly 2.9 million in accrued payroll related liabilities that primarily relates to accrued wages and benefits related to employees who are paid throughout the summer months for july and august then you'll see there's a state eight anticipation note of roughly nine point or roughly nine million dollars celine like very many districts in the state has taken out what's called a state aid anticipation note again this is just to help manage the cash flow of the district primarily as a result of the delayed state aid
035payments that we just talked about that you're still expecting to receive as of the end of june the difference between your assets of about 20.6 million liabilities of roughly 16 million is your fund balance of approximately 4.1 million dollars next we take a look at the general fund revenues and you'll note that this is excluding what's known as the mipsters the 147c payment this is state funding to support the retirement system essentially what happens with these payments is the state provides money to the district which it then just turns right back around and hands back the retirement system so it doesn't provide expendable resources for the district so we exclude that just to make it more of an even comparison between the two years but you note obviously that the vast majority of the revenue
036comes from state aid and state sources primarily that's through the foundation allowance so again the foundation allowance is a per pupil amount that's set by the state so for june 30th 2020 for celine that foundation allowance was eight thousand one hundred and thirty three dollars per pupil you take that by your official membership count of roughly 52 100 students and that comprises again that combined number is more than 70 of the total revenue of the district it's important to note based on that that obviously the majority of the district's revenue comes from the state and so local districts have really very little control over their funding levels they're really dependent on the state where that really comes to light is in an issue similar to we had this year when the coveted crisis hit and
037the state economy took a significant impact state aid was actually reduced right at the end of the year in august there was concerns as we're into the may and june time frame that that per pupil foundation could be reduced by up anywhere up to 650 to 700 per pupil that would have resulted in roughly a 3.6 million dollar funding cut for the district in august when they went through and did some updated financial forecasts they determined that they would be able to limit that reduction to 175 dollars per pupil but again the result of that was that you received roughly 900 dollars less in funding in august than you would have otherwise planned so again you're sort of at the mercy of the state and therefore the the state economy for the funding of of
038the district next we'll take a look at general fund expenditures and again to keep it even this does exclude those 147c uh payments that we talked about a moment ago this graph classifies your expenditures by object as you can see roughly 88 percent of the expenditures are for salary and benefit costs which is what you would expect obviously a school district is in the people business of instructing students and the majority of your costs as you would expect would be salaries related benefits and you can see those percentages are pretty comparable from 2019 to 2020. this next graph provides a little bit more insight on those expenditures and compares it for how selene compares to some of your neighboring districts this graph compares the instructional expenditures of the districts as a percentage of the operating
039expenditures operating expenditures is essentially the total expenditures less capital outlay debt service community services and transfers just to provide a more equal comparison amongst different districts and you will notice that this is as of june 30th 2019 which is the most recent year for which there's complete data available but you'll notice that you know celine has roughly 64 percent of its operating expenditures going into instruction which again compares very favorable with your neighboring districts what this essentially shows is that you have a greater percentage of your expenditures going right into the classroom in saline this graph takes a look at the history of the general fund revenue over or under expenditures it's essentially uh comparable to if you would the net income for the general fund for the year so if you take your total
040revenue for 2020 of roughly 62.8 million unless your total expenditures of roughly 61.5 million this is a difference of approximately 1.3 million which then adds to your fund balance level and you can see some of the historical trends of where we've been for the last several years but the important thing here is that again this then adds to your fund balance and as we talked about on the first graph your fund balance is essentially your assets minus your liabilities and again that number is roughly 4.1 million as of june 30th 2020 and your the deterrence when your revenue and your expenditures in any given year subtracts or adds to that fund balance level fund balance is a metric that we really spend a lot of time looking at it it's important from the fact that
041it represents the financial reserves for the district it allows the district to plan for unplanned expenses so if you have for example unplanned maintenance or higher than expected utility bills it allows you to handle those types of unplanned expenses it also helps insulate the district against revenue losses and funding instability clearly 2020 reflected you know highlighted the fact that there is a fair amount of funding instability in michigan certainly with this last year with the current financial crisis and fund balance again it enables you to deal with those types of unplanned situations a little bit more um long-term for perspective and you don't have to make immediate drastic reactionary cuts to things that might pop up throughout the year and so again it represents those financial reserves so the question then becomes how much fund
042balance is adequate this graph sheds a little bit of light on that this represents the general fund balance as a percent of total unrestricted revenue so again it would be your 4.1 million a fund balance divided by your unrestricted general fund revenue of approximately 50.4 million this is a metric that the state actually uses in determining fund balance levels for districts so back in 2015 the state enacted what's called early warning legislation and that's designed to identify districts that are showing signs of financial distress and so the state measure would be districts that are at below five percent of this metric for the last two fiscal years are potentially showing financial distress so clearly that's a number we want to stay above and you can see we've made a little bit of headway this uh
043this last year we've been able to move that percentage up from roughly 5.7 to 8.2 percent for 2020. so we do have a little bit of breathing room but it's still you know important to keep in mind that this would be you know we're still below our peer peer districts essentially would still be below the state average in that level and that that metric and again with the significant amount of funding uncertainty um you know the state managed to keep the fund the per-pupil foundation essentially flat for this current fiscal year but essentially they managed to do that by using most of the state level savings and so to the extent that there's any continued blimp blips or interruption the state economy and if they have issues funding that appropriated per pupil balance again the
044fund balance is going to be important to maintain our level of programming if there are you know happen to be future prorations so that uh represents a quick quick summary of the financial results for june 30 2020 if anybody has any questions i'd be happy to to take those this evening hi thank you um with regards to fund balance can you tell me what the current uh after this last fiscal year what the current average is in washington what the current average is in the state as compared to our 8.2 i don't have the numbers for the for washington specifically i can give you some context on the state percentage so the common percentage is actually generally general fund revenue divided by total expenditures and so just for from that metric again using that 4.1
045million of fund balance your total expenditures are roughly 63 61.3 million that percentage is about 6.6 percent if you look at the state average as of june 30th 2019 that average was about 14 and so again 2019 is the most recent year that data is available i would say that anecdotally what we're seeing as results are coming in is that because a lot of districts when that may june time frame they were expecting potentially a 650 per people cut they made some pretty immediate reductions to fund balance or two expenditures excuse me when that cut only came in at 175 just because of that kind of one-off situation i would guess that that 14 will probably be something comparable for june 30th 2020. but again we're at on that metric about 6.6 percent compared to
04614 percent of the state average for last year jeff i don't have a question per se but one i would like to thank you and anthony who spends a lot of time with miranda and her office i'd like to thank brenda owsley and the business office for all the work they did you know obviously not only for the audit but also putting us in a position to have a favorable year there's a lot of turmoil moving forward and so um to the extent that we can start to to put ourselves in a relatively stable scenario as we look at the uncertainty that we're facing um i think that's a strong step forward for us and we'll only serve to support our staff and students so thank you jeff do you foresee any changes either in
047accounting uh principles or procedures that would affect us or in uh just what the state might propose the big impacts are again just what the state's going to propose there's really not any significant changes in the immediate future from an accounting perspective they're going to have a significant impact on the district there's a few things that are always changing here and there but from a fun balance perspective there's really nothing that's going to have a significant impact the key considerations really are just the funding for the next two or three years and where that's going to land mr higgins i have a question um earlier one of the earlier slides you had some pie charts and they compared the the bridge the summer bridge last year was about 3.5 million this year it was almost
0489 million nothing exceptional in that as far as you're concerned uh i'm sorry which graph are you i don't know the number perhaps you hat can go back up go backwards one of the pie charts uh nope i think it was a graph actually but well there we go that'll do actually that would if you go back there you go so under a state and uh aid anticipation no you know one year it's nine million the next year it's three million is that concerning at all to you or because six million dollars is quite a bridge to quite a gap to bridge yeah i mean so keep in mind that those state aid anticipations are taken out typically in august or september and so you are trying to forecast future cash flow needs and again
049so that balance is up but correspondingly you'll see your cash balance is also up so cash at the end of 2019 was about a million dollars at the end of 2020 it's about 6.6 million dollars and so it's really just offset by additional cash you had on hand to deal with the summer expenditure so again you're trying to forecast out what are we going to need you know several months into the future um but it wouldn't it doesn't indicate to me necessarily that we we borrowed a bunch of money and then spent it all and now we have an issue it's really just we have more on the the state anticipation nope we also have more cash on hand to to utilize to cover our expenses yeah and i can i can speak to that
050um we transitioned building uh our transition business uh officers and and i think uh miranda owesly's approach is to have additional cash on hand we had some we became very close relative to cash flow and payroll the previous year and so because borrowing costs are so low um the idea of having sufficient cash on hand to make sure we don't come into spot where we're moving things all over in order to make uh frankly to make payroll in these intervening months when our state aid our strategy has in 2020 and as well as this year has been to borrow slightly more and again our cost of borrowing because of various financial markets is very low so so well i appreciate that so the so really the bottom line is the cost of borrowing that money
051really wasn't much of a ding at all on our budget and i appreciate that no it provided us insurance for cash flow thanks mr higgins any other questions thank you so much and thank you to the business office for making uh what could have been scary um a pretty good ending result of fund balance so it's a lot of work to get to that point all right well thank you and i would like to echo our thanks to miranda owesly in the business office they do a great job being prepared it's a significant undertaking to go through an audit so we appreciate all their help and cooperation throughout the process all right thank you jeff can you hand me the clicker as well okay so we i'd also just like to point out that you
052know again saying what uh miranda owsley and the staff did there were no material adjustments that were put through on this report which is is pretty good there are no surprises that we have had this year which is also extremely good thank you so at this point we call the vote all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed the same motion carried seven zero next on the agenda is discussion items return to school update superintendent graydon all right thank you as has become the uh the general norm we do weekly or apartment weekly we basically do um let me get back to get to where we're okay there we go yeah get back to the top here um did we do uh me every meeting we do a return to school update and
053so um these have shifted from conversations around what type of plan we will be approaching to our information we're sending to the state whether it be our continuity of learning plan or now our extended continuity of learning plan and really in the last two meetings in particular have shifted to tracking the metrics associated with the covet cases in our community and in our area and then also kind of our timeline for progress towards more in-person time as well as opportunities for families to consider what type of instructional model they want and so that will be the the main focus of the discussion tonight as this slide is becoming more and more prevalent the metric associated with how do we determine what whether or not we move from one uh one area of instructional model to
054another and so um i'll go back to this target that first line in terms of what we would want to see these were numbers that we developed at the start of school and really looked at the the uh the protocols that were put forth by the cdc at the time as well as other state models several states early in the summer had developed models for reopening schools we focused on those and i'll talk a little bit more about that so those are targets obviously we don't want to have uh case positive cases or cohorts if you think the zero zero it's the first number would be a number of positive cases and the second number is the number of students and staff in quarantine on any given monday and then percentage of positive tests in
055washtenaw county percentage or number of new cases per 100 000 residents and then some overall things we have a health committee set up that has representatives from each of the bargaining units as well as our nurse karen hervey and dr lacha myself when we look at every other week we look at these numbers and so on october 15th we looked at the numbers and uh we were had one positive case and five uh members of our community in quarantine um which is relatively uh frankly at this reflecting on it now is great um we the positive case percentage was below the three percent the number of new cases in our community was right at our threshold we had relatively flat i added the 505 at the time it was the 493 and the 496 numbers
056those were just the straight number of new cases in washington county over the previous two weeks do we have evidence of compliance when i talk about compliance really means mask wearing social distancing hand washing et cetera do we see our students and staff complying with our with our protocols and the general evidence remains yes and then kind of regionally region one if you are familiar with the my start my safe start map really looks at this concept of what goes on in our region as it relates to the percentages and numbers so that was the 15th by the 21st uh the following tuesday we got together as an admin team we were looking at this idea of being back into a larger in-person model at the at the young five to fifth grade model the
057numbers have begun to uh begin to move up drastically and we we put the pause button on and really focused on what does november 4th look like and indicated that we would be making another announcement to the community early this week well it's early this week and now the the next phase that we want to really is what are we looking at currently so this is as of well the the dashboard really is the dashboard that's on our website um that we we will update every monday that is actually now less our apartment bills are more than what is reported there but i don't want to confuse people indicate i'm going to stick with the dashboard numbers we have as of this monday we had four positive cases and 31 students and staff in quarantine
058that number is slightly higher now the positive cases have gone up to three percent although the my start page does have us at 3.5 as we're continuing to see growth in those areas our cases per 100 000 had gone from nine on the 15th to 23.5 and our number of cases in washington county are versus the 505 it was the previous week and uh on this thursday based on just tracking the numbers daily that 828 will be lower than what it will assuming uh we have cases in the next couple days will be higher again this week we still see our compliance in case and then certainly our regional trend has continued to grow i think it's important to note um what we're seeing in wausau county i think there's a perception because of the
059major announcement by the university of michigan that is that washer county somehow is is an anomaly across the state in in communities that uh don't have colleges and areas that don't have they're seeing continued growth we're seeing school outbreaks and certainly um within our own community we're seeing an increase in in numbers the um this is our dashboard so if you look at this and this is noted every week we do send out a new update on monday we work with uh nurse karen hervey to to look at these numbers to make sure um no you you can come you come on the list if you're positive or in quarantine uh if you're on a given monday you're not then you would come off so this is not a cumulative list we do have some
060opportunity to have uh you can see the archived dashboards on there in addition we are to post within 24 hours if there is a positive case in the school um and so if you look at the the note there but if you were go to the page with our dashboard go underneath you look click on that positive case updates and each instance that we've notified the community is located there so you can still get kind of if if members in our community want to look back at kind of where we've been week to week you can certainly do that but note that the dashboard that will be published each week is as of that monday kind of that monday morning time frame as it were and yeah yeah oh there we go um so this
061is the the reported cases from uh from washington county this was from the 26th we had 80 there were 87 cases today um just to note and so this is again where we look to see where we're at as it relates to the county of the previous two weeks and this will be updated from a two-week window this coming thursday at around three o'clock we will look at that and again each day if you look there they'll see the number per per day this is the my start page you look at the 3.5 percent we are now over that that number continues to go go up as it relates it's still relatively low one of the things you'll see if you look across the state at various counties the washington county number while the cases
062per 100 000 is is fairly high as it relates to other counties our positivity rate is relatively low and been told based from the washington county health department that a lot of that is due to a great deal of asymptomatic testing that occurs around the university of michigan and so when you're testing different programs and teams um the other asymptomatic it does drive down the positivity rate slightly although again it is above the uh the three percent threshold daily new cases um this is a number that obviously is concerning was just evidence of community spread i think um i i can look at this graph and and know that there's more spread i can also look around our community and look at our dashboard and see that the community spread is within our community as
063well and then this is this is the the graph that i think continues to start to gain a little more um relevance and this is a graph and a model that came out after schools had started the michigan department of health and human services delivered this to local health departments as a framework for decision making for schools and to help schools make decisions about reopening and if you look at where we're at you know our percentage of positive tests is in that three to seven right that medium risk range but our our cases per 100 now they use the cases per million of course we can't use the same metric across various groups but if you do the math on it we're in the very high range relative to that and so then when you
064look across their graph and and see okay we have buildings with known cases and staff and students but no ongoing transmission i do think it's important to note that the cases we've had have not had ongoing transmission from the school setting but it does put us in a spot where we need to consider reducing density to affected buildings and cleaning contact tracing et cetera it really does put us in a spot where if we're considering the move forward which i frankly have been considering and an advocate for more in-person time particularly at our younger levels based on the the guidance from the michigan department of health and human services they don't recommend that conversations with the washington county health department have indicated now may not be the time to move forward with uh plans to
065to add in-person time and so we find ourselves in a challenging situation as it relates to what we're seeing in our community and our ability to continue to increase in person time which i think if you talk to the families that chose the virtual in person or the chose the gradual to in-person model we want more time i think if you talk to our staff from an inherent standpoint of wanting more in person time the answer is yes from feeling is it a safe inspirement these types of numbers and the evidence we're seeing of spread within the community really do have an impact on our staff in terms of their i think their readiness and i think the the anxiety level that they feel relative to adding uh to in person so a couple of
066of key points around this i want to be be clear um i think i went too far um just a couple of key health points that that have come up in areas i want to clarify um yeah i had some some feedback that you know we're not being forthright with our discussions around the fact that there's not been school transmission because how do we have these cases and not have it be transmissionable there are two things that come out exposure and close contact are two very different things the idea that there's somebody in this building that is infected and that somehow we are all now considered a close contact we need a quarantine is not accurate it's not accurate by the washington county health department nor the the cdc and it's defined as someone who
067has been within six feet of an infected person with or without a mask for a cumulative 15 minutes over a 24 hour period and that that period has been starting from two days prior to the illness onset and the time the patient is isolated so there's this essentially this period of uh ability where where an infected person or a person who tests positive is infectious to others and so i think that's an important note one of the things that we've had a couple of times is individuals who have been to school on thursday don't show symptoms till monday they don't come to school on monday they test positive they by definition are not a close contact with anyone who is in school on thursday so again i think it's important to note when in some
068of those scenarios that play out there are also scenarios where we've had individuals within within the building that have not been in close contact with other individuals it's a little bit easier for staff obviously in that sense and we've worked through those as we go so i i want to be very clear that the presence of someone who eventually test positive in a school building in and of itself does not mean that everyone in that building is now a close contact and that exposure and close contact are different we continue to work through that in a diligent way we have had students and staff that are quarantined based on being in school with someone who's positive but we've not had evidence of transmission within school and that's that what the that is what defines a
069school outbreak where you would have multiple cases of positive i'm covered where that's the greater likelihood that it happened at school so the uh the other one is the social distancing and younger students one of the things that we're continuing to see and we continue to have conversations with the washington county health department as well as others we are not seeing whether it be in our community or across michigan in particular frankly it's across the country but it will put focus on michigan the higher infection rates women confirm transmission levels within students 10 and under we're just not seeing that level of transmission and when you think about the size of our students and one of the things that the american academy of pediatrics has noted is the three foot social distancing target for younger
070children and it simply goes down to the lung capacity and the ability for the the spread to occur from a seven-year-old is very different than a 15 year old and so they're seeing that they're just not the transmission whether it be from students to students or from students to adults at the younger levels and so that is one of the reasons why i think we're a little more interested in the idea of can we make safe environments for our young fives to fifth grade students and make sure that they can be in school a little bit more i think it gives us hope although i will tell you given the spread we're seeing our community right now we're also gives us pause in terms of the the level there's there's a time and a place
071for us to move forward and i'm going to be very frank and share information with the community after the meeting tonight that now unfortunately is not that that time so i will be sharing information with the community later this evening secondary schedule as noted last week remains the same we will continue with the same hybrid model um through the end of the first trimester which is now november 24th that's the tuesday prior to the thanksgiving break of note the alternative high school is four days a week in person i think it's important to note because you know you think about are we taking advantage of situations where we can safely do some of the things we want i think that's a perfect example of a program that has moved forward with a four day weekend
072model because it's best for their students and it can be done safely so an alternative high school is a very different environment fully loaded then saline high school is fully loaded and i want to be clear about that the second is elementary and and we are we are committing tonight to just stay with the model we have right now for the first trimester one of the comments we've had from families has been the need for some degree of certainty around what that schedule looks like for extended periods of time and while many families who are in the graduate in person want us to be in person more they also want to know what to expect and be able to plan particularly as schedules and and commitments become more and more busy as we head into
073the kind of the holiday season we are also hearing our parents as it relates particularly to friday in the learning format on friday would there be a way for us on friday particularly in the morning to have some more synchronous opportunities for student learning and to really set the table for that day for their learning to occur and i think that's a conversation that i know our instructional staff had this morning and there will be more further conversations this friday in particular with our elementary staff talking about what can that look like how can we even though we know at this point given what we're seeing in our community we can't move forward with more in-person time can we find ways to do some more direct instruction as well as continuing to provide the much
074needed time for planning lesson development and continuing to work through what we call the lms which is that learning management system where we know our staff needs to house their materials in because we do still have a fear that as we progress into winter we may see periods of closure and if we do we need to make sure that we can move quickly and seamlessly to the extent possible into that virtual environment that ms caldwell has been able to show us this evening so the next steps for us is that we will be in the hybrid learning environment from now until the thanksgiving break we have a community survey that will go out on the 5th that's a week from thursday we'll close on the 9th and in that community survey families will be asked
075to select whether they want a gradual to in-person model or do they want the virtual model you can choose to remain or choose one of the other options of note it's important to note that choosing the gradual in-person model means you're choosing the model that means we'll be in person as much as possible and that if it starts in hybrid it may move to more so i want to be clear because some people said i want to choose hybrid hybrid is the model we're in right now but hybrid is not where we are saying we will always be and so um we had some people say well if we go to four day a week i still want two day a week that's not really an option it's going to be the gradual in person
076is just simply means more and then ultimately we really are tracking this this local covid uh metric and we have some some real positives in place i think we've had a lot of really um important and meaningful conversations around how can we safely move to a more in-person model at the younger levels um and and it's our intention to continue to move in that direction from a planning standpoint so that if and when the the cases indicate that we can do so safely we are poised and ready to move to a more in-person model that continues to be our goal for our graduate or in-person families and we'll continue to work towards that so i know that's not the news that any of us really probably wanted for tonight in a sense but i feel
077like if if we balance the need for safety and for our students and staff as well as the need to make sure we can provide consistent instruction that this is the best we can do at this time so questions susan excuse me i personally support you and you know i think this is with you communicating with the washington county health department and looking at the data i think i think it's wonderful and you know i think it's important how you explain that that it's not um you know if there's one case um it doesn't doesn't mean that they automatically have contacts right so that's good because that that speaks to the distance that we're keeping at this model um also uh with fully in person imagine up to 30 students right in the regular classroom
078so you're not going to get that six feet distance and i noticed that the academy of pediatrics that they suggested even three like three feet right so um yeah so i support you personally thank you thanks anybody else first off i want to say i'm glad my name's not scott graydon let me get you know you you've got a terrible position to be in and and i get that you know i also couple things um when they we do our dashboard and we look at the data from washington county health department do they i mean do they break it down in age groups so that we could i mean obviously we've talked about the spread in the younger groups uh age group it's not as likely stuff like that do they break that down is
079that something that are i mean yeah they they do and and it will tell you that it's it's a very small percentage of the cases that are at that level and the issues we've seen at those buildings so far have been adult it's been staff issues we have not seen uh that the issue with um students below uh below heritage at least with with a positive case that we're that we're aware of we know it's probably happened but we're not we're aware of which i think gives us the opportunity what we're seeing now is that the community spread is such that it jeopardizes the operation of the school as opposed to the spread within the school if that makes sense i think that's the concern and why i think we felt maybe a couple weeks
080ago that there was an opportunity because there were these low transmission infection rates with the students but as it spread within our community it's impacted our ability to staff school and the other thing with the american pediatrics saying the three feet if we were to go back in in person with let this say k through five cause i know it's a little bit different once you get into the uh moving classrooms and stuff would we be able to maintain the three foot social distancing which they recommend or is that not even possible because i know we're at 70 percent roughly well it won a couple things one is now because we've committed to this model depending on if we see families that move from the graduate to in-person to virtual it gives us a better
081opportunity one because you're right it's about 70 percent of the families are in the graduate in person so when you think about that it's not half and half it's really 70 and then half and half in the building and so um if we go to 70 in some cases yes in some cases no not even not even three feet now i will say um we do have in the younger levels we have a couple of young fives classes and a couple of kindergarten classes that we probably could could hold that but it wouldn't be something where i could say any one building could do it um i would also know we always say with um our plan that it's social distancing to the to the um extent possible and we will do our best to
082do it but we know that um you know in these environments particularly with young students it's it's a challenge and our staff has risen to the occasion but i also don't want to act like it's a hard and fast never it's to the best of our ability yeah and that's what we noted and then it was only as strongly recommended in the face for current michigan yeah so um so okay well that answers some of my questions so thanks i i also want to say it'd be really nice to have the kids back but we have to do it safely and you know i don't like the numbers i watch the numbers very closely and you know it's it's kind of scary we do want to keep ours our students and our staff our staff
083safe and you know we have to do that that's that's an important part of what we can do we can teach them from a distance but you know if if we can't get the teachers healthy and them in the building you bring them in and and then we have to shut down the whole district that's not going to be good for the kids either it's better to be gradual and be able to continue instruction instead of not having any construct any instruction yeah it is a challenge i appreciate that the comment you know i'm frustrated i mean this is this is it's incredibly challenging it's hard to to understand what is the best approach movement from one phase to another phase is incredibly challenging for the organization it feels like when you're in a spot
084you can hold that ground sometimes more than you could make progress i look at other communities in washtenaw county in particular that are governed by the washington county health department and and they also have been hitting the pause button um they're in hybrid or they're in virtual trying to get to hybrid and have had to hit pause i mean it really feels like if you get to a spot you can hold ground but making that progress is a big challenge for a variety of very good reasons and and i think a variety of very human reasons as well um so yes first thank you um thank you to you and your team i know this is a daily conversation and discussion so thank you and thank you to all the teams in the buildings as
085well custodial transportation principles teachers everybody i wanted to go back to something that struck me when brian was talking about continuity because that's something that comes up a lot in public comments and comes up a lot for me as a parent and and looking at this the board member as well being able to plan um it's incredibly important to be flexible when you choose a hybrid model know it that there's a path to in person when it's safe um but it's also important to kind of manage your household for staff and teaching staff it's important for them to manage their their course load so with regards to stopping at the second try i was just curious why the decision wasn't made um to go to january and after the break and to give more time
086i appreciate the month i do it's very it's very good to know what you're doing for the next month um but i know you know we talk about all this other school districts doing this and this other and i know and maybe you can kind of speak to that too because we're a different animal right we have 5 200 kids as as compared to some of our friends in neighboring districts um so what was your decision making behind uh keeping it to the try versus going till january and trying something else well and not to kind of share too much but i think that's that really was a large part of our conversation earlier today about what model is going to be something that that is sustainable and i and i'll be honest you know
087the two-week window that we've been in since we we kind of got the hybrid um it from a decision-making standpoint and from a parent standpoint it's really not sustainable we can't have our administrative team you know hand ringing week after week as to what the next week will mean that being said we don't want to give away an opportunity because we we say we're going to be something for eight weeks and the best time to get to a new model is four weeks in and we're not prepared to move and so i think the the november 30th one while a natural break at the secondary level doesn't feel quite as natural to elementary level but we tried to hold together with i say that we will do one more checkpoint in 2020 and that really
088is on our route the 30th um if we get to that spot and the numbers are kind of where there are now or unfortunately maybe worse then i think the announcement needs to be and i'll be very upfront with this group that we would have to look at saying after january the idea of any type of pause and movement within december does not make sense to me on a variety of fronts from just from a logistical standpoint and honestly i don't want to have to make uh decisions about different models the first two weeks in january so it would be my recommendation we're going to have one more look at it because we value an opportunity that might be there if that opportunity is not there then i think we're talking about a mid-january conversation
089before we even think about another move and so i don't want to the community to feel or people to feel like we're going to be looking at this every two weeks we're going to have to be to provide that balance of stability um and particularly given what we're we're thinking about from a winter standpoint an indoor standpoint a travel standpoint um going back anytime before um you know probably that week after the the dr king day and inauguration days would be something that we would not want to consider okay thank you um i i like looking at fridays i think that that's a really good idea i totally agree with december do it one way or do it the other and don't don't do the two-week thing um i did want to follow up on
090one comment that was made uh both in public comment and from the table from you uh during the last board meeting about teacher changes and i know you don't have a crystal ball and i know we're going to do the survey and i know we also have a possible percentage forecast that might change you know from from virtual back into in person and vice versa but i was wondering if you could talk about any possible teacher changes and what you're thinking about that now yeah the um you know that's something that you know it's such a double-edged sword in terms of providing uh transition points for families is great from a standpoint of not feeling like if you recall when we said we wanted people to commit for the year there was a lot of
091hand-wringing the downside of not committing for a year is we can't simply move people in mass and so we've really tried to do some since i've made some of those comments and tried to be upfront that if you are moving you may need to move and if enough people move over the other operationally it's going to put us in a spot where some families that are not choosing to move might need to consider their options we're seeing that as a much smaller number than maybe we thought and i think i don't want to to needlessly scare people who think everyone's we're going to shuffle the deck i see what i'm seeing is that i think the families that have made connections in the virtual setting are happy with those i mean you saw what happened
092tonight i you know i i think the families are saying this is working for my family this is working i value the teacher that i have i think the same is the case in many cases for the in person and so dr lotch and i've talked i would anticipate a relatively small number and to the extent it's a relatively small number only people impacted would be those moving in in a different direction which i think they would be making that choice they would know they would have a different teacher but i'm seeing very little need at this point you know barring any real real swings and people who stay in the same model needing to look at a different teacher so that's a good question thank you thank you susan oh one more thing yes
093um so you mentioned the presentation um today i thought that was fantastic um and kind of relates into this because i know i feel like there's an over focus on children you know what like we want to move to fully in person but at the same time saying that they need more contact and at the same time there are families who are fully virtual um so i don't want to leave like that aspect of like what's working what's not with both versions right um so i like the positive positive presentation and everything and know that you know teachers are doing both hybrid and in person um but i just want to point that out that it's we have seen a great deal of success in the virtual model for families that have chosen that and
094the staff that have chosen that i think it's been a really um a really great program um and so i we talk a lot about the the graduate in person that's the majority of our families and students but and probably the one that's most challenging for me to manage so i i do feel like we sometimes don't talk about the successes that our virtual families and staff are having and it's out there i'm very proud of that yeah or what what needs you need on both right both models anybody else looks like we can move on okay moving on um policy committee update trustee step okay let me get my notes um so we are scheduled to have a special board meeting which will be policy committee of the whole we're calling it special board
095meeting because all board members are invited to this so hopefully everybody all board members will attend this but if not um that's fine but we just want to advertise it as that because there could be quorum um so this will be monday november 9th at 6 30 um here at liberty um and it is uh basically we wanted to push this out as a separate meeting for policy because of the return to school updates that we've had you know the really important things that are that are going on that should be you know priority so we wanted to schedule this later so it'll be the second reading and possibly put up for a vote on the board of operations procedure policy zero one seven five point one which is the school board conferences conventions and
096workshops um so i have and you'll you'll receive the packet soon for for that meeting coming up and this will be we we had the discussion about uh with the first reading i'm implemented the changes that we talked about at the table um and then you could take a look at whenever we send it out in the packet and if you want to get me some comments on that it could be brought up at the meeting that would be good and then we have uh there's a draft new policy for the diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee um and this will broadly will include like the structure um the mission uh the goals at a district-wide level um and the process of that and what that looks like so this goes back to putting into
097policy what we had worked on last year we had a couple of graphs with the policy committee so we're going to move forward with that and that'll be the first reading draft discussion and you will get these notes out to us right away so we have time to go through them and process the the policies the drafts drafts yeah me and scott had talked about um by the end of this week so yep okay questions yes i just had one um so i remembered at a previous board meeting that we did have various neola updates that we needed to get in but obviously the pandemic happened and those were clearly small and not as important as what was going on with closing the school district do we have a little bit of a backlog that
098we have to catch up on updates that need to go to the website are we all caught up now or there are a few we have another update that's coming as we talked about maybe putting those together with them so i would know they're not not what i would consider be of consequence in a sense so all right um next on the agenda is the consent agenda the following are offered as part of the consent agenda motion noted will be 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 would like to entertain a motion to approve or to authorize the following items as part of the consent agenda approval of the regular board of education meeting minutes of
099october 27 2020 approval of payment of the general fund accounts payable of october 27 2020 in the amount of 4 million 724 252.88 cents approval of payment of bond fund 2 bond funds series 2 accounts payable of october 27 2020 in the amount of and 5 two dollars and seventy six cents receive and file the finance and human resources reports approval of the early graduation requests as submitted by superintendent graydon item a should really be october 13th i was looking at that thinking i don't think that's right october 13th thank you for correcting that so moved then that was paul and support by michael and all those in favor say aye aye motion carry oops those opposed the same motion carried 7-0 items scheduled on the next agenda we will have a human resource report
100we've talked a lot about human resources and retention of things we'll have an update from assistant superintendent ellis we'll also have a budget up amendment for the current year from assistant superintendent obviously and a return to learn plan update what are our chances of getting the first graders to come back again that might not be a bad idea it was good and i can do 12 jumping jacks next time i have to admit it's been a long time since i've done jumping jacks that's pretty scary public comment we don't do we don't have any other public comment except brian so can you also do that again please all right there we go if this or a presentation one month into an expired contract it might be a little awkward to do this a second time
101um good evening i'm brian bowes president of the saline education association uh my my letter uh is very much in in the spirit of mr grading's report tonight um on behalf of the certified staff i do want to thank you and mr graden for taking this cautious mindset in regard to our teaching models and as i mentioned earlier um staff are are working very hard as you're aware uh the the students that have been coming into the buildings are excited to be in the buildings but there are clearly a lot of anxious staff uh as it relates to just the rising numbers that mr graydon related to in his presentation as one high school administrator noted this week it does appear that at least in the high school we are that students and staff appear
102to be finding a comfortable rhythm within the hybrid model and i can second that with my own class my own classes and students in my class they appear to be fine in their footing relationships are building and we seem to be progressing pretty well as we get to the final stretch of the first trimester however as we know what we're doing um from the wi-fi all the way up to the the senior level uh what we're doing is fragile and we can see this fragility evidence of this pretty much daily as our quarantine numbers begin to rise as we see a positive covet student at heritage as we see elementary students who are leaving the classroom to be tested for covid we know that this is this is a state of high fragility we do
103continue however to appreciate you keeping the health and safety of our students and our staff foremost in your decision making we do understand the logistical challenges that are currently posed by this pandemic and our own staffing shortages as relates to trying to maintain uh these models as well as to move into other models uh and mr graden has talked about this quite frequently and i know we're we're posting positions and this is not a saline thing this is a statewide thing i know last week i believe jackson's suspended jackson public suspended busting for a week they just don't have drivers maintaining continuity right now is incredibly important to our mission and whenever we have a student or staff that have to quarantine that continuity it's frankly it's fractured and too many fractures and and whatever
104we're doing begins to break for these reasons and for many others we thank you we urge you to continue to be thoughtful and measured in your approach to our instructional models and in keeping the health and safety of all the stakeholders paramount when guiding our decision making process thank you do we have any people that have called in all right no call-ins at this time no call-ins at this time so our next board of education meeting will be held on november 10th 2020 at 6 30 pm here in liberty um uh at this point i would like to entertain a motion to adjourn a geor adjourn the board study session of october 27 2020 at 805 pm hello jennifer and paul all those in favor say i i oppose the same motion carry oh suppose
105the same emotion carried 7-0 i would assume we all want to get out of here all right now i have one announcement that if you did not break pick up a mask for you or somebody that you love when you came in grab one i made too many and i need to share with people who need them so please make sure you take them you