001welcome to our november board meeting we're going to call the meeting to order and thank you all for coming out on veterans day i feel like the flag i've been at a couple of veterans programs i love this day when we say the pledge and we finish if you if you're a veteran or or if you're a spouse of a veteran or a child veteran would you just remain standing for a minute because i have a feeling there's a lot of people that are connected with veterans not that we're gonna you don't get a prize but after the pledge just don't sit down right away i just wanted to see so let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it
002stands one nation under under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so where's our veterans and connected to veterans [Applause] if your your parent was a veteran or if your spouse you know you guys what is it we serve or also [Music] well thank you all okay uh after all of that we're ready for our superintendent's comments uh dr secretary thank you welcome to tonight's board of education meeting we are glad you are here i walked in and said hello and we're starting to see three or four people who are joining us on a regular basis i look forward to seeing you this is it's uh it's always great to have people in person and uh and we're glad you're with us tonight and if you're joining at home we're glad you're with us
003as well i like to echo dr towers sentiments on veterans day i'd like to say happy veterans day to all our veterans thank you to all who have served and are serving our great nation we are forever indebted to your unconditional pledge and fight for our freedom and i tell you today i was able to get out to a lot of our buildings and we had drive-through parades harris had one today a couple of schools did we had a couple in-person assemblies and just a great opportunity for our veterans to come into our schools or drive through the parking lot and just be able to get a honk or a wave or a thank you for their service so veterans thank you so much since our last meeting in october we had parent-teacher conferences and
004pd days for the staff both events were a great success thank you parents and guardians for continuing to partner with us in your child's educational journey and we truly believe in every student together and it was great to have our conferences in the pd day we're going to talk about that a little bit later on in the uh in the meeting but really just a great day for us as a staff to get together and learn and grow together also since our last meeting unfortunately we had three different situations occur at three different schools in our district that were highly concerning at hardin we had a threat of emails containing threats and hate speech and material at schs we had two bullets were found on the in the hallway and then at st charles west
005we had a graffiti found a girl's restroom that included threatening language all three cases have been reported to police and investigations are still active we will always keep the safety of our students and staff as our number one priority is we stand and collectively against any threatening behavior towards it towards or in our schools the sdsc is a great safe place for our students and staff to learn and grow together and we are focused daily to keep it that way as always we will keep the involved uh staff and families updated if and when we have information we can share and i just thank you to all of our community members thank you for your continued support and trust fall sports and activity seasons have come to an end but we have some congratulations to
006give out our st charles west girls and boys cross country teams girls took second place you can clap for that [Applause] boy boyce took seventh place we have lily jackson uh second place overall individually jenna wacker took sixth place and with james wortham on the boys side third place and jacob blessing game came up with seventh place so a way to go to those students team clap again star osi also sent some cross-country runners and they did a great job as well but i will point out saint charles hi have has a second team all-state softball player brighton kendrick and then we also have an all-american football player marquis graciel so we can clap for them as well [Applause] believe it or not winter sports uh is here uh and uh and i we do
007have a board member who probably like to talk more wrestling than basketball but uh we and and we do have some awesome wrestling teams and swimming teams as well but uh the turkey tip-off that a lot of us look forward to we hope that goes off without a hitch this year in person looking forward to that and it's always a great time that tuesday before thanksgiving break we just celebrated last night our outstanding academic seniors last night from both high schools it was a fun night to get together in the same space space and honor the work the seniors have done thus far in their high school career carrying a 3.5 grade point average or higher through their first three years of high school congratulations to our seniors let's finish strong and it was just
008a really good night last night to celebrate them with their parents we hope to have a new podcast episode out soon so be stay tuned for that i know that's probably a highlight for all of you that wasn't supposed to be funny but thank you for the strong response on the right uh we've worked hard to prepare for this meeting tonight and i know you're all here probably for good but we got a good covet update for you uh we're gonna have a good discussion on our pd days we have a bond project to discuss proposed calendar revision and also the district financial report as always i want to encourage everyone to keep going strong let's continue working together and continue to make 2122 our best year yet together we can and will reach and
009teach and empower all of our students thank you okay uh item 3.04 board communication ellen do we have any not at this time okay item 3.05 is our public recognition and tonight we're recognizing a harris and our special ed department so which one is going first mr tyson plumley is going to come up and make some comments about the hair special education department do i what the disclaimer oh oh we do yeah we do thank you i'll read it do you have it i got it yes hang on please yeah as many of you know the open session of our board meeting is televised the next portion of our open meeting will consist of public recognition through participation in the public recognition portion of our meeting all parties give consent to the televised broadcast of
010information and images as well as other district related media if you prefer not to participate you have that option one two three go [Laughter] mr pulley thanks again for your service as well happy veterans day board members and families that have come and also employees thank you for having us i think that it's important that in this time that with all the shortages going around in the world around us we aim to find ways to be consistent with our kids and at harris we have two autism classrooms both classrooms have students with very specific needs some of them have limited communication abilities and some of them have higher abilities where they can push out more with adult support and paraprofessional support but when i thought about bringing the people at harris to recognize them tonight
011i really thought about our paraprofessionals because they've been the most consistent for our kids with high needs the entire year and they've been flexible all around they've had to fill gaps in students days and one thing that stays the same is they show up every day no matter how difficult it is no matter how hard the behaviors are and some students can be pretty physical some students have needs some students have devices that may not be working or be faulty and they're off for repair but one thing's for sure is every single day our paraprofessionals come ready to greet and meet the kids at the door with their meet them where they're at and and work hand in hand with both of their teachers so i just wanted to say thank you very much for
012coming to harris every day with a smile on your face and being there for the kids because one thing that's hard to replace is someone who wants to be there working with these kids every day and they rely on you they rely on seeing you every day the systems and routines and procedures that are put in place and our pair professionals adapt to schedule changes we might get a new kid in from somewhere we might have a new staff member come in that's that's been hired and so but they embrace them and they bring them on board and you know that's how we say the nest is the best so i just wanted to recognize our paraprofessionals this month so thank you very much for all that you do each day and for coming in
013and continuing to stay the course and work with our kids so when i read your name just come up and we'll get you lined up here i guess so we have aaron frisbie come on up we have jacqueline cleese nope jacqueline please is not here but if she's watching come on down we have carrie major troop come on up [Applause] we have laura schnattler [Applause] we have melissa spilker [Applause] and we have jackie weinicky she's not here no yeah and another person we have is molly schulte henrik but she could not be here this evening so we want to recognize her and and lastly really the students could not be successful without your guidance each day and i know some days the days are really tough and the students can be tough and the shortages
014are tough but just with you being there every day for me it helps us it helps the kids and like i said the kids are most important and you show up each day for that so for me i am grateful so thank you very much all right one two three thank you ladies congratulations thank you [Applause] 3.06 uh this is our audience comment uh section you want to read that sure you're going to be doing a lot of reading uh all regular and special meetings of the board shall be open to the public since the board desires to be a good listener and be responsive to the community persons desiring to address the board may do so during the time so allotted on the agenda and according to established procedures during the audience portion of
015each board meeting patrons are invited by the president to speak for or against any proposal on the tentative agenda or on any other school concern the individual is asked to identify him or herself limit comments to a few minutes and avoid discussing personalities the president reserves the right to limit the number of presentations and or the length of comments at the discretion of the president patrons may be recognized at other times during the board meeting the board is very interested in audience comments according to board policy members cannot respond during the actual meeting the board will listen to and research all audience comments if necessary additional follow-up will occur through district administrators should i just go in or do you want to make a comment no i think let's we're going to go we have
016some uh some patrons who emailed their uh comments and so dr malone's going to read those so the first one is from kimberly siemens a mother to a second grader at lincoln elementary and fifth grader at jefferson intermediate dear saint charles school district board members thank you for your actions and protection of our children this school year i have been so thankful for your thoughtful planning and discussion through this year in regards to keeping our children safe healthy and in school culvert vaccinations for five-year-olds through 11 year olds became available last week my children received their first dose last friday they must wait 21 days for their second dose then an additional 15 15 days after their second dose they will be considered fully vaccinated please allow us as time to get the young children
017fully vaccinate it before moving to change the current masking policy as you prepare to discuss and vote on changes to the masking policy please keep in mind that our five through 11 year olds have not had the opportunity to get fully vaccinated those of us that are passionate about vaccinations are taking action however we still need your protection until we get to the finish line thank you for all you do to support our schools sincerely then we have a letter from amy leatherberry dear board of education i would like to start by expressing my gratitude and appreciation to the board and district administration for their strategic and balanced approach to covet mitigation strategies this year our testing contract tracing and masking policies have led to the best student outcomes in the saint charles area moving
018to optional masking for grades 9 through 12 was a cautious and necessary step to the off ramps we might begin to use in the pandemic as numbers improve however i want to point out one critical difference between that decision and the one that you will discuss tonight high school students had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated before they were optionally masked this is an important distinction that i urge you to consider even as a motivated mom able to get her children a shot on the very first day that they were available my boys will not be eligible to receive their second dose until saturday november 27th they will be considered fully vaccinated as defined by the cdc and apa 14 days from then on december 11th for my family and for other busy working class
019families like mine still trying to get their kids appointments this week i ask that you consider extending mandatory masking for grades k through 6 until at least the next board meeting please forward my young children the same protection given to high school students by allowing them to be fully vast before they are optionally masked sincerely so this came from michelle kamik can the board please wait for all students to have the chance to get fully vaccinated before shifting to a mask optional protocol the earliest a child would be fully protected would be mid-december we have masked this long why not wait for the last safety measure for parents who want to get their children vaccinated thank you and then this one and my last one heather hayes to the saint charles school district board and
020administration i am a parent of two students at lincoln and one student at ecc i first want to thank you for all the difficult choices you've made to keep our children safe this year and thank the teachers and staff for everything they do for our kids my kids did the virtual option last year and although their teachers were amazing and we could not have hoped for more during the last school year they are happy to be back in person this year we were comfortable sending them back to school this year because of the mass requirement you voted on and have kept in place for younger students this school year my fourth and second graders received their first pfizer vaccine last weekend the first weekend vaccines were available to children 5 through 11. they now must
021wait three weeks for their second and even then will not be considered fully vaccinated for another two weeks after that the earliest any of your students age five through 11 can be considered fully vaccinated is mid-december it is too soon to start thinking about lifting the mass mandate for these students especially with the upcoming holidays and gatherings that are likely in the next two months i ask you to continue the math requirement for at least the elementary and intermediate students to those who would argue mass infringes on their freedom or liberty even my young children recognize that freedom quote unquote does not mean doing anything you want without regard for others we daily agree to follow rules and laws that restrict our choices but keep ourselves and others safe we comply with speed limits and
022do not drive 60 miles an hour on residential roads and we drive even slower when school is in session and children are around we use car seats as required by laws to keep our children safe in the car we impose restrictions on when children can begin driving freedom is not about having no restrictions or interference from the government it is about being protected from arbitrary restrictions those that exist for no reason and yield no societal benefit requiring mass does not fall in this carrot category it has a clear purpose and societal benefit well accepted by the scientific community of mitigating the spread of covet 19. we can easily compare our district numbers to those of districts without mass requirements to see that masking works to keep our students safe and in school due to the
023circulating and highly contagious delta variant the cdc continues to recommend universal indoor masking by all students age 2 and older staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status please continue keeping our children safe please continue requiring mass in school thank you thank you okay and we have um we have four audience participation cards the first one is ellie gibbs i couldn't do it hello my name is ellie gibbs and i'm a sophomore at st charles high school i'm here to speak about the current mass policy within our district within the past month covid cases have been getting worse throughout the high schools fortunately these increases have not been dramatic however i feel it will get worse during the upcoming cold and flu season if we continue to have an optional mandate a
024week after the mandate was lifted we had five coveted cases in one day at st charles high school a week after the mandate was lifted our theater teacher pulled us out of the thespian conference for fear of us being quarantined by the time it rolls around in january also within the last month we were unable to have our district football game because too many football players were quarantined as president of the sophomore class i have the best interest of my peers in school at heart i speak on behalf of the immuno-compromised students the students with elderly people in their lives the students with babies in their lives and the students who are just scared of getting this deadly virus i understand you will not require a vaccine however the majority of the student body remains
025unvaccinated i know the masks are annoying and i don't necessarily want to wear one however it is needed until the majority of the student body is vaccinated my life liberty and pursuit of happiness depends on the safety of others this mandate does not just affect the students but also their friends families teachers and their teachers families as well as anyone else in their lives i believe that we will get through this if we go through it together it is not an individual fight thank you thank you ellie our next card is from nathan hodge i find it a little odd last meeting there was not a single person other than that guy there that was speaking out pro mask and then every single one of your emails this week happens to be pro mask you
026can't tell me that was not cherry-picked information last week you went as far as wanting to arrest a grandfather for not wearing a mask while you sat there with a mask off for half the meeting yourself that's absurdity masking children so that adults feel safe is child abuse it needs to be in the hands of the parents if the parents want the kid to wear a mask wear a mask if you don't don't if you want a shot get a shot if you don't don't that's the only person that ought to be making any uh decisions for their children whatsoever not a bunch of non-doctors or anyone like that that's it thank you nathan our next speaker is brandon kearns good evening members of the cabinet and board of education my name is brendan kearns
027the president of scea as this meeting falls on veterans day i'd like to begin by thanking all the veterans both on our staff and in our community for their service to our country your service has helped us keep the freedoms we enjoy every day i would also like to point out that next week is american education week on this week we celebrate all the people who help students succeed as we approach thanksgiving our members are putting in an extraordinary effort to make sure our kids are all achieving their best the challenges of having everyone back in person are formidable and our teachers are feeling the pressure we are pleased to hear the proposal to add days to winter break and believe that this will help us to recuperate during what has been a challenging year
028thank you thank you brendan uh the last card is caleb mertz uh hello good evening i'm caleb mertz as i'm sure all of you know um and i am a junior at saint charles high school now i want to begin by thanking each and every one of you for lifting the mask mandate and the high schools i know that i have been able to learn better and communicate better with my peers and i and in turn i've been able to be a better student overall and it's actually starting to feel like a normal year again which i know all of us want that um and so thank you for being proactive by putting my and my fellow students education at the front of your minds now i know personally that i've benefited a lot from
029the list from the lifting of mask mandates i can only begin to imagine how much the other students in our other schools will benefit from a mass mandate being lifted i i can imagine how a kindergartner would feel being able to actually see their teacher's lips move and then realizing oh that's how you say that word or that's how you say this word now i can actually imagine what it's like for someone at jefferson to finally see the classes of their or the faces of their classmates that they haven't seen before because they come from because they came from different schools i know that was one of the biggest things when i was in jefferson um and i can imagine the middle schoolers at hardin uh discovering like who they are as a person and
030like what they want to be like for the rest of their lives and who they want to hang out with just because they can see their friends faces and you know really develop that personal connection with them so thank you for lifting the mask mandates in the high schools and i just ask that you lift them for the middle schools and elementary schools as well thank you thank you caleb thank you all we have concluded all of our audience comments and before we go on to the business portion of our meeting which is riveting uh we we get we're going to take uh just a couple of minutes for those who would like to exit the meeting or if you have other plans that you need to attend to go ahead and take care of
031that now okay all right uh we're moving on to item 3.07 can i have a motion to amend or adopt the agenda i have a set lori okay all those in favor aye opposed all right so our agenda is adopted item 4.01 the consent agenda for efficiency the school board utilizes a consent agenda items placed on the consent agenda are routine in nature or are among the many decisions that the board has already determined are in the domain of the administration do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda do i have a second second all those in favor all right opposed okay rolling along uh under old business item 6.01 we're going to be talking about our covet update dr secret thank you dr towers as usual we have a quick power point
032to go through some things and some slides so we're you know clearly what we're talking about today just again to reiterate our why to keep students and staff safe and also to keep students and staff in school as normal as possible those are our two why's now the next couple slides uh chris if you kind of just scroll through that with me but just a reminder of what our protocols look like and this is a lot of this is original uh wording from the summer's tax task force and we're pretty much going to get down to slide seven slide seven basically tells you kind of again just to remind you of kind of what the quarantine's out there now for massamask and just the normal procedures for being able to test early out to get
033back in a quarantine that we're using in our k-8 buildings in terms of what the normal modified or regular quarantine looks like slide eight and nine are going to get into um these new modified quarantines that we've been using and i just that's we don't want to spend a little time with that we'll get back to the masking the modified quarantine right now is uh if a student was masked when exposed during school regardless if the positive case was masked or not they would will be placed in a modified quarantine and they can continue to attend school so this means that they have this means that they can go into a modified quarantine if they had a mask on themselves we've been using that the issue with that is we're still losing kids that are
034getting exposed at times when it's either when they don't have a mask off because a lot of some of our kids are still not vaccinated so misha which is our sports association as well as dhss which is the state health department came up with tests to stay in test deploy we put we have put that in now as well for the high school and i can tell you that both have helped keep kids in school but i do know that the test to stay and we'll talk about some of this in just a second more in detail but the test to stay especially the test of state park can be tedious and a little extra obviously extra work for our nurses and and that can be a challenge for our nurses but i will tell
035you test the play does save band members um thespians athletes you name it to be able to stay and and quite honestly and we'll talk about a little we have the lead and lord you'll know this for sure because you lived it last year but we had the lead actor actress in the play last year in the friday of the opening opening play uh was quarantined and had to and we fouled rules and missed the whole play had no um symptoms um this year one of our top volleyball players at st charles i had to miss the district championship came because she was exposed um and it goes on we we've got another we had a band member the same way the same same thing happened so test the play is a is something that
036i think really does help our kids that are trying to do activities and things after school so we'll talk a little bit more of that and we've been doing test to stay play uh for a couple for at least a week week and a half now and we'll talk more details about that i'm just kind of giving us an idea of where we're at right now now if that doesn't confuse you at all because i live this every day and it's still confusing to me slide 9 talks about the newest modified quarantine in our district or our not our district i'm sorry our health department county health department has basically has said now that they've gone to the modified and it it does not basically matter if you have a mask on or or not
037you can still come to school but you are still in the modified so you can't play sports but you have to wear a mask for 14 days not the test part the test to play came from the state this is our local we already have wentzville using it orchard farm's using it howl is looking at it i believe i don't want to really talk about what other school districts doing but i believe zumwalt probably will go to it eventually but they are k through 12 optional so they might state the fact that you have to have a mask on to have the modification we'll come back to this in just a second because we need to talk talk specific about what the quarantine looks like as we move forward and i've got some other things
038to share with that so that kind of gives you an idea of what we're doing quarantine wise and what we can add if we need to now saying that obviously everybody knows that we've been 9th through 12th grade optional and k-8 we have been uh mandated for for mass and so if you look at slide 10 and shows you our numbers and for the most part if you look at the numbers as we pull them off our dashboard and they're pretty good they're they're it's pretty typical right now where we have 14 active cases student cases which out of you know almost 4 900 kids that's pretty good now saying that and we heard one of our students said you know when we went last month we decided to go optional very quickly all of
039a sudden we had five cases in one day at high since then julie helped me with some of the numbers at st charles high we just had another case at west today i think they've had two cases since then and heis had instead versus 10 which is and and i think you have to talk about that now is that coincidental uh what we're seeing i think is um each school seems to have their hot spot it just seems like all of a sudden one school will go three or four bam and and so is it just that was the high school's turn or is it because of the optional and if anybody listens to anything i have to say during these presentations each month sometimes i don't know because we have more people that want
040to talk about it but that's okay we're balanced i'm trying to give a balanced report of this is what i think this is what we see this is what we've been told we can use and putting a best package together to make sure our kids are in the best possible learning environment least restrictive and again mass or restrictive we know that but we also want to keep them safe so we want to make sure you knew those numbers we've seen we've seen the rise especially at st charles high i will also tell you this we've had our tests to stay go pretty well so some kids now not all the kids that get they get exposed remember and again this is all work for our administrators this is all extra work for our nurses and
041so when you get a case now we we have to see if they've been vaccinated they've been vaccinated and they're good remember you have to remember that vaccination piece is very important we've heard that in about three or four letters tonight we'll come back to that as well so we say if they're vaccinated or not if they're vaccinated they're good to go then we think do they have a mask on or not then they can stay if they have a mask on and then we look at tests to stay and test the play and test to stay we have done several kids test this day and i will tell you because we're not going to leave anything out this week we've had our first positive test to stay so we had a student who test
042to stay to stay the first two because you have to basically test three times within that first seven days the first two times that person was was negative the third person the third time they were positive now then we then we have to contact trace that situation as well i think we got about 12 additional cases now is that going to happen all the time i don't know but we did catch that there's a lot of things that i don't think you're going to catch and there's still a lot of things out there that we can't control so i just want to throw that out anything you want to add to numbers-wise i will say if we're talking about there was an increase of 17 kids um in the high school the same period of
043time there was only um up until november 5th there was only one new case at the elementary school and since the last board meeting there's been uh let's see like 18 cases yeah 19 cases at the elementary school too yeah k through 6. and then let's not forget because our our staff's important to us as well um we have five staff cases right now we've only had 13 staff cases the whole school year which is pretty pretty pretty good so if we go to slide 12 again stop me if you have questions i'm just trying to get all the information out so we can have a discussion um i'm sorry 11. sorry thank you this is good note good this is good news so the transmission rate is at 0.83 and we've said anything below
044one is as good so this is pretty low also would be really focused on the positivity rate and last last week we were the last month we were kind of teetering on that seven point and kind of what does that look like for the high school so right now in saint charles county oh the whole county is sitting right almost seven percent and you can see the grid below that and then you look at uh the city where obviously we're in and it's it's at 5.96 we're heading the right direction that's pretty good and it's holding steady there that does not mean we're not seeing cases does not mean we're not seeing some cases pop up or a couple of schools having some hot spots and we have that four percent rule in play as
045well if we needed to stop the optional piece we have we haven't even come close to that even with the five or six cases we've had so this is a positive note this is something that we can say we see a good direction going with our numbers county and city anything else you want to add to that all right so when it comes to a recommendation i'm sorry to say something no costing okay then when we come to a recommendation in the next two slides last time i had a specific question that basically said what do we want to do with masking optional and if you looked at the board docs earlier this week i had on there are we ready to go k through 12 optional and as i talked to our board our
046our myceo team and i talked to just our central office team and i talked to some of our principals um i and we had a meeting with our union reps the other day as well i felt like i needed to get a little bit more specific to what we're really talking about and really lead you guys through a discussion and not so much that i have to say to you go this direction but i really want to give you a really a little bit more specific about an idea of what i think our overall game plan is here heading into the holiday season does that make sense so i broke it down into masking quarantine and then on the next page uh basically just thoughts okay so thanks chris let's go back up to that
047so masking i think we're at at this time the two questions are do we want to keep the optional masking at nine through twelve and then also then we we broke it down k through eight um and and and well k through six and seventh and eighth and this actually should say keep masking at k through eight not k through twelve i apologize i should say k through eight um or go optional so those are the two questions now you've heard a couple letters tonight i've had some conversations with people as well and just keep in mind and we'll get to some thoughts in just a second actually you know what let's just throw those questions out you guys think about those questions let me get to the thoughts in just a second hold on
048hold on chris go back up the things so that's the masking the two questions are do we want to keep them at optional masking 9 to 12 and do we want to keep the mandated masking for k through eight basically or do we want to look at separate k through six seven eight those are the questions quarantine here are the protocols protocols we are using and available to use so we have the initial quarantine so we have those in place we have the modified three feet six feet testing out early there's a modified piece if you're three feet this is mass the mass we still have all that going on at our elementary schools our k through eight buildings now we have a modified quarantine that says if you are masked this is in our
049optional settings if you are mash you can still stay in school if you've been exposed at school showing no symptoms but you have to wear a mask for 14 days no sports or activities now we've added test to stay test to play and again i'll be flight out honest with you we really like this option for our thespians our our our band our musicians and our and our athletes we really think that test to play can keep some kids in and keep them going in their activities we didn't think we could just put tests to play in without test to stay cause we don't want anybody thinking oh we're just catering to one group of students so we put tests to stay in testa stays in tests to play and i think one specific issue
050we have with this is how much more uh work is this put on our nurses and what does this look like and is this very feasible for us to continue now saying that we do have an extra grant that we were that we were federal grant that were used just for covert and just for nurses and we were able to hire an extra nurse tonight we're hoping to but right now one that can specifically help with testing so that should be a should be a help i want you to know all the the angles here so my feeling going forward and i'll just talk about my thoughts in just a second but i think we could probably eliminate test to stay keep test to play and i'll tell you why in just a second so
051the newest quarantine then again i'm just going over it again it's not utilized yet but the art and our health department has agreed to it the state level and the cdc have not agreed to or they're this is not part of their corn their their protocols but our county has said yes we're using it i would say all five counties districts in the county will go to it at some point and it is again it does not matter if you're massed or not if you're not showing symptoms you can stay in school and then the 14 days you wear a mask okay and we're going to talk about that in just a second so the next slide is the thoughts so this is where we'll have a conversation so the data scsc covered numbers and
052county positivity rate we've already told you about that that's pretty positive there's some good things coming out right now our numbers are getting lower and we're not under that five percent mark yet but we're it in the in the transmission rate too is is pretty good our numbers obviously we do have some cases but for the most part our numbers have stayed steady for the most part obviously we've popped up the high schools a little bit um we've discussed that numbers are good because and again the question is are numbers good because of our mitigation strategies in place and then is that why we're we're still really good and i tell you i've seen um our county executive steve ellman i see him probably it seems like once or twice a week it seems like
053at different meetings and every time he says i've been checking your numbers and you look pretty good you look pretty good so i know that collectively and then and not that it's a a race or a game with the other count the county schools but we look pretty good with our numbers and we look we look pretty healthy in terms of what we're doing so that's the data testing-wise i wanted to put on there that i think if we continue to do a test to stay type of program i think it is increased work for our nurses because they're doing a lot of testing remember we're already doing a lot of testing to just test kids when they need to and staff and then i also said this we did have our first test to
054stay play positive test this week uh test the play again does give our students our student thespians musicians and athletes etc an added layer of being protected from being quarantined and and ineligible to participate um we've talked about those certain examples i'm i'm i'm really serious when i say that i think we have to keep test to play if we want to have uh another rep again if we have symptoms we have a cove if we have a positive covert case that's another thing but i'm turn i'm just talking about in terms of in school exposure um it's it's going to be hard we didn't have it's going to be hard not to have a season without some type of hey we can't play a game or two three games because of of uh because
055again even at the k through eight level if they're exposed at lunch they have to go off okay we'll talk about that a little bit jason can i say one thing oh can i say something sure and just um when we're talking about this test to stay in tesla play it's only if they were exposed to school so a kid still could not play or participate in mission activities if they were exposed in the home center yeah i keep saying in school exposure but that's great just just to like reiterate and and right now i don't know if we've said this too we because of all the testing with the test to stay in tesla play we do have our athletic directors helping us and trained to test as well as well and they're secretaries
056we had about a two-hour meeting when we were going to go to this with our two high school nurses were in the room and we had a good conversation because we knew this was going to be more work with them so our 80s were trained and they're helping out the testing as well thank you julie for those clarifications then the vaccines we've heard those and how important those are so we we have partnered with uh the state of saint charles county health department and hopefully you all saw your emails that went out it was very important that we got the specific information out to our families so they know exactly when those vaccines are because a lot of those vaccine clinics are by appointment only so there was one this last wednesday we all know
057the processes it takes a while for those obvious those two shots and uh again vaccines are not mandated they will not be mandated but we certainly want to make sure the information is out there and we've worked with what we uh applaud that again chooses to get vaccinated they have a lot of opportunities to do so but it's going to take some time to get those vaccinations going uh and then we're obviously ages 5 to 11 we're starting those are starting to occur but it's going to take a little time to get that going as well and then so the questions moving forward is it best to keep k8 in mass while vaccine is being rolled out and and then the other piece is let's look at the strategic piece of we're getting into the
058holiday season we are a week and two days away or a week and three three days away from basically what a five-day weekend with um with thanksgiving then we come back for three weeks and i know we're going to talk about a little bit of revision in just a second three weeks and then we're off for two weeks and so we all know what happens during holiday seasons everybody gets together we usually see a spike so we need to think about that we also need to think about we'll have a december meeting that we can talk about some things and then our january meeting if you've looked that far i have we actually have a thursday board meeting we come back like on a tuesday i think i believe it is and so not that
059thursday but then the following week we have a meeting so we'd have a pretty good idea that's almost a full week to see what has occurred since kids have been out and all together and i think we have a really really good idea so the question would be because of that strategically and again we'll have to talk about it in december i'm sure you're all going to come back that was supposed to be funny my feeling is strategically we probably don't want to make huge changes until until january but that's up to you all so that's strategically you have to think about that that question and then 9-12 can probably stay optional but are we ready for the newest modification modified warranty that's what we have to discuss now does the newest modify quarantine make
060the most sense for k through 12 so that even students exposed at lunch can stay at school without testing the stay and then also k through 8 would still be massed up and let's talk about that for just a second i know one of the other superintendents in the county i heard him he made a comment of we're not going to we're going gonna have we're still gonna keep the quarantine of you have to have a mask on but they're k-12 optional to me i continue wanting to move forward and i continue wanting to see if we can be progressive but also balance it with mitigation if we're k through eight before k through eight massed up for another month does it make sense and we have to be careful because if you want to
061go to test to stay for the for k-12 we're gonna start seeing a lot of tests and i don't know if we can keep up with that with our nurses we're gonna try and we we've got help but and so to me if you went to the newest modification what would that do for you that would keep your high school kids in we would monitor them they would wear 14 we would get away from tests to stay we would have test the place still for those kids that had activities we would monitor those kids have masks on them for 14 days i've talked to the high school principals they said they can really they're going to come up with a google form and some things to really make sure those kids are in maths and
062then if they're what happens at your elementary level then is we've got and you'll see on the numbers you know we have like eight kids of coverdell out right now we're we're massive mass we still have eight kids out well it's because they're exposed at lunch so what this new modification would do is be able to keep those kids in and all they have to do is wear a mask well guess what they wear a mask anyway and what this would do is i believe this modification is not going anywhere i know some people don't like the fact that the state level and the cdc didn't come up with it seems like our county is going rogue a little bit i understand that put that out there but i think this is the quarantine modification
063that we're all going to go to it's going to happen because right now what is our why keep kids in school well let's face it we're getting so many modified quarantines i can't even keep them straight and we're getting a point now where keeping kids massed up just to keep them in school is they're they're handing it to us they're just handing it to us so i think we could stay we could stay massed up k through eight through the holidays stay with our ninth or twelfth optional again the thought is how do we get mass off kids i get it that's that's where our thought is but let's go progressive with the quarantine let's let's see if it works and see if we we might you know we got to test to stay positive
064today we might start seeing more positives and we'll have to pull it back and that allows our k through 12. even your exposed launch you get to stay in school and see how that goes and so the last piece then is early childhood would continue their individualized protocol plan um but again at some point does the newest modified quarantine benefit benefit them as well because if you see the numbers they got 22 kids out right now now i don't think we're ready to do anything with our pre-ks at this point but at some point we'll come back to them as well so what does all this mean i think we want to continue to have a balanced approach we're certainly we've heard both sides of the story again tonight great compelling conversations on both sides
065have both two great students talk obviously both opposite we're just not gonna make everybody happy our goal and our job is to keep kids safe keep them in school and these modifications keep rolling to us that it's not necessarily gonna be oh we have to keep kids messed up to keep them in school but i also understand here comes holidays ver there's a lot of uh and and we've heard from i've heard from quite a full a few of our teachers and again i understand that's an adult issue maybe that i've heard that too but that that they would like to see us get through the holiday season and see where we're at so again what do you want to do mask-wise 9-12 seven k-6 eight and then quarantine wise do you want to go
066to the newest and take away the test to stay but keep test the play is kind of where where i'm at with things now questions discussion first of all central office seem anything else you want to add to that anything i forgot or said said said wrong or different or all right that was a lot sorry but i've tried to be very clear and precise of where we're at with things because it gets very nitty-gritty on a whole different level um we have set the threshold at four percent and um i think danielle you calculated that was 32 students yeah yeah yeah well if we have 32 students all at once testing our with covid we're in the midst of a major outbreak and so maybe we should consider lowering the threshold well 2 percent
067would be 16. maybe three percent would be i think neighboring districts have have a lower threshold and to that point then yeah and i'm i'm not opposed to that you just have to watch some of our very small schools well good um but so far the high schools are the only one that are ones that are mask optional so you're right but i also think when you look at a threshold that could still be for your quarantine as well it could if you want if you wanted to it doesn't have to be right now it's a threshold for masking but it could be for the quarantine yeah a threshold for you know i called a kill switch the the mask mandate would go back in place yes if we reached a threshold of four percent
068but i on further reflection i think it is too high yeah so we can have that conversation as well well can i say something sure and i i think it depends too on if you're looking at like is the say it's 12 15 20 kids is it because um it's been a holiday and they were all exposed at home or is are these school exposures and i do track that every time we have um on the dashboard like how many are from home exposure how many are from school exposure and i will tell you that like almost majority of i didn't look at the number exactly majority of our cases come from exposure at home like they don't typically come from exposure to school so i think that's something to consider if we're looking at
069a number or a threshold is is it one class who or is it spread throughout the building or are they all like coming back from christmas they haven't walked into our building yet and there's 15 kids that are coping positive that would indicate the community spread has gone up and masks might help that situation you know and what that wouldn't your point julie also support what ellen is saying that for those uh unique times that the numbers might shoot up uh i guess my whole point is like a certain percentage may not tell the whole story that's true so it could it could mean yes it's a horrible thing or you could have two percent and it could be a horrible thing or you could have it just depends if kids have been in school
070if the kids have been exposed since class board meeting and st charles high has a lot more cases since the last more to be than st charles west you know could those be i and i haven't looked i could while we're sitting here you know we also had a long break during that time and so were those kids exposed to each other just right maybe it had nothing to do with being at school and they were all they are i don't even know if they're friends it just there's a lot than just is this like is school environment causing cases or other things well i'm i'm not i guess i am confused about our threshold does that kick in on just that one instance and then uh or do we or does it have to
071be maintained for so many days out of at a grade about four percent and then we have to i i think we would reevaluate it at the next board meeting but that was my understanding okay my understanding was is that you all said that i had the ability to go ahead and call it and then my feeling is is it would be something we would look at then because we're doing this every 30 days right yeah we would come back to the to the drawing board when we came back and and to your point going from four to three i don't think it's going to hurt anything it could help us it could be a little bit better of a threshold than four um i don't know if we want to get into two and
072one at this point but i certainly think going up that's my opinion but i think it's a good point that you brought up so so i wrote down i think we have then we so then we just decide on the mass the quarantine and also the threshold maybe we could decide can we just eliminate one of these while we're going do you want to finish up with the threshold question and then we can move on to the other two do we have some other thoughts about do we want to keep the threshold as it is or do we want to change it my thinking is that the threshold now is so high that it's not like having a threshold you know so you'd like to make it three percent yeah okay and don't i just
073said three if you want to go two you can vote it i just any other so we have a a discussion right now of perhaps changing the threshold from four to at least slowing it to three yeah if we want to discuss so it's so it's four masks not the quarantine piece but for mass so if it's right now it's just two high schools the two schools um so one one high we'll talk about individual schools if they got to instead of four percent it would be three percent of the population positive cases i would be able to say we're back in mass until the next meeting are you talking just high schools too yeah because if you went to two percent at lincoln that would be three kids right they're not optional right now
074right just that's what i'm saying just the optional schools yeah it's just high schools at this point yes you're right now yeah you're right so that so julie's point yeah because it could be that's right okay so we are there any more discussions right now though on the threshold yeah why can't we just vote for uh mask optional for high school uh for uh nine through 12 with that kill switch at three percent and then that takes care of that and then yeah and then right so do you want to make that motion sure i moved that uh mass be optional for the high schools 9 through 12 with the um uh with the allowance that the superintendent can change the policy uh with a three percent special threshold i second okay okay i'll get
075that kelly i made that up as i went along okay all of those in favor aye opposed okay so our so we have decided now with our 9 through 12 students so now we're looking at uh you want to take them seven and eight or and then uh kindergarten through six or do you i think we should consider looking at numbers right now hardin is sitting at 693 students in person and that 3 positivity rate would be 20.79 so 21 students they just had another case today julie's done a great job of keeping up with us so set up through seventh to eighth grade they're eligible for the shot yeah at hardin that there's not as much space to spread out but they've had the same amount of time as our high school population to
076be vaccinated i would just keep in mind i'm certainly not trying to sway you either way you're talking about different age groups in the 9 through 12 and you're again you're a week in two days away from thanksgiving and then a break and then then it's just three weeks and we're off again for two weeks i don't know what that's going to look like and if we change them quickly now and then we'll have a break and a break i just don't know what that looks like i think coming back and looking at it in january would would be the safer bet but that doesn't mean you can't do it i think we just be very careful with that because that's a different age group and they are there's there's not there's not a lot
077of there's not a lot of there's just not a lot of space to spread them out there and i will say based on kind of what i'm looking at on the spreadsheet it looks like there's been one quarantined kid that then became positive out of all their quarantines the other ones i it doesn't specifically say but so far i've only seen one that went from quarantine to positive you know i the for me the and we want to get all of them in as soon as we can i think into mass optionals but um we are so close to so many little these breaks that are coming and uh so many of our that now i'm really the k through uh sixth graders but even even our seventh and eighth grade students they're still young
078and some of them even though they might have had the opportunity they may have hesitated and they felt that they were kind of young i i'm still leaning toward a safe safe rather than sorry that just let's give it another month look at it at december or maybe or we can look at it he said we're going to do it every 30 days i would say keep our mask mandate in place for kindergarten through eighth grade i think i understand your point we have had though a five-day weekend well i guess yeah the five-day weekend over halloween and the parent-teacher conference which you could take into account at hardin and there aren't extracurricular activities and i would be like the seventh and eighth grade they're less social you know as far as they can't drive
079yet and those types of things so i think it's just all things we have to consider if we're saying we're looking at the positivity rates and we're basing our decisions on that i think we just have to at least consider but i understand with breaks coming up that we have to take that out i guess the other the other thing we have no control over is while we can keep them safe in our school environment and mask a lot of our as juniper not a lot of our positivity cases are coming outside the school and we can't commit we can't control that could we think about it in this respect okay because there are a lot of things coming up and like we're setting a threshold okay couldn't we actually make a decision and if
080the threshold gets busted before then say when they come back from winter break max massacre optional in seventh and eighth grade and that gives you time to still say oh wait well i don't know if we can do this because we're now at five percent well we're going to have another conversation right but i'm just yeah we have to look at it every 30 days yeah i know but i'm just putting it out there is something to look forward to well that's kind of where i'm at i don't want anybody to think because i'm not i am not a pro-mass guy i i would like to get masks off our kids as fast as we can to be honest with you but also we've come this far and we've done this well that it's like
081i just think you have to be strategic about it but we'll do you know to your point i would love to say in january but i can't say that for sure because who knows what the number's going to look like but that's our thought our thought process should be when do we get masked off kids that should be our thoughtful process it shouldn't be we should be living these things right to your point i mean i think a statement that it's not going to make me very popular with some people listening um okay it's like and i am i sit on a board of education because i believe in education and i believe in science and i've had my vaccines and i'm going to get a booster in that and at some point i think
082we're going to lose this battle because we can't keep fighting some people refuse to get vaccinations does that make sense and we're not going to mandate it just my two cents sorry so we i'm just trying to guys summarize where we are right now we we have we have settled our uh high school nine through twelve uh optional massing and a lower threshold and have we also addressed this state of uh state of play no we're just atmasking right now okay we're just doing maths and so you're at seventh and eighth grade right now so um let's let's just make a motion either from one of you either um you decide do you want to make a motion first for seventh and eighth grade to go to mask or continue with a mask mandate and
083a do we need the lower threat we don't need the lower threshold no continue with the mass mandate we can make that motion and vote it up or down or you can make the motion for seventh and eighth grade to go to optional with a lower threshold of three percent i would stick my neck out and make a motion if possible to keep the current policy for seven and eight in effect until the next school board meeting okay what do you see what levels this is seven seven eight seven and eight yeah to keep it as current then why don't we just say then why can't we put the policy k through h okay yeah well that's good i'm sorry i broke it down the side i thought some of you might want to look
084at them but fine we can vote k through eight yeah if that gets voted down okay so the motion is that we continue the current mass mandate part k through eight yeah yes second okay all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay so we are going to maintain what we're doing uh as far as masking yeah until our next board meeting and do we need to do something with the state of play yeah i want to talk to you i think i want you guys i appreciate thank you for coming in i appreciate the fact that you all have trusted me to make some of the decisions with the quarantining and we we've kept up with obviously everything i do i i go through you all with it but since we're at a point
085now where we have a newest modification and we've got some this test to save play going i just think we have to have a conversation it doesn't have to be very long but i think and i put it out there i just i want to really get your your thoughts your ideas and probably your approval for moving forward with that with that said now that you're keeping mandated k-8 and then 9-12 being optional uh i do think we've got our high schools where we've got we've got a pretty good pocket of kids that are vaccinated they're older and we can we're just kind of not that they're guinea pigs but we're seeing how things are going with them i feel like to test the play is a must test to stay i feel like is
086probably going to be julie you you correct me because you do a great job you get an extra nurse in there or 80s are trying to help with test the play i just think if we continue to stay with tests to stay it's going to get a little too it could be really tedious a lot of work for our nurses because they do a lot of nursing because because here's what i want to say at some point our quarantines need to match k through 12 because it's hard because right now we're basically saying and we know it's optional but we're basically saying hey nine through twelfth grade you basically get to say and you're optional k through eight you're mandated and if you're caught at lunch you can't even come to school there's that doesn't
087make sense to me and i'm not saying let's rip it off the band-aid but because you said k-8's in a mask and we're controlled i like to see us let's let's see this new modification meaning mask or no mask they can come back and they have to wear for 14 days that way we can get our kids back at lunch because we're not seeing those kids come back positive that are exposed and it basically ensures every kid comes to school and they're still a mass in a very controlled environment high school level we'll have to really watch it because now you're optional with letting them come back and we also had a case already today that our this week was test test to stay but i think we have to be careful with test this
088day because i just don't know if it's gonna be feasible for everything but if you go that newest modification you're basically guaranteeing that every kid get stays in school the reason why test the play has to stay is because all of those are modified quarantines they can't do things after school and i believe we have to have tests to play in yes yeah so that's where i'm at i'd say let's go just if you're asking my opinion let's try the new modification i know that's gonna ruffle some people's feathers i think we can get through it i think we're you're still got enough mandated policy in there with mitigation that i don't think we're gonna see a rise and we'll just have to see what happens at the high school level um i ask a
089question how many tests have been administered in tests to stay do you have this you have a ballpark i have the numbers of her total and then looking at i do have those numbers the positive ones well what it is is if and let me just kind of explain it kind of briefly too what it means for our school nurse just the test to stay is if you have a kiddo and he's positive and then you have 10 contacts those contacts get tested the day that they get identified as a contact plus two more times before day seven so that means that in the course of a couple days she's performing 30 tests on just that group of kids now if another case pops up then you may have another 30 kids on there so
090um what i've noticed in the previous couple few days because we haven't been doing this very long is that our nurse at high has been doing about maybe 10 a day now when she gets a little help that's one thing but you also have to remember the test itself take like two seconds to administer the hardest part is before you can even do that like like you can leave they can stay at school the day they're identified but you can't test them until you get a parent signature so then you're running down parents trying to get them to sign these things send them back in and all and all of this and in the course of all of this we really like we said we've had one comeback positive um it was weird because it
091was on a late like the last day like day day seven so i'm kind of like did she even get that or he or she get that from the from the exposure or maybe she got it somewhere else we've also tried we've also sent out the form so a lot of parents are filling it out so that helps yeah my whole thing is is at some point we have to get more consistent with what we're doing with quarantine wise for both i know we've got two different maths going on but just i know you're going to hear from parents that my kid's in a mask all day he goes to lunch for 15 minutes or 17 minutes and then he can't come to school for 14 days because he's and then but our high school
092kids are in now saying that do you have a lot of options here you could we can since she is getting an extra nurse you could do test to stay and play at the high school level one more month to see where it goes keep everybody the same you don't have or you can go to the new one just for the high school you could go test to save for k through 8 but i think that would ruffle some feathers with our nurses quite honestly at the k-8 so there's a lot of combos you can do you don't have to do but it is yeah and the the day we came we came back on a monday where we ended up with five kids that were positive tuesday tuesday no it was the week before
093because that was the first time we had heard about tessa's stay in play and we thought could we start this now at that point we only had one more day of school we had 105 kids out on quarantine there's no possible way that our nurse could so it could get to the point where it's not even feasible that's a great point because when it first went out with those five now but we don't know if all 105 would have been tested because someone would have been vaccinated right so but it could have some some of them have masks on do all the work but again and if they don't have we're just saying like if they just don't if they were exposed at school and they don't have symptoms now we may need to have
094them do a symptom checker every day or something like that but like if they don't have symptoms just allowing them to stay in school with massdot talk to mr walker today he's already thinking about i wanted to see kind of what their thoughts were and he really thinks that new modification can work but he they're going to come up with a system in google in the google form that will help them with okay who really needs to be a mask and monitor that looks like not that this is the number one priority but we don't want to add more work to our administrators or more work to our nurses and when you get into this test to stay and then you do this to do that who's in a math i mean there's just so
095many things that they can start having to worry about that it just makes it it gets crazier and it's gotten crazier i don't know i'm i'm i'm so confused so the question this is why you're gonna have 20 20 nickels or 10 dimes so so again right now in 9th through 12th grade you are a test to stay in test deploy they don't have to go home but they have to be tested now if they don't want to be tested we don't force them to then they just go home the question is do you want to keep both of them in play or do you want to go to the new modification i don't think we're going to go backwards i don't think we're going to put more restraints do you want to put the
096new modification in play for ninth and 12th grade that's your first question okay and do you fully understand like the test to stay in play okay so like because the test to stay is the three times within seven days the test of play is adding a test every day that they practice that sport now that's misha so so right now they could get tested like 14 times possibly if they got you know the first day if you go to what uh dr seifert's saying where we just let them stay in school without symptoms of their contact then basically the test is play sorry is the only one we would use that mean the only testing they we can't supersede or do anything different with this because this is misha they would just need to not
097have symptoms and they would be um testing just on the days that they would be playing that's a great clarification that helps i mean that yeah because the test stays three tests test the play is and we would do this we have to do it to test the play they have to be tested every day they're even going to practice or again yeah so those will still have to stay in play if they want to stay at school but again or if they want to stay in their sport but again they're not eligible for that if they were exposed at home they're only eligible for that if they're exposed at school so if they're exposed outside of school and you said most of the most of our cases are coming from outside of school it
098is just yeah so this won't even be a factor if if a um it's a factor because we have enough exposed okay they're they're getting exposed to school the cases are coming outside of school it's the cases that come they'll come to school there and then they expose the other yes and that's where it's coming from okay and we thought we had to do stay and play together initially because we didn't want people to think oh they're just catering but i'll be the i don't i i'm not bashful to say it if you want to have any kind of play season band season winter sports season and really give us a chance to stay in you've got to do test to play i think there's a lot of things you can do test to stay
099go to this new modification and again i said i don't know if we want to go backwards i don't have to so much backwards but you can say because the 9th through 12th grade can be vaccinated and they can wear a mask if you wear a mask you stay in school so you can say that too but then you have the test to play and then you might hear oh you're kind of catering so there's there's just a lot there you can do so honestly your question is no i'm serious because that's this is how crazy it gets but i want you to understand the details and how much there's a lot of difference of play just with quarantine so you have test to play i think you guys know that i think we need
100to keep that you want test to stay or do you want you can the newest modification that says it doesn't matter if you have a mask on or do you want to go to back to you have to have a mask to be able to stay in that's that's the bottom line what's wrong i think that was i though the way you said that i don't know they would still they would have to wear a mask the 14 days after their case though on all these yes i'm not talk i'm talking the specifics when they were exposed it doesn't matter it seems to me that the newest quarantine is a very low risk scenario because most kids who are a close contact don't end up developing coping that's my two cents from school yeah you're
101that's you're right but it could seem to that point you're right it could seem to a teacher or just some to a family that has a kid on our school they it could seem oh my gosh they can just stay now and it's just wild wild west i mean there is that side of it but you're right if you go off numbers and what the data we have you're exactly right at this point and are we saying this this kind of discussion about state of play is only with our mass optional population it it doesn't affect right masks of eight are done yeah we you're gonna really muddy it here yeah that's what i'm saying right when you get to when we get to k through eight for manda for the the mass man we're
102on math mandate for k through eight there is a conversation that we need to have is to her point to helen's point if you go the newest modification test to stay doesn't do anything for you but the new modification could come into play and you could save those kids that were modif that were exposed at lunch and keep them in okay so right now we're looking at it's just nine through 12 3 9 or 12th grade you want to keep test to stay in play or just play and then if you don't do the stay it's either you have to have a mask on to be able to stay back to stay in school or you don't have a mask on or not with all of it you have to have 14 days i know
103you don't like how i say that but that's so is there a motion uh how would you like to say how am i not saying clear enough i don't know is there a motion for our ninth through twelfth grade uh students that we uh we make we make a motion but uh that at our ninth ninth through twelfth grade uh students uh hat we initiate the uh state of play uh coin latest uh quantum menu the latest one would be taking out the test to stay we would just utilize the latest guidelines which and test to play for sports i was just trying to simplify it so the more you like to to use the latest right uh the newest modifier the newest modified quarantine with test deploy right which means in essence the only
104kids that could not come to school are the ones that either were half copied were exposed at home or have symptoms and the only kids that cannot play sports would be if they have covid if they were exposed at home or if they don't don't test yeah and have symptoms so the only way that we could guarantee just be clear the guarantee that you can play your sports is and stay in school no matter what is if you're vaccinated right and don't have symptoms or you test the play even if i'm saying the only guaranteed way because if you're exposed at home it the test of play doesn't even come in here i make a motion to adopt the new modified quarantine for grades 9 through 12 as well as test to play period i
105second that moment right all those in favor say aye aye aye and those opposed all right so we are going with the latest uh modification thank you for clarifying julie what do you think i i just oh i'm sorry are we doing k to eight then two as far as the new all right so you believe we we've we've finished with nine through 12. now we're looking k through eight which has mass mandate in place so how does how does this so i'm going to let julie say because she says it clearer than i did she said thank you she's like let me have it okay simplify so take it from the special educator i'm gonna put my mask on and just listen that if we utilize the same quarantine procedures the latest quarantine because
106we don't really need to worry about test to play because there aren't the misha stuff um but if they we wanted to you keep kids you know use the same quarantining procedures basically the the ones that are getting sent home now are the ones that get exposed at lunch because that's the only time they're really taking off their mask so what it would be is that we those kids would not get sent home they would get to stay at school as long as they keep their mask on and they're symptom-free well misha is the one that does the test to play and i don't think any of those like extracurricular activities k through eight are through misha so we would need to probably decide on the route you're right but mission does that julie just
107said that's mischief for the high school sports and activities this would be we don't really have this uh sanctioned sports but we have activities and clubs and i think at this point they wouldn't they wouldn't they just wouldn't participate in that i don't think we would test for them to do that i just think that's probably too much to do at this point but their basic guarantee because their mass the mass k through eight and now if they're exposed at lunch they can stay because they still wear a mask unless they have symptoms is your guarantee they've been to stay in school unless unless they have symptoms so another question would be with before and after care through the ymca at the schools i know that that previously was not included in the you know
108type of thing so if they're in the schools would that qualify under this according to the health department it is just that they can come to school activities they're still quarantined outside of the school day so they would not be allowed to do before and after care from what i understand and the and the piece of that that would especially with extracurriculars would be like too is that they don't have those kids have to be wearing a mask for 14 days so those people in those programs would have no knowledge that they were a contact right and being quarantined so i i would think that they wouldn't be able to participate that's just my thought on it right now we do not because the health department quarantines them outside of school that's a good question
109right it wouldn't change and those people wouldn't know like they wouldn't have any knowing that those kids need to be messed up and they wouldn't have any knowledge of those kids being contacts it would only be our schools that would have that knowledge you if you go this newest modification for k-3 it'd be a big change for people but they're not uh y club club fly club clubs activities that is still modified they will not be able to do that just come to school more than math so the latest modification would is only going to be during the school day and basically what you're doing then you're you're basically putting your quarantine k through 12 the same except for your have the test to play for the mission and that really isn't our decision to
110make because the health department is the one that says that they are at school that they're still quarantined outside the school that's a great point so the health department has made this call what you're going to hear from some people is the state and cdc didn't make this call our our health department make this call so you will you'll hear that a little bit too probably but right but there but they are actually on modif they are after day seven with the test they pro they're they're out or after day 10 without a test and no symptoms so it's not as long as it used to be with the whole 14 days and not that we're trying to do this but you're really cutting down a lot of testing and our nurses have done a
111great job with testing but they have a lot of other things to do as well all right so i'm looking at heidi you're pretty good at making this movie probably start with newest mod if you want to modification and unless you want to do something different i make a motion we adopt the new modified quarantine for grades k through 8. all right all those in favor say aye all right opposed all right so we've got a lot done with have you done all of our so in summer do you want to do the summary or do you want me to okay will you help me so nine through twelfth grade is optional masking with three percent threshold we're also using the newest modification plus the test deployed in 1912. k through 8 we are still
112mandating mass we're now working the newest modification at k28 as well with quarantine wow so it was and we think it's complicated for the last how about those kids that are currently quarantined they come back well julie just opened the can of worms oh let's we did this last time this is very helpful so my feeling is this starts monday that's very helpful because i get all the information out tomorrow we'll get letters and emails and everything out tomorrow so it starts monday starting monday is when it starts so those kids would come back at that point on monday just to clarify it they're at home now but their quarantine is supposed to go through next friday and they have no symptoms they can come back to school okay with a mask for the rest
113of their 14 days as long as they don't have it already messed up okay danielle would you like to say something to the group another buddy another muddied water is there something wrong so with the decisions we've made you can work out whatever that little glitch they're just saying at this part this new modification is trusting what ellen is saying and the numbers are showing that these kids aren't getting that they're not necessarily coming up positive and if that's an issue up to look at it it's a good point it's great it is and for instance when we talk to we can figure this out in each building but like carrie holt and i talked about this at the early childhood level not that we're changing anything there but if kids would come back and
114they need to be six feet apart because they're finishing their they can come back to school or whatever there's other places they could eat or sleep or things like that where they can spread out like in a cafeteria or a gym or something like that so we will figure it out logistically well to the yes everybody's safe some of our schools have already done that they're already six feet apart or under 15 minutes so okay we're moving on to new business and in 7.01 our professional development day a chance for those of you who didn't go to the professional development to just share some thoughts i know i went i think ellen you were there and heidi wanted to tell you marita did ellen i'm sure you all will say this too but can i
115just throw it out kudos to danielle and her team i mean it was top notch it was the kind of professional development day that i feel like i experienced when i go down to the state you know msba kind of like the keynote uh speaker dr mohammad i loved i really liked that guy and i stayed for his second um presentation breakout session down so well i'm i'm chatting right now i well it's a discussion so go ahead well i was going to let them start but i liked how he emphasized because the key thing here is uh i think there's this big discussion about equity you know and what is equity and i liked how he really kind of said equity just is really an opportunity for all it isn't that we're going to
116change our uh and rewrite our curriculums or our i mean we adjust curriculums all the time but it isn't a big shift of some kind it's just opening up these opportunities for all and acknowledging the contributions that maybe haven't uh been noted in the past that uh that is providing more equity about how we look at our our different subject areas but i i thought it was so well organized wow great job ellen well we don't necessarily have a presentation prepared we're happy to talk about the day i mean i can kind of give you a rundown of the day for people who weren't there and i'm happy to listen to any comments or feedback or answer questions that you have so to clarify that when we discussed that donna said let's not do a
117presentation or report it was just for you all to share your thoughts and what you you gained and we can do the same thing as we were there it just it was we were in the understanding it was it was just a quick discussion of how the day went yeah and so if you want me to give a quick rundown i can't or okay um it's a really good question we have in as you know our diversity equity and inclusion committee that has worked over the last year we have our i am that was probably a good thing we have our diver our diversity equity inclusion committee that has worked now over the last year to um talk about diversity equity inclusion issues within our community within our district how we can help adjust things
118in our in our district in our curriculum within our code of conduct with professional development how do we make sure that we are truly providing the best education for every child in our district and so when we started that and rodney jason julie ellen anybody who's been on the committee feel free to chime in um we we talked about professional development we started with that committee last year we had probably seven people attend the solution tree virtual summit on conversations beyond race and we all came back and shared with the committee we were able to share some video like video recordings from the sessions dr muhammad was and dr and ken williams who was our other keynote presenter both presented at that conference and we saw them and we saw the power and many of
119us have been to previous sessions with dr anthony muhammad who talked on plc's or rti or other key initiatives that have been central to our work as a district and so as we were thinking about how can we begin some of these conversations in ways that we knew would be thought provoking and not controversial right they rose to the top because we've seen them we knew what kind of quality they would bring to the discussion and so we were hoping from those sessions to be able to open some eyes to help people reflect and think to walk away feeling empowered and that also for our staff members and our students of color that they feel seen and valued and heard and and know that that we are all working together to create a school system
120that advocates truly for every single child and so when i looked at the evaluation results from from when we had him in during the summer to work with our administrators those were some of the best evaluation results we've had and when i looked from this from november 1st they were pretty awesome too and we know that we had a lot of people who had picked other sessions to go to heard him at the keynote and switched you know and they went to his session because we we check we traced them down okay they didn't sign in here but they did sign in like we saw the migration of people wanting to to stay in here and um from his session in particular the first session was more around diversity and inclusion work his second session
121was around plc's and the comments that came out of especially that plc session were we need him back and we need him for a full day like we need we need everybody needs to hear it so it really was the beginning of the conversation there's so much more work to be done rodney and nicole adams have started lean in conversations where it's just an open forum for people in the district to kind of hop on a zoom and have conversations and those we've had several of those now and so really this is the beginning of the conversation of really taking a reflective look at the district of what are some of the policies procedures curriculum professional development the different things and the different opportunities that we do as a district we we need to take
122a step back and really look through different lenses to make sure that we're making strong decisions that better every single child that come to us so well i don't know if i answer the question walking the talk well that's what i really was curious is what kind of actions are we taking for example and i have to tell you that i thought he was very reflective and i had to you know i really thought about it yeah and uh but for example he mentioned the one time you know for example uh many schools not getting beyond algebra 2 or something like that and you know and then he came up with a course or something like that where he took certain elements of algebra 2 to help you know people work and i appreciate that
123but what concerns me uh in my mind is that is he trying to say that every student should have a right to go to college does that make sense what i'm saying not every student should have that right you know i mean they can have the right to go but if they're not qualified then we're gonna then college is going to be our new high school you know what i'm trying to say and what are we going to have super super duper college i think what he's saying though is that by virtue of the zip code that you live in or by virtue of the color of your skin depending upon the places that you go to school the access the resources the those types of things many impoverished areas have impoverished schools that may
124not have qualified teachers that may not have those access to those upper level classes the state of missouri many years ago said children going through high school absolutely need to make it through algebra two in order to do whatever they're gonna do in life go to college go to the workforce whatever like the state of missouri and the national association for teachers of mathematics have said that for a really long time but when you look at statistics and you look at impoverished areas and they don't have the same access that creates a societal issue based upon where you live and potentially what the color of your skin is versus what you are capable of doing and so i think that's the conversation he's trying to have that we need to challenge ourselves to think beyond
125i know in my tenure here we've had lots of discussions about algebra and math curriculum and maybe we should create classes that teach algebra one over the course of two years for kids or maybe we should have this class that no matter what you do with that they never get to algebra two so even in our district we have conversations that kind of get to the fringes of some of those things that we need to take a a step back and be reflective about i think that's what he's getting at not that we need to water down expectations or entrance criteria or anything like that but rather we give all children the same access the same experiences the same ability and opportunity to get there and to have that rich learning and to have teachers
126believe in them and say you know what you do have a scientific mind like have you ever thought about maybe going into the healthcare field you know in that first session the the the piece that stuck with me was the picture and i can't remember the doctor's name or the woman the african-american doctor who is the only pediatric female neurosurgeon of color in the country the only one and she said it was a i think it was a community college science teacher who took an interest in her and said you know you you could that you have this kind of mind have you ever thought about and she said her biggest hurdle to becoming who she was and doing what she did was her belief in herself and that's because of the people around us
127and that's because of our teachers and you want to talk about power of teachers and power of curriculum we change lives by doing that and so i don't know why i'm getting choked up but i am and it's because we we need to make sure that all of our kids have access all of them no matter what well that's true and that's you know i'm just merely saying that not everybody is meant for college sure so not you know not everyone you know should we we should not feel that everybody is meant for college counselors should not be telling students that sure and that's also why our district has invested highly in lewis and clark career center and building our vocational opportunities for students and i don't know it was if it was last meeting
128or maybe i dreamt having this conversation about the beauty of and you don't have to be only college bound you can take vocational classes and still go to college like you can have both a very practical trade and skill that you can have as a hobby or as a life career and still go to be go to college and expand your horizons there too but you're right like kids need to find their passion and we need to help them find something that they're going to love to do that also is going to pay them well and let them be successful people moving forward um access and connection yes there it is oh we're telling kids they have to do this or that the kids are going to make up their own decisions too we just
129want to give them that access and and be able to connect with all kids and give them opportunity and the great thing about dr mohammed as well and you've done a great job of explaining is it's not i hate to say not just about dei but but he gets into connecting dei or equity diver uh diversity conclusion with the actual rti process in our plc process and how we are trying to connect with kids he brings all that together in one package and that's why it's so when you when you ask what's kind of what's the why or what's the purpose behind him coming in is because he's bringing the access and that connection and the opportunities for kids within the process that we've set as a big rock for us which is the rti
130slash pbs uh [Music] rti are basically the same thing and so it's so powerful because that whole second message was about how all that interrelates together and that's what was powerful about it then if you go to ken williams who was that he came to speak and ellen you got to hear him and we actually i thought it was a great morning i enjoyed being in there with him and one of the biggest things i heard from ken that he told our support staff and he talks about equity and inclusion diversity and bringing people together what he said and he told me at the end of the whole day we worked together and he said jason you've got it going on here you know why because the sense of belonging trumps it all and that's
131what ken said he goes i could feel i i could feel it in our in when i walked in i could tell that when you have a sense of belonging and i can feel this district that trumps it all you can talk about equity you can talk about race you can talk about all those but if people feel like they belong and you connect with them that's adults and students that surpasses it all and i would love to hear that and he said you've got it keep working on it that's my takeaway and that's the way i i feel about the school district so that's why i asked what are you trying to accomplish i think it allows you know all of the all of the participants all of our teachers and staff that had
132a chance to hear that message made it made them much more aware now of of all the things we're going to be doing but we were going to add i saw you pick up your mic yeah yeah i i think before i make my comments i i have to say i don't speak on behalf of all african-americans i'm only going to speak on behalf of myself but i think one is that um diversity equity and inclusion is something that um is all around us it's not something that it's from the or away from us and we're learning about it it's something that all of us are embedded in whether we know it or not and so what was so um impactful about what dr mohamed did was was that he showed how it was embedded
133into the curricular piece and then teaching and learning which is so important because when you're looking at standards and you're trying to determine what students have learned we understand that doing that process faithfully is ensuring an equitable education and so that in itself is powerful so i i think it wouldn't be a far stretch to say that if we then provide students with meaningful interventions based off standards that they're not mastering in a classroom that's not insuring equity okay so that's the first thing i think the second thing that's really um important to think about when we're talking about access is that um the key point about access is that what it allows things to level out if i never make it to the basketball court i don't know how good i'll be in playing
134basketball but once i make it maybe i'm not cut out for it and i think that's really what it boils down to um i certainly wasn't a soccer player oh no no i took that back i wasn't definitely that but i certainly wasn't a baseball player but when i stepped on the field as a chubby fifth grader i really realized i won a baseball player okay and so i switched to basketball and that became a game but i had access to baseball okay so i was never left to wonder was that my sport or not because i played it i tried it and i didn't like it and so it's college for everyone no it's not but what we would like to ensure is that all of our kids had the opportunity to tinker with
135the idea of college rather than not having access or the potential to have access or the potential to have people that look like them that's in college or that's a mentor or a community member that says you can do it now what happens if someone says you can do it and provide you access now what was a fleeting thought is now hope and a dream you see and so i think that's the this thing that's the important key and sometimes we can go through our system so long where um and and i just talked about this in my mary bill class that i teach sometimes we we have unconscious bias and we all do we're not oblivious to it it doesn't matter if it's the affinity bias or the confirmation bias or the halo effect
136we all have these unconscious bias and what happens is as adults sometimes they play on us and we don't even realize it so taking something such as the rti process or once you break down or i mean i'm sorry taking something such as the poc process and then the intervention piece is the rti process well if we're not giving kids meaningful interventions then it's very it's very possible that they're not getting access and that's the name of the game as long as you show me that if as long as you give me the opportunity and believe in me then maybe i'll just i'll determine if it's for me or not and i think that's when i heard uh daniel you said well i've been hearing this but that that access piece the plc and letting
137all teachers get this this message uh from dr muhammad about the opportunity or having someone a teacher who will just make that connection to say have you thought about you know this or just opening up doors letting them see if uh well i'm i'm repeating but i think that's that's the key thing from at least the november aren't i i'm on oh anyway uh i i think that the beauty of november 1st uh with the time that all the teachers and staff had an opportunity to hear that message just reinforces the fact that we do have a district of teachers who are caring and will i hope continue to notice that child just that one-to-one connection somewhere ellen we i kind of skipped how about some thoughts i saw ken williams and um he didn't
138really get into equity i was i had an appointment that i couldn't miss and i left at lunch time he was talking about team team functions and he used clips from 12 angry men to uh illustrate his points and you thought it was oh yeah the day was worthwhile and what was great about him in that session that's not what he had planned on doing in that session but again we had staff who heard him and came where originally we didn't have as many support staff coming to that session it was going to be geared more for administrators and and teaching staff um and so what he had planned he didn't know if it would resonate with who was in the audience and he flipped on a dime to kind of engage people and it
139was it was really interesting i sat at the table with a couple of our our um skilled um maintenance guys and we had some really in-depth conversations about dissecting that movie and that we would have never had that kind of conversation it was amazing you're exactly right and i was with with ellen i don't know if you would say about our conversations did i that was what i mean but like we were going philip they were going philosophical and i was like that philosophical right ellen but to the point of is is that whole process did talk about so you're talking about team dynamics but that did talk about how we receive people and work with people and equity does come into play and diversity and inclusion comes into play it all it wrapped right
140into it he did a great job and then the second half of the day he was pretty much the ceo team and a couple of different uh the principal and a couple teachers and he unpacked again some of the rti plc processes and really talked about our why and so a lot of things that he talked about reinforced the things that we're already doing and the cool thing about ken was it was just let's let's just make sure everyone remembers friday was just for support staff money was just for certified and i thought that was genius on danielle's part to do that we could just focus and ken came in it was just awesome his keynote to everybody was just celebrate the support staff it was just awesome to see and that sense of belonging
141trumps everything was world resonated with me and then he really got into team dynamics and then really gotten some nitty-gritty things as a leadership group at the end of the day then when you get to the certified staff yes dr muhammad was there he did his thing which again he brings dei and right into the rti poc process the thing is is there were so many other things that people could go listen to and see and the great thing is is everything is connected to our two big rocks either our ti process you get a lot of that ellen you came and heard a whole session on rti process at the high school level which was great and then there's a lot of student needs things as well social emotional learning and cultural responsive teaching
142and so it's not just oh just go do this go do that bring this person in it's all connected to our two big rocks and that's what's awesome to see and so over the two days just as a quick synopsis we had just under a thousand people during the two days over a hundred sessions that people were able to choose from um and all in all the evaluations were very positive we did find with support staff they had a few technology sessions that were virtual because the group that we typically go with isn't traveling yet and we learned our lesson again virtual is not the way to go so we will not be doing ritual sessions ever again for pd if we can avoid it um but we also asked them what else would you
143like to see like next year what else would you like we did see a lot of the sessions that we had they asked like this was amazing bring it back this was amazing we'd love to have a full day this was amazing please do this they also gave us some things to think about and support staff and certified staff alike they would also like to have more detailed specific sessions that pertain to them so our staff that work as school secretaries would like things that pertain to school secretaries instead of just office staff right you know the registrars might need things that are different from our finance staff here in the buildings or the finance staff at the schools um so and the same thing with some of our teachers like being able to break
144it down even further for like our career technical teachers at lewis and clark or our alternative ed teachers or our specialty content areas that maybe there's only a couple of the teachers in the district you know who teach that kind of thing so we're going to work um starting right away we had a meeting today with the dpdc after school to kind of debrief too and so that's going to be our next step is already jump starting into planning for next year and how can we provide more customized options but all in all the feedback was really good people seemed to have a good day i on the support staff day i was going out to my car so this was later at st charles west and i i couldn't quite see see the person
145but literally they were going out to turn off onto some bell at the light and rolled down their window and yelled at me across the parking lot dr torwell that was the best pd we've ever had and i'm like okay thank you you know but but that and that was the support staff day right like so i think that it went it went really well and i think i al i also have to give shout outs to some of our community too that loved on our staff so we love st charles knocked it out of the park they brought so many grandma's cookies like i've never seen that many i'm pretty sure grandma's cookies was pulling all-nighters like like to pump out cookies like they loved on us um chartwells fed us and like just
146a lot of um a lot of good support for our teachers and staff and i think people felt it that those days so then that's a great day thank you okay 7.02 of our bond projects charles i bet that's you yes this month you only have one project which is monroe's hvac project another and monroe is a fairly complicated project as we've told you before because it's going to have to be built over two summers the architects and engineers further asked us to pull out a a third piece to that project being the hvac because of the long lead times so we're going to bid that early and then success will follow pretty quickly but that will be a january board meeting item for you to consider at that point so the one you have
147in there tonight is for lighting replacement at the buildings that we have not yet accomplished that in with the exception of success in monroe because they'll get it as they get their big interior renovations and so you see there is a recommendation letter from our mechanical engineer chris jordan of fsg as well as the bid bid doc that shows you how the bids came in kb is clearly the low bidder with a overall project cost if we take bid one into which is our recommendation of one million eight hundred ninety seven thousand dollars and we would request that you approve that bid this is one of those projects we aren't waiting until next summer because the the lighting contractors will work second shift so we should see this project begin probably even before christmas if
148they can get the the parts our current project that is covering benton null st charles high and harden we're still waiting on some fixtures specifically in this building all these wall sconces there are about 80 of them in this building and those are a special order item that are all delayed so we have a few things like that that are delaying the current project and so we want to get this one awarded and tell them to move forward so that hopefully we we can see project progress even before christmas okay and we'll make a motion yes i move to approve uh to accept the bid uh from kb electric as presented a second all those in favor opposed all right and 7.03 our proposed calendar revision that is me so quickly i just we humbly
149come to you and want to basically ask for for your approval once again uh to give the sesc staff students this is the why and to give the ses scsd staff students and families two days to focus on their own mental and physical well-being and also the other part is to utilize revise our calendar for the betterment of our students and staff so the plan chris can you go to that please and go to the second slide so if you recall we did this last year we didn't call it a uh we didn't call it a fancy title last year but several districts have come up with the the title mental health day so we're looking at asking again for the 20th and the 21st which would be that monday and tuesday before winter break
150to be used as mental health days that means that december 7th would become the last day before in a break whatever is planned for that day on the last day chris can you scroll down thank you um december 17th with that friday so there's an early release for k through eight whatever ever whatever was originally scheduled for the 21st we would do on the 17th this change would give the sesd community a much needed full two weeks and then a three weekends off for wrestling rejuvenation during the winter break we understand that we can ask that we can't ask for this every year we understand that um but i also think we're still in a pandemic there's a lot going on we've seen a lot of behaviors we've seen obviously i mentioned a lot of
151things happening at schools great things are happening as well we believe learning and growing growth is happening but people are there's a lot going on for people for for big big people and little people and so um slide four um again other districts are doing the same um some of them are taking the two days of thanksgiving that was a question that came up for us a couple things there one december gives actually it says we believe taking the two days at winter break is better here's the following reasons one is more time for families to plan for the two days if we do it now it's it's just a day and two and and this does affect some families because it's two more days a day care um last year but a lot of
152them was very positive for our staff and and our families last year as well last year's plan worked so well in the full two weeks that winter break really helped us propel us into the second year our second half of the year and why how are we able to do this we were able we are able to absorb the two days in our regular calendar meaning we won't have to extend it to the uh extend the school year into june because we have extra extra extra instructional hours already embedded in our calendar again i don't think we want to get into this is something we do every year but we're certainly certainly still on a pandemic so then a side note on slide five i just wanted to make sure you already know this information
153but i just want to make sure people understand we obviously had to cancel school twice at hardin middle school obviously one before a power outage and the other one was a threat our plan is to absorb those two days as well in our regular schedule meaning we won't extend the school year and just remember our staff actually worked the power outage they stayed in school that day and on the threat day they did not but again i i tend to believe that wasn't a great off day for anybody because we had a lot of traumatic experiences going on and we actually did um meet in the afternoon with the staff virtually that day as well so that was not certainly oh a day off for our staff we believe we can absorb those days as
154well now saying that if we can't for some reason um we would still try to absorb it by basically taking an ada hit we don't certainly think that is what we want to do but that would not be a huge cost if we had to do that but i just want to make sure you knew that we believe this is the most appropriate plan for our hard middle school that the staff actually worked again the power outage day and then the threat was a very traumatic time for all involved so we humbly ask um this is this is your gift this is your this is this is you to give the and you guys knew this is ahead of time so i might spring in on you uh this evening but you were so gracious
155last year we just thank you for all that you do for our staff um when we're asking in for the two days to make a two-week break at winter break would you mind just i think for the sake of the public and for me to know what i'm voting for can you give me examples of why the teachers are so stressed out or you know the staff is so stressed out so i could get an understanding of what i'm voting for would anybody in the room like to add or or would like to talk about seriously because i i'll say it but brennan well actually we have secondary elementary we have we have uh office clerk in the room as well and what about you we've already talked about the nurses and and all that
156they're already standing up yeah so and i don't first of all let me say this i think your point is clear and we can have that conversation but i want you to hear from the people in the room that would be great yeah okay sure thanks for hearing from high trunk me a lot of our kids are really struggling coming back to in-person learning has been a challenge for a lot of them um behaviors have been above and beyond what they typically are even in our building where we're kind of accustomed to the behavioral challenges i can also speak just as president a lot from my fellow secondary teachers and just stresses of having kind of everybody back into the building i know the larger buildings are having behavioral problems as well in readjusting and
157it has been a challenging year because i feel like this year when i've talked to staffers administrators it feels like we are kind of adjusting we have the situation still going on at present but we are also starting to see kind of old familiar problems that we have pre-coded and issues and challenges that us every school district faces um coming back as well and so kind of the combination of the two of those has been very heavy on our staff this year um as in speaking to you i've talked to a lot of our elementary reps as well and i would say they are as stressed so that's i mean where i feel like we're at i know people in my building are really feeling it right now and those two extra days would really
158be an immense help for us and i think bring us back for a stronger spring semester and hopefully a gradual return to normal thank you thanks for asking this question um i would just say from an elementary perspective students and staff and parents i think we're all at a place where last year we thought we this will be over soon and just not being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel has just put a lot of stress on everybody um things that we would normally have been able to deal with no problem are just everyone's window of tolerance has just gotten smaller and so every thing that's new everything that's challenging is just creates a lot of stress one of the workshops that i went to at our professional development day
159was from a counselor and she was talking about how kovitt has put chronic stress on us that we are not meant to carry for the amount of time that we have so i would i know our mst members our elementary teachers would really appreciate these extra two days so thank you thank you so and i would add just two things based upon what they've said too so looking at the questions about pd and what would you like more of mental health trauma meeting the needs all of those things rose to the top and we had more like mental health type sessions this time than we've ever had before so that definitely is a need that teachers are and staff across the board are expressing but just as a reminder just to put it back in
160perspective so when we talk about our second grade students when you say when was their last year of normal schooling the answer is never right right when we talk about our ninth grade high school students when was their last year of normal schooling it was sixth grade so when you put those things in perspective we're still asking everybody to get the kids exactly where they needed to need to be but we have a lot of hurdles and a lot of chronic stress and a lot of other compounding factors where like i think um what lauren said it best like people's window of her tolerance it's it's it's not there like it normally is when the lack of subs and support staff paraprofessionals teachers teachers just picking up the slack in in all areas because that's
161what that's what teachers do and they used to be able to do it but i think i'm saying you're right lauren it's suddenly that that constant constant uh stress it just it's still wearing down and adding to what danielle said i mean it's not only just on a learning okay a sixth grader okay let's say they're eighth grade okay the last time they were in school was fifth or sixth grade it's it's a social thing too just getting them back to their socialization skills i mean still they're working with a mentality of well this is how i was last time i was in school yeah well i appreciate lauren brennan saying something that i didn't hear for us or that we can't handle it or that we're different look across society everybody's struggling and i
162would like to be able to help our families and our parents but our parents don't work for us our staff does and we don't take care and i just for me as a superintendent i always try to take care of our staff because we can't but they might not always love every decision we make or be perfect with it right guys but i think one thing that i i take pride in is that i always are it's all about our students right it's all about our students but you've got to take care of your staff as well and we believe yes this could be a little hardship for some of our families looking for two days of daycare i get that i want to put that out there but i know what it did last
163year for us i heard so many good reports that that two full weeks really really helped us propel us as brennan said into the second semester and in some degree not that it's poor us but we're facing more challenges now than we did last year can i make a motion i move to approve the proposed calendar revision as presented wait a second all right second all right all of those in favor say aye all right and opposed that calendar vision passes thank you so much good deservedly so my drum roll so this is as long or short as you want to make it bored that's interactive yeah so just a couple threats before i get to the uh the the board um [Music] are teachers have been teachers consider yourselves teachers you can imagine my
164presentation today at hardin building number 15 was much better than my presentation way back two weeks ago at whatever the first building was but i don't think i did a bad job i think i've just improved because i kind of know where we're going but that's gone really well you'll also notice the asbr is in the financial report for you and really the only thing i want to point out there to you two things one the asbr is always a postmortem from the previous year so this is a snapshot of the district as of june 30. um and then number two you probably notice that we always look at that percentage that we have in operating reserve and so we actually went up slightly and that's after a year where we were really and i
165was leading the charge really really nervous about where we were going financially so that is both i guess a a black mark on my ability to forecast the future but really is a credit that the state of missouri finally did pay us what we were going to be owed on the foundation formula that the uh the economy and st charles rebound and so we really were able to come through the pandemic financially in fairly good shape and if you notice we're up about one percent um one percent in our budget overtake about 850 000 if you look at line 54 24 in revenues that is 876 000 we receive in the first round of cares act money from the federal government so there's about one percent difference so if you want to say is there
166one thing it's not just a single one thing but that's a one percent difference that probably pointed to all the other factors being reasonably equal to where we thought we would be so that's the long and short on the asbr now the thing that again might either generate a lot or very little discussion is something that saw and then called me about because she thought maybe i'd put it in the wrong spot i think there's a there's a recommendation from a company called ab creative for some playground equipment that would not normally be in my financial report but i just it's there after discussion with jason and the co team about what we need to do with the playground that is just to the north of where we're sitting right now benton elementary is probably
167as long as any other building in the district the playground that is there has been there well longer than any other playground we currently let kids onto and features things like you know the the hot metal slide that can burn you on the way down and sharp edges on equipment and so josh schaefer's been after me to let him take it out i think that that is one possibility the other one is we replace it with a little bit of equipment replacing it with a little bit of equipment might um be appreciated by our near neighbors because we do have kids that use what's there now those of us that work in the building can tell you that ellen and lots of folks bring their dogs by or walk their laps or bring their kids
168out so it does get a lot of use but we thought it may be needed we wanted to hear at least a consensus from the board before we spent forty thousand dollars on playground equipment for a building where we have no students so your thoughts are certainly welcome i can argue both ways on this one so thoughts on the playground equipment i mean i for one look at that area almost as a little central park for the for a central location and i i would think it would be well appreciated and uh not only well used but look attractive too to make that a a play area playground area so i think that looks fine i agree with donna i i'm sorry i didn't i agree with you oh just just i mean the the
169other question that might be in some of your minds is well what for the other buildings and so you know we're still waiting on the lincoln playground which you all approved as our bond issue projects to replace we've added a significant piece at coverdell we rebuilt the blackhurst playground after renovations there we've worked on some changes there uh our pto is very active and so really the only building that we haven't done a lot of playground work at in the last three or four years is uh no and she's just haven't gotten there so we really are trying to take care of active places the same we've replaced a couple of pieces we haven't added but we're getting ready to hopefully in the next year year and a half bring a proposal to expand some
170of the areas play that would all text us by monroe and do some upgrades on that campus as well well this the motion is all under one financial report so like gage i mean is there anybody that's terribly opposed to us doing it i guess is marita if if you'd like to as a board ask me to you know you can pull it off and vote on it separately or we can just do a consensus but either way is perfectly fine with me do we have a consensus to to improve the that playground area no no no then let's let's take that out make it a separate motion i'm going to start with no i'm going to read it um do i have a motion to um remove the the i consider hazardous playground equipment
171and and uh put in some a few new pieces i tell you in either any way we probably are going to take it out you know one way or the other yeah we just we need to take it out so there's some coffee ability but um so is there a motion to remove the the playground you know is there a motion to make that area with some new playground equipment i'll make that motion a second second okay uh do you want a low carb load or do you want to just vote no just okay all those in favor of uh improving that play area as proposed say aye aye opposed no the emotion carries that we'll go ahead and do something with that area are there some uh thoughts and discussion on the remainder of
172the financial report i do have two other sheets that i'd like to show you and um one is a sheet that it did not patch today milled it to me when she realized that it was not in there so chris is going to pull him up behind you it's the two uh chris that have the highlighted corner there's month end this is the old style that uh we used to see regularly i love that old style and so you know i asked lavinia specifically to do this for us this month and then she realized we got month but not years so this is beginning balance for the month of october and you can see we're ending the month um it this c sheet shows 18 million but i want to specifically call out fund four
173fund four is uh affecting that balance negatively to the tune of about 4.6 million but we really have bond dollars that are paying for all of that out of fund 4. so we really are not as far down as 18.1 but it's it's the stereotypical fall for us where we are receiving local or very little local revenue we're receiving our state revenues but by the middle of december we'll start receiving local tax revenue and you'll see our balances begin to go back up if you look at that next sheet chris if you could pull that one up for me yeah then you know there you go that one please if you can make it a little bigger it would help me at least you can see on the year end that starts with 40 million
174dollars and we're at that 18 with that you know negative in fund for un uh you know actually erroneously affecting the bottom line so um otherwise you can see we've got almost no county revenue but that's not unusual we should get fines and forfeitures anytime which finds in forfeitures continues to drop so again i'd encourage you to speed on your way home if possible and you know if you watch highway 70 you would think we'd be going up but not so much and then state revenue is holding in where it should be federal revenue as i think most of you are aware but i'll repeat it in case you have forgotten or didn't know we we draw it down in arrears so we have to spend the money and then we can request the money
175and so we still um we're in the process with nidra wilfolk our federal program specialist of requesting our first draw down from sr2 but that's not reflected here yet but we're going to pay for summer school and um in our bipolar ionization project and so you'll see that uh so it'll be a big jump federal revenue doesn't come in evenly the state comes fairly evenly all year questions so that's you're saying also that projected yes ending balance is going to be going down that's that's right about where the asbr is that you've got so that would be about holding steady now that is i'd say at this point of the year a guesstimate okay is there any discussion with the financial questions for charles thank you charles um i love that page it does happen
176it is just just tell us about it and show me that page that page just what do you just say that page is between marina and her or the board [Music] do we have a motion to approve the financial report try the second nice second all those in favor hi he was opposed okay 9.01 do i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn the meeting do i have a second all those in favor say aye opposed thank you we're adjourned