Board of Education Meeting - September 3, 2020

001all right i'd like to call the meeting to order so if we could all please stand for the pledge of allegiance 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 all right good evening everyone nice to see a lot of faces good to see everyone all right we're going to start with a motion to approve the agenda so live second we have a motion and a second any discussion all right all those in favor say aye opposed all right that passes next motion to approve the board of education meeting minutes for august 20th second motion second any discussion all right then all those in favor say aye hi post all right that passes

002all right next we have patron comments so i'm going to turn it over to um janet sadowsky who is going to read our patron comments thank you very much janet the floor is yours okay um i have 33 comments tonight that are all posted out on the website as well if you wanted to read those so comment number one to the rockwood school board of directors first i should let you know that i'm a parent of two elementary age children i say this because my questions and concerns are related to what is happening in the elementary setting and this is their the first year that they have had to use the program canvas the following is my questions and concerns why was there no training for the parents or guardians and how to use canvas

003was there no time or no way of having the said training as far as teaching and learning my kids and myself love having zoom times with their teachers because it allows them to ask questions and get clarification on what they need to learn but why can't the teacher teach the lessons while in zoom my children and many others learn far better from their teacher than from canvas the canvas program is a great program but it is not very user friendly for elementary kids that are not as responsible or self-motivated learners lastly i'm a firefighter paramedic and i am well aware of the risks involved with coven 19 however me like other parents would prefer their children to be taught in person is there a chance that the district will reevaluate the education or lack of

004education that the children are receiving due to technology and lack of training and realize that the risks are worth the benefits of having them in school a concerned parent signed by matt goff g-o-u-g-h second comment is from julia hilton to the board of education we are dealing with unprecedented times as humans we are parents professionals business and community leaders young middle-aged and old we have an obligation to protect our society as science finds a vaccine however we also have a responsibility to watch for the greater good we can't trade absolute safety for our children's social and emotional well-being as rockwood taxpayers and parents of three young children we strongly urge the school board to consider a grade level based education approach like that of lindbergh school district children in k3 doing virtual school are being

005hugely impacted in their growth teachers are putting in herculean herculean efforts it's still a challenging situation half of my child's first grade class aren't paying attention during most of their zooms the teachers are doing the best to keep the kids focused but do you want to look at a 14 inch screen for six hours a day help ease the children's fears and anxiety our future leaders by considering an alternative approach for k-3 to get our children back on track comment number three is from elma garrison who has kids in chesterfield elementary the biggest issue is that all these online learning tools are not designed for children who can't read and they cannot be taught virtually do due to that while watching endless videos from teachers that they never even met i have a kindergartner and

006a second grader and neither is able to complete their work independently and my husband and i both work so we don't have the luxury of giving them the help they need navigating these complicated tools additionally so far rockwood has put a huge emphasis on social emotional learning that is not being at all addressed with the online tools our kids are being exposed to too much screen time which up to now the academy of pediatrics has advised against they are offered zero opportunity for socialization and emotional learning and they are suffering mentally right now due to the anxiety caused by this and are losing any passion they had for learning i want the district to put our kids in their mental well-being first above all else and show me how they are championing for our kids

007and their education number four is from sarah simpson good evening i am a mom of the third grader at kellison and ccl i emailed all of you last week about my concerns about virtual learning but wanted to voice them here as well for the public record for context i'm a liberal and lifelong proud democrat i believe in science i do not think the pandemic is a hoax i know covet is real and can be very dangerous although my whole family had it and we are now fine but this isn't about politics this is about our kids despite the risks i want to urge you to get at least our elementary learners back in the classroom as soon as you can as a stay-at-home mom of only one child i've had a lot of time to

008participate in my son's education and learning i've been involved in every lesson since the launch of virtual learning in march through last week here's what i've seen in the last eight days of school kids who do not have proper supervision at home and can't pay attention on zoom kids who have no adult proficient enough to provide tech support or do not have a solid wi-fi connection so they are constantly missing lessons teachers who try their best but cannot navigate screen sharing canvas and zoom simultaneously a kid who cried because she didn't have her school supplies another who hula hooped during a zoom meeting personally for my son we have also struggled we have clicked through lessons on campus that won't load or not engaging or simply confusing some lessons are way over the abilities of

009a third grader to absorb them simply through a screen face to face with our teacher on zoom has not been much better sadly more than half of our zoom calls have been discussions of tech support such as a 30 minute science class that contained about five minutes of science and 25 minutes of technical issues attention span issues and supply issues remote learning isn't working it just isn't any parent who tells you it's fine for their elementary aged kid is flourishing in this setting isn't paying attention because they have their own jobs to worry about during the day and can't monitor their kid constantly i have seen what is really happening daily in our school for remote learning and while it is may keep us safe from the virus it is not learning these kids are

010simply too young to learn this way and our system isn't set up for it our teachers are struggling and our kids are going to have a lost year if this continues please get them back in the classroom patron comment number five hello let me introduce myself and family we are the humes wren family jayden is in ninth grade there's also a first third fourth grader at eureka elementary i have been nothing but pleased with our decision to raise our family here we moved here for the school district i'm sure you've heard this many times recently but i could not be more dis satisfied with the virtual learning program or the decision to have virtual school this week has been one of the most stressful of our lives we've had to scramble to help kids because

011a first grader needs one-on-one attention to manage this program our help then backed out because the demands of virtual learning would be beyond her capability with a group of kids she backed out after the first day of school we both worked full time did i mention i'm a pediatric rn at st louis children's well i am for 12 years now i've worked this entire pandemic we were never rocked at work like we thought we would be i've seen firsthand that the vast majority of kids handled this virus quite well this hasn't even been close to a yearly flu season we never had to use the floor we shut down for covered patients it's just never turned out to be what we feared it would be thank goodness for that what i have seen is suicide

012attempts behavioral health problems abuse gun accidents etc i've seen a child run over by akari because her mom was trying to work and let her kids get a little fresh air more children will suffer long-term effects of the shutdown than from contracting covid my own resilient child who has been top of her class received every award you can think contemplating taking her own life we now see a therapist weekly now i'm seeing this ripple to my younger children picture there's a picture attached to a six-year-old who has had to been forced in front of the computer for six plus hours a day this week while i try to work we can't afford help five days a week for four kids this is not sustainable it's not what rockwood is about again i know you get

013countless emails but i wanted to share with you about what the board's decision is doing to our family academic emotionally and financially i beg of you to look at the data listen to dr newlin and dr orschland and who have said that it is safe for children to return to school if the proper precautions are in place i honestly feel my bless my family is blessed we have all the tools in our toolbox i'm very worried for those who have not been as fortunate in closing i hope to read i hope you read this and soak it in i think broccoli can make a decision for greater good and get our kids back to school safely please let me know if there's anything else that my family can do we'd be happy to help and

014that's from the humes family patron comment number six was trans transcribed from a phone message left by lisa huck dear board i know the decision to not offer five days in the classroom was not an easy one to make regardless of your decision there will be stakeholders unhappy with the risk for all of those involved i am concerned about covet and the safety of our children their friends teachers and administrators what keeps me up at night is the concern i have for the long-term academic and social health of my son and really all children our children need to be in the classroom five days a week they need the routine and in-person education opportunity with our wonderful rockwood teachers obviously it's been a rough start to the school year you all have adjusted and made

015some good moves on virtual learning and i appreciate that our teacher is phenomenal she has been wonderfully patient with the children and she's retooled how she is teaching them which is appreciated certainly my husband and i supplement at home we are lucky enough to have my parents do the same but i'm going to tell you that i have no confidence in online education for children it doesn't work for most children and although education experience for my child and all children is my top concern it really impacts the family unit it is catastrophic most of the families i know rely on two incomes just like ourselves or one income with single parent families the parents have to choose educating their children or putting food on the table if they are lucky like we are we can

016send the ch child to daycare for several days while they are in school however that doesn't protect the health of our children my son is in daycare two days a week because i can only keep him at home three days and from a health standpoint that isn't much better than going to school i know many have shared their concerns we've completed our online surveys giving our opinion it just feels like a large percentage of parents and children want to go back full time or even hybrid solution i implore you all to listen to the parents in the district and please get them back in school children like my son who really have a difficult time focusing this online education is just painful to watch and i know you're all doing the best you can but

017would but it would mean the world to get these kids back in school thank you for listening in your time and your service the next patreon comment is from amy reed thank you for taking the time to read my comments regarding the start of the school year with virtual learning and thank you for your service on the board there has not been a day where i've not had a major computer issue that affected my children being able to learn with virtual learning the technical issues are getting on the in the way of good teachers teaching and students being able to learn as they should i have five kids at rockwoods from first through high school and all of them have had trouble finding assignments or quizzes on a daily basis assignments are named similarly and

018just a slight number change which makes finding them challenging my older one said google was much more user friendly and mind you three of my kids use canvas this summer so they're probably more familiar than with it than most kids one of my daughters had a mouse pad stop working on friday so we had to rush monday morning before her 8 30 zoom to get a replacement i have two with audio issues and on and off throughout two weeks one is on her third computer due to issues with them i've restarted and updated the chromebooks daily my girls could hear others but others could not hear them so they couldn't be an active participant in zoom breakout rooms with their classmates it's day-to-day as to whether it works or not sometimes it works better in

019the evening so i'm not sure if it's because we have five kids zooming at the same time or what today the pe teachers video was distorted and lagging so instead of being active the kids stood and still and watched it wasn't the teacher's fault but technology was not working for them to today so the kids did not get what they should have my other children have mentioned the same thing the videos played with videos played during the classroom my two older girls have violin well three other ones are zooming with classrooms you can imagine how well that works out being able to hear there are so many places you can go on two floors and you can still hear them playing my middle schoolers and high schoolers have also mentioned how it's been a lot

020more difficult to keep up with assignments because teachers have been giving more assignments as at a faster pace with the condensed virtual schedules my high school daughter was not let into the zoom meeting today and on another day she tried several times and then emailed the teacher she never heard back from him so now she's behind she's mentioned he's not the greatest with technology this has been really stressful trying to manage this type of learning with a students can't do what they do best because of technical issues they're having to contact teachers several times a day in some cases being failed by them i attempted to call technology helped us last week regarding an issue and waited a half an hour and was sent to the voicemail to leave a message and i never received

021a call back i've had to make three trips to the schools because things were not given to me the first time or the teacher said my child needed to get library books from school being the only parent at home this is quite a challenge to leave please get the kids back to school five days a week they need to be there i understand wearing masks might be mandatory but please allow face shield as an alternative to those that prefer them these kids need to be able to see each other's expressions the mask distorts speaking and make it harder to hear for those who have who have auditory learners or who have special needs rockwood teachers are very creative and can find a way to use plexiglass partitions and other things so that students only need

022to wear them when necessary in lines and in the halls the teachers are trying to do their best but technology is getting in the way rockwood is failing our kids by educating them this way sincerely amy reed dear ma dr miles and board members i've been given giving my comments all the recent board meetings and sending emails with suggestions for possible solutions that would get our kids back in the classroom sooner rather than later among among my suggestions i have been asking if we can have kids in the classrooms while the teacher records the zooms for virtual kids i do appreciate all that the district is doing i'm very appreciative that the online learning schedule resembles a typical school day but we are sinking i have a seventh grader and ninth grader even with the

023best internet wi-fi and equipment we can buy we have had repeated instances of zoom calls freezing so that my kids miss some of what the teacher is saying we have completely missed soon calls when links didn't work canvas is so confusing that we are missing assignments and having to redo assignments due to confusion about what videos to watch and what the expectations are my kids are crumbling under the pressure of doing the fast pace that comes from a semester's worth of work in one quarter and this first week they have already had tests and quizzes when they don't even understand how to use canvas and the technology has failed my son has shed tears and asked to be moved down to a lower math class because of this both my kids are depressed and sad

024to have to be doing this school this way i've heard here and there that there may be a chance that elementary kids may get to go back in person sometime soon as fast as our lifeboat is taking on water i absolutely understand that those younger kids need the life jackets more than we do i hope and pray you will give those younger kids the life jackets soon by bringing them back to school i'm sure you're bombarded with comments and data from many places and i wanted to share one more um so she's got a link on here from the new york times that can be viewed under the patron comments posting it seems every time we turn around we are hearing about inflated data errors and thresholds for return to school that some say are

025unachievable i am very worried that we will literally be virtual all school year the longer we wait to return in person the harder it will be with flu season coming in the confusion that it will cause private schools are already back in school in person my nieces and nephews are in school five days a week at private school and they are thriving please put the kids back to school during this quarter thank you deb michaels i'm writing to you on behalf of my own children ninth sixth and third grade as well as all rockwoods students i have nothing but praise and admiration for the district's teachers and building administrators as they have persisted through new challenges with grace and are doing their very best in these unprecedented times these technical difficulties experienced widespread last week

026appeared to be resolving however children spending all day behind isolated behind a computer screen is not sustainable especially for elementary grades local private schools and public districts in neighboring counties have determined it is safe to reopen their schools and morocco needs to urgently follow suit the superintendent and school board have the sole discretionary power to reopen schools and the district administration should be planning for the transition of students especially the elementary level back in the classrooms for full-time learning immediately having my own children all three levels it seems that middle and high school hourly zooms are better able to mimic a daily class and schedule through the virtual platform although still not ideal i'm supportive parent but i'm compelled to continue to speak out in support of returning children classrooms as soon as possible i

027also work as a school psychologist in special school district in the rockwood area and i'm most concerned for the vulnerable children in our community at the end of the day my children will be fine but i have great concern for those without the same support system especially those with learning language social emotional disabilities and challenges these deficits will only become more pronounced by the prolonged shutdown of schools i trust administration is brainstorming allowing small groups into buildings at all levels as teachers and staff return successfully a few weeks ago the district has been able to find solutions for allowing high school sports practices busing students residing in the city back and forth to attend athletic practices and having adventure club students in buildings daily it is time for district leaders to put that same creativity

028and planning into educating their students in person our family along with overwhelming majority of rockwood parents and community will support you to take the lead in st louis county to ensure continued high achievement for local students i've also been so proud to be part of the district and that is what makes this current situation extra disheartening thank you for your consideration shauna poggio this is from ryan vardaman i don't think i can emphasize it enough as the director for the centers for disease control the leading public health agency in the world it is in the public health interest of these k-12 students to get the schools back open for face-to-face learning redfield told the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis on friday mental health services 7.1 million kids get in school nutrition we talked

029about reporting of child abuse sexual abuse mandatory in schools the isolation that these adolescents are feeling that now is associated with increased as you mentioned increased drug overdose deaths and now increase suicides quoted from dr robert redfield the cdc director these are words from the cdc director what reasons can you give to hold out opening schools for those who want to return do you know better than than this man would the next one is um from amy craig krebs and i she has a seventh grade fifth grade and second grader in the rockwood school district i spoke at the last board meeting i'm for kids going back five days a week i'm a speech language pathologist i've worked for francis health school district as the first steps as well as first steps in missouri here

030are reasons why kids need to go back the repercussions remote learning for kids has much greater detriment detrimental risks than the changes of the chances of contracting coven 19. the failure to educate an entire generation is having huge psychological effects short and long term you are neglecting the child's academic social emotional skills the ability to get healthy meals exercised for many mental health support racial and social inequity and those with severe disabilities on ieps that need daily occupational physical and speech language therapies remote learning from a chromebook seven hours a day is not age appropriate and to expect a k through third grader to navigate independently is senseless i have to sit with my second grader my fifth grader for all their subjects 100 of the day every day our school does go till 5

031pm sometimes the american academy of pediatrics cdc american federation teachers national education association and the school superintendent association all agree that students should have the opportunity to safely resume in-person learning they go on further to say that they recognize that children learn best when physically present in the classroom it's simple take precautions for inlearn in person learning this will include students and staff do at home screens before coming to school wear a mask wash your hands and social distance never have we closed down anything during generations of influential influenza which killed 360 children last year only 36 children have died of covet in the entire country and most had underlying issues and the 15 to 24 age group more will drown in accidents than die of covet this is ridiculous my name is debbie ten

032ike and i have a kindergartener at chesterfield elementary i'm 100 supportive kids going back to in school in person school five days a week i believe the mental health issues and lack of learning are far bigger risks than the risk of our youngest kids getting covered 19. i'm in support of going back safely so our kids our teachers feel safe doing the job that they're good at doing our youngest children have brains that are sponges right now to miss an entire year of learning because i think we all have know that e-learning for kindergarten just will not work no matter how amazing our teachers are is detrimental to their future we've worked hard very hard the past six years to keep our daughter away from screens overnight she went from two hours a week to

033five hours a day i've noticed the behavior changes already one cannot expect kindergarten children to navigate the campus modules on their own my husband and i both have demanding jobs and we send our daughter to goddard for care and social socialization during the day they are not staffed to have someone sit there with her to help navigate everything i can't believe most families are staffed to do this the american academy of pediatrics cdc american federation of teachers national education association and the school superintendents association all agree that students should have the opportunity to safely resume in-person learning they go on further to say that they recognize that children learn best when physically present in the classroom i would be happy to and i bet most families would sign some sort of waiver that agrees to

034the behaviors we will take to ensure we are following safe and healthy practices we were so proud to be a part of the rockwood school district one of the best in the state let's reinforce that reputation by being a leader and doing it what is right for our kids thank you dear dr miles and the board my name is nicole hasbrook my daughter olivia is a freshman at eureka high school we recently moved to the rockwood school district for very specific reasons number one being finishing my daughter's public education at a top-rated school i have to tell you i'm very disappointed i think she would have been better off staying in northwest high school northwest took the data and made decisions for the students that was not influenced by any political agenda i believe st

035louis county school districts are allowing the politics to dictate what is best for them instead of what is the best interests of the children olivia has been in accelerated and gifted classes since she was in kindergarten and a very good student she was an energetic learner that was happy and that is and that is gone now i get texts all day while i'm at work about how she can't learn the way these classes are being taught the speed of these classes doesn't allow for time to process and learn the information they are watching movies and getting packets instead of instruction classes are not open and the technology doesn't always work the teachers i'm sure are doing the best they can under the circumstances but i don't think this should be good enough for rockwood these

036decisions we make now will affect my daughters and every other rockwood high school students entire future the grades these young people are getting are now part of their permanent record and we will have an impact on on what will be available to them when they are thinking about college this is very unfortunate and again i'm disappointed in my decision to move into the district we should be listening to the experts and coming up with a plan to transition safely to in-person learning for all students as soon as possible instead of listening to the county executive and his health department friends that have no expertise in the field of infectious diseases there is a way to have these kids in school that will keep them and the teachers and staff safe they are doing this all

037over missouri and every other state around the country st louis county is the minority in the type of education we are providing to our children rockwood should be uh up to the task to provide the type of education i move my family to get i'm begging you to think of these kids who need in-person instruction they need not to be isolated to learn by themselves if others chose that they don't feel comfortable sending their children back that is their right but the majority of the parents know that the in-person experience is a vital part of kids lives thank you for your time nicole hasbrook patron comment number 14 is from andrea miller i am a banking executive an essential worker and every day i make decisions that impact the public every day i remind myself

038that customers come first and the decisions i make need to put my customers in a better position than they were before who are your customers are you putting them in a better position mentally socially emotionally can you honestly say the customers are willing to come back how much has your enrollment dropped what about the reputational risk that this is posed in our district it's time to be bold be brave put your customers and your children first it's time to go back to the classroom dear rockwood school board and dr miles past two weeks as a parent of teenage children in this district has been a great challenge the virtual platform not only has technical challenge but even more concerning is the left that it lacks the ability to engage my children in learning the typical

039day for them is four hours and zoom followed by an additional one to three for my high school student and one to one and a half hours for my middle schooler in the evening with on for online homework this amount of screen time prior to the virtual learning platform was never allowed in our home but now as a parent i'm being forced to accept this as part of my child's education according to the american academy of child adolescent psychiatry too much screen time may lead to sleep problems lower grades in school reading fewer books less time spent with friends not enough outdoor and physical activity weight problems mood problems poor self-image and body image issues fear of missing out and less time learning other ways how to relax and have fun personally i've not noticed

040additional problems including neck and headache neck pain and headaches and most concerning a lack of motivation when it comes to mastering subject content that has not been an issue previously the kids who struggle with this in the classroom i'm sure are equally disengaged if not more virtual learning is not a sustainable option for any of our children all of our kids deserve to be back in the school including our teenagers this is an essential part of their mental and emotional development and well-being they have been isolated from their peers far too long without adequate support adequate data to support their decision my question to you tonight is long how long do we have to continue to tell our children the goal of the district is to get kids back in school full time without seeing

041significant action taken by the people who can make that happen please get the kids back in the classroom kay keithley my name is valerie johnson i have a daughter in first grade at baldwin elementary i'm also a step mom to a sophomore at parkway school district so i have unique ability to compare both districts are handling this virtual learning in addition i can speak on behalf of those who have had covid since our entire family had it in march when school shut down my daughter presented with cold-like symptoms and my husband and i had symptoms that were very similar to the flu i could provide you with all the data that shows what minimal risk cova 19 is for children and adults who are otherwise healthy but no one seems to be listening to keep

042schools closed indefinitely because of the virus that has such a minimal impact on the majority of healthy citizens is detrimental to our children the camp canvas platform used for learning may be acceptable for older students but it is not conducive to learning for elementary age students especially those whom are unable to read how did you expect our children to navigate the system on their own oh that's right we need to send them to the pod for supervision or sacrifice our jobs and money to stay home and help them ourselves and for how long rockwood was a leader in the state right now the district is under massive scrutiny as other districts are managing to provide a better all virtual learning environment to students don't forget the other students uh that are providing five-day instructions for

043their students are also giving an option for virtual learning at the same time rockwood thinks it is impossible it is not since the closure of school in march i would have to know what was being done to plan for the scenario to me it doesn't seem as a well thought out plan or any training was put into place for teachers and students the teachers are doing the best with what they have been given the principles are doing the best with what they have been given our kids are doing the best with what they have been given however what they have not what they have been given is not quality education all of us tax paying citizens in rockwood school district expect and deserve you must do better for our children this way of learning is

044not education at all sign valerie johnson my name is lori kirk i have a junior at eureka high school i think these kids need to be back in school and they are being penalized every day that they are learning remotely they are missing the interaction between students and teachers that brings a deeper understanding of the lesson i do not think that they are building the strong foundation that will support what is required to advance the next level in the math and sciences curriculum my understanding is that the american academy of pediatrics cdc american federation of teachers national education association and the school superintendents association all agree that students should have the opportunity to safely resume in-person learning they go on further to say that they recognize that children learn best when physically present in classroom

045the students and most teachers are not in a high-risk group people with underlying health conditions and who are in a high-risk group need to do what they feel they need to do to protect themselves there are options to accommodate teachers in that high-risk group for example they could teach virtually to students in a high-risk group please look at the hard data and do allow yourselves to be in do not allow yourselves to be influenced by the panic and fear being pushed on the public and do what is right for the students in the district signed lori kirk we have three children throughout rockwood we have left pacific years back to attend the school district that is supposed to be top of the line we are completely heartbroken at the choice we made the taxes we

046pay to be in this position our children are not thriving with virtual learning instead they are suffering mentally the new campus infrastructure that was thrust onto us last minute is a failure the videos buffer and spend children cannot sit for hours in front of a screen without personal interaction many parents have a household where both parents work out of the home the many ways in which this is an epic failure would take pages of emails our countries are in school and trying to make the best precautions possible but moving forward to say that saint charles student will not interact with someone in the rockwood school district is absolutely not even the realm of reality other counties enter our county and district all day every day be it for work stores etc we need to open

047these schools and resume life immediately the cdc has even finally admitted this failure but stand up and be the school district that you all stand for and promise to be we are appalled as parents we are looking to move and flee this ridiculous agenda you are all pushing numbers of enrollment will be drop dropping is it is all the fault of the district making these bad choices signed william and haley cook good morning my name is kathy dehart and i have a senior and freshman at marquette i know many people have sent in stats and information to support in in-person learning so i will not do that again i'm just writing to show full support for five days in school i believe the data speaks for itself thank you kathy d hart my name is

048mike matt mathis you recently have received an email from me stating my frustrations regarding the back to school plan i wanted to take the time to personally thank board member dunn for responding to my email personally his response was welcomed and appreciated i'm sure many of you have been receiving multiple emails regarding your decision to go all virtual at the start of the school year as you can see your parents are passionate about your children's learning about their children's learning we will do what we feel is best for our children like i stated in my email rockwood school district prides itself on being a leader in education is one of its core values is exactly that leadership the actual values state that we lead by example are creative innovative and resourceful and change when when

049new information requires it we encourage new ideas supported by that thought and data i again asked this board to look at the data and realize that our children are at a very low risk for contracting and spreading this virus with the proper procedures and equipment teachers as well as students should be able to make a safe return to school well before the quarter end your decisions are having a greater impact than what you realize this board and this school district are being placed in the spotlight and your parents are watching closely to see if you will make the right decision the decision to choose our children their education over politics and fear thank you for your time and again thank you to board member don for the personal email reply sign matt mathis my name

050is vanessa metz i have a second grader freshman and senior in the rockwood school district i support the kids returning to school for the full five days we have been a rock with taxpayer for 17 years here are a few reasons why kids need to be back in person the risks with remote learning are much greater than kova 19 virtual learning is not effective not only are children's academic skills suffering from minimal instruction time social interpersonal and emotional skills are being ignored mental health is severely impacted motor skills are not being developed children is sitting way too long staring at a screen and that is unhealthy those in lower social economic environments do not have the same access to technology and social services for nutrition sexual abuse and child abuse and those with special needs

051are not receiving the services they need from a personal and mental perspective my senior has lost 15 pounds from being depressed with no school all three of my children have yet to learn anything of value in my second graders not being challenged academically the american academy of pediatrics cdc and others agree that students should have the opportunity for in-person learning and learn better within the classroom the safe goals set by the district are unrealistic seasonal flu has an infection rate of 2 to 2.2 annually yet the goals for covet are below that data is measured by age groups now which is great it needs to be taken a step further and eliminate the college age kids that are 19. the percentage positive to being tested is bogus test rates are down so the percentage of

052positive cases will increase only 36 children have died in the entire country and most had underlying issues more will die from drowning than cova this is the data you are using to cause short-term and long-term damage to our children single parents and working parents have the unexpected financial burden of finding academic help for their children and reducing hours or having to quit their jobs as a taxpayer the alarming number of students leaving the district for private school or home school will have long-term detrimental impacts on home values thank you for your time please give us a choice to decide what is best for our children that was from vanessa metz hello i have four children in the rockwood school district three in elementary at gagy and one at one in ecc one of my one

053of my children is deaf and has an iep she is in desperate need of in-person schooling is very difficult for her to engage in and she is so discouraged it is very difficult to watch the children with ieps need the extra help and in person learning it's also hard as a parent to keep up with four kids that all need help on calls and with school work this schedule was not planned out for parents with multiple kids please consider the children's mental status and that and that but every home life may be and that not every home life may be suitable for good virtual learning best wishes casey keiser dear rockwood school district school board members i'm writing today in hopes that my comment can be shared as a patron comment during the virtual meeting

054on september 3rd i have major concerns about the virtual learning experience for the children in the district the experience that my children are having is not setting them up for future social and academic success my son who is in fourth grade desperately wants to see his friends and interact with his classmates the online experience is cumbersome and doesn't have the kid doesn't give the kids an opportunity to be fully immersed in the lesson what may feel like improvement is in reality the children giving up to a situation and following along because they have to my daughter who is in kindergarten is an even more difficult spot than my son kindergarten is all about socializing learning how to interact face to face with their peers online learning does not offer any of that seeing people on

055the screen is not the same and never will be her teacher is doing an amazing job but real growth and development isn't going to happen in front of an ipad in her bedroom or in our kitchen my heart goes out to the to the teachers attempting managers i fear the burnout they'll feel after struggling with technology and student engagement over the next few weeks it's going to be unavoidable my wife is a nurse and thankfully only works two days per week i can't imagine the stress this is putting on families who both who have both parents that have to work full-time to manage this the few days per week when i am home supporting the kids education while balancing my work schedule is beyond stressful i have an extremely demanding career i work full-time at

056worldwide technology while also running a business of my own i'm in position where i have to decide if i neglect supporting my children's education my professional responsibilities my situation is not unique every working parent is having the struggle i implore you to get the kids back into their classrooms this is failing the teachers parents and most importantly the kids respectfully doug lumpkin please let our kids back to school this is not normal school for them it is so detrimental to their mental health all ages they need to be with other kids if parents want to keep their children at home they are more than welcome to they have many options including virtual classes and homeschooling their kids the kids that thrive in the classroom need to be allowed back in the schools i have family

057members that live two hours away in different directions from st louis that have their kids in school they both offered for me to send my kid away to stay with them so they can be in the actual classroom with his teacher and other kids i can honestly say that i did consider it but it would break my heart to send him away from me and his immediate family and it would break his heart too parents should not be put into the position to make these kinds of terrible choices think about this for a moment and how you would feel to send your child away please read my fifth graders writing piece below nicholas wrote this last night in response to a writing assignment his first draft said if i were in charge i would cancel

058school because it sucks and it's boring and it's no fun my husband felt it was negative and asked him to rewrite it and the picture was his blow was his second draft if i were to change if if i were in charge of the world by nick b if i was in charge of the world i'd cancel life because it was always will be cruel and unfair corona because it was has to go it has to go it is ruining my life that is signed by amy amber brainworth the next patron comment is from cherry pillow my name is cherry pillow i have a seventh grader and a fourth grader in rockwood school district i'm writing to voice my opinion to return to school in person five days a week there's so much more that

059these kids get from attending school than just an education the social and emotion and psychological benefits are just as important in just this last week my children who are normally very positive and upbeat have exhibited behaviors unlike anything i have ever seen before they are withdrawn extremely negative about everything struggling with their schoolwork and frankly just plain depressed sometimes during their online times they put on a brave face but after that is completely different story over the past two weeks we have experienced and have invited have experimented and invited other children into our home to do school work with our kids the difference in my kids moods and behavior was night and day these kids need to be around their peers it is just as important as the schoolwork they are learning during the day

060i have seen many others doing this as well as much as kid 10 kids together at a time if they can be in home or in anybody else's home doing school work together they can be at school the effects of keeping these kids out of school will be far greater than the effects they will receive from coven if you are sincere in stating that you are making these decisions to keep children safe and healthy then you must consider the factor that factor as well social and psychological health is just as important these are just the effects of my children that my children are having i know so many others are having a much harder time you can't tell me that kids with iep special needs or those that need meals etc are faring well in

061all this because i know they are not they are struggling the most at the very least schools need to open for them it i've also seen pictures of kids sitting around outside the local taco bell or mcdonald's to use their free wi-fi for school because they can't get it at home really that is what the district wants the curriculum world out for k2 is almost boggling those kids do not have the foundation to do their schoolwork at home they are lost in all of this you are creating a negative impression of learning in those young minds and it's heartbreaking to watch also the district stated the guidelines and data points being viewed to return to school everything i saw was based on the number of cases going by those data points we will never return

062to school i'm not sure if the district thought we would wouldn't understand that but most parents in this district are pretty well educated we understand an email was not and the email was not received well every doctor that i've spoken to that actually sees coveted patients said that the way the county is handling these numbers is all wrong they will inevitably be an increased number of cases due to more people being tested and mandates and shutdown should not be based on the number of cases what needs to be evaluated is the number of hospitalizations in depth by age in our area those are the only data points that matter the reason i say that is other than the highly vulnerable and those 70 plus most people are only experiencing mild symptoms they're getting it and

063they are getting over it much like other viruses they get each year imagine if we counted all the cases in the countless viruses that kids pick up throughout the year you know that ones that don't have any antibiotic and doctors say to wait 10 to 14 days to let it run its course those are spread every year to grandma and those with pre-existing conditions and likely cause deaths but we don't shut anything down if we did we would never be in school also please answer this why can we open our schools for school aged care and parents can pay money to send their kids to do online school but we can't send our kids to go to actual school there this makes zero sense based on the reasons rockwood stated for doing an online learning

064lastly we can safely return to school my sister is a middle school teacher at a parochial school in saint charles which by the way has had far less restrictions than st louis county she had a total of 165 students that she teaches in her class sizes between 27 to 30 students more than a rockwood classroom for the 13 total kids that prefer to do online she live streams her class she wears a mask each day and so do the students they have completed 15 days over 21 period and there have been zero cases among the staffer students even though cases shouldn't be determining factor i say that because without a case there hasn't there can't be a hospitalization or death we can do this we must do this for our students if as educators you

065truly care about the students well-being we need to return to school asap in person five days a week this next comment is from tiffany moton i am writing again to compel you to consider in person school for all elementary students i'm the parent of two fourth graders in rockwood one which has adhd both of them struggle daily with zoom meetings campus modules and online learning they complete the work but no real learning is taking place this age group particularly needs to be back in school over the summer they attended veta sports camp most weeks while my husband and i worked there was no covet outbreaks the american academy of pediatrics has recommended in-school learning when it is safe they recognize that schools provide more than just academics to children they learn social emotional skills get

066exercise and have access to mental health support and other services that cannot be provided with online learning the virtual learning platform has been nothing short of a disaster fourth graders cannot sit and click through module after module they especially hate recording themselves to explain their answer we are fortunate that the teachers have recognized this and are moving away from canvas into more live zoom meetings but these are still difficult for this age group i'm confident that with mass social distancing and good hand hygiene we can return to school safely in the immediate future thank you tiffany moulton to whom it may concern education has the most fundamental and consequential effect on any society the absolute essential of all essentials i understand this is unprecedented territory with many layers to navigate navigate but education is not

067an area that should be considered for compromise not even a day the goal should not be to get better with online school but to eliminate it i admire the teachers for their commitment to make this experience as beneficial as possible but there is nothing that can compensate for their presence as well as the lack of social environment and the stress fund difficulties and the ease it provides the current response whether health or politically motivated sincere or unjust is concerning without a clear plan of attack worst case covet is the new norm but virtual school should never be and that's signed by terry humes to whom it may concern let me start by saying i understand that these are difficult times full of difficult decisions that nobody ever imagined would need to be made that said

068is responsible parents we must weigh the risk when it comes to our children and their education versus their safety according to the cdc coveted cases in the zero to 17 h range make up roughly eight percent of the affected total in the deaths in the same range rank same age range make up roughly 0.2 percent of the total fatalities based on those figures i'm extremely confident that the reasonable added safety precautions that our daughter would be completely safe attending school in person with her classmates in the first grade just like we are confident that our four-year-old son is safe while he attends preschool in person currently at a local private school our daughter is young for her grade with a july birthday and we are very concerned that she will not get the level of

069attention or interaction that she needs to be successful this school year in this online environment we are currently paying 800 per month for her to attend a program developed by a local daycare who has hired certified teaching professionals to facilitate the online curriculum to try and bridge that gap even with the added level of support it's easy to see in roughly two weeks that our daughter is having a very tough time engaging and we grow less confident day over day that this is an effective means of teaching a six-year-old the rockwood school board should only be focused on the education and safety of our kiddos there should not be any other outside influences involved in decisions on this matter please open the schools our children deserve better we want them to be safe and we

070want them to learn we can accomplish both signed by grant napoli school is less stressful this week with no canvas but still not good wi-fi is hard with three on it all day and i work through a vpn so when i get kicked off it takes a long time to get back on the fifth grader is fine but very lonely kindergarten is another story kindergartner is another story she's acting out so much we are crying and fighting she has questions to me on every call except the first one she doesn't want to work on anything in between she wants to talk to people be with people she is too little to understand i have to work and her brother needs to focus on school this does not work for working parents maybe for stay-at-home parents

071but even those i know are struggling i in my work have done everything to try and make this work and i'm at a loss of what to do with with her without in school in class school i can't afford to put her in kindergarten private every day and i can't have her home asking my mom to watch her every day isn't fair either she needs school she's isolated lonely frustrated and bored if private schools can be in session and adventure club can so can elementary school i'm feeling like i have no choice but to pull her out in a in our in her in a pre-k program if she doesn't go back soon at this time it is more important for her to be out of the house of people and learning through play than

072learning then trying to learn from a computer which i'm thinking she isn't retaining anyway i really feel like i'm failing her if i do not if i do that is that's not a win everywhere i hear kids need to go back i have yet to find a reason that it that this isn't happening because every time i go back to adventure club and private schools classes that have 25 to 30 kids if those can happen safely is not the concern but i don't know what is this is the biggest display of underprivileged discrimination i've ever seen i'm not poor by any means so i can imagine how people who can't get any help are feeling they probably just gave up would be my guess thanks for your time please get the little ones back in

073signed by michelle spill and puffin dear rockwood school board i have three children who attend baldwin elementary in fourth and first grade since we started virtual learning it has been a disaster and i'm worried about the mental well-being of our kids as well as their education every day is a struggle to get them on their calls and completing their work through campus my husband and i are working full time to try to keep our jobs and cannot sit with our children all day long to help with school work young children cannot be expected to sit and watch zoom calls and navigate through the system completing work on their own they are not capable of recording and uploading videos on their own this is no reflection on their teachers and principals who are doing what they

074can to support i can only imagine the frustration on their side when they have many children not even show up to the calls and others that are crying in frustration this method of education is not sustainable so please i'm begging you let our children go back in school as soon as possible signs sunny stack hello i'm a parent of the first grader and third grade at kursmill elementary say the last two weeks have been a struggle would be putting it lightly last monday and tuesday's technology issues really started e-learning off poorly however now that the system is working we're just not sure this will work for our boys and are considering moving to a private school or even homeschooling i do want to say that teachers and the principal have been amazing they are doing

075their best to engage the kids in minimal time they have with them daily the problem is that two hours of interaction and no socialization is not a good learning experience especially for elementary age children although not ideal and the actual zoom meetings the teaching and peer interactions are the closest thing the kids have to normalcy and if we have to continue down that path i'd like to see more of those incorporated into the schedule the recorded video lessons are not helpful helpful for this age group i hope dr miles and the board are looking at other options to get our elementary kids back in school i've seen other districts around the country look for innovative ways to do this including outdoor teaching spaces using high school facilities for elementary education installing better air filtration systems

076hiring more staff and much more i'm disappointed rockwood hasn't looked to find alternatives to having six and eight-year-old children in front of a screen all day we would be totally on board with masks frequent hand washing plexiglas dividers and anything else needed to make the environment as safe as possible we love our teachers in the kurzmil community and i don't want to have to move our kids elsewhere however we have to decide if this experience is doing more harm than good we hope the district is also reviewing how this is working and the impact is having on the kids and teachers and will make the adjustments needed i do appreciate the work you are doing thank you for taking the time to receive my feedback signed by robin reichert hi i'm a nurse at st

077louis children's hospital i voiced my concern by email multiple times already to the board and dr miles the health care community as well as the cdc all agree that children should be in school the most recent data showed a death rate of 1.8 percent none of which were children working for the hospital i can say we never have more than four kids in our hospital with covin they are able to be admitted and released very quickly the normal flu has been way worse on them from managing a coveted swabbing site for a few months and not one of us getting coveted i was able to see that wearing ppe works have the teachers wear it and go back to work in the schools teachers are essential workers just like myself there should be no choice

078on the fact that they have a job to do and should either do it or find a different career path where grocery store workers below them as well no we all must do our job to help the community if i have to continue to teach my son at home i will no longer be able to work who will care for the sick then it's essential for them to work as it is for myself online is not sustainable for these children my second grader is struggling to focus and watch a computer screen all day they need this time to learn and be with their friends it blows my mind that our children are allowed to go to school for their education but they are allowed to play sports with the very same kids we also live

079only a few miles from two other districts that are able to go to school five days a week for all students i've always been proud to say my child is in rockwood because of the education that they provide sadly this is no longer the case if things do not improve we'll be removing our children from the rockwood and putting them in a private school signed by amber kane finn and the last patron comment is from derek watson my name is derek watson i have a seventh grader fifth grader and second grader in the rockwood school district historically my wife and i tend to avoid voicing our opinions or even getting anywhere remotely close to anything that resembles politics furthermore we are extremely active in the pto holding key positions and helping raise thousands of dollars

080each year to help support our teachers however when the second school district removed the five-day schooling option from the table in mid-july we spoke up some background we moved into the district 12 years ago from another district because my wife had attended all the schools our kids eventually would attend and she knew the quality of education and opportunities that exist not being from the area i was taken aback as we experienced those first years in the district and i was witness exactly what was promised teachers faculty and facilities that were second to none over the years we had come to leverage some of our some of those key programs individual learning plans supplemental teaching assistance ccl all supported by our teachers so as the summer unfolded and our in-person options dwindled i was extremely concerned

081if you table all the other concerns we had for our kids effects of long-term isolation lack of social interactions and friendships etc the programs programs mentioned above are key in my children's learning and development even though i wasn't happy and had reservations i still thought if the school could pull off virtual learning it was rockwood they had over five months to prepare and the best teachers and staff i had hopes that we could at least maintain for a while until classes resumed when classes resumed if i said i was disappointed would be an understatement there was very little information provided prior to the start of school the campus system was clunky and he had no information populated when classes finally did resume it was a mess again putting aside all the service issues with zoom

082in canvas the approach of having teachers do check in meetings and then allowing students especially k3 to log off and do their work is absolutely crazy to me even with my wife staying in the room full time with our second grader she spent more time trying to figure out what's supposed to be done and trying to troubleshoot technology issues than she did actually teaching him anything the rare zoom time he gets with his teacher is interrupted by other children who either aren't prepared or are causing distractions we are giving it two full weeks before we pull our son in favor of trying some trying something anything that can work better than this in closing at this point in action is is not an option your mission statement claims we do whatever it takes to ensure

083all students realize their potential the evening system isn't working i beg each of you no matter how difficult please do whatever it takes for our kids sign derek watson and that is all the patron comments for tonight janice dowsky thank you once again for your perseverance for reading all those next time i see you i owe you some ice cream okay thank you all right next we have superintendent board comments so we'll start with our superintendent dr mark miles thank you mrs mondel a few announcements this evening at the last board meeting i outlined the community health indicators we've been monitoring and will continue to monitor as we move toward our ultimate goal of returning safely to a five-day school week with in-person instruction for students these indicators are a starting point one of the

084many factors we consider as we move forward as always the driving force behind any decision making is the safety and well-being of student staff and school communities we must all continue to do our part during this pandemic where face covering maintain social distancing protocols stay at home when we're not feeling well and wash our hands frequently by following these simple health guidelines we'll be helping our families in our rockwood school community so we've created a community health indicators page on our district website rsdmo.org so the rockwood community may track these measures as well as share thoughts on community metrics and progress while much uncertainty still remains we will continue to embrace the need for flexibility and keep our community informed along this challenging journey so carl weinrich is updating that data regularly and we appreciate

085that carl next rockwood school district earned multiple honors at the american heart association hardee's awards ceremony which was held virtually in august the ceremony recognizes schools and districts in missouri that participate in the kids heart challenge or american heart challenge programs rockwood was named the top district in the state of missouri here's the certificate i will provide to you president mondel in the near future when we are together again and staff members and students from blevins kellison and worther elementary schools were honored for their participation in american heart association initiatives congratulations to all of the honorees and thank you for lending your time and effort to such a worthy cause the rockwood student services department and community partners in prevention are partnering with alive and well community is st louis to host a series of

086workshops for parents this fall the workshops will be held virtually on september 8th 15th and 22nd and cover topics such as self-care dealing with stress and affecting positive change in the community we hope that rockwood parents will join us for these sessions which will help them develop strategies to address their needs and the needs of their communities we remain committed to addressing the social emotional needs of our district community and we thank alive and well for their partnership in presenting these programs next the astral orbit rocketry team composed of marquette high school students ben cook alex chen anna rudy comoretti and andrew wu finished second out of more than 240 teams nationally at the annual rocketry challenge last month the annual competition was held virtually this year so instead of designing building and launching an

087actual rocket teams were tasked with building a rocket and sending three astronauts to the moon and back through a space flight simulation game astral orbit is looking to build on the success for next year's competition when they hope to be back to building and launching physical rockets congratulations to these outstanding rockwood students and finally tonight i am pleased to announce that rockwood's district teacher of the year marquette science teacher dr kathy farrar has been named one of seven finalists for missouri state teacher of the year by the department of elementary and secondary education the 2021 state teacher of the year will be named at a recognition event on october 15th dr farrar is emblematic of the wealth of talented dedicated and caring teachers that we enjoy in rockwood we're fortunate to have teachers like dr

088ferrar and our district and could not be more proud of her success in this competition congratulations dr farrar that is all i have this evening thank you very much dr miles any board comments i have one quick comment i just wanted to thank chris friend and dr paul northington for the tours at eureka high school in rockwood summit this week we had the opportunity some of us some of us went this week to see some facility upgrades and changes that have taken place over the summer months as a result of our bond issues and uh both schools gave us some lovely little gifts so the next time i see you all i will be happy to share the items from rockwood summit including new summit face masks for everybody so they sent a lovely card

089and they were very gracious with their visit and so next time i see you all i'll have a gift for you from them thank you very much any other board comments i would like to make a comment i would publicly like to thank the rockwood board of education because we have to continue to show grace and kindness um i counted my emails today we've had approximately 350 emails in the last month 90 of those have not been very kind and have not been very gracious to us i'm sure we'll get blasted again tomorrow for what i'm about to say but please know that we are doing our very best and we continue to love our rockwood kids regardless of the 90 percent of you who think that for some reason we do not um i'll

090close on that next i need a motion to approve the consent agenda items as submitted we have a motion a second any discussion we have two donations tonight both of them for rockwood summit high school parents organizations first one is monetary two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to support the rockwood summit girls across program needs monetary donations to help the rockwood summit girls lacrosse program meet general needs and our wish list items second one is also monetary thousand two hundred fifty dollars to help the rockford summit softball program and purchase necessities for the season our wish list items monetary donations to support the general needs our wish lists of the rockwood summit softball program thank you very much to rockwood summit's high school parents organization thank you dr kinder anybody else all right so

091that motion is to approve the consent agenda items as submitted all those in favor say aye anyone opposed all right that passes all right next we're going into our agenda items 8.01 pltw distinguished schools presentation dr megan bray brian reed and ashley benny did i say that correctly uh you have the stage welcome awesome thank you guys uh good evening my name is ashley benny and i'm the director of school engagement for missouri school districts for project lead the way i am here tonight to congratulate the rockwood school district for having all four high schools recognized as pltw distinguished schools the pltw recognition program is designed to honor districts and schools committed to increasing student access engagement and achievement in their pltw programs these districts and schools are empowering students to thrive in an evolving

092world and have achieved achieved exemplary results from their pltw programs rockwood should be pltw proud to know that they had four of the only 18 missouri high schools to achieve this coveted honor in addition to the rockwood school district's outstanding commitment to stem education as evidenced in this recognition i would also like to take a moment to thank brian reed and megan bray the ltw coordinators for the district for their unwavering support i know i can always count on brian and megan to stay informed of the ltw happenings communicate updates to the rockwood pltw staff members and ensure that rockwood students are getting the best pltw experience that they can rockwood is truly home to a model high school project lead the way program and it has been an honor to work with the staff

093and students of rockwood school district with that i would like to turn it over to brian and megan to add any additional details or thoughts thank you thanks ashley and and thank you everybody it's i i truly blessed to have all of the pltw teachers and students and the support of the families and and everybody else is a part of the program ashley is instrumental in in making sure we're on the right track as well and so i really enjoyed her partnership and i look forward to seeing what else we can do so so next time you're at one of the high schools you know look at the look at the hallways we have some really cool banners hanging up around that that definitely celebrate this achievement for for all of our kiddos and staff

094yeah i would just like to echo what brian said and what ashley presented to us i know it's a huge effort by the teachers and i think they're just really the ones to thank in all this and the support that they provide for their students in this experiential learning that plcw provides thank you very much anybody have any comments or questions all right appreciate it thank you very much all right next we have uh 8.02 procurement my gosh why can't i sign that procurement cards update brenda kerchoffer is going to give a presentation and first of all i need a motion to approve superintendent designee to continue to manage the fy 21p card program as presented we have a motion a second brenda good evening thank you for having me this is third year the

095district has participated in bank of america's p-card program overall it's been very successful some of the advantages of the program include a single tool for for reconciling transactions and reporting features that provide additional spend control next slide please from the process management standpoint each card is assigned a strategy that consists of a single transaction limit and a monthly credit limit the program provides another layer of control by tracking strategy changes through the works program and allowing us to restrict usage based on a merchant category code or an mcc code as of august 1st we had 238 cards in use which is substantially less than in previous years when we had about 500 cards in the district the number of cards is the number of cards in the program is closely monitored and evaluated on an

096annual basis last year we added two new cards one for the curriculum department and the other four facilities we have 99 department cards and 139 individual cards the department cards are assigned to one user who is responsible for managing and reporting managing reporting and checking out of the card these cards are available to multiple users in the buildings the individual cards are assigned to one employee and this person is responsible for all transactions and reporting on the card last year's purchases were just over 4.6 million dollars which is down about 15 percent from last year the good news is the rebate amount was actually up about 8 000 and this is attributed to the timing of the rebate period and the inclusion of e hails any questions no thanks brenda thank you brenda i always

097enjoy your updates because um i think the work that you're doing with these p cards are very very important for our district so i always appreciate these updates thank you thank you very much any anyone else all right so that motion is to approve the superintendent designee to continue to manage the fy21p card program as presented all those in favor say aye anyone opposed all right that passes thank you brenda all right next we have bond issue purchases i need a motion to approve the bond issue purchases and related contracts over 150 thousand dollars from worldwide technology for a new cisco firewall at the main data center and disaster recovery site second motion a second deb catchering this purchase is part of our annual review of technology needs and infrastructure needs and we decided that

098with the additional impact on our systems for network needs that it was time to advance the refresh of our firewall by about six months to a year and so we are going to implement this it will allow us to be a lot more responsive should we need to be in the future it also will give us some end intrusion protection that our current system does not have and some other security features that we'll be able to utilize very good any questions all right so that motion is to approve uh the body she purchases for world wide technology all those in favor say aye all right anyone opposed all right that passes thank you deb all right next is 8.04 return to schools update and dr mark miles and his alt team and the cope committee

099are the ones that i have scheduled for this so take it away whoever's up first i i will begin with just a a few comments um last march when public schools around the country closed in response to this new virus that was spreading globally we could not and did not imagine that six months later our rockwood schools would still be closed we certainly had great hope that we would have victory over the virus and that our lives would return to our normal routines and that our children would return to school but that has not proven to be the case it's now september 2020 and we are still in the midst of battling cobit 19. we're still having conversations about masks social distancing and washing our hands frequently many of us have had friends and family

100members who have been impacted and affected by the virus and we're still battling corota virus and unfortunately this can lead to fatigue frustration and disappointment among all of us i can tell you i've said this many many times as the superintendent of the rockwood school district i want our students back in school safely five days a week i've not wavered from that that hope statement and i know that our rockwood students principals teachers staff and parents want that very same thing uh we recognize too that our families need options and we need to continue to offer a high quality online education and we must begin a move in the direction or in person education over the past few months we have continued our regular collaboration with superintendents medical professionals and health care professionals in the

101st louis region we've identified reviewed and assessed a series of community health indicators to help determine when it would be appropriate for students to return to school and there's no one indicator that's going to point us in that specific direction these indicators are a starting point and one of many factors that we may consider as we move forward on tuesday evening we held a focus group that included a cross section of our rockwood school community we had about 55 stakeholders that were present there we discussed these community health indicators and heard from medical health professionals in the area of pediatrics during patron comments uh dr orscheln and dr newland uh were mentioned both from washington university they were there to present their views and answer questions and we certainly appreciate them i think the direction

102was very clear especially when we have looked discussed and looked at the data that shows the lowest rate of cases is among people ages 9 years and younger tonight i just wanted to provide an overview of some of the themes that were identified during tuesday evening's focus group meeting and i'm not going to take a lot of time to review the themes but i do want to highlight those for those who are with us this evening deb if we can move to the next graphic the next graphic really identifies some of the strengths the desire for balance some of the challenges that we face and some of the keys to future success as we look at the uh strengths of the rockwood school district these were very clearly identified in the themes deb if you'd

103hit the next slide as well our people our community our flexibility our historical success and the support that we have from our community as you look at the desire of the participants as we narrowed these themes down our community wants to see our students back in school and i would i would say most i've received feedback with some of the challenges identified with the learning environment and i've also received some compliments related to the online learning environment but one of the themes identified was that our students need support and that's difficult that support is difficult sometimes to provide in the remote environment and often difficult to replicate at home but as we consider returning to our school environment we need to make sure that it is a safe environment and we've continued to talk about

104a number of mitigation strategies uh so the questions we have to answer as we move to consider returning to our schools is how do we make sure we have a safe environment how do we make sure that we have those proper mitigation strategies in place and how can we provide that such a diverse environment and what happens when we identify someone who is ill uh that must quarantine and how do we maintain the health and safety uh of all and so we're gonna answer some of those questions uh this evening from a variety of voices as well as we look at the keys to our future success uh we have to have a detailed and thoughtful plan we've continued to plan uh since march our staff members continue to need a time to prepare as

105we might consider a return to our school buildings we have to have clear expectations maintain and be very vigilant with those guidelines for safety and those mitigation strategies we have in place to support those expectations uh for all to follow those mitigation strategies so that is a very quick overview of that meeting it was very helpful to have a variety of voices in the room and i think in our smaller group discussion we've recognized that one opinion doesn't represent the opinions of all so gathering together those individuals communicating with each other uh was a key and as we consider as a district the steps we must take our continued communication timely and efficient communication is going to promote safety and continue to support the social and emotional health of our students and staff so those

106were the the highlights of our meeting uh yesterday evening and so a few more comments before we allow the board to ask some questions um while i would i would celebrate the opportunity to have all of our pre-k 12 students return to our classroom simultaneously i think a gradual phase-in of students by grade level is going to be the safest and most appropriate course of action as we consider our future so i know we've been having a large number of conversations uh these discussions continue on a daily basis um so tonight i'm recommending that we consider our youngest learners we heard that in patron comments we've heard that in patron comments for several weeks now that we would consider uh phasing in phasing back into a rockwood campus onto a rockwood campus our youngest learners

107so this would include a schedule for preschool kindergarten as well as those in early elementary years in grades one and two when it can be difficult to manage those online learning platforms and those online learning tools following that successful transition from pre-k through second grade we would likely begin a phase in for grades three through five so as we would successfully and gradually phase in those grade levels and programs we would certainly keep a careful eye on our community health indicators our own rockwood practices and any concerns with the health and safety of students and staff because health and safety those both remain our priorities so i know that the first question uh is going to be when when is this going to occur when will the gradual phase in of grade levels begin so

108this is where i'm going to need some additional time to collaborate with rockwood administrators teachers and staff while i would likely love to begin as soon as possible and hopefully in september there's much work that still needs to be accomplished we've already been having some tentative conversations among our schools and i believe the heartfelt support is there to begin that transition for those early grades now would you we just need to do the work to make sure that that happens so over the next few days i'm going to be continuing the work with some different groups some different employee groups including principals support leads curriculum technology professional development teachers support staff human resources and representatives of the special school district so as soon as i have a date and uh a definite date and a

109direction i'll be sure to share that with the board of education uh that may require a special meeting within the next um a few days weeks and i'll certainly be willing to share that with our rockwood students and parents so i'm sure that many of you have questions and each of our department leaders is with us this evening to provide some insight into the processes and procedures as we would prepare for that transition i believe miss bayes is going to help us facilitate that q and a portion um please know that we take our decisions very very seriously without a doubt as mrs mondel said uh we love our students we love our staff members and want to take great care of them and we'll be moving through [Music] this transition very very carefully and

110as i mentioned we will begin this transition uh with our pre-k through two students and look to transition soon those in grades three through five with an outlook for the future in grades six through twelve as well uh but we want to be very cognizant of the steps that we're going to take through this process so at this point miss bayes i'll hand it over to you thank you dr miles i want to just say thank you to you and those who were uh in attendance tuesday evening for having those courageous conversations uh board members were not present for that so what we have done is we have spent time individually coming up with some questions for some of our key administrators in this district to help us just kind of gain more information and

111knowledge about their particular areas of expertise so being that we are on a zoom for this we decided that the co committee would step in and help with some organization of that just to help us have a good flow tonight so uh the members of the koch committee are myself uh director miller and director mediate and so we are going to go down the list board members uh just so everyone is aware have submitted their questions and we have organized them according to the area and the person that would address them we're going to give each of those people time to speak and answer the questions that they have in front of them that we have submitted thus far if there are additional questions while someone is speaking if you could please utilize the chat

112feature and type your question in when the person is finished speaking we will help facilitate and navigate through those questions to make sure that any additional questions are answered this evening but we just don't want to interrupt the flow of the presentation as they happen um so before i begin yes do you want us to send a chat to directly to you and not to everyone how do you want that to be formatted uh however you'd like to do it um so to give you an example i'm going to introduce the first person who's speaking give a little background on what they're speaking on and then they're going to speak and then i'll facilitate any questions that pertain to that person and then uh lynn will take the next one and then randy and we

113will just alternate the best if we send it to you to whoever is guiding that section yes and we will record those questions and add them to our group and um and go from there thank you jamie in addition to the questions that we all submitted the other day yes i'm talking about what we what we would put in the chat box are our additional questions not not the ones that we submitted no just the additional ones thank you correct thank you for organizing this for all of us too oh sure you know uh thank you to janet because as always um flowing effectively every single day so we are all uh in debt to her for that um so first up tonight without further ado is uh the executive director of elementary education dave

114cobb he is here we have submitted quite a few items to him to answer this evening and just to give a little uh recap those questions are mainly in regards to logistics in our elementary schools if we were to consider bringing kids back in as well as some questions regarding adventure club and so he's gonna uh take those two sections of questions and answer those and then uh if anybody hasn't please put it in the chat and if you could uh just put your uh screens on mute while he's speaking and then we will uh keep it going over to you all right you just want me to go through the questions and jamie as they were submitted to me then however you want to do it dave some of them might overlap and so

115if you just want to speak uh go for it but however if you feel best doing that yep certainly so i will tell you that the good news is since march you know when we did shut down um a lot of the work that has been done um since march was you know in um in line with how do we get our kids back to school so our administrators and teachers and all of our staff have been thinking about um at the end of the day how do we get our kids back in school so that that question has never left our mind even though we've navigated um the online learning portion we've certainly kept the in-school piece um on the front on the front of our minds to figure out how we're going to

116do that so i will tell you one of the questions here is about full capacity numbers how will social distancing work with full capacity if you remember when we were looking at hybrid we were at half capacity when that return happens in person we believe that there will still be a number of of parents and students that choose the online option we will not be at half capacity we will certainly won't be at full capacity so somewhere in the middle and right now our our classrooms can range from anywhere from 17 students to 25 students and so we'll have to take a look at those numbers but um i think from the social distancing standpoint we'll always say that you know we will social distance to the extent possible and so our teachers have always

117thought about ways that they can have their classrooms available for students to make sure that they are as far apart as possible while we can also continue um with learning so we're looking at ways to rearrange furniture to ensure that we can try to say three to six feet apart but realize that some classrooms could have as little as 16 and some go to have as many as 23 so we'll be working um you know that'll be individual by classroom um will the daily schedule stay the same full day or short day i think that we would look at if we were to come back pre-k through two we would go back to a full day of learning um so that would be most of our schools are nine o'clock to four o'clock and some

118of them are early start so we would be looking at a five day full day um not a shortened day will the students stay this with the same teacher that they have now with virtual uh the idea is that they would um i don't know that that's going to be all true for everyone but i think for the vast majority that would be true we do have pockets of students in classrooms in different schools where some pockets of our school district schools have very few students that elected online in some pockets of our school district we have almost half of an elementary building that would be online so in most cases i believe that they would have the same teacher but i will say that it is certainly possible that a teacher could change but

119those would be case-by-case basis and we would be looking at those numbers as we do the work when we um when we understand who's actually coming back how will specials be addressed art music pe um art music and pe would be in person for k through two um it would still be virtual for three through five and then when students um could return safely for three through five then specials would be um in person as well so specials would just run in person for those in person and then virtual for those that are virtual um what kind of support and timing are we giving our teachers and administrators for planning i think that's a fantastic question um the truth is we've been planning for a long time the other piece of that is our wonderful

120teachers have been spending much of their day and evening doing the very best job they can with the online platform and so it will take some time for our teachers to transition that time many of our classrooms um still have desks that are stacked on top of one another their bulletin boards aren't ready and all that we also know that we understand that timing is important as well so i think that our teachers will be supportive of getting ready but it will certainly take time but that planning has always gone on and will continue but we will provide some time for our teachers to plan how will lunch and recess look we've talked a lot about that lunch is one of those areas when you talk about covid19 and social distancing um that is a

121time where students remove their mask and they eat and so having students right next to each other while eating lunch is not ideal so we will be looking at extended lunch opportunities possibly we'll also look at possibly students eating in their classrooms and or mixing grade levels so are not mixing available i'm sorry if you have a grade level that has four sections perhaps you might have two sections eat in the cafeteria in two sections eat in the lunch room i think that will vary by school but the intent will be to ensure that we do the very best we can to keep students um separated more than six feet as they eat lunch because that will be a time where they won't have a mass recess will look the same recess will be probably

122there might be additional recesses because we want to honor and take advantage of the outside and being outside with kids um you know especially that would be a time with possibly no masks during recess we certainly will have different protocols for safety and equipment things like that but um being outside is certainly something that we look forward to doing uh boxed meals at elementary we we won't have elementary the elementary food will remain the same so we'll continue as we always have with elementary food it just might look a different on where they eat as far as arrival and dismissal time and traffic will we stagger the arrival and diminish dismissal times we won't stagger the times but we will do many of our schools have already done this work is they might stagger the

123the opportunities to enter the school so you might have doors on each end of the school be open for arrival and dismissal so we don't have all of our students coming in the front doors and we can spread those students out as they enter our schools ccl would look the same as far as the format our sales students will be in our elementary schools when we are in person they would be in person with their students online they would be online or that remote model and as we transition back that format will change in addition to the schedule of ccl and the number of minutes will also change if if kids stay home sick or with symptoms are they able to participate virtually that's something that we have to have a conversation about um what

124does that look like we are still um in the planning phases of the virtual portion of if and when we do return back to school what does that virtual opportunity look like understanding now that 100 of our teachers are teaching virtually when our students enter our classrooms they will have students you know physically with them so what does that virtual model look like um we've been talking about that and planning for that um and so that's going to that's going to depend on what the actual virtual model looks like so we're still preparing for that build time within the schedule for procedures um their students are physically present we need to reset our communities we need our teachers to meet with our kids um you remember that we we haven't been together since march and

125we've got a lot to talk about with our kids we've got a lot to celebrate we've got a lot of things for new procedures to discuss and so we want to make sure that we take the time to do that and i want to say that our teachers will do a fantastic job with that but there's going to be a lot of student-led discussions and teacher-led discussions about how we keep our our students safe and what does recess look like now reminders about washing hands reminders about restroom reminders about lunch walking in the hallway all of the things that they got accustomed to some of the things are going to change um but you know i think our best teachers are our students and so um i think they're gonna they're gonna do perfectly fine

126with that but we will certainly spend time on procedures will we share any resources between kids i will say that we will do our best to try to have resources available to each student but i will also say that there will be shared resources between kids you know our students are in the same classroom they're going to be working together um they're there to learn they're there to work together um that's how they learn and so um while we will do everything we can to the extent possible um certain resources certainly still will be shared will teachers be encouraged to use outdoor space when available absolutely we will encourage students to take advantage of the nice weather the outdoor learning spaces because you have more of an opportunity to social distance and also fresh air

127is certainly something that students will thrive for what is the process of a student wants to switch from virtual to in person or vice versa you know we really would like um people to make a decision whether they're coming back in person or staying online people coming back and forth certainly isn't optimal for learning and so we will take those in a case-by-case basis but we will certainly promote um parents that make a choice of staying either online or in person that they make that choice um and not be switching back and forth because that certainly isn't optimal for a child and their success um and will there be restrictions for large school programs and visitors there will be we will we will not have large school programs assemblies um things of that nature because

128we're going to focus on social distancing and the safety protocols because you know at the end of the day what we do in schools and how we protect our kids in the emphasis that we put on safety will be the driving factor of us keeping our kids in school and so we want to act responsibly and we want to be safe and so we will certainly be doing our part with that and as far as visitors go we will want to keep our students safe in our schools and we will ask visitors non-essential visitors to you know whatever the reason they're there for to send an email or call and we're happy to help them but as far as entry in the building is the the fewest number of adults that could enter our buildings

129would be the absolute best so we will be discouraging um non-essential visitors to our school um a few questions about adventure club that i have here right now the current structure for adventure club is we have several sites across the district where all of our elementary students go to those four or five different sites it's really just essential care right now um and so we'd like to get back so if we do end up back in the in-person model adventure club will go back to their home schools um and we will provide before school and after school we are still in discussions about if we came back from a k through two setting with three four five still waiting we still think we can provide for three four five during the day um but uh

130we're still in those discussions and so um and there should be and will be um before school and after school at all sites i will tell you that right now with um adventure club is always driven by staffing and um i think that we are right now we typically get in the month of august about 40 or 50 individuals that apply and i think that we've had one or two so just know that um adventure club is is always driven by by staffing and so the more staffing we have the better we'll be able to serve so i think in a nutshell those are the questions that i had and of course if you have any other questions certainly let me know uh so far there's just one additional question in the chat that pertains

131that i don't think you hit on is the early childhood special education status right now yeah so early childhood special education is online right now and um in visiting with those teachers in those schools um they're as excited as anybody to get those students back into their settings so we will continue within person there those classes are always have been somewhat reduced capacity just of the nature of the program so um we'll continue to um to offer that um the early child experience for all of our families so we'll go back to the registration process and um welcome all of those students back jamie yes sir i sent four but i guess he didn't go through oh okay um and jamie i sent you the one about outside yeah he spoke about that tom uh

132two yeah he just mentioned um you know as people are able they can head outside and stretch out and one of the questions that i see is if parents have a second and fourth grader could they start together or fourth would wait the fourth grader would wait until the transition back i i believe that you know and it's hard you know covet is not something that we we can never predict what's going to happen in the future we just can't but it would be my my hope and vision i think along with everybody else that we have a successful re-entry plan for our pre-k through two so successful that the um the the grades of three four and five would be very shortly after but um um we would have they would have to wait

133by by the time of their grade level coming in as far as parents notifying us if they are going to be virtual or not we will have to work with um glenn hancock and the rest to ask the question whether or not they are coming we will need that data to know which students are coming to our school so we will be asking parents for that um we'll also be pre-packaged meal or through the food line it would be through the food line i talked to our food service today and we plan in and believe that lunch can be served safely as we've served it in the past um and then will students where's the plan to have the virtual students join their class virtually that's an option right now where there are several options

134we're looking at keeping in mind that there needs to be a balance and so we really need to take a closer look at that and i know shelly might touch on it later but we have to have a discussion about that virtual setting for our online learners and what that looks like we want to make sure that we're providing the optimal um education for both in-person and online and so we have to talk about that balance we certainly are in the planning stages of that and we believe that we've got we're close to what that might look like but there needs to be more work being done for that i think that was all of the questions that i see okay yep i don't see any others either it sounds uh thank you for answering

135all of those it sounds like obviously um a lot more conversations and decisions and thought to go into much of this so um we appreciate that i know in conversations that i've had with either parents or via the emails we've received or with principals or teachers um you know how that whole virtual piece looks and making sure that the transition is successful from day one are kind of the top key things and i know everybody is focused on that and so we appreciate your expertise and everything that you're doing we will look forward to hearing more information in the days and weeks to come um one more thing jamie too i've spent the better part of the last two weeks visiting our elementary schools with our teachers teaching um and the purpose of me doing

136that is just to connect with all of the teachers that i know and i've had many conversations with them and i will tell you that the vast vast majority of our teachers are excited to see kids they want to see them you know in the classrooms of course there is anxiety and there's a little bit of nervousness i think we all felt that um and we all feel that but um you know with with with that nervousness there's also some excitement and um our teachers are doing a wonderful job and they really really miss their kids and that's very obvious as i visit school so i think that they're already planning in their head of what that could look like and so um i just wanted to say that that they've really been vocal about

137um how much they miss their kids and and looking forward to safely teaching them in person uh a couple more questions have just come in sorry you're not quite off the hook um from from dr kinder what process will be in place for parents to notify school they will still go virtual so will you be i guess it sounds like we yeah it looks like that what we would do is we would send that questionnaire to parents to ask them to answer individually so then we can create that database to know exactly who is coming back and then we would know who would be virtual so then we could start um using that data to to better plan to make sure that we um are there to to to provide for them you know when

138when either they choose virtual or in person and then uh director dunn had another question i will just read it as he wrote it why aren't the classrooms ready for students already they needed to be when we were going hybrid yeah well a lot of our teachers when they came back um they moved their classrooms around shuffle them around because what they actually did was they created a a teaching space and so a lot of our classrooms teachers have moved tables around they have computers set up right by their smart port so they can have dual screens and so they rearrange they put their classrooms together they rearrange their classrooms to now be the best spot for them to have the online teaching space for them so a lot of our rooms i will say

139they're not all not ready they're just not ready for students to come back right away um and so a lot of them have been changed just to provide for the virtual experience can i add one thing jamie i'm sorry i'm not in the elementary world but from my visits with teachers in in buildings and and dave's right like you know you go in these classrooms and it's it's just so cool to see like they've they've created this like station around themselves you know they take a whole classroom and they create this this little station so they have everything easily accessible and so that's that's part of it why is the classroom not totally ready but the other thing too and i'll say this from a pre-k 12 perspective too you know we and shelly can

140say this too we've gotten supplies in and we've got you know and they usually spend those first few days getting all of that organized and ready to go well this this year they spent those first few days just you know buckling in and like it was like the first day of teaching for every single teacher it was the first first day of first year of teaching for everyone so they didn't unpack boxes and they didn't um you know they didn't organize uh reading materials and you know they left that for after hours kinds of things so to dave's point and i've seen this and i've seen it in secondary too you know we have some classrooms where you've got the teaching station and everything looks beautiful and they've got their smart board and they've got

141their posters and and everything's great but then out in the rest of the classroom you know they still have a little bit of organizing to do because they weren't going to spend their time those first few days back to school doing that they were really figuring out what does online teaching look like and preparing themselves for that so i think it's a combination of the rooms aren't totally set up not because they didn't want to set up their rooms but it's because they were spending their time really focusing on how do i how do i teach totally online for a first grade classroom or an eighth grade social studies or what have you so i i see a lot of that with our teachers yeah thank you both for answering that question i would echo

142too that i know just based on some emails we we have received in the past not everybody entirely understands the teachers are on contracts that begin three days before in general three days before students arrive in their classroom so to your point uh this was everybody's you know very first day of of a whole new whole new ball game so we appreciate everybody's flexibility for sure um one more question has come in uh from tammy is there has been some talk about live streaming for the virtual learners what legalities might this encounter for parents who do not want their students shared visually yeah that's part of the planning process and so you know that's the constant conversation is with every online option and experience that we can offer you know there are questions and answers

143that need to be offered and so um while there will be will be concerns about that um online zooming in person we have um engaged with you know legal to talk about what those are we you know for the online piece what we want we know there are going to be pros and cons for but for for whatever we choose we want to choose the online platform that's going to be best for our students and so um we'll continue to work with with um all of our teams and our teachers to figure out what product that looks like or what platform sorry thank you dr cobb i think we are uh i don't think there's any more questions for you and so i will let lynn take the next section okay so we're going to

144talk about uh students who receive special education uh and i believe we have jamie smith the special education coordinator and carmen harris the rockwood director of special education standing by yes yes we do yes great okay so uh you also should have received some questions that the book post and uh let's talk about how we're going to make this transition for our students with uh they receive special education services sure our special education staff have been collaborating with our families we've been creating those distance learning plans that outline how our students will receive their special education services currently virtually as i've been visiting schools i would echo what both dave and lisa have said and that you see the staff having creatively arranged classrooms that are working for that virtual learning i see a lot

145of our paraprofessionals that are working side by side with our teachers in supporting students in breakout rooms creating those hands-on manipulatives and activities that are helping to create that engagement for students at home again we've been really focused on that engagement opportunity and pairing those hands-on manipulative activities with the virtual instruction and our staff have been developing creative ways to connect students um with types of virtual break rooms things that have some books and some visuals and some videos for them to participate in to support in social emotional needs and they've had some brain breaks for them and did you know building some digital reward systems etc where students can earn rewards that that are delivered to their home it's just another effort for us to connect to school and home as much as possible

146for our students with special needs so we'll continue to collaborate and discuss the specific reentry considerations for students receiving special education services we've already started those discussions with ssd with regards to transportation staffing etc so that we can ensure a smooth transition to in-person learning when we're ready to do that carmen there's been some questions about actually students coming in to this school house the school room uh to receive direct construction or support services how have you thought about how that might look even if they even if they remain virtual i think that the discussions that we have had is that we will support the rockwood model of instruction for students receiving educational services so if our rockwood students are receiving virtual we'll continue to support that platform if we are able to bring those

147students kindergarten through second back we'll be providing kindergarten through second in-person special education services any other any questions from the board for carmen okay thank you carmen um randy yes thank you very much guys so next up we have uh dr lisa counts talking about secondary education that being our middle and high schoolers take it away lisa all right thank you i feel very blessed i only had two questions on my list but i'm sure you guys have had plenty of time to think of some others so hopefully i'm prepared so um mine are kind of big global um questions that y'all asked and so i'll try to drill down a little bit um in case i'm missing some things so um just kind of some overall feedback how is the semester going um so

148perfect timing i had met with middle school and high school principals um this week so we talked a lot about this we talk pretty much every day about this topic but um you know secondary we we feel pretty pretty good not that we don't have challenges and we don't have some we know we still have some work to do but um you know our our kids are more independent and so while it's not ideal and and we want kids in the building um our kiddos each and every day it's getting a little bit better and like dave said i too have been in buildings every day for the last two weeks and you you really can um and i've now had the good fortune of um you know coming back to places that i started

149the first or second day of school and now i'm there a week later and you you can see people are teachers are settling in their kids are becoming more confident with canvas and zoom and and all of those pieces so um you know some of let's see i took some notes on your questions here i'm going to just make sure i'm not missing anything um you know i will say from one thing that i heard loud and clear from both middle and high school was um teachers how appreciative they are um that they are in the building that they have the ability to collaborate with each other obviously masked and appropriately socially distant but you know they they talked about the difference from last spring in alp where we didn't you know have the opportunity

150to be with our colleagues and um you really truly can can sense it and feel it in the buildings that staff are leaning on each other they're supporting each other you know we certainly have um differing levels of proficiency with canvas and zoom and those kinds of things so teachers are really supporting each other i mean they already collaborating they're using their resources you know we're blessed with such amazing resources in our school buildings it is really nice to have them there and working from their classrooms so that's that's probably the biggest takeaway um and the second one and literally and i think dave said this too um just people are just missing kids i mean i so many of our teachers that i talked to pro i don't know what percentage but a high

151percentage said you know they they want their kids back asap like they're just you know it's kind of weird to be in those schools and there's no there's no kid energy there so they're missing their kids for sure but um from an observer when i walk in the classroom and teachers are teaching their butts off i mean it's and it's a really weird phenomenon because you know i talked about the the teacher space and and i can't do any justice here without you you know you seeing it but those of you that have children and if you've looked in on their zoom i mean from the other side i walked into um a eureka high school science class the other day and of course you know one of their new amazing beautiful stem classrooms which

152are just unbelievable and it looked a little bit like a kind of a disaster zone out in the rest of the classroom but you know this was a chemistry classroom and he had like all the supplies and he had this whole table set up and it was just amazing to walk in and watch him teaching with an empty classroom but i mean the content was the same and the energy from the teacher was the same and it was just really cool to see i thought wow if if i was in this predicament i don't know that i could pull it off quite like that so they are really um teachers are really putting their heart and soul into this so um from that standpoint i think it's good kiddos i think we're overwhelmed for sure

153those first few days um as we've heard and and we know there are still some students that are overwhelmed um i think one of the um things that we have had the opportunity to do during this time without the students being there is our archdi process where we can really drill down and determine those individual students that are struggling we're able to identify them really quickly and so we we really um have already started putting things in place whether that's working with a counselor a social worker um you know accessing our resources through vic and brittany hogan and you know whether it's nursing services you know school food nutrition whatever it is we've really been able to drill down to those kids that we know are struggling at a more significant level so i think

154that's that's been a benefit the next question on my list was on the effectiveness of the quarter system um and and truly from a 612 perspective um we've gotten calming response of um students are feeling less stress than last spring and teachers are feeling less stress than last spring in the management of the number of courses that they have so um from a student perspective and and you know i'll speak a lot here even from my own personal experience of having a schooler who now has four classes instead of seven um and it's made a world of difference i mean ironically i really do think he already knows his teachers better now than when he was in person last year with seven teachers you know he's with those teachers each and every day you know

155they're having conversations they're building relationships so i think um just the stress level which is already high because of our online situation um the number of courses to manage um has been very helpful um so the positives for sure of the quarter system are the um just the caseload you know and for teachers for sure um as as i said this is this is really like you know first year of teaching for every single staff member i mean take you know think of the rock star teacher that your child has had the rock star teacher in rockwood um this is like their first year of teaching because this is all very very new territory very unknown and so for them um the quarter sys benefit because again they they can you know have a more

156smaller group of students to get to know and then also be able to manage those courses better in having um in teaching teaching fewer courses in the quarter um we do know there's some areas of improvement for sure in the quarter system and and we're working with shelly and the curriculum department and um you know even renee in in best teaching practices through professional pacing and we know that and again i'll speak from a parent um you know the first week of school my high school junior um was like this you know i have so much homework and this is way more than i ever had when i was in person with seven classes and i was like oh that that doesn't feel really great you know so i think teachers are kind of settling

157into some of that you know because it is a quarter system because um we have amazing curriculum we we have rigorous curriculum i think our teachers um we've gotta we've gotta really be clear about what that looks like and what that translates so that we're not overwhelming our students that yes i know we need to move maybe at a little faster pace or maybe we need to make sure we cover those key concepts the essential standards which again i think have to go back to our instruction and look at what things can come off the plate and what things can we take away and and make sure that we're balancing that for kiddos so pacing i just i do see of improvement like i said i i think that's something that became a abundantly clear

158to parents and and students and teachers alike after even four or five days ironically i was texting my son's principal just because they they humor me and i'm like holy cow you know spencer has three quizzes or tests out of four classes on one day i'm [Music] like a lot and so i think i think they're trying to settle in and figure out what this looks like to to figure that out it also the benefit of trying to acclimate to this quarter system is forcing us to really do a full course audit of every single class like it is really those plcs are working together more collaboratively than they ever have because now they really have to look at that entire curriculum that we've had an entire semester to teach and really pare that down

159and go what are the essential standards and how are we going to deliver this in the most effective method for students without overwhelming them so um i'd say that's our growth opportunity right now with the quarter system is to really tighten up that pacing and make sure that we're not overwhelming students and again it's allowed us to really dig in and look at what are those essential standards how do we assess them not everything has to be assessed through a traditional quiz or you know 50-point question test there's teachers are really getting into their content and recognizing ways to be creative so that we don't overload students so those were the two questions on my list i'm sure you guys might have some others oh yeah i've got a few more for you now the

160first one is from jamie um could we consider when it's safe to bring kids in small numbers for things like labs et cetera to get some of the hands-on learning in so like in the stem labs and things like that yep yep so we um high school principals we met today we talked specifically about that you know um if we turned it over to our teachers they would have had those kiddos in yesterday right they would have had them in last week like teachers are just you know chomping at the bit to get kiddos in and experience learning we have to be really thoughtful about that because we want to we want there to be equity and access for all students right and so if we make it a required hey we can have you

161know we certainly can social distance in these beautiful stem labs we have we could easily get 10 or 15 kiddos in there and be socially distant we absolutely could do that it it becomes um an opportunity and an access situation and so we really have thought a lot about that um so right now we're kind of taking a slow evaluation of what that could look like and we just would want to do that so that everyone had access to do that so you know we've talked about if you make it optional like hey you know in physics we're going to be hosting such and such lab next tuesday and wednesday well if a student doesn't have the means to get to school um what if their student who um maybe they or someone in their

162family is immune compromised so they don't they don't feel you know comfortable coming to school um you then it then becomes an opportunity situation and so some students would have the opportunity and some wouldn't so we are we are constantly discussing um what that looks like um and how we how we manage that because like i said they were up to our teachers i mean literally i know our principals every day get requests from teachers like hey what about this i know i thought of this great way i can socially distance my kiddos in a fax class or in metal shop or you know so so we know those teachers have thought of creative ways to do that we just have to think of also making sure it's accessible for all students okay uh tom

163had a question um are we providing support to teachers that are still having issues teaching on this platform he has heard from numerous students that some teachers are having a hard time explaining the material or the student has to watch a video outside of class time from another source to explain it there's a lot of info can be covered again are you getting what i said a lot of info so are you good did you get that off okay no no i got it so um yes we are still providing supports to teachers again this is this is a brand new platform and so um there are some there are some challenges there are some teachers that um are more comfortable in this setting than others but certainly um through the work that uh renee

164trottier shelly willot glenn hancock um their whole department i i'm leaving out people so it's it's there's many people that have created um trainings for teachers canvas courses um the content facilitators have done a lot of work in their various departments to help um push out those resources that's another topic we just talked about today pe was an example um you know the amount of resources that we're trying to push out to teachers um is just amazing so yes the support is is there um but yeah there are some teachers that are you know based either based on their their experience their content um may have to access other resources but certainly we want our teachers to continue with that training which is why we're really grateful for this all day professional learning day on

165september 8th that i think there will be a lot of opportunity um in fact our we've kind of pulled away from any um organized specific um training to really assessing what teachers need because certain content areas will need more support than others and so we will devote a lot of time on that day to that okay and tom had a follow-up to that are the teachers that you notice having troubles are they asking for assistance are they just continuing to struggle because they may be embarrassed to ask for assistance or what you're no i they're absolutely asking like i said i have the the amount of collaboration i have seen from teachers um and when i ask principals like this was the first and second day of school you know tell me you know just

166give me the temperature where are people at that was one of the first things they said is that teachers are truly reaching out and asking for assistance um one principal said something interesting that it's it's almost kind of leveled the playing field if you will in the sense of we're all at the same level right like you know you might be the the amazing experienced teacher who's been in our district for 15 years um but you have just just as many questions as the first feature so um i don't sense any teachers that are embarrassed or um worried to ask in fact i see the other way like they really want to do this right because they know they're already not with their kids and this is already a stressful situation for students so i

167see actually the other side of it that that they're really they're exhausting all their resources it's through their plc their administrator their content facilitator shelly willett's office etc and one final question um jamie had uh could you address the plan for finals just to clarify it for others um yeah uh finals shelly glenn feel free to chime in here um the song that never ends um i'll let you guys maybe answer that because you guys have worked closely with with teachers on that so last spring we made the decision that we were going to let content areas decide as a district plc whether or not their class needed a traditional final exam and we opened that up to them doing a variety of types of assessment it didn't make a lot of sense that some

168of our performance-based classes were given a written final every time and so we left that up to those groups some of those groups have made that decision as to whether they want to continue some are still having those discussions so that will be on a course-by-course basis and then the content facilitators and coordinators will continue those conversations with the assessment department leading us in that discussion of where those groups will go next so glenn's department is really doing a lot of work with alternative types of assessment and authentic types of assessment especially in this online environment so that uh we're not giving two hour paper pencil tests and classes that that's not the best fit okay anybody else have any other questions doesn't look like it thank you very much lisa and shelly appreciate it

169thank you thanks guys all right next up we have uh right back to you shelley superintendent for learning and support services she's touching on some virtual questions some canvas questions and delivery methods and and the like yeah so there were just a few questions um and the first one was really about inconsistencies and how teachers are delivering their content and i and it looks to me like that is leaning more toward posting of schedules homework assignments those kinds of things and that really does go back to those four basic tenants that we ask them to use on canvas we ask them to use the inbox the calendar to put assignments on so that that generates that to-do list for our students um the teacher bio and course information so that all of the grading practices

170and the teacher information is right there at your fingertips and linking their assignments to canvas so they don't need to they don't have to use canvas created content they can link their google classroom assignments if they want to stick to that into canvas and the whole point of that we started that work last april was so that parents would have one place to go to look for all of their kids things that was one of the biggest things we were hearing from that alternative learning plan was that they needed that common platform so training is continuing on those things we've been doing training with people since april we have training available in lots of different formats to suit different learners so we have video training we have written instructions and self tutorials that teachers can

171take on september 8th we have our curriculum day that typically was built into the beginning of the school year at teacher orientation this year's the first year that we built that out of that week in order to give people some time to breathe a little bit and then really be able to focus on that learning so on september 8th our instructional technology specialists who have been spending tons of time with our teachers in the classrooms right now i know time you referenced um you know if teachers are struggling who they reach out to they're reaching out to those instructional technology specialists and they're coming to the classroom and really working with them and they're going to be offering training all throughout the day on september 8th geared to specific grade levels and specific things on

172canvas and we're going to keep continuing to offer those um over time so that everybody can access the learning that they want um so that's a big thing and then when you mention inconsistencies in how teachers are delivering content we always want our teachers to use their own spin on things there was a question about some people digging into academics faster than others that always happens every school year especially at the elementary level we try to build in some academic work with all of the um getting to know you activities and getting to know the routines because we believe that you can incorporate those two things just like you can do those social emotional activities and do academics at the same time it is totally possible and so we were really encouraging that this year

173i think what you may be seeing in some instances is that whole focus on the fact that we were out of school since last march and i think some of our teachers are really concerned about what kids may have missed and so they may have jumped into academics a little bit quicker this year than they have in the past because they really want to know what kids know and don't know so that we can fill any gaps that are there we really have taken that approach of acceleration for learning we're starting kids in that grade level content and then whatever gaps show up we've got resources built in to the um the learning that we've built out so that they can address those gaps as we go we don't want to spend months on review

174because we believe kids need to be into that curriculum and learning it so it's just finding that balance and again it's kind of like lisa talked about it is new in many ways and they're trying to find their balance and their groove in things too and i'm noticing this week that that it's getting a lot better we did a 2 30 zoom with elementary teachers today just an open curriculum q a and there was a sense of relief that we did not see the first week and they feel like they're they're finally getting into it so um we felt really good about that and you as you know we did make some changes to that elementary curriculum that teacher time teacher contact time was a question here we really looked at that and gave teachers

175some suggestions on how to do that last week so as we're hearing about teams that are struggling to make that move our literacy coaches our math coaches are jumping in and supporting our curriculu curriculum team is getting in and supporting and we're really just trying to help out as much as we can all right uh i have one additional question so far what is the plan for using canvas when students return to the classroom we want to use canvas as a hub and that's that was our intention was a communication hub so i will say that from the elementary perspective they jumped into it faster we were thinking about that hybrid model that we were talking about at first where kids would have been on their own three days a week and so i think

176the teachers felt that pressure to get into that canvas we really told them it's okay let's ease into it kids need help navigating it as do parents and so we've done a couple things to remedy that um renee trouter and her team are building out some resources for parents on our district website we're going to be offering video tutorials self tutorials and written tutorials for people who want those so they'll be getting that pulled together and there's a group of people from our cross team that are helping with that we had many of those materials pulled together we just needed to get that in the right place so that's going to be there as well and we really wanted the kids to learn it because our hope was that we were going to be in

177school at the beginning of the year the kids would be learning that in the classroom and by the time we were out we were thinking that the kids would be able to just help their parents navigate it and it would be a beautiful thing and that didn't happen so that's kind of how that happened in those steps it was a very quick turnaround and we assumed that our teachers understood this the subtle shifts that moving from that hybrid to online were and they were so caught up in getting everything that some things got missed and so we went back and worked with them and i feel like they're in a much better place this week so hopefully you'll see a lot of improvements in that realm we've learned a lot about elementary students and canvas

178and technology in the last two weeks and my team i think has come out stronger for that okay uh there's one more question uh from lynn lynn i'm i'm just going to ask you i don't know if this question goes here if you want to hold that for amy where or later it's what will happen if a classroom needs to quarantine do you mean in regards to curriculum and and learning yes yeah i do yes methodology so when we we have curriculum built out for them to use virtually that's those lessons that our elementary teachers jumped into right away and so that content will be there and it will be dependent on the state of the teacher and whether that teacher can work or not and we'll work with those individual situations for sure at

179the secondary level that will involve the curriculum coordinator facilitator at the elementary level we also have our math and ela coaches that can step in and help navigate in that realm and we'll be working with katie's department too with subs for sure to make sure that if there's a long-term sub or someone that's taking over that class that we're working with them so that kids don't miss that academic delivery all right one more from dr kinder will classes be recorded for viewing later yes actually we are recording all of those zoom lessons i'm asking teachers you know it's not supposed to be a big ordeal just take the lesson part of it you don't have to tape the other kids in it and the whole method behind that is equity and access that if a

180student has a technology issue at home or they're helping a young younger sibling or something's going on that they can't access it live there's a recording for them to access the lesson later and those are all secure in a google folder that the student can access through their google account so they have to sign in to do that those videos are not floating out there for everyone to see so that kids can access that learning if something would happen that they can't be there awesome all right i think you are off the hook for now maybe more later we'll see and lynn okay a big topic has been staffing subs support staff and so katie reverely who is assistant superintendent for human resources will address the questions that we sent to her evening everyone thank

181you for um for having me tonight as you know a critical component to uh the the most critical component to a school district is is humans so we need to make sure that we plan and support a staff a safe return for our students and our staff we need to be mindful of those mitigation strategies that everybody talks about uh social distancing wearing masks washing our hands because we need our employees and students to be in our schools for our schools to run so just kind of running through the questions and you know human resources really will respond and make changes based on the needs of our of our students and our staff but the first question is how many teachers and staff will stay in our buildings if we bring kids back the great

182news is our teachers our staff are already in our buildings that's been our expectation from the beginning so the vast majority of our teachers are teaching from their classroom now there are exceptions to that based on uh health condition or child care which would probably continue uh those same teachers would continue on possibly to some extent it was child care and their kids were in rockwood and happen to be in k12 they could they could transition back but we we already have an idea of what staff will um will need to um work from home or or not not not be in school take some sort of leave can staff resign spots i i think we mean can teachers resign their positions um of course that's up to the board of education so teachers can

183request to resign in the position and the board uh would of course need to approve that um like likewise for any support staff position um support staff positions uh the resignations all go to the board of education so that would be up to you guys how do we accommodate teachers that do not want to be in the classroom uh of course at any time we work with any individual teacher whether they have a medical condition or a personal issue that we need to work through uh dave cobb spoke earlier about you know we're still in planning and making decisions of of what this transition back from online to in-person school will look like and we do have to nail down those specifics before we we really know what our teaching positions are going to look

184like i want everyone to be aware because i think it's important especially speaking as a as a fifth grade parent uh myself with my child in uh in the rockwood school district um we we have a couple options here that we need to explore with our with our teachers and with our um with our administrators if we bring students back to the exact teacher that they have online in in a virtual situation that means that that teacher would have virtual and and online kids at the same time which poses some difficulties but but allows the child to stay with the teacher that they've gotten to know for the last two weeks or a week or whatever it is um seems like an eternity doesn't it but i think it's just only been a few a

185few two weeks um the other option is is that then we we have some online we have in person and online teachers uh that would allow us to accommodate teachers that needed to teach uh online and online positions um but it would involve us changing students from from their from their teachers so hypothetically my fifth grader could have a different teacher because his teacher now could be the online teacher so we're going to have to work through those those mechanics and those are really important pieces that take a lot of people a lot of minds thinking collaboratively of what's best for kids but i just want to i just want to be mindful of that um you know when you try that when you try to take a system and move it from a virtual

186system to in person there are pro as dave said there are pros and cons uh to all of those this system so we'll take a a look at that but we do need to make those decisions to know exactly what staff will need to accommodate uh what will quarantine of teachers look like well the department of health determines the quarantine so that's that's pretty and i know amy will probably talk about that that's pretty specific and laid out pretty clearly um again we want people to if if they're sick or don't feel well or exhibiting us a symptom we don't want them to be at work by any means certainly if they're quarantining as ordered by the department of health we would have to have a substitute teacher in their classroom for those students the

187next two involve subs which are really interesting because i just want everyone to be mindful that we have a sub shortage in in in the good times pre-covered we never had enough subs um on a daily basis prior to covert and rockwood um we would have 150 to 200 teachers out and that that's a that's a heavy burden on on a subsystem that certainly isn't um specific to rockwood that's a national shortage um but as you know we're entering into a difficult time with kovid we have a solid sub pool that we can utilize whether we're in a virtual environment or online i want to remind you also that if a sub is in a student's classroom for more than 10 days they have to be a certified teacher so i know a lot a

188lot of there's been a lot of discussion of um hiring more subs and absolutely we we are hiring subs all the time um but be mindful that if a teacher is quarantining which is 14 days per se um that would that would need to be a certified teacher sub so we will continue to to uh find problem solve and find creative solutions to uh to teacher subs um will subs be trained in current methods of teaching health safety virtual learners of course they will um we'll we'll make sure that they have they have that training um it's probably the same training that the rockwood teachers had which is here's how we're doing it now i'm just kidding but i do think it's um it's really important that we provide that training to our subs and

189then our last question is uh bus driver numbers and food service you know that's always an area again that's a shortage for the rockwood school district we are always looking for bus drivers for child nutrition workers for adventure club i'll throw that in for subs i'll throw that in i mean if you look at our job board we have those positions posted right now that's even pre-covered paul northington has shared that bus drivers are are staffed so that's excellent news from from his department in the transportation but again those are those are positions that we're always looking for um and we will we will continue to respond to the needs of our employees to meet the needs of our students i think that's all my questions yeah page two isn't me uh sorry somebody sent

190me a question for you uh sorry lynn from dr kinder just to keep this going he said on the web a claim was made that 500 teachers resigned could you clarify that uh rumor please uh that is a false uh that's false 500 teachers did not resign katie i i was muted i'm sorry uh thompson and this question we have heard repeatedly that teachers want kids back in the classroom what are you hearing now from teachers about coming you know having kids back into the classroom are is there people who are comfortable with that or uncomfortable with it what are you hearing yeah you know that's an interesting one i think it's i think it's a a varied i think i think every teacher wants kids back in the classroom wholeheartedly in their heart they

191are love kids and that's why they're in the field of education um i think that there is fear with covet i think it's it's uh it's a reality that we have to face that there are people who are scared and there are people who want to ensure that we have safety protocols and i think it's really important that we um communicate that to go back to dr miles a slide at the beginning of this we communicate that and we are clear about our expectations um for our protocols but yeah i think you know speaking i i i talk to a lot of teachers but i also live in the community where parents and teachers talk to me about um they want to come back but there is fear we just want to make sure that

192we're helping alleviate that fear and helping support our staff as they return as we discussed in our community session tuesday night dr newland and dr orsolyn were there and there were several questions about that transition phase for secondary students as well and i think they too would recommend that initial phase in of pre-k 2 and then 3-5 to establish that as a foundation for success monitor the community indicators but also monitoring what's happening within our schools are we having uh cases or any spread within our schools we can maintain a safe environment in our schools then we're going to look at that that phase in of our secondary students as well we also recognize that our as you think about our secondary teachers it's much more difficult to cohort our secondary schools because in our

193secondary schools they're moving from classroom to classroom and have much more interaction even during the school day which increases a bit of risk of transmission even within our schools but you see a mix of reaction from the teachers with whom i've spoken as well so randy speaking of teachers i think the next section is yours yes so next up we have laura baker who is the president of the rockwood nea go ahead laura okay um my first question was about the pulse of teachers that i am hearing and i'd love to be able to say that i have some quantitative numbers to present to you but um quick turnaround with the idea of considering a return i know many of our teachers heard the message that we would be going through the first quarter so

194um just kind of wasn't prepared well enough to give you um a number however through emails and phone calls i feel as if i am and as a peer with and the role i particularly play i i feel that i'm receiving um a fairly good understanding of the pulse and and that there are three different kind of thoughts that are out there among our teachers one is that they are ready for a return with the safety protocols that are in place to the extent possible that we've talked about already um there is a group of teachers who would be more comfortable upon a return if we had a little bit more in the way of safety measures whether that be temperature tape taking temperatures or plexi glass or just maybe more of an enforcement of

195the masts and the rules of social distancing and then the third camp i guess are those teachers who as katie mentioned are um are fearful and and maybe have some health concerns of their own or or that they're considering with their families and have some child care concerns now that they have to work through so there's just kind of different pieces along the way but i think across the board there there are teachers that are in different places um i think that's all i really have the concerns really that are brought forth our safety is at the forefront definitely prep time teachers who will be coming back will need time to adjust to in-person instruction after spending so much of their time right now on doing the very best they can with the virtual platform

196that there will be some time necessary for teachers to adjust to coming back into the classroom with students um and and again one of the other concerns it was mentioned before that having teachers try to balance both in-person instruction and a virtual platform with a class of students is not best practice we've heard that before so as much as possible our teachers really need to have kind of a focus of either in class or virtual but trying to mix the two up really complicates things and and doesn't really give our teachers a their their best ability to be successful with either of them to the extent we can um so i think that's my first question second question is whether or not i'm emphasizing the importance of staying off social media and my communication to

197our teachers has about has been mainly to be professional to just remember that you are an employee of rockwood and and anything that you are communicating should stay in a professional manner and kind of that's really been my extent to communicating to teachers about what they do or don't do on social media and then the last question what pressure are we receiving from missouri nea the answer is none missouri nea and our national nea really are there to support us so our job as a rockwood organization is to represent and advocate for our teachers and do what's best for our rockwood community and our students so um really there's no there's no pressure at all coming from anyone outside of what the teachers are asking for within our own kind of structures and and buildings

198um i think it's important to remember that our members are all voluntary no one's forced to be part of our association so um the voice we have is is the voice that our teachers want us to have and it really is organic from the ground up based on our needs and our teachers needs we know that supporting our teachers here in rockwood means supporting our students and when our students when our teachers are successful then our students are successful our working environments are their learning environment so so there is a direct connection on making sure that what we do as an association in rockwood is what's best for our teachers because again that's best for our students i guess that's it all right anybody else have any other questions doesn't look like it so i'll

199turn it back over to jamie thank you very much laura thank you all right so we are going to actually skip this one because we're having some technical difficulties so we will pause on dr harris for now and come back when we can get him into the zoom um and move on to depth catching and lynn that is you oh sorry i'm going to interject just because he's here if that's okay try to keep everything in the order okay dr harris is here he's the executive director of student services dr yay welcome you're muted but um the main question that we have for you unless you've got other updates is simply how are the children um i think that we probably should ask how is terry because i was stressing out texting lisa and janet

200and trying to figure out how to get on the zoom call i blame i blame uh keith kender for not letting me on the call i'm sure he has something to do with it [Laughter] and that was my wife in the background keith who said i love you she loves you um so i i think that um the the kids are okay okay in a certain extent right so brittany and her team with the social workers and um uh therapists they have been delivering food um deb and her team have been very helpful in terms of making sure that we have hot spots but we still have gaps and um that's the that's the truth in terms of food we're we're okay we're delivering food and paul and and carmen have been very helpful with

201that um but i received a few messages today that uh we still have some some gaps in terms of hot spots so we have to do a better job with that and making sure that our students are able to connect online um and i think that we're working on that i met with the principals for middle school as well as high schools this week and dave i know has talked to his elementary principals so we are doing the mindful mondays but the reality of the mother is mindful mondays are designed in a way to make sure that we're giving kids a break from just being on zoom and trying to find some level of happiness so we have yoga we have uh meditation we have how to cope with anxiety we have how to cope

202with everything that's going on and so we're still trying to figure out ways to uh engage kids so that there are things that they're they're not um still trying to engage kids in terms of things that they're not necessarily aware of that we're not aware of so we can help them out we also have yoga and mindfulness and certain things for staff members as well and so we're happy about that um and jamie you know this because obvi jamie laura lee you guys know this and uh daniel then because of what we've been going through and kathy we have a group of families that are still asking for support so rockwood gives back is making deliveries every single day are trying to make deliveries every single day we are um helping families out with paying

203rent and different things like that so it's a tough time like i i i i just i miss the early parts of the meetings but it's a tough time for our families and and all families are trying to figure out what they need to be able to just survive i'm happy to know that we have been lucky luckily jamie and laura lee um and randy to be able to receive the support that we have for for deliveries and um financial support to support our kids but the reality of the matter is it's a tough time right now and so we have people who are asking for financial support to pay bills to pay um mortgage to pay a a um a gas bill or a light bill so we're strugg we're we're trying to help

204out with that in addition we're making sure that our kids have hot spots and and all those things that the number the the beauty is in in rockwood that number is not a high number but it's still a number that we have to be concerned with and so we're trying to do the best that we can to make sure that all of our kids are well but um and i would say that for the most part they are we just have a small percentage of kids that we need to make sure that we're paying attention to so um today uh brittany and her social workers are um working with deb and her team and um shelly and her team to make sure we have hot spots to make sure the kids have the resources that

205they need i'm proud to know that paul and his team and carmen are working very hard to make sure that our kids have food so we're doing all those things but it's just those outliers it's those kids that we just don't know about and we're trying to figure out what's going on with them kids who are not checking in to make sure that we're meeting their needs so uh in terms of how are the children that's where we are but it's it's the the question is it an extension it's not just how are the children it's also how are they teachers so i mentioned earlier that we're trying to provide some social emotional support for our teachers it's also how are the children or how are the parents so i'm working to create a parent

206series in terms of what what parents should do and what parents need to do in this time of covet um so we're just trying to cover all those bases as it relates to um social emotional learning and just this this space that we have never navigated before janet told me to keep it short so uh i stopped there if there are any questions um i'm willing to answer those questions well for terry and everybody else i need to clarify something he stated his wife loved me so there aren't any rumors i had his wife in class this summer at marigold university and she is easy to see she's a much better student than her husband was i'm sure you don't really mean that but because of covet i will give you the um exception thank

207you dr harris i don't see any more questions i did jokingly say to you earlier just as you said that question is an extension and i joke and jokingly said to you how are the board members because as you know we all could use a little tlc these days it has been as director model stated some very tough times so we appreciate your team and all the work you're doing for everyone in our community and and for yourselves too yeah thank you and i know i know janet i apologize because janet told me to keep it short she knows that i can talk forever but i do want to say that um as as crazy as the times are um i'm really proud that all of us everybody on this call like we're doing a

208lot to make sure our kids are okay like we really are we're doing a lot um you you guys know that the police officer who was shot and killed uh in the city of st louis um those kids are rock with kids and um kellison has been very wonderful in terms of reaching out to the family our sros are trying to figure out all the things they need to do to make sure that that family is okay um we have kids who are again struggling with food and every time we get a call from one of our principals or our schools we're making sure that we are providing food for those students and so this is a tough time for all of us um but i mean this with all my heart there's no there's

209no school district that's better than rockwood school district in terms of coming together to make sure that we rally for our people we love our kids we care about our kids and our parents are really happy with the fact that we're doing all the things that we need to do and so if there's anybody on this call or anyone that's listening to this that uh are in need of any type of support they can reach out to student services lease accounts dave cobb uh rockwood gives back and we will make sure that we provide the the services that we need to make sure that our kids are thriving in this time so thank you jamie for just sharing that you bet thank you for that we have an amazing community who is so supportive appreciate

210it all right lynn okay uh get dab catching chief information officer cio will talk to us a little bit talk to us about the technology needs and what's happening in that realm deb thank you one of the questions i got was um how can we assure parents that technology glitches have been addressed and one of the things i want to do is is just kind of set the stage real briefly about what we planned and then briefly touch on some of the bumps and how we're planning to move forward so in the technology department we planned and implemented solutions this summer to provide a smooth transition um with prepared teachers and a full availability of all of our resources in in a hybrid environment that could transition to a virtual environment we performed upgrades we

211made sure that we had virtual application access for students in our fine arts and business courses that they would not normally have access to from a chromebook because we wanted to replicate that in school feeling and experience as closely as possible and we implemented a new internet content filter to address issues that we experienced and our students experienced during the spring and we've stress tested our network a few times with the last time being a district-wide zoom call zoom testing with all of our teachers and principals and we really felt good after those stress tests had been performed knowing that august 24th was one of the largest return to school days this year and would stress our online vendors we checked with them to make sure that they were as prepared as they could be

212but even with those measures we experienced a bumpy start from a hardware um technology issue perspective our instructional technology team um has been working oh my gosh so many hours this summer to reach our teachers and working with curriculum and professional learning teams to assess what those teachers needed to be prepared for a hybrid or an online environment and they reached more teachers over the summer this year than ever before and they are continuing on a daily basis and i'm sure most of them are still answering teacher emails and questions tonight to support those teachers with what they're doing right now based on the feedback i'm hearing are our tech team is is doing a great job um especially those that are supporting the just in time needs for our teachers so that might be

213an instructional question it might be oh my goodness my computer quit working so we're getting very positive feedback internally we did experience some phone issues on august 24th um due to an unprecedented volume of calls at the same time we had over 600 phone calls come in within a few seconds of each other that overwhelmed our system our network team quickly identified those issues they worked with our our vendor support to get the corrections made and even with all those phone issues on monday our help desk team answered more than 2 calls last week that is an incredible amount of phone calls um for for a group of people to answer and we typically receive around a thousand phone calls during that first week of school so almost double what we got last year after

214monday our team noticed that students were still having problems they were closely monitoring that new internet content filter they identified issues that were slowing down that chromebook traffic and they made incremental corrections and adjustments throughout the day and by the end of the day they had a larger scale solution and we implemented that on tuesday night when students restarted their chromebooks the majority of students felt that things were working much better and they were having more few many fewer problems so the the um we're continuing to monitor those systems and um make sure that we're addressing any needs that occur but um one of the biggest things i i think is um important to note is we we are still serving a lot of kids every day successfully and we're now to the point where

215those issues that we're having are very unique um i would say are unique circumstances um and they require a bit more effort to resolve and lastly terry mentioned this about the hot spots and that's our last major technology hurdle to school opening successfully and that's the home internet connectivity issues we projected our needs based on requests in the spring and summer for assistance we purchased hot spots um you know we thought we were in a good spot we had prepared for um a stock of extras um our hot spots did not arrive on time they're they're still not here yet um we also had an overwhelming increase in the request between um about the wednesday that teachers came back to work to last saturday we had almost tripled our number of requests from what we

216had um on august um 10th so we're we're working to get more so that we can address every family's needs but um we are working on that our first shipment um is due soon it's preparing to ship and the st louis county library digital equity hotspots will be announced soon when they're going to be available for pickup so i just want to say again that as our as we prepare for our students to return to class in person our instructional technology specialists our support team are engaged with the curriculum team the facilities teams the principals um all kinds of people to ensure that we're able to successfully support our teachers and our in-person and at-home students who are learning virtually so i appreciate all of your support i know that i've been coming and asking

217for a lot over the last six months and so i appreciate your support and your understanding that the things that we're asking for are needed to assure our families that their needs are being met and that their students are being taken care of so deb uh dr kinder is asking how will you assure the students technology needs of being met i believe you've answered that but keith do you have a do you have another question or did deb answer that are you asking dr kinder if they're having a problem how we're meeting their needs so for example if their chromebook stops working okay if their chromebook stops working or they have a need to get technical assistance we have repair sites at each of our high schools they're open monday through friday seven to eleven

218and noon to three thirty um the students can bring their chromebook and we either exchange it and take it and repair it or um if it's uh sometimes it's something that can be resolved right then while they're there um we'll do that that's what i thought i saw the other day when i was at rockwood summit but i just wanted to make sure so if they have a problem they can contact you or can you just come in they well they can they can come in um we do like for them to submit a ticket so that we can track the devices and we're sure that we're you know keeping track of of keith kinder's device and um jamie baze's devices and we're not mixing them up we we assign them to a number in

219our system so we we would like that students can submit tickets um parents we've added a way for parents to submit a ticket directly from the rockwood school district website they can click on a link and it will take them directly to a ticket that they can complete and submit and then it gets routed to the appropriate person and someone will reach out to them to let them know how to go about getting support for to meet their needs sometimes that's a phone call that can take care of it if they're having trouble with canvas we can you know call them and take care of that if it's a hardware issue we explain to them what they can do to get it repaired that's great thank you very much deb tom asked how about having

220availability during evening hours to come in extended hours during the evening yeah be able to get to school during the hours because parents are working right um i'll say that i have made um arrangements with parents that have that need um to to make arrangements to meet them our our staff um is also hourly and is also um you know facing some of the same issues they have children that they have to take you know provide care for so we're trying to balance that if we find that we need to add evening hours you know we've talked about that um about adding possibly one evening a week where parents could come in and and bring devices honestly when we had evening hours last spring we didn't have as much traffic as we thought we would

221so um when we opened this for this season we thought that we would try it this way if there became a need we would address it we'll make adjustments and tammy said this question is this information being shared out with families and caregivers um the the support site information and how to enter tickets yeah yes that that was sent to families via uh rockwood five things to know about technology uh message and all of the links were in there and information about how to complete the form and where they could go who they could call the help desk information all of that was in there all right and it's also on the district website and so deb going forward thinking about k one and two coming back into the classrooms i think the last question

222on the list here is how will virtual learners participate so and so we there's been some discussions about a webcam yeah um and and i really i'm not quite sure what what that's referencing one of the things that we have um been talking about as dave mentioned and and i think shelley mentioned were and katie what those um classrooms might look like you know if if a teacher is doing full virtual the needs for that are different from a teacher with um in-person students and virtual students that they're trying to instruct at the same time so we have been planning in conjunction with the curriculum team and the professional learning team about what that environment might look like in a classroom with both in-person and virtual students and our instructional tech our curriculum content people

223have been talking through some of that our hardware people have been talking through that we've identified some potential hardware that would support that and as a matter of fact tomorrow we're going to try a solution that is developed internally to see how that works but we've also looked at things like the logitech meeting room the meeting out and meeting owl pro to see what those devices might bring to the classroom and how that might support the teacher to provide a better quality experience for the students from an audio an audio and visual and video perspective because one of the things that you know there's a whole instructional piece that will have to occur about how to make sure you're meeting the needs of all of your students in your classroom even those virtual students but

224then there's also just the the hardware logistical pieces of where do you stand where do you put the equipment how do you face how do you face that equipment to minimize in the event of a family would not want their kids shown on the video how how do we make sure that that's working so those are all some things that we've identified and are working to to address and lynn i wanted to add that we this simulation we're actually going to run it as closely as we can to a classroom so we're going to put the teacher in a mask because that's what they would be doing in the live classroom we're going to listen to the sound we actually got a mask with a clear front on it so they could teach a phonics

225lesson because we really wanted to see what that looked like um we're going to do a math lesson with some games and white boards like we would typically do in a classroom so that we can really get a feel for what that might look like in real time right good thank you good to go for the next one all right looks like it um next up we have rockwood's top nurse anywhere good evening everyone thanks for inquiring and i'm glad that you're interested um along the lines of equipment to protect our teachers and staff i have kind of an exhaustive list here that is provided weekly by brenda kirkhoffer um who has i i tease her and say she's got the best job she's a professional shopper and she always says i don't get to

226shop for much that's very fun so um but she has spent hours and hours trying to procure items for um personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies that sort of thing so i i do have to give her big kudos on all of this um i can share this list with janet if she doesn't have it so that you all have access to it but we do have plexiglas dividers for people with shared work areas or like welcome center areas clear face masks disposable face masks kn 95 masks the n95 masks which are the true medical grade protective ones you cannot purchase outside of a hospital system right now if those do become available i think we would be interested in buying some of those for nurses and custodians who are dealing the nurses face to

227face with kids who are symptomatic and trying to assess them and take care of them and then the custodians that would clean up those spaces after those kiddos have have made it home we have isolation gowns we have cloth masks that have and most of those have been distributed to staff members and then we've got backup ones we have child size masks that will be um and i see dr kinder has on a clear face mask there for you so you can see his pretty smile um i haven't tried that one does it fall it doesn't look like it's fogging up too badly um i have one that's all clear um and it gapes too much on the sides and the foam rubs my chin too much but um it might be fine for some

228people with a bigger face or something i don't know um we do have child size masks coming um and those are of course to replace masks that kids um either they get soiled or lost or they forget them hand sanitizer over 3 000 gallons of hand sanitizer are now in our district we're using distant planning to use disinfecting spray and paper towels to clean up work areas um student desks that sort of thing as the like clorox wipes are just not available in bulk we have infrared thermometers i know laura baker mentioned teachers wanting temp some teachers wanting temps to be taken that is not best practice or an effective use of time and resources in children so that's not something that we're planning on doing right now fewer than half of children that have

229a positive covid test ever have a fever so runny nose is the big thing i've been hearing lately under 10 kids with a runny nose testing positive and that's their only symptoms so we will be on the lookout for that disposable gloves we have on hand face shields that are really to be used in conjunction with a mask just a face shield by itself is not considered protective but there might be instances where teachers need to use that if they don't have access to a clear mask or something and it can also be used you know along with other ppe for nurses or custodians if they're cleaning up somebody after someone or taking care of someone who is really you know symptomatic and we're really concerned that it might be a case of covid um

230and then the spray bottles for the the cleaner those have been received and distributed and more on on order so again thanks to brenda for providing that list and that update um every week basically to to i don't i don't know who well it goes to i'm not on cabinet or anything but you know i do get that list so that's that's great um to know that all those products are um in place for us we um will all kids be wearing masks at all time other than while at lunch and drinking i heard this addressed a little bit before masked breaks are are recommended by the cdc and we will encourage them to be allowed when it is safe to do so that would include outside when they're and when they're socially distanced even

231within the classroom um gym recess inquire band um so situations like that that where kids are far enough apart and can take their masks off you need to scroll on my list amy yes i'm a little worried i wore a mask for four hours tuesday night teaching class it really makes you appreciate these doctors and nurses that wear those things for eight and 10 and 12 hours it's unbelievable just four hours how that wears a person out yes it does bart baker get your teachers ready i was going to say uh before i was a school nurse i i worked in uh facial plastic surgery and and wore you know full sterile garb for eight and ten hours at a time and it's it is it's you know it's something you do get used to

232but it's challenging um my next question that i have listed here is is how will parents and guardians share the responsibility of it adherence to student masks and physical social distancing requirements i'm not sure i'm really the best person to address this but we will be asking for parents to acclimate their students to wearing a mask prior to returning to school and i think that's the biggest thing is getting them used to it that will be something also wearing masks is something that we are i expect our staff will model and teach and encourage and remind students to do and i've had some input from area nurses in in around the st louis area who do have students on campus and from our adventure club staff who have had kids on campus since late june

233that the kids are pretty good at putting their masks on and leaving them on and we may be really surprised at how often the kids are reminding the teachers to wear their mask appropriately and quit touching it and all of that stuff so um i think some of us forget that i mean kids are very malleable i mean they you know they will model what we what we do and many times do what we encourage them to do so not all of them of course there will be challenges but um i think as an overall they're going to be so happy to be back with their friends and in school they're kind of going to be willing to do whatever it takes so my next question is if there's a positive staff or student case

234in a classroom you know what what if there is a positive case um and i keep saying this and i'll answer all things covid my answer is it depends um so we do have flow charts that cover the basics of what happens and who does what um and we've been using that with staff members we have been using that with our student athletes so there are many facets to that but it involves you know the making sure that person is off campus stays off campus we do some reporting to county health we get our custodial team involved to make sure the areas they were last in it were are cleaned um communications if a notification needs to go out if that person has been on campus within 48 hours of testing positive or becoming symptomatic

235we try and do a notification um so happy to talk more about that with anyone who has a personal interest or send you the flow charts and that kind of thing they should be up on our website in the next couple of days so um how does the nurse and staff how do the nursing staff differentiate space and service to kids who are well versus kids who show symptoms during the school day this is one of our big challenges in many buildings many of our especially elementary school nurses offices are very small so it does vary by building our brand new eureka elementary has um it's technically a mother's room but could be used as an isolation space there's also two bathrooms in that office one of those could be converted to a an isolation

236space there within her actual office but those of you that are familiar with fairway blevins wild horse those three nurses offices are pretty much the same footprint and there's not space to do that in those offices so we're working on how to um accommodate isolation spaces in all the various buildings and those configurations and we hope to communicate with parents ways to help keep their well children out of the nurses offices for routine issues um you know if your child takes um let's say an adhd medication can they take an extended release so that they don't have to come to the nurse at lunch time for a booster dose just simple things like that and of course that takes their their doctor's input so it's not something we can just change but we might ask

237them to consult with their doctor on that um we may we will be asking teachers to we've always asked teachers to do minor comfort measures in the classroom um you know allow children to put their head down for a few minutes if they've got a headache um get a drink of water um you know simple things like that clean really minor cuts and abrasions put a band-aid on that for them so doing things like that outside of the nurse's office will help keep some of the well kids out of there so that the the actually sick children can be in the nurse's office and taken care of what circumstances would constitute a shutdown of a classroom a wing or a building again i'm going to go back to it depends i think we'd only close

238an entire building if we were instructed to by county public health officials or if we didn't have enough staff to safely supervise the students an entire class could be quarantined and that'll just depend on how well social distancing can be accomplished in that specific class and how how well those mitigation measures are being followed so it's i mean there's no one hard fast answer for most questions around covid and that's why it's the the contact tracing part of it and that takes a lot of time just to ask all the right questions and get thorough answers so that you can make the right decisions to keep people safe what additional responsibilities will the school nurse and nurse aides have where are you guys hiding the nurse aides we don't have those just so you know

239we do have um staff members that are trained to be backups for the nurse um on the rare occasion we can't secure a substitute nurse or if a nurse has to attend a meeting in the building or they're called to an emergency that's let's say out on the track or the field playground something like that somebody needs to be available in the nurse's office to do those routine kinds of first aid and administer routine medications so most of our buildings have that pretty well handled so hopefully those people will also be available to help in this situation related to covet i think contact tracing is is i already know that's going to be a very time consuming process our high school nurses um of which we have eight um are certainly at lafayette lafayette marquette

240um pretty overwhelmed right now with just tracking the student athletes and those athletes are not um while they're on campus and under our watch they are practicing social distancing wearing masks as appropriate but they're they're still teenagers and i when i walked out of the lafayette meeting on thurs tuesday evening i saw probably a group of 10 at least just all huddled together and hanging out there and the whole time that i had i walked all the way across the parking lot and they just were standing there you know socializing which is what teenagers are supposed to do but um so i think it's you know happening off campus way more than on campus so right now i i kind of feel like county health is asking school nurses to do two jobs county health

241has hired five contact tracers at the county level to do the contact racing for all 23 school districts in the county i've got eight nurses doing that just for our high school athletes and and they can't get to you know following up on immunizations needed and and the other parts of their the routine parts of their job right now and that's without kids walking through the door needing you know things on a constant basis throughout the day so um it's going to be challenging not sure how we're going to handle that but when we do have other people getting up to speed on contact tracing so all the student services personnel are doing that and several administrators have done that so we will be reaching out and asking for help on that so um many

242of the the um things that we used to do in the nurses offices comfort measures and um over-the-counter medications those are going to be we we aren't going to be doing that we aren't going to be doing over-the-counter medications the way we used to be doing because we if a child used to have a headache we would um you know try and treat that with um without medication if that didn't work or older kids it would just say i just need an ibuprofen you know we would make sure they have consent for that and give them that um that's going to be a reason to be sent home now so i think that's that's going to be a big change for parents for students and and potentially create a lot more work for nurses just

243trying to get a hold of parents and then where do i put these three kids that all have symptoms that are waiting to go home so i also think we're going to have anxiety issues that are both staff and students that the nurses counselors social workers are all going to be asked to jump in and help with so all things kovid continue to change so just keeping up on the latest information and how that impacts schools and school health how nurses are going to assess and treat students is a challenge and a change i don't know if any of you have any experience with asthma albuterol can be in a liquid form it's a rescue medication to help students breathe better and that's given via a nebulizer which sort of aerosolizes the medication so the

244student can breathe it in better that is a procedure that we're no longer going to be doing in our school nurse offices we are it has the potential to aerosolize the virus and put it into the air in these really tiny droplets that'll hang in there suspended for much longer so we won't be doing that but we do have an updated emergency asthma protocol from our new consulting physician um and we are working to secure common use metered dose inhalers the puffers that's what most people are familiar with with disposable mouthpieces so that medication can be used with multiple students and without risk of cross-contamination so that's one of the things one of the many things we've been working on the plan for training and district support again contact tracing is the one thing that

245i mean i think nearly all of our nurses have done um i myself have been on multiple webinars and zoom calls throughout the whole yeah since since april at least um you know many of those are our weekly updates on things so um and i've had many nurses that have done several of those as well many are put on by desi or the missouri department of health and senior services asthma allergy foundation all kinds of professional organizations so and we also have nurses have a staff training powerpoint that's available to them and they're ready willing to share that with staff when when we're to that point that staff need training on okay what is covid what am i looking for in kids when do i need to worry what what do i do um worrying

246doesn't help what do i do so um i get and that brings me to about the end of my notes so um what questions do you have in terms of contact tracing we have a number of uh school social workers counselors dan sadowsky and i are going through the johns hopkins uh contact racing training it's the free training really open to the public and provides a lot of information about the history of covet 19 as well as the processes for appropriate contact tracing so i just felt like our knowledge of contact tracing would in some ways assist our efforts in collaboration with the st louis county department of public health so we have a number of individuals that are completing that training through johns hopkins to keep in mind about that principals have done that

247as well middle school and high school principals have all completed uh the john hopkins hopkins um training i think many of the elementary principals have as well and amy may have said this already but all counselors social workers sros so we've got a lot of individuals that are going through that program as well and i would say the one thing to keep in mind about the johns hopkins course and i'm not sure exactly when that was set up i did it in june but um it is based on the cdc guidelines and some of st louis county's guidelines are a little bit more stringent about times of quarantine and who can release someone from quarantine i think that's the big one it's not just you get to do this this much time and then you

248get out of jail free it's you are supposed to be released by county health officials in our in our county so when they get backlogged that process gets backlogged all right amy i'm not seeing any other questions so uh i'm very thankful to you and your staff for taking care of our kiddos when they're at their worst and we appreciate everything you do thank you very much yes thank you all right we should have scheduled a brain break in here is everybody still awake yes all right two more to go two more to go all right next up chief financial officer paul northington take it away sir all right well i'll try to bring brief i know it's been a long evening um so a lot of what we uh are under my umbrella is

249the support service so we're really going to be talking about transportation facilities food service and finance and really just to start with the facility side of things our custodial maintenance staff have really been working uh with the covet situation going back to last spring and that work has continued throughout the summer so a lot of uh what amy spoke to in regards to sanitizing and working with brenda in obtaining the supplies have worked directly with our facilities team uh on a daily basis uh facilities will naturally have the routine cleaning that they go through uh with uh specialized approach in addressing the proper sanitation that needs to be done each evening but during the day as amy mentioned we also have products within each of the classrooms to where individually each teacher or person in

250the classroom can sanitize uh their items at their leisure or or the quantity of of uh disinfecting but the custodial crew will each evening make sure the buildings are thoroughly cleaned and on a rotating basis they will also go through and do spraying of the facilities throughout the district on a regular basis so again they've been they've been at it for quite some time another question that was uh part of my presentation had to deal with air quality and they've also been working this summer to really see what we can do to bring in more indoor air while still preserving the integrity of the hvac system there's a good balance there they've spent a lot of time balancing those systems to enhance the air quality within within each of the buildings and i feel confident

251that air quality is going to be good um in regards to plexiglass and protective barriers i think amy addressed that we have because facilities has worked to put a lot of those barriers in place during the summer and right here to start school and they're strategically located in the areas that are that are necessary [Music] now transition into transportation some of the questions regarding bus routes and safety in regards to social distancing question about bus routes the same and basically the bus routes are going the integrity of the bus routes are going to stay the same naturally as we phase in elementary kids first we'll have fewer students riding the bus we know that we're also encouraging carpooling and we think we'll see more carpooling and less need for bus transportation so we see our

252bus ridership being lower than previous years and then when you also add the fact that some some parents are going to still continue to do virtual it's going to relieve some of the capacity on busing starting out if we do a k2 k3 setting naturally that makes the ridership less as well so we'll be able to social distance to students better on the buses we are going to have a design seating assigned seating chart so those students will sit in the same seats each day that allow us for tracing and things of that nature when we need to work with amy in those situations as we ramp up and gear up in a full elementary setting i'll just say this social distancing on buses is going to be difficult to do because it's just just

253not enough space on a bus and that issue is not unique to rockwood it'll be an issue across any district that provides transportation in regards to bus drivers like all our other employees they're going to do the daily health screenings prior to coming to work bus drivers since the start of school have been receiving a lot of training in fact you've probably seen some buses out on the road that's part of our dry runs that we do each year we're doing a little bit more this year just to keep the driving skills sharp but in addition that we've also done a lot of training in regards to covid and safety precautions we've also put hand sanitizers on each of the buses as the students board the bus it's available to them and bus drivers have

254been trained on how to disinfect the buses in between tiers or routes we've got a pretty good system to where when we drop off middle school and before we go to high school where they can go and touch uh and disinfect the high touch areas pretty quickly and then in between our morning and evening routes we'll we'll come back and thoroughly do some the bus again so uh transportation teams been working hard on making sure that we have those safety protocols same thing with food service and some of that's already been discussed staff have been trained uh in each of these levels whether it be facilities food service or transportation um what are the questions here protocol for building and classroom cleaning prior to the start of the day of the school again the buildings

255will be cleaned each evening and we have products in each of the classrooms in the event they need something during the day and then the last couple of questions really deal with finances and the question is any current or future concerns with finances and that's a good question um i'll just say this that kind of what we talked about when we adopted the budget in june uh still kind of uh sits in front of us we were fortunate that we came off a very strong year financially uh when we concluded the school year uh in june of this summer uh so that's that really is going to provide us some some cushion as we get into into this fiscal year uh we're right now we're at a comfortable point uh we continue to look at

256finances on a regular basis uh we're looking at opportunities to avoid cost where possible and we did that even going back to last spring as well when the buildings were vacant we did some things to where we shut down automation uh saved a lot on utility costs uh there were other things that we did to to do some cost affordable uh cost of audience measures and we'll continue to do that going forward we feel like we have some pretty good guidance from the state in regards to state budget situation and if you caught recall again at our june board meeting we kind of gave up a warning that there were going to be some state budget cuts and those kind of panned out the way we thought they would and so we've we've kind of

257planned for that um the big question for us at this point is how long is this situation going to last number one and number two what does the local economy look like and what do local tax collections look like when that process starts up in november and december and we really don't have a history with this with this type of environment we do have some history when we looked at 0809 when there was a a recession and we've kind of modeled some of those things um to kind of give us some some best case and worst case scenarios at this point though we feel like we're we're in a pretty good position we're definitely from a cash flow standpoint in a very good position um do we anticipate a balanced budget for this fiscal year

258no but we're hoping that the surplus that we had last year will carry us through this year so kind of hit on those things real quick any any questions i have not gotten any additional questions for you so i think i think we either completely lost you or i just i covered everything so it's good you covered it all you're great uh moving on to lynn oh you're muted lynn we have saved the best for last uh i believe kathy orta is here with us tonight i know she is supporting the district again kathy kathy you're muted there it is did you want to go ahead and start alex sure um well so we both have alex and we're saving the least for last here or the last for the good news is i have

259three questions and one of them has already been covered um how do we better communicate to the parents and caregivers specific directions for accessing schedules troubleshooting tech issues who to contact for what etc well schedules are in the return to school plan that's at the bottom of the left-hand column on the front page of the plan we we promoted um access to the help desk throughout this process that's listed in the return to school plan as well as the question regarding who to contact for what we have a a page on our website called that very thing who to call for what it's not a new page but it's a recently revised page what we have done is added i think nine administrators to it these are administrators uh it lists their areas their subjects

260of expertise the goal of that is that so that people don't all turn to our superintendent as their first source of information for a question about that he may or may not know the answer to so for for questions regarding you know whatever curriculum transportation communications it lists on there the other people that uh can be helpful because as i am fond of saying if i don't know the answer to your question i know people who do so that said i'll jump down to the third question how we test the systems we put in place for success prior to day one deb and shelly have pretty well already uh covered that i think uh one question might be the interface between live in classroom instruction and live virtual instruction there will need to be some

261measures put in place to test that but that is certainly out of my area of expertise i will say that uh you know regarding the first day of school devon company did their homework they they tested zoom with within our district had a stress test in fact but then zoom itself did not do their homework so zoom had issues globally now as lynne referenced as you all know kathy order is back let's all hear it for kathy kathy's advisory capacity uh to both dr miles and i she's been a welcome addition to our department once again and she is going to talk about what information we are giving to parents as to when full face-to-face might be an option that is something that kathy has been working on in one of her multi-tiered communication plans

262kathy all right thank you alex i am i'm just excited to see everybody it's it's wonderful to see you um and you know communication is so important during times of change and you know we have been through just mountain monumental uh change over the last few months so when we're ready to begin announcing that elementary phase in when the work's ready and our superintendent um is is provided that direction we are already underway in developing a comprehensive communication plan to move that forward so we um i had the pleasure working with alex and team and we've really done some good research we've looked at our current system seeing what we need to do to improve them and make them better we've been looking at messaging to make sure that it's very clear and concise and

263very responsive to what our community needs our first step of this plan is really to look at the website um and see what what do our parents and caregivers need so part of that restructure is just a health and wellness strand we've been working with um amy um and really just what do our kids and our parents need to know we have a new online strand that's we're going to carry over what we have with online learning but also and put some more resources there for parents and then we're also starting that uh proposed elementary phase-in so what do our parents and and students in our community need to know about that each of those strands include a toolkit for parents so the wellness strand will include a toolkit to help parents prepare their kids

264back um you know to wear a mask and and what they can practice at home the online toolkit will have we'll work with renee it looks like she's already well well uh on the journey to making that happen and then the same with our our elementary phase in so we want to just have the resources really right there for them so that they know exactly what they need to do to help their child be successful but we know a communication plan isn't just a website so we will be working with the different channels of you know intended audiences the communication they need and make sure we have very specific channels to go ahead and reach them so one part of that comprehensive plan is also an internal communication plan we've been working on that already

265and hopefully we'll have that ready to launch next week it includes again an update on one rockwood with different strands to help our staff adapt to these upcoming changes we're going to be sharing that in five things one thing that is also in there is really a key messaging so our staff can kind of follow us along as we take this path and so they'll be just as informed and know you know they really are um our best ambassadors our internal stakeholders and we need to make sure they have the information for that role and as part of that key messaging strand we'd also have a feedback loop so if our staff members have a question they know that they can go ahead and ask that as we receive them we'll go ahead and just

266update our key messaging loop as we move forward so um it's been a pleasure to work on that thank you so much kathy uh tammy had a follow-up question or i think it involves something that's near and dear to my heart is a number of grandparent there are a number of grandparents slash caregivers who are frustrated with how to navigate the technology where to go for what uh our building sharing in print any information as well as via the website yeah i don't believe we have been sharing in print but that is part of our communication plan we just want to make sure there are um resources that um our principals when they have that question from caregivers that they can send that out although a lot of what we do of course is electronic

267and many times it's just a pdf that can be printed um so yes that is you know the caregivers and the grandparents trust me i i know how important they are so i appreciate that comment thank you tammy okay i believe that's all the questions i don't have any questions you and alex did a great job thank you so much thank you jamie it's back to you i believe thanks i'll just wrap it up quickly i just want to say thank you to all of you for your time and your patience with us so that we could get through all those questions it's super important for us to be able to ask the questions uh that we have and that we receive from the community and from staff members and so uh we really appreciate

268all the extra hours that everybody's been working to do their best for kids and that's what this has always been about and it is what it will continue to be about for each and every one of us so i just want to say i appreciate all of you and and not just your lengthy time here tonight but previously and going forward because the days ahead continue to be long for each of us so back over to you dr miles i don't know if you have any closing words about this no i i will uh just say that in working with the communications team we'll be communicating some of this information out as not everyone will have watched the the board meeting this evening i just appreciate the efforts of all of the the team members

269the support of the board of education um and really want to give kudos to the medical and health care professionals that have provided us guidance so that we could make it to this point the road ahead is not easy there will be challenges before us and we're going to do our very best to keep our students and staff safe while we provide incredible learning opportunities for our children and each of us will play a role in the successful deployment of this plan so just want to say thanks in advance very good thank you everyone uh next up 8.05 proposed agenda for the september 17 2020 board of education meeting and deb is bringing that up right now transportation update a few other things let us know if you uh need anything on the agenda uh

2709.01 future agenda presentations and events to attend as always janet reminds us the board of education google calendar has upcoming events on unless there is anything else any anybody else have anything to add or questions good night all right we're gonna join the meeting thanks everyone good night good night thanks everyone