001um the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we're ready for item um 3.03 my superintendent comments so jason will turn it over to you thank you dr towers i am going to take my mask off so people can hear me it's great to see you all we have a jam-packed room tonight this is awesome so welcome to tonight's board of education meeting we're glad you have joined us and on behalf of myself and chris bennett the back in the back we believe people can hear and see us right chris all right we know that has been a struggle so if you're at home we're glad you're with us tonight we are about three
002weeks i guess it's our third week into school we feel like it's our best year ever so far and we believe in every student as we move forward with this great year i just wanted to make sure that we paid our respects for just a second i want to read this paragraph to you all yesterday along with many others in our community and county we honored marine lance corporal schmitz as his remains were escorted to bowie funeral home at cave springs as we move forward maybe remember lance corporal schmitz and all service women and men that have faithfully served our nation and paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom as 9 11 approaches let's also remember and honor the heroes of that horrific date in our nation's history as well our thoughts and prayers are
003with the families who have lost loved ones to war and acts of terror and a special note or a interest or just a side note um lance carver schmitz actually lived four doors down from me for several years and i can just tell you a family and just things that i could see him do with his brothers and sisters and the way he was as a brother he actually graduated with my son at fort zuma south you could tell he was a great young man and came from a great family so rest in peace uh lance corporal fall sports and activities season has started we have a lot of a lot of action going on i actually got out there right before the meeting and so did a couple of our board members as well
004but uh the warriors and pirates actually squared off in tennis today and also in softball today and that's always fun because when i go to those games i can't lose i get to watch both teams play and and hopefully uh see some great games so it's awesome to see we're back at it we've got kids at games we're we're right back to almost normal outside activities and obviously inside for volleyball we are massed up in the stands but it's great to have our sports and activities back to full capacity this year our latest podcast episode was was released uh the first friday of the school year hopefully you got a chance to catch that um and then just talked run down about policies and how we started school and different things so hopefully you can
005like i said catch that and more episodes are on the way so play please plan to stay tuned for that tonight we will have a coveted update and review for you as well as a professional plan review so we're looking forward to a great evening tonight and i hope everyone has had a wonderful start to the school year we are well on our way to making 2122 our best best year yet and together remember we do this together we we may have different opinions on different policies and different decisions but we stay together we stay united we will definitely reach teach and empower all our students to be their best and that's what we're all about that's our why so thank you dr towers thank you and that that's so true um adam 3.04 do
006we have any board communication okay i i'm sorry item 3.05 publicly recognition we are so happy tonight to to honor and to recognize our uh health clerks and our school nurses and many of our emotions are here this evening yes ma'am is that me yes sorry i was trying to put it on all right um i can i just stay here since um i don't i won't be in your guy's space then all right so um i typed out my comments today just to make sure i got everything out that i wanted to say but um good evening i'm very excited to be able to spend a few minutes tonight recognizing our school nurses and our health clerks while i have been supervising the health program in our schools the last seven years it's only
007been the last year and a half that i've really gotten to work with these ladies so closely sometimes they probably figure way too closely um while the board and the community recognize that all of our employees have gone above and beyond to help keep our students in school in school and safe i want to recognize all of the extra responsibilities and duties that our nurses and health clerks have had and performed in order to make sure that our schools have stayed as covid free as possible so just some of the extra things that they've taken on and i lost my list that was probably about twice as long but they've they've done a great job training students and hand washing doing morning checks with students contact tracing and reporting contacts to the health department sorry
008about that you guys probably hear me better now sending letters to families regarding contacts and positive cases in schools following up with parents regarding symptoms health department guidelines quarantine procedures returning to school how are they feeling calling on the weekends calling at night you know all hours of the day emails um they actually um were one of the only um nurse groups and in our only we were one of the only districts in the area last year to start testing students and staff in our buildings they report those testing results to the state and the health department via the school district they helped plan and work at the points of distribution that we originally were going to set up for our in our school district but then when it changed the family arena they quickly
009um you know changed changed their you know helped us change procedures and went over and visited with us to just make sure that they would run nice and smoothly many of them worked multiple pods we had a lot of our nurses signed up to work at the buildings and other districts that were hosting pods that they signed up for every single health department pod that was at the family arena weekend after weekend so and then when we actually had one of our retired principals kind of set up a special time for us to um get vaccinations um early on they also worked in that clinic as well they did everything they could to make sure that as many of our staff as wanted to be vaccinated could be vaccinated early on while we didn't always
010agree on things all you know right away along the way we were always able to come together and meet to discuss like our differences we would discuss the pros and cons for everything we did for each issue and then come together and always made a decision which was centered around keeping our students and staff safe for instance when the binax now testing the antigen testing came around as an idea last september or october the first thing that happened was our across the river our nurses really got together and sent the superintendents in that area letter saying what all the reasons why they couldn't do the testing and our nurses came together and decided that we would at least give it a shot um so we we kind of started trying to pilot it and with
011i want to say it was only a few days in it was like well this isn't so bad like every school was was testing kids was testing family or not families but staff members so while all the other districts in the area decided not to do the testing we started we met to talk about what it would look like how it could help us and what the expectations were so they were willing to put our community's needs above their own and this has helped out our district in so many ways one our students and staff didn't have to find appointments and take time off to find places to get testing they also didn't have to wait for the results from you know two days of results from testing other locations with these with that testing
012we were able to get results in 15 minutes they also had protocol you know if you were being tested you had to stay home until they were in until the results were in so by having those tests in our school it allowed for quick response time that helped cut down time out of school for students and staff it also allowed us to identify positive cases quicker as well as those that were contacts of those cases it allowed us to send students and staff members home sooner so that the virus didn't spread on our schools so i attribute their prompt contact tracing their reporting their testing for the low number of cases that we experienced last year and so far this year they continue to support these efforts even when the other districts around us are
013loosening the reins on masks and contact tracing and seeing numbers skyrocket in their school it would be so easy for them to say like enough's enough let's go back but i believe tonight they're going to be talking to you guys about you know their recommendations moving forward as well so they know that it's important and are willing to put in all this extra work if it means that it keeps our kids and our community safe so i am very proud to work for a district that's doing the best they can to protect all of our students and staff i'm even prouder to work with this group of ladies that have supported their district students and colleagues and even when it wasn't easy i'm grateful that they have not only supported me during this crazy time
014but have communicated their concerns and fears as well with all the good and bad situations and conversations we've grown together as a team to support and trust each other at a very difficult time i know that our district could not have made it throughout this pandemic without their knowledge their expertise their compassion their empathy and hard work of our school nurses and health clerks we're very lucky to have them and although i would never be able to repay them for their hard work and dedication even though some of them had asked for steak dinners and lobsters which i can't afford sorry i hope they know how much i admire them and love them for the work they do every day for the saint charles school district so i just wanted to thank you all and
015i know this isn't the same as steak and lobster but we want to recognize you and give you guys a certificate so mary leonard is our early childhood nurse and she is not was not able to make it tonight uh kaylie kelly you're here right no she's not here either lauren farin are we gonna do a picture yes can they come in the middle maybe it'll be less than 15 minutes i'll read fast do you want to maybe have a yeah there you go laura anderson [Applause] judy brink who's also our lead nurse thank you lauren coomer kathy burke she's not here okay uh brandi can [Applause] thank you kim stallschmidt [Applause] casey mckinney [Applause] mary honey cannot make it tonight she is our nurse at west chris kelch she's not here either jill meyer
016[Applause] and our health clerks ran from building to building to help support everybody else last year too so there and becky kyles [Applause] thank you so much all right so maybe one more round of applause for these guys they're some of the hardest working people around as chris takes their picture typically we would have you guys go around and shake hands but we won't do that tonight but again on behalf of uh myself our ceo team you getting in there thank you ladies real quick i just want to say again on behalf of myself our co team and our board of education you simply put above and beyond above and beyond and julie's right our staff all of our staff we had to do this together but if it wasn't for what you all did
017we would not have gotten through that year and i want you and i think you've heard that from me we've been in meetings powwow meetings together too right but i want to make sure everybody heard that again thank you so much let's give them another round of applause thank you ladies construction paper it it seems that if we're going to uh have a heart attack board now is the moment to have it yeah this we're in good hands right now we're in good hands basically says it's time to have a heart attack since they're all here yeah the statement of the night yeah all right item 3.06 is uh time for audience comments maria you have a statement to read all regular and special meetings of the board shall be open to the public since
018the board desires to be good listener and be responsive to the community persons dealing or desiring to address the board may do so during this time so allotted on the agenda and according to established procedures during the audience portion of each board meeting patrons are invited by the president to speak for or against any proposal on the tentative agenda are on any i just had a what's my doodle hang on here 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 our 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
019comments 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 okay thank you um we have three um audience comments that have been submitted electronically so do you want to go ahead yes this is from kimberly siemens mother of lincoln and jefferson students dear st charles school district board members i want to voice my opinion in favor of keeping the mass requirement in our schools especially with the highly infectious delta variant circulating removing mass indoors could be a recipe for disaster after all every child deserves the right to an education and it must be a safe one thank you all for your team and the school staff have done to protect the students please continue
020with masking for all students and staff miss elena shendova a parent she writes good afternoon i ask that you please take in consideration a few points first i am calling on the board members and attendees at the last meeting who couldn't wait to rip their masks off at their faces of their faces after they thought the live stream was over there was no sound most of the time but the video was fine saint charles school district parents i suggest you watch it on youtube a couple of masks off and went around the room to talk to others and didn't even socially distance such a hip day but you can't wear yours for two hours second point members except one as far as i know there is no federal or state law number three mandating mass
021cdc of overheal says the board has a responsibility towards the kids in the district not the community people in the community have to protect themselves why are we sacrificing the health and well-being of our kids to protect adults out there who are not careful themselves uh excuse me why are we sacrificing the health and well-being of our kids to protect adults out there who are not careful themselves just go to walmart or target or walk down main street in old saint charles and you will see only a few masked people five if the board is concerned about the health of our kids then look no further than the school cafeteria the food that is offered there is unacceptable cinnamon rolls and pop-tarts for breakfast cereal goldfish chicken nuggets nachos for lunch are not healthy nutritious
022foods for growing bodies absolutely the people including kids who have those exact diseases six people think for yourself you don't have to follow blindly the experts healthy kids don't drop dead from covet children that end up in the hospital have some of the above mentioned comorbidities or cancer or some other underlying issue such vulnerable kids should do virtual school we can't keep risking the healthy kids mental and physical well-being for the few who are vulnerable that is just wrong we the parents number seven know what's best for our children we care the most about our children and that's why we should decide what medical treatment they should get and how to protect their health and for some of us the mask is not the answer if we don't stop this insanity now how far are
023we going to take this a year two are you going to mandate mass every flu season forever parents wake up just a few months from now we are going to be here debating the covet vaccines mandate if covet vaccines get mandated in school a lot of us will pull our kids from the public schools i hate excuse me i hope you make the right decision mandate is not it have a good night and then the last letter is from amy leatherby dear board of education good evening my name is amy leatherbury and i am the mother of two students at lincoln elementary i would like to begin by commenting district staff for a wonderful beginning of the school year we feel grateful to be part of the school district undoubtedly you will have many statistics
024presented tonight on masking but i want to share a personal story to give life to the numbers unfortunately on the very first day of school my first grader was exposed to covet positive classmates because both students were masked my son was able to enter a modified quarantine which allowed him to continue to attend school in the mask as we monitor monitored him for any symptoms because of mass my son got to bond with his class and learn important procedures during those critical first weeks because of mass my husband and i did not have to worry about who would have to miss work to supervise an at-home quarantine on the advice of our pediatrician we tested my son on day seven after exposure because of mass he tested negative and was in a was able to
025enjoy a small labor day barbecue with his fully vaccinated family mass work they keep kids in school they keep kids safe and healthy and well the data supports this fact and so do countless stories from families like mine please continue to support basking while we are in a time of high community spread best thank you now we we have several people in the audience who've submitted their participation cards brandon kern you're up good evening i'd like to start by thanking our nurses who are in attendance for all of their hard work over the past two years taking care of all of us and keeping us safe my name is brendan kearns president of scea our teachers are working busily as the year begins with more crowded classrooms being greeted with excitement and the realizations that
026of the new challenges that lie ahead tonight the board will take two votes which will have a significant impact on teachers working ability first we will vote on whether to extend our mask mandate while feelings on mandatory masks run the gamot the data is hard to argue and the time we have been in school neighboring districts with less stringent or non-existent mandates have quarantined hundreds of students while our own district has quarantined only three masks have enabled us to keep students learning their best by learning in person next we hope that you will approve the five coveted leave days that central office is proposing while we greatly appreciate central offices consideration on this matter upon speaking to our nurses we believe it is best to extend this leave to seven or even 10 days while
027scea members are working hard to stay as safe as possible reality often has other plans this quarantined time will allow a sick staff member to recover or to take care of a quarantined child too young to be vaccinated we hope you will take this into consideration on your vote this evening thank you okay thank you you know often you'll see us removing our mask when we're when we're talking at the mic only because one of the things we realized during last month's difficulties is that wearing a mask while we're talking in the mic in inhibited a clear understanding so we did hear from patrons on helping them to hear what we're saying better so we we try to uh stay six feet apart but we will some of us will remove our masks from time
028to time in order for you to hear us clearly our next participant is lauren ferran hello my name is lauren ferran and i am the school nurse at coverdell elementary school today i am speaking on behalf of every nurse in our district your attempts to make us feel safe do not go unnoticed for all staff and students our hostess of our board of education staff members parents and the surrounding community can see that our district nurses stand in the united front regarding the mass requirements currently in place with coca-19 cases on the rise in the country the county's modified warranty guidelines in place we feel that masks are an absolute necessity at this time we support the utilization of county and district data on a monthly basis to determine changes in the mass mandate if
029the priority is health and safety maths are necessary if the priority is keeping our children in school and our parents at work masks are also necessary we are grateful for your willingness to deviate from the decisions of our surrounding districts and again we thank you so much for doing your part in keeping us safe thank you our next audience participation is chris house this time one two good evening uh my name is chris house i'm a parent of three kids in the school district right now ages 8 10 and 13. um i just started off i wanted to commend the board for being on the leading edge of returning back to in-person schooling i know a lot of school districts around the country even are still in the virtual side i commend you on that
030obviously i think that's what's best for our children especially mine i just wanted to raise a couple concerns that i had as a parent um right now uh it has as far as the mass mandates and the vaccine the whispers of the vaccine mandates and i've heard a couple of things about the data shows and statistics show um i have the most recent one that i was seeing was in the new york times where they were actually saying that the school district that was requiring the mask mandate was showing uh improvement and no increased causes or cases of coven 19. the problem that we're seeing with a lot of these statistics and data in studies is that it's kind of the devil's in the detail there's a lot that one in particular they were they
031failed to cite a control group they never cited they never compared one with mandates with one without mandates so i want to be real careful that we're actually looking at the data and the underlying data and the studies beneath what the actual headlines are saying with the actual click bait on the internet is showing a lot of people that i think there's a lot of line by statistics statistics going on out there like i said i'm not seeing a lot of the data that is showing the support for this mandate thankfully the virus does not pose a deadly threat to our children and our the adults can get vaccinated and that dramatically reduces their ability to have any sort of severe reactions to this virus um i understand the abundance of caution um and but
032my question is at what cost right now we're seeing a spike in rsv off-season spike in rsv so we have to question whether these mass mandates and all the preventative actions that we are taking is that taking some sort of adverse effect to our children's immune system schools have always been kind of a cesspool a petri dish of germs we all know this kids are sticky we understand this so i'm just curious are we trying are we making decisions based out of fear we're making decisions based out of logic and what we're seeing and what we're seeing right now based on cdc guidance is that our children have more uh threat of dying from pneumonia than they do of cobit so one of my biggest concerns right now is that i'm not seeing any sort
033of limiting principles to a lot of these decisions a lot of these mandates that are being made i understand the beginning of the of the covid that we are very concerned about it we had models showing that two and a half million americans were going to die i understand that so abundance of caution was warranted but at this point we're seeing since the start of covid just over 400 children have died of this any child's death is tragic my heart breaks for that parent we have to understand that we don't do that for anything else we don't close down schools for new orleans we don't close down schools for the flu and we're seeing consistent numbers as far as that's concerned another concern had to do with the learning process uh teachers are required to
034wear those masks um and how's that can you can you finish up the timing so i just uh how's that affecting our learning as far as facial cues uh speech development and understanding instructions that are giving to our children i know that's been a concern with my children and um i guess again that limiting principle is the goal zero covid and is that realistic so i'm asking the board to respect the decision of parents that decision that it belongs to us and remove the mandate and make it optional for any parent that just that's so desires thank you thank you bill i'm sorry it's not real largely the next hearts chris yeah i i miss i gave you the wrong name thank you yes there is a three limit uh three minute there is a
035three minute time limit on participation roland moore hello everyone my name is roland moore i'm actually a junior at st charles west i play on the baseball team i'm a member of the marching band and national honor society and involved in other areas of the school i'm here to talk to all of you board members about considering overturning the mass mandate as well i would talk about three different reasons why we can overturn this mass mandate and then you guys can consider this i like to discuss the impacts on relationships it has the impact it has on my learning and my parents role wearing a mask causes challenges and relationships it stopped me from getting to know a lot of people better because the masks are causing a barrier between us i've been able to
036talk to people with the mask on but it stops me from making long lasting relationships we are a smaller school which in the past has allowed better relationships to develop between the schools and students certain events like basketball and football games those are big events that allow you to create fun memories and school spirit last year covered protocols and social distancing kept me from attending those events now we have to strive really hard to rebuild that school spirit wearing mask and social distance protocols are also impacting my learning for example last year i was in chemistry because it was too difficult to clean the tables and lab equipment we couldn't do any labs labs are the main part of chemistry and boring paperwork isn't fun we can only set a limit of a limited number
037of people to a table sometimes it's hard to hear my teachers which also makes that challenging and all these things have impacted my learning i am 16 years old and my parents make a lot of big decisions for me like trusting me to have independence while driving and to make safe choices they also make my healthcare decisions for me i ask my mom if i should stay home when i'm not feeling well my parents help me make healthy choices please let my parents make the choice on whether i should wear a mask please let the other parents make decisions of whether their kid should wear a mask or not and i understand that the county health department has said quarantine guidelines for the schools i know that the mass mandate is put in place is
038to help the school to not quarantine a large amount of students i know we all want to be in school but this could be an opportunity to revisit and change those guidelines as well with the county health department thank you for listening to my reasons why you should consider overturning the mass mandate and thank you for giving me this opportunity to be here and i please ask you as a great example on how we should represent our school thank you thank you roland um caleb mertz uh hello i'm caleb mertz and i'm a junior at st charles high school i also play baseball and i'm also in the marching band now i wanted to speak to you tonight about removing the mask mandates in the district i'd like to share my feelings and how the
039mask mandates are affecting me and my peers now i went into the school year looking on the bright side i believed that this was going to be my best school year ever as i know you all want it to be but the farther along that i go i realize that it's not the best year it's simply just an experiment it's an experiment on me it's an experiment to see just how long i can go before breaking down it's an experiment to see just how disconnected i can feel while still functioning it's an experiment to see just how much i can learn on my own while not building those vital connections with my peers and teachers i don't feel like a junior at st charles high school i feel like a rat running in a maze
040a maze full of people where i can't see their faces i can't even see their smiles i can't see if they're happy or sad which makes me feel disconnected from everyone else i feel like i'm in my own bubble while someone is rushing shoulders with me in the hallway when am i going to be able to feel like a high schooler again when am i going to be able to see the faces of my classmates again when am i going to be able to feel like a normal human if i'm feeling this bad i can't imagine how my peers are feeling i know a freshman who just moved into the district this year and i can't imagine what he's going through i can't imagine what it's like going through a new school district not knowing
041what any of your classmates look like i can't imagine how he's supposed to make friends how is he supposed to make those connections with people he can't even see i want all of you to remember back to your first day of high school remember how difficult it was to make friends to navigate the social dynamics in high school now i want you to imagine how difficult that would be while not being able to see their faces well that's actually a reality this is what me and my classmates have to deal with every single day whole day so i please i beg you to take away those mass mandates that are hurting the connections between students and teachers please give us the opportunity to see the smiles of our classmates please give us the information on
042what data will push us past that threshold that will free us from the masked mandates and allow us to go back to living a normal life please let me have the best school year ever by simply removing the mask mandate thank you for your time thank you caleb thank all of you for sharing your thoughts the board listens and although we don't make comments we certainly do hear all of your thoughts we're ready for item item 3.07 do we have a motion to amend or adopt the agenda is there a second all those in favor all right 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 the board has already determined are in the domain of
043the administration do i have a motion to approve the uh consent agenda all those in all those in paper hi opposed all right the consent agenda is approved moving on to item oh i'm sorry i always forget to do that at this point in the in the meeting we give all of you a chance to escape uh and we'll take a just a short break if you want to stay for the rest of the business part of the meeting we'd love to have you but many of you have places to go so this is a time for you to exit thank you yeah i'm watching i always forget that part get out i'm just moving along i forgot thank you actually okay yes i'm all right are these all all right jason what's up hey
044kelly thank you okay item 6.01 this is a policy change is on our second reading is there any discussion on those policies did you we made just to be clear item policy bca uh just about an hour ago we resubmitted that so i asked you all to take a look um that we inadvertently had a sentence in there that we had asked to be removed and it is now corrected if if you want to make sure so are you suggesting that we approve it with the assumption that that correction is being made it is made if you open it up she she's already submitted it it's made oh okay yeah all right and so it it reads i mean for my point of view it's it's fine and corrected but have you so um do
045we have a motion to approve policies ac bca and bcc i moved to approve policy acbca and bcc is presented okay all those in favor all right opposed okay item 7.6.02 this is our covert update and that's dr seaford it is i'm going to go ahead and remove my mask as well since i'm six feet apart i want to make a comment too about the thought of facial recognition and being able to see people especially teachers seeing students and i want you to know that in our um not in all cases but in many cases our teachers have found especially at the secondary level have found a spot in their room or in the front of the room where they have marked it out where kids know that that's where they're going to be where
046they'll be six feet apart from people and they can take their mask off and have conversations and kids can hear them and see them we know that's important so that's happening i also want to say this you know we're kind of in this all or nothing mentality with and uh one of our gentlemen that i had said something about look at the details and and i just want to make sure people are clear that we are kids at recess outdoor activities our football games we're not masked because cdc says the regulation the the recommendations are not you do not have to be massed outside so we're not masked out and we're not masked all day long at lunchtime they're in mass as well and then it's under the jurisdiction of each teacher to give mass
047breaks during the day as well that's important to say so i just want to make sure i commented on that so we're going to take you through a quick presentation there's probably eight or nine slides um i just want to remind you the the first three or four just protocols just reminders again what is our why why are we why are we doing what we're doing we want to keep students and staff safe and we want to keep them in school and so obviously the safety is a huge obviously that's what we all want um but there can be arguments about oh what does safety look like how how deadly is this disease and those type of things the thing that you can't really debate is the fact that we're keeping students in school we
048don't make the quarantine rules but we have felt felt like that if we follow those quarantine protocols and rules we're able to keep our students in school and again i am not pro-mass i'm on anti-mass i'm what my why is keeping our students and our staff safe and keep us in school and you'll see our data in just a second and we all can talk about other school districts and decisions they're making tonight to change to some asking and different things because they're seeing quite a few coveted cases and quarantine cases we are simply keeping our students safe and they're keeping him in school at this point so i want to make sure we have that coming as well added in there so just a reminder on on slide three the protocols the daily systems
049and checks and assessments are a very important piece of this we do not want students or staff coming to school while they're sick and we take this very serious because this is how we keep the spread out of our schools the second the next uh item uh four is uh just to remind you of the testing that we're doing in each school julie talked about that earlier and it's a very important piece of it as well um and then obviously the protocols of the face covering a mass that gives you five just gives you the the vocabulary and the did you have something you wanted i need to move that down to five five chris please thank you i'm gonna go through this pretty quick here in the next couple of slides chris so so
050five is is basically just showing you what's in our entry plan in terms of the vocabulary six talks about our our scenarios that we have come up with in our first entry plan so we would have we believe there's kind of not that they're phases but three different scenarios that we could go to one would obviously be what we're in now is which is expected mandated for all students in case k through 12 to be massed up there's a middle ground where we could look at seven through 12 students since they're eligible to be vaccinated in an optional setting with mass k6 would be still messed up because at this point there they don't have a chance to get vaccinated and then there is obviously an option to be encouraged to wear masks but not
051mandated at this point so there's three scenarios slide seven just talks about the contact tracing isolation the quarantine that's happening and again we get our co we get our quarantine we do not quarantine students we do the contact tracing and the school and the the health departments who want to do the quarantine and i can tell you it's not on a slide but i want to let you know there's continued conversations with other school districts in our county it's not good or bad it's just different um they are there are this what we're seeing and the data is showing is this the districts that are are in optional masking optional mass are seeing lots of kids quarantine lots of numbers and so there's lots of conversations i just want to make sure our board knows
052there's continued conversations about changing quarantine and we're not going to keep in the way of that but we're not asking for any changes because we simply took what we were given and we're making it work and we'll show our data in just a second but i just want to make sure our board of education understood that there are some conversations coming up to changing quarantine like two things you saw jefferson county go to this already and they're basically a couple of their school districts um i think um northwest south springs is one of them that they petitioned to say are basically their health department and this what i understand is a decision that was made that is um independent of the state level state health department so it's the decision they have made i don't
053know if that's backed up legally or not but it's what they're deciding to do um and that is their optional mass so they're trying to get a modified quarantine by saying if you're exposed at school it doesn't matter if you're a master or not for 14 days the whole school the whole class that is exposed would then wear masks for 14 days my issue with that is how do you place that at a middle school at a high school level to make sure because it's optional and make sure those kids are in mass all day and so i think we have to be careful of that the other thing that you might hear come up is there is a petition or at least some some of my colleagues are asking for the corn the quarantine
054this uh to have a modification of just if i'm wearing a mask i can be court i can be modified to come back to school not if it's mass mass i'm not against that i just at this point what scientists told us what cdc has told us what all of our health departments have told us is right now it is still a master mask situation but i wanted to give you a heads up that those are two conversations that can continue to be had throughout the county and so those changes could be made but that would not be our changes that would be from our health the health department at this point okay slide seven this is where we get into some numbers i want to show you and i told you last time that
055we're really keying it on with the positivity rate i know we can have we can have debates and arguments that people aren't dying from covet or kids aren't dying from cobit but what we hear from cdc what we hear from dhss what we hear from our local uh health department is really focusing on what that positivity rate if you remember the range 10 and a higher percent in the county and i have city and the county and that's not just our school district that's just the city the the zip car the area code we live in and then that's the whole county so good so 10 or higher is still a high risk that's why we're in mass anything from five to to basically or i should say eight to nine five i would say
056five to nine is moderate and substantial risk and i think if we got into that six to seven range or eight range we probably could look at maybe the seventh through twelfth grade um optional piece that's my own thought i'm not i'm just that's something that i would i would bring to you and then if we're five or below percent that's when we would take our mass off or we would recommend that so we're ways away from that but good news it's not the sky is not falling we're balanced in this we've gone from about 18 down to 10 as you see 10.4 and 10 point basically 10.4 for city and county we have a ways to go but it is trending in the right direction which is exciting to see the the not so
057great uh numbers is we're starting to see coven numbers rise in our schools and we've seen that in our other county schools as well so and with their and i'll show you numbers in just a second but yes there there's a rise in copy cases since 8 23 where we've logged it since the first day of school so we're starting to see some cases and then our county school districts our our counterparts are starting to see not it's not i would say two weeks ago or a week ago it was really a conversation about how many were quarantined now the conversations are starting to be how many covenant cases are actually in the building not so much for us put around us okay so that's the positivity rate positivity rate that tells you kind of
058where we're at in terms of the numbers we're really looking at to make some decisions with our math okay if you go to nine chris and those blue links just so you know that's a dashboard the first one was the dashboard from the health department and this blue link is actually our dashboard and i know people have asked me why is it on the on the district website we're not focused on these numbers but we are keeping them internally and one thing that's happening is um good or bad or right or wrong or fair unfair we do have a lot of news outlets they're just grabbing numbers and they're just throwing stuff out there and we feel like if they need numbers from us and we were going to update them update every meeting for
059you as well and we'll bring that out we're not afraid to show our numbers actually we're very proud of where we're at with our numbers at this point um but that's why we're keeping them off the uh off the um up there the website is at this point so this is this is this is the meat and potatoes of what we need to talk about so as of 8 23 are starting on 8 23 and as of today uh i am proud to tell you that we have zero active staff cases now is that mass the mass is that vaccinations is that our staff just making good good decisions i think it's it's all the above since 823 we have two cumulative confirmed staff cases in our bill julie please jump in our center office
060team of you guys everything to add student wise that is where we're seeing our cases so as of today we have 13 active in-person student cases in our district that sounds like a lot last year november december january we would see we could see almost 11 12 13 in one day so so we're it does seem like a lot for current active uh students but 13 out of uh you know almost 4 800 students is is a pretty good number now what we have tracked so far then as from 8 23 until today we have 24 cumulative in-person student cases so 13 are active but we've had 24 cases here's the interesting piece one was in early childhood then 23 of them were from k-12 but here's here's kind of here's kind of some of
061the telling of the details 17 and they're talking about younger students right you can't be vaccinated and they're seeing a rise in students so 17 of those cases of 24 came from our k-6 buildings and then we have three cases only three cases from our our seventh and twelfth buildings now that's three buildings versus six i understand i understand that but that's that's pretty amazing and i also feel like that's massive mask and also vaccinations as well knock on wood please now here's here's here's the other piece out of those 23 we have three cases from our lewis and clark and our caps programs and i don't mean to point fingers but those three students are from other districts they're not ours i mean we love them for the half day but then they go
062to their so but that just shows you that there's three there that out of the 23 are from other districts as well okay then we also look at our probable cases so you can basically say we have 25 communicative cases but we have one probable active and that puts us as one community uh one that basic cumulative problem case as well and probable you want to just make sure people know what probable means real quick and why we differentiate that very quickly please probable just means that they were a contact of a positive case and then they have either one larger um uh one larger symptom like loss of smell or something like that or two smaller symptoms they automatically get called probable because they've been exposed they are a contact and then they develop
063symptoms so those people were not necessarily tested they just are called probable and have to follow the same procedures as a confirmed case can i i'm going to ask a question that maybe nurses do know just on a personal case so i have a 99 year old father who was asked to take the covet test and he he is now quarantined because and this is the first time i've seen the document the test and he took the the not the rapid he took he went to barnes pcr yeah and it reads that he is presumptive yes presumed positive yes well that's my amazing it says you have and this one said he had only one out of multiple factors and i thought uh because he's asymptomatic he's well i mean yeah presumed positive means they
064do have it in there they're not actual positive until it goes he or like the national database then it becomes an actual positive so anybody around here who tests positive with a test whether it's rapid or pcr they're not actually they're they're all presumed positive until it goes to the national debates not not to say figures could be different but we may have does that does that mean we could have people who are saying you haven't that's one of our actors all of us all of the people that are actually positive are presumed positives okay and then probable is different presumed positive is just pretty much the same as positive it just has is it the cdc it goes to and then they log it or uh it's not until it's logged in the national
065database that it's actually considered a positive okay i just read this thing about my goodness it's the same thing as a positive okay so when you're talking about the probable probable means there hasn't been a test done okay but they yes they've they've been in contact and they've developed symptoms because some i'm saying he's asymptomatic so some people could be right okay thank you so this is the next piece is very important to talk about as well and this is again the why keeping students in class so again starting on 8 23 as of nine of of today we have 41 students this is cumulative numbers this is not active numbers but since the 8 23 into today we have 41 cumulative modified quarantine students those kids were contact race being masked the mask within
066three feet they are modified they have to stay home going other places but they can come to school so they're still coming to school we have 41 of those kids and none of them have become positive at this point thank you cumulative full quarantined students from a school exposure okay now so that means we not not actively currently but since this whole time since three weeks we've had 22 kids that have been out full and let me give you some details to that 15 of those are from our early childhood off of one case because because of that age and what we're doing with mass there and it's uh and it's an optional mass there they had 15 out of one case so out of the 22 who have not been able to come to
067school and again our goal is to keep kids in school 15 of them are from early childhood that means only seven from k through 12 had to miss school because of coping that is the proof again not that master's stopping coving or you know we can have the debate that why are vaccinated people be able to be um uh exempt from quarantine those type of things because vaccinated people can get sick but simply going through the regulations of what we were being given the recommendations from cdc to dhss to our local health department we've only had seven kids miss school and right now two are actively out it's only two out of forty eight hundred kids that's that's pretty telling where we're at at this point julie did you add anything to that the reason
068that they're actually out is because they didn't have masks on at a certain point like it was lunch or it was um so basically where you can get exposed is pretty much at lunch or activities but again if you're s if you're basically 12 and up some of the 12th grade and you're wearing a mask most of the day and you're vaccinated you're pretty much coming to school which is great so our nurses on top of keeping all the data and the contact tracing they're also telling us whether it's an isolation because they have covid it's quarantined from a home exposure quarantine from a school exposure a modified quarantine or in the cases of capps and lewis and clark they're telling us if it was a quarantine based on the other school district exposure so
069we're keeping all of that data behind the scene so that we can give that to you and be able to tell you exactly how they were exposed and why they can or can't be at school and again i don't like talking about other school districts but i can just tell you because i know the meetings are happening tonight and i've already seen some of the news school districts that are not having a mandate a mask now are going back and having to put masks on kids in certain situations i'm not saying it's all the whole district-wide but they have to go back it's not just because of the quarantine anymore it's because of actually cases and that's happening that's not right or wrong or good or bad it's just factual so our recommendation at this
070point to you as a board of education and let me say this the students who talk today the students who and the parents who continue to tell us that mass are detrimental to the relationships of those things i'm i emphasize with that and that's something that i really don't like to hear or see to be honest with you but again some of the things that we've heard like we couldn't go to different things last year we couldn't do labs i've said this all along we're back we these aren't this is not normal but this is keeping us normal this is keeping people in school at this point and i think that's important we're back homecoming we're we're having parades we're having um we're going to have assemblies hopefully those assemblies will be outside we're just
071being smart i believe if if you do it smart and you do some things mitigation wise you can still have your life and and and get on with things we're still going to have dances we're going to probably have them outside so we're doing certain things and bringing back our kids packed the stands for football games high hasn't had a home game yet but west has and we're having a great time we're going to pack the stands and basketball games but for this point if we're in a mass we'll be in mass so we're doing it i believe we're doing it the way we were asked to do it or recommend it again i understand there's no mandates but we have gone through the experts with the recommendations and what is working for us right
072now to keep students safe and keep them in school our recommendation slide 10 please uh at this point from you as a board of education is to again extend it for 30 days we'll look at it again in 30 days but to keep the mass in place at this point but then again it is your and again this is your decision and i put my i'm on the chopping block a little bit because believe me i get emails just like you all do and i get some nasty grams and i'm quite honest we get we get a few that are disturbing but i but to be honest with you um but i i want to make sure that as a leader and as a district leader it's my responsibility to give you recommendations i know
073you're making the decision but it's my job to lead the best way i know how to how to and at this point the data speaks um and i feel like we need to continue to do what we're doing jason can i throw one more piece of data in there that i didn't give you that i just thought of i just looked at our lewis and clark tracker so when i said we are also keeping track of kids that are quarantined because they were exposed to other school districts we have 15 kids out right now quarantine at lewis and clark that can't attend school because they were actually quarantined because of an exposure in their home district that's a lot of kids at lewis and clark that are on quarantine i didn't understand all you said
074that those 15 students that are quarantined are from other districts they they are quarantined from coming to lewis and clark because of an exposure in a different district they were not exposed in our district because of the mass mandate they were exposed in another district so they have to miss school because even though they they can't come here either if they were exposed they are not wearing a mask i would like to end with this i am not saying that anybody else is right or wrong i'm not saying that we're right or wrong i just know what i've the information i've been given and what i understand is working for us to continue to keep our kids in school and that's what's happening at this point i'm hoping at some point we take these off
075and i think we will but right now i think we need to continue to do it so yes i know it says this is an information discussion but i think we need to at least have your your feeling again to continue uh legal teams and different people that don't believe that that house bill or that bill pertains to um uh educational board boards however we're going to follow that that that so we don't have any issues obviously we've seen the attorney general uh enter the this situation uh so we're gonna we're gonna abide by that what that says is the governing body has to prove it i can i can i can i can say hey we're going to be a mass but within 30 days you have to approve it and you have to
076continue to prove it every 30 days so we're just going to keep abiding by that so we don't have to worry about that and it's great to look at it every month well and many of us voted last month knowing that we would re-evaluate every every month and things change yeah and we well you know and you can't you can't really win at all because then we've got some people who said i can't believe you're only doing 30 days we're following the law and we're also giving us an opportunity to look at data because again this is not this is not i was like whoa this is not the end all this is what's keeping us at this point in time in school okay well let's vote so uh members of the board any further
077discussion on this item that you'd like to present we will take a motion when you're ready well i'd like to point out that i did some number crunching this afternoon and one school district that is mask optional has almost three percent of their students currently on quarantine the number is 508 508 students have to miss two weeks of school so to compare to us you know right yeah i think most of us agreed that as dr seaford has said this no one likes wearing masks and and we agree with the two young men who talked about you know how it impacts them in school a seven-year-old will tell you the same thing no one likes wearing the mask and it does have some some hindrances that we we don't like but looking at what we
078have in data right now and our numbers have been going down and we're 10.4 if we evaluate each month i'm foreseeing that that we will be able to change our mass protocol but right now we we need to have a motion to vote on maintaining our mask mandate as as being yes i'll second all right all those in favor aye aye that was opposed thank you lori yeah we have one member who is soon uh those opposed okay all right this uh our covert mandate will uh continue for another month thank you uh we're ready for uh item 7.01 this is our professional development plan review okay everybody all right guys well we're excited tonight to bring you our professional development plan as you know this is a plan that we bring every year that
079highlights kind of the direction that we're heading with professional development for the year um we have a couple of people here with us that are going to help co-present so we have valerie sutton from null elementary she's currently the chair of the district professional development committee and we also have carla johnson with us from lewis and clark and she is the past chair of the of the dpdc and together they make up the executive committee of the district professional development committee so in board docs you have two items you have the professional development plan which is a really long document that has a lot of our policies procedures guidelines forms different things that we use to help guide the professional development and the use of funds within the district we also have tried to create
080kind of an executive summary of what we are focusing on in the district when it comes to professional development this year and so i'd like to highlight a few things and then i'm going to ask val and carla to come up and they're going to help share some items as well so within the district we have the district professional development committee which helps guide and lead a professional development for all of our certified staff in the district we also have the sspdc the support staff professional development committee too and they also meet to help guide professional development to make sure it's relevant for all of our custodians and maintenance our technology department our office staff secretaries and paras things like that so we have been working to address district initiatives c-sep goals to help support
081people within their roles so that they can continue to learn and grow and we have been able to do that over the years through a few ways first of all our our calendar has been set up to allow us to have either early release days approximately one per month for k through eight or early outs at the high school level that allows us to have some common planning time within our building schedules or if they're not able to have common planning time they can use some of that time to work together collaboratively it allows us time to be able to work on building initiatives building goals district goals those types of things and all of our professional development does relate back to district initiatives and our csip goals or the school improvement goals that the
082building has set so we do have a couple of of things within the district we do have our district wide professional development day that we've instituted a few years back this year we are splitting that out on october 29th we will have the full day professional development day for for the majority of our support staff so our maintenance and custodians our office staff and secretarial staff our technology department they are all going to have professional development on that day when our buildings are closed because that's the friday after parent-teacher conferences what we found in previous years when we had everybody together is that those individuals were getting pulled to do other things our maintenance and custodians were getting pulled to me to open the buildings and keep it running because we were we had them
083open for the professional development day our tech department was getting pulled to deal with technology issues and they weren't able to have the professional development that they needed so we have split that up for this year so october 29th they are going to have their day and then that following monday it's a no school day for our our students and our certified staff our para professionals and our nurses are all going to have professional development that day and so we feel like that new structure will allow everybody to be able to focus and people shouldn't feel like they're being pulled in multiple directions we are excited to um offer a great opportunity of or a great several options for people to be able to choose from and so we'll go through that with you in
084just a moment we also are still participating in the missouri model districts grant through the department of elementary and secondary education they provide a lot of customized support to each of our schools around assessment capable learners about instructional coaching strategies about data analysis and rti and intervention we also are working with the rpdc the regional professional development council through ed plus to provide some rti school-based coaching this year so all of our schools have the opportunity to work with ed plus to customize professional development to continue to help their building progress in their plc and their rti journey we know with all of our students coming back from the school closures and far from about a third of our students being virtual last year to re-emerging that we have some academic needs that are persisting
085for our students we have some social emotional needs as students are re-emerging and so we want to help provide support to our schools so as they continue to build those supports for students that they can also feel supported along that journey and then we also have new teacher orientation which we just held it seems like not very long ago but a lifetime ago at the same time we had i believe it was 48 new new staff members that we welcomed into our school district family we did restructure new teacher orientation this year to provide more choice so that we had sessions that were set up based around different topics like instructional support and curriculum implementation social emotional learning which also included mental health and trauma trauma based education strategies diversity equity inclusion strategies looking at
086rti and closing the achievement gap and technology and the teachers were able to choose sessions um that they felt most met the needs that they had or for the positions that they were going to employ this year and we received a lot of really great feedback from our new teachers about those changes well they didn't know any different but we had um a lot of great feedback from them in fact one person in their comments had said to said in there this is the fourth district that i've been a part of and this is the first district that have has done a really great job of welcoming us into the into the family and um has really supported us through the new teacher orientation process and they basically said job well done this is the
087best best version of this that i've seen and i've seen it four times so those are the types of things that we are excited to see through our evaluations that um we've tried to focus give choice and meet people where they are and so that they can continue their own learning process so now i'm going to invite up val and carla and we're going to talk you through kind of like the executive summary that we put together for you through our district professional development committee we do have four areas that are goal overarching goal areas that we work towards every year the first is sustaining and enhancing our plc processes within our district in our schools our second is increasing student learning because obviously that is the end goal of everything that we're trying to
088do in our district the third is becoming more data driven with all of our practices to make sure what we're doing for students is making a difference for students and and then also working with our new teacher orientation program to make sure that our new teachers get the support that they need so that they can be successful and that they stay with us in in this career um for a long time to come so those are our four main goal areas and like i said earlier everything else within those relates back to our csip relates back to our district initiatives and so in this table if you guys want to come up because i'm just going to keep talking i'm just going to keep going um in this table we're going to highlight for you
089some of the things that we're doing through either it was through summer professional development our full day pd that's coming up ongoing pd that's going on in the district or through buildings we've had book studies all of our buildings have their various pd initiatives as well our district professional development committee continues um professional learning for themselves as well and then new teacher orientation so i think val's going to walk us through the first two columns around instructional support curriculum implementation and then the social emotional learning trauma based education and mental health support yes that's a great question so typically in our district the book study is that we give everybody a specific book they read it together or they read it on their own but then they come together at different points to discuss um
090the book that they've read to that point um how it relates to our district our classrooms ourselves personally and professionally um and it's really more of a personal and professional growth type of opportunity we don't have um all of the book studies pretty much to this point have been voluntary in nature people were able to choose to do that we do typically as part of our curriculum revision processes we do typically have book studies that go along with that process to help shift some of our thinking along that way so but outside of curriculum types of things our book studies are voluntary and we had quite a few people participate in them over the last year who chooses those books well it just depends so like this past year we had quite a few of
091them that were related to diversity equity and inclusion because that's one of the areas that we've really looked at we have a diversity equity and inclusion committee that has met over the last year to kind of help lead this process and those books were generated from that committee or from individuals that have on the committee that attended um a virtual conference and those were books that were covered or discussed in the virtual conference and so we were able to purchase those books and make them available and then within that committee i'm pretty sure everybody on that committee served on at least one or two of those book studies and then individuals from that group then offered the book studies out during the summer to the district as a whole so that's typically how that piece
092has been done whenever we have book studies that relate to instructional practice or let's say social emotional learning trauma based education so we've done in the past book studies around help for billy which is a trauma-based education book that many of our our staff members have participated in or teach like a pirate which gives practical instructional strategies but it's also a motivational book to get people fired up about the teaching practice those are things that teachers or dpdc members or other individuals have offered to um to lead out and then we will do that usually during the summer and services so teachers can read over the summer and meet or buildings have have led that too where individuals on the staff member on the staff have said hey i'd like to do a book study
093on x y or z um and then sometimes those staff members meet before school after school or they'll they'll call it a learning lunch and they'll meet at lunchtime to discuss the books do you guys want to talk about that because i know you both have participated in various book studies as well so well what i'm asking is who's the ultimate decider of which books are going to be used in the book studies to ensure that they fit our philosophy of education that's really what i'm concerned about so the book studies that we have had all up until this point have either been vetted through the district professional development committee and who from administration is on that level i am okay you are i am so that flows through my office we also have four
094of our building level principals who serve as liaisons to that to that committee as well so you all read these books ahead of time we we may not read all of them but we have done our research in terms of um the the reviews the different articles we've come up come to those books through other very reputable educational sources to get us there and they usually relate directly back to other professional development that we've already offered in the district okay i just want some type of control over our philosophy of education because i mean i know at the university level there's an awful lot of controversial books that are great book studies but for not but perhaps do not assimilate with that principle of education for us and that's what my concern is so all
095of the books that we have on our list that you you saw there we stand behind we've vetted in various different capacities and then at our building level they also may choose book studies as well that relate back to um things that they're implementing there as well so you feel there's enough oversight to make sure that we are picking the right board ladies what do you think i can give an example of like a building book study um so was it three years ago we rewrote our ela curriculum and we kind of went to like the science of reading and kind of bringing in the science of reading into our instructions so a lot of buildings did um some of the coaches instructions went to a training it was about the science of reading they
096brought those book studies back to their building and let our staff do it so that we could also bring that into our classrooms and support our students so a lot of it goes with our seasick goals and every book study that we try to embed or try to to talk to our teachers about really goes along with our philosophy of education and supports what we're doing as a district to enhance our learning so that we can bring it into our classrooms and it kind of gives us an opportunity to not have to miss days in the classroom not have to go outside to a conference it's like a and it gives you a chance to learn with your plcs and have conversations around those discussions so that you can enhance your learning and keep growing
097as a teacher so book studies is one way that you can have a quick pd option to help you continue to grow and one if i could add something one overarching thing that we have as well is we have the ses united plan that we came up with three years ago that tells us our why and what we do and then we also have our two big rocks and our rti process and our student needs that that drives everything that we do as well so it has to line up with our philosophy and our goals and how we're moving forward with our csip as well yes and that's my concern i want to make sure it does as opposed to and we get books that he's approved i mean i'd hate to get an errant
098book in there and boy you know we have problems yeah so so with this too oh sorry you were going to talk about instructional support curriculum implementation and social emotional learning yes okay so instructional support and curriculum implementation is something that is ongoing we make sure that we provide professional development throughout the entire school year and including our summer and that even after something is implemented we continue to have pd on those areas to to if new teachers come in or sometimes uh teachers have been teaching for so long like you know like a refresher so we try to make sure that we have ongoing professional development for to support teachers and their implementation of curriculum so we have summer pd this past summer um we did our teachers college writers workshop came in and
099they gave um sorry they gave professional development on uh writer's workshop we've been using uh our units of study for about 10 years now so just having that refresher to come in and have that ongoing pd kind of gives teachers the new insight of how to um bring it back into their classroom we also have a lot of foundations customer pd with that new wilson learning that we got so we have ongoing pd for that so that teachers can keep growing on that area we have a lot of math training through math and focus um that really helps with new teachers that are coming into the district so those 48 new teachers who have never been trained on that program have that opportunity to be trained on it so that they can start day one
100feeling confident knowing what they were going to be teaching we also had learn 360 this year and then we also have a lot of classroom videos on demand so like any any teachers that need technology support or if they couldn't make a math training and they wanted to watch some videos on what the lessons look like we have a whole pd option for that so it's just summer pd to kind of get new teachers ready to go teachers who want to go back to those pdu to start the new school year so that was our summer feeding we also have our full day coming up and november 1st which we're really excited about we have jen cervalo coming who used to work for the teachers college who works with teachers on how to create small
101groups and differentiate in the classroom she is amazing we're really excited to have her company come in because it will help teachers know how to work one-on-one or in a small group setting to differentiate for their students we also have um pre-k second through second angela throw who's going to come in and talk about um like fine motor skills and things like that and how we can help support kiddos who need that extra support with fine motor skills so it it goes through curriculum but it also gets like how can we prep our kids to make sure that we are setting them up for that success ongoing pd which means this is constantly ongoing we have now instructional coaches at the high school level which is amazing we have k4 math pd for every elementary
102building heather krieger is coming in and she is she is making pd for each building so buildings get to decide what they need each grade level this is like what they need to support their teaching skills so that's amazing um we were going to have k4 foundations walk through so the trainers from wilson were going to come into our buildings and they were going to walk into classrooms to see how the implementation is going because it's year two for that so it's kind of like what are we doing well what are some things that we need to work on how can we keep continuing to grow and then our third and fourth grade teachers this is their second year with foundations as well and this is their year to get pd at our two horizontal
103days so all the third grade teachers and all the fourth grade teachers will come together and they will have a facilitator from wilson reading who will come and give them pd on the foundations as well any questions about instructional implementation curriculum another big wreck that we've really worked on too was a lot of social emotional learning and we've been doing this type of learning lots of pd from like probably four years now we've sent teams to um heather forbes who is a she does a lot of that trauma training and we had we had arts we had uh trauma teams go there and they brought it back into their buildings and they taught the rest of their staff about that through that we've learned how to um their zones of regulation how to work with
104a kid who's just regulated having a calm down spout having rest you know rest areas or um reset rooms where kids just have that opportunity to go and take a break right school is tough sometimes kids just need a break so that pd has really helped teachers learn how to implement that into their classroom on top of all the curriculum that they do is how can we support our kids social emotional as well so we've had john converse come in who is a local a local guy who does a lot of restorative circle practice and this year the dpdc is actually doing the circle forward book as a book study um which supports restorative circles so on our side we'll be able to push out this book has a lot of like um ideas and
105lessons that you could do with like your whole class on restorative circles so the point would be to let everybody have that community and then we're one family inside the classroom and that we want to be a part of the circle so it's kind of like a classroom management thing as well um so he's actually going to come at our full pd day this year and he's going to reinforce that book which is really exciting because our dpdc companies also do that as well so we're looking forward to having him come in and support that work that we're doing as a district it also supports classical mindfulness and then our ongoing pd for trauma is youth mental health first aid crisis prevention any other questions about any questions about social emotional so then when we
106talk about diversity that's another area that we mentioned that the district is really focusing on and so we did have a lot of book studies that have run this past year through the committee work and through the summer we also had two trainings this summer we had anthony muhammed come out and work with our administrators during the administrator retreat and that was a very um empowering and transformational day for everybody the um the reviews from that were very very highly rated and then we also had a two-day training this summer at the beginning of august with educational equity consultants where over 60 people in the district came together many of them were from the um diversity equity and inclusion committee and as well as many others from from the district and we spent um two
107days together and that was a very powerful eye-opening training too i think that everybody who participated came came out changed from that training so um that was those were two separate professional developments that were highly impactful this summer then we also have for the fall full day pd for the october 29th we have dr ken williams coming to us and he's going to be the keynote speaker for all the support staff around diversity equity and inclusion but then he will also have breakout sessions since that's a day that many of our staff are off they have the option if they would like to come to attend additional sessions they are welcome to do so they can earn ceus and credit for that for that time as well and then on that monday november 1st dr
108anthony muhammad who was here this summer with our administrators he will be back with us for the keynote for our certified staff and then he will have breakout sessions during that day as well and before we um send everything out for registration all of you are also welcome to attend if your schedule is allowed so as soon as those booklets are ready for you to review so that you can pick some sessions we will make sure that you're you're included on those um book studies are continuing and that pretty much wraps up the diversity equity and inclusion work at this point the committee will continue to meet this year and will help drive that work as we move forward and then one of the big rocks for the district for a few years now has
109been rti and making sure that we're working within our power to close the achievement gap for our students wherever we can so we do have various um sessions coming for the full day and then i also mentioned earlier that we're working with ed plus and missouri model districts and we are going to offer the rti school-based coaching for each of the schools so that they can really get the next step of their journey for their building because our levels are at different places but even within the levels sometimes the buildings are at different places and so creating um a one size fits all training in this would not be the best way to go so this is more customized to meet the specific needs of the schools and then we've been continuing to do things
110like the distance learning playbook and and different things like that differentiation in the classroom and rti have all been focus areas and so carla's going to talk to us a little bit about technology which is the other major strand that we've we've focused on yes um so historically we have always provided i think a strong um strong set of courses for summer pd in technology um it tends to be what draws many of our participants teachers want to learn about technology in the summer time because it's fun and it's something that we can really get into and we can really use it as soon as we get back um never has that been more important than in the last 18 months that it's no longer something that we can just sprinkle in here and there
111in our lessons it's integral because we do have kids out on quarantine and we do need to be utilizing um you know google classroom daily now so we have our google level one and two certifications and um our sis 360 which is our grade book teachers this year were um transitioned to the sis 360 instead of the classic grade book that a few of us veterans have been holding on tight to and um so it was really important to get that training because although 360 is more user-friendly it still is a transition and and you know that can be difficult sometimes so we gave that training um lynn hare is coming on our full day of pd in november i am so excited to have lynne back here she's been here several times she is
112a phenomenal presenter she is so passionate about using technology and education and she every time i go i feel like she stretches me to the limits of my capability and then coaches me through just a little bit further and um i walk away every time being feeling like my mind is blown and i know i'm not the only one so i'm really excited to have her back and we will also have other district presenters on technology um our ongoing professional development is through individual and small group trainings um probably with tina and tina she put correct me if i'm wrong the classroom video on demand was i mean that is such a resource for us because technology is something that is that sometimes i can only take so much of it and i need it
113in a small segment before i can be ready i can implement this and then i can come back so it's very important to have the on demand because then i can go find exactly what i need as i need it i think with as with everything with technology we are focusing on our big rocks but there is a lot of choice that's involved in it also and that's where the on demand comes in that you can where do you need to be trained and you can find that to meet it do you have any questions so you guys did a great job thank you so we have a lot planned um as we go through the year as needs emerge we will continue to plan professional development schools are in the process now of starting
114to develop their school improvement plans their professional development is going to be aligned to all of that so more is still to come but the areas that we've talked about are the major areas of focus for the district as we continue to move forward with professional development so we'd like to entertain any questions that you have or any comments or suggestions i have questions sure and i apologize because i'm kind of hitting you up without having forewarned you on your question go ahead but i i'm a strong believer in professional development and i like the fact that you said that you're going to now show if it's effective or not so i wouldn't mind i don't know how the rest of the board feels about this but you know when we have these reviews these
115program reviews i wouldn't mind knowing how much we are paying for these different programs you understand what i'm saying do you agree or disagree it is hard to separate out because a major part of the professional development is those early release days right and everybody's got 24 hours of early release and what does that cost um you know uh i i don't know does that go does that go into professional development that but that does not that doesn't necess that doesn't come out of my budget so basically our district professional development committee funds that state mandated that's one percent of our budget so depending on the year it's usually between 70 to 72 thousand dollars that the district professional development committee has to spend on professional development for our support staff pd we spend probably
116less than ten thousand dollars a year on that and then i also have access to additional funds within my department or from federal dollars that often have percentages there that we can use for professional development i and then the schools within their budget allocations have money that they can use for professional development so i think that charles as he's coming in he might have a better idea too but i would say probably as a district for the professional development that we we see happen throughout the year through district means or through building means i would probably say it's in the ballpark of 150ish thousand dollars and that that would be a normal year where we're paying for subs where there may be people traveling to professional development so there's travel costs last year in kovid
117it was nowhere near that nowhere near that um but i would say in a typical year prior to covid 150 000 is probably that's actually less than i would have thought yeah and you have uh you have a reputation for having a just an incredible professional development program you know so so i'm not as i said this is not a loaded question i just want to know how much we're spending but to ellen's point like those figures i don't those would not be in the numbers that i just gave you yeah like the staff costs 24 hours is a lot of time for kids to be missing and i wonder what measurements you have to see that that is worth 24 hours of instructional time every teacher either well at the high school level it's
11824 hours of intervention time that they miss the students miss 24 hours of intervention time and at the elementary they miss 24 hours of instructional time and i don't know what that is used for if it's data analysis um so you know i just want justification for learning loss we've got a lot of learning laws and 24 hours additional um time would go a long ways in uh what eliminating that learning loss so um when we talk about learning loss uh many many years ago when i was still actively teaching or whatever then the the teachers all of us uh whether we're administrators are still in the classroom our um our cry was we there's not enough time in the day for us to improve our teaching skills uh and we need we need to
119figure something out so we can do that and be better and smarter at what we're doing because honestly 30 40 years ago when i was teaching it it was just you know you're thrown out there so i understand there's time learning loss from as you can calculate it by by hours but i think the trade-off is the quality of instruction improves so much by giving teachers that time not if you're um mandating what they do at that time one of my last years of teaching every time we would have an early out we were i was to meet with a teacher who was teaching the same class and we were to give the principal a copy of our common assessment that we had to write and compare our scores well [Music] we were surprised to
120find that our scores were almost identical and we submit that to the principal and then the next time we'd have an early out we repeated the process well that's i'm wondering if what i'm hearing now and i i've forgotten i didn't retire many years ago no but you know but each year i think i would would like proof of that you know well i think i can speak to some of it so when we look at professional development as a whole you know that some of it is going to be ambiguous because there's so many different variables that go into it but there are some pieces that we're seeing some of those pieces with our professional development directly related to curriculum implementation occur on early release days or potentially early outs at the high school
121level and so what we've seen like and i think that val can probably speak from her role as an instructional coach and as a former first grade teacher of those implementations of those new curriculum those times that they have that intentional professional development either on horizontal days where all of third grade comes together for their training or the customized pieces where the coaches are moving into the buildings to provide that for for teachers when we're doing our instructional walkthroughs we are seeing it implemented consistently across the district so it's wondering why was i required to repeat the same thing over again it never got any higher you know we weren't told to stop doing what we were doing we were told to continue doing what we were doing and the same result for one semester
122we analyzed all our tests and we didn't see a difference in our scores and i think that that's also part of that that plc and that rti journey because sometimes you can get stuck in just like churning the data well and i really resented it you know it was like i was forced to churn but the next step is how do you take that data and not necessarily if you're seeing the same things but when you dig deeper for the kids who aren't getting it what are we able to do differently within the intervention periods or what are we able to do differently so that those kids who aren't where we need them to be how do we get them there or the kids who already have it how do we push them further mandated
123yeah but ellen that could have been that could have been at your at your building level where it was miscommunicated to you and you know what the whole point of this was because maybe it's an opportunity for you to work to really work in your life but you know what in the interest of time okay yeah i'll shut up about it but you know i'm just saying what my experience has been okay in the district how do you just say something real quick because to your point ellen i i um to be honest i mean just flat out honestly i think especially our high school level i think our principals would say this i think the piece that you're talking about i think that common assessment piece for a lot of the teams that worked
124i think we were stuck at some points and we didn't go beyond that and i think that's what well i'm i'm agreeing with you so i think that and i and i think there's some other teams it sounds me like and again i just i think this is a good clarification point sounds me like your your partner the person you worked with you actually had a common assessment piece and then which is a good thing because we have some teams that are stuck that don't that don't even have a common assessment piece yet because that's a big that's a big part of the journey as well and so you were able to get a part of get up you were past that point but then you got you were stuck because you weren't led to
125the next step after that right and it's not allowed and so i want you to know that that i feel like what we're doing now especially as we we've added instructional coaches to the high school level that are helping us with this process that we are getting to the next pieces of what to do with data and i believe that we were stuck there for a while okay i just feel that's how that's what i have seen and so i want to validate your point i believe we're moving forward well and another piece of that would be algebra data right like so we've been working with our algebra teams at the high school level and so they have had some intense professional development they have gone through the practice of creating their common assessments and
126analyzing the data and putting in interventions for kids where they're not getting it and over this past year with kovid and over this yeah past year with so many students virtual our expect and i shouldn't say expectation our gut fear was that our scores were going to drop further but in that group where they have been intentional and they have been focused we actually saw an increase in scores over 2019 scores so that's a that's a place where we've been intentional we've been focused we've been working them through that process and it hasn't always been sunshine and roses right but on the flip side of it then we do have some pieces of data that are saying but you can see the growth in light of virtual learning in light of a pandemic we're still
127continuing to grow so i hear you and i think that um like jason we can echo some of those some of the same sentiments but i also think it's part of the process of where we were and where we're starting to head and so this year like the plans that the the schools at the high school level are they're putting together is on their early outs about every third one or fourth one they'll have professional development the other time that they do have time for collaboration and much of that is because in our small school schedule we can't get common plan time for teachers and so that time is really reserved for the collaboration that they need to have amongst like teachers and looking at how how our students doing how can we shore up
128those learning loss gaps and how can we continue to move everybody forward i fully believe it's not in every case but as the appeal team teams are stronger they're they're i don't want to say the word allowed but they're empowered to move forward with the data and do some things with it i don't think you were i think i think i think it was i think we were stuck and i think we're now moving forward and again what is that data what does that proof look like i think we're going to see that individual growth with kids sorry i was just going to say that at our full day pd day we actually because of you know at the high school level we've talked a lot about what does rti look like how can we
129support our high school teachers we've had a lot of conversations at dvdc about that so this year at our full-day pd day we actually have someone coming in that is totally geared towards seven through 12 to help with that process so that teachers can know how to do that at that high school level so what is the what do plcs look like what do plts look like um how do we what are the all the steps to get there and how can we make that happen at that upper level as well so that's that allow those plt times and the early release days allow us as teachers to be able to do that work and create those intervention groups so that the other 95 of the time we have strong intervention plans and that we
130have always have data that we can go back to and create new groups and collaborate together to do that and then we also for all the early outs and the early release days our teachers are completing surveys as well and so the dpdc goes they go through all of it all the comments everything and so 95 of the time things are great teach teachers like yes this is exactly what we needed and then in those situations where it's something went awry then we are looking at it we're having conversations with principals of saying like okay what happened here how do we fix that for moving forward so that's that's something that's part of their work every month as well i just want to validate your point and i i appreciate the fact that you're not
131too far away from being in the classroom correct and i think we can learn from some of the things that you share with us and i i truly believe we're moving forward with some of those with that that intentional rti plt process so i just want to make sure i said that any other questions or comments concerns and i need them thank you so much thank you ladies i need a motion to approve the professional development plan i'll second all those in favor aye opposed no okay it passes uh 8.01 this is a first reading for uh policy changes so did you have any i guess that could be defer to me if anybody is it's it's an hr policy but if anybody has um questions right now as if you've read the reference copy
132basically it's a new policy based on senate bill uh 1007 2018 and it's it's actually known as the whistleblower law just adds protection to those by that that's the first reading yeah okay uh resolution to extend the covert leave what's that yes i believe uh rodney lewis dr lewis who's not with us tonight he shared some of this information with you but i will briefly tell you just a quick rundown of what this looks like so when coving started last year it was a mandate um i believe from the federal level and through the state that said we're going to give 10 days of covert leave right when we got to december january we had to make a decision if we're going to continue it and you all extended to 10. this summer as we're
133talking about and reflecting and talking with and kind of where we're at with cobit at that point and then with other school districts we at that point rodney and the ceo team and we at this point and actually this probably this point last because we were talking about it before the meeting last time that we weren't going to uh have a resolution or give uh coveted lead days this year for anybody we're not looking at anything different between a vaccinator and vaccinated person i said it because i'm going to talk about a point in just a second however as we started this year as we were looking at it and quite honestly seeing some of the other school districts now coming by and coming and adding some of the resolution adding some days we were
134thinking what made sense for our staff to make sure we're supporting them again continuing through this pandemic and we full disclosure we still talk do we think zero do we think 10 as we did last year and then what we decided on for a few reasons um you know when you look at our situation right now with mass to mass and and the ability for everybody to be vaccinated and as you see we have no staff out you really don't have to you're really not going to be quarantined that much or at all and the only piece that you could really get caught up in is you're unvaccinated and so our thought was do we really put 10 more days that seemed a little excessive but we also wanted to make sure we were supporting
135our teachers because what we heard and as i went around the staff members are we weren't able to be in person for our um our whole kickoff but i went to try to get to all the meetings just to say hello and and a couple of those meetings i heard from some of our staff members that say hey don't forget about our some of our staff a lot of our staff members that might have students in other county schools that do not have the mandated mass and we still might have to be quarantined with our kids i thought that's interesting like i want to think about that so as we've talked as a co team and ronnie and i we thought okay we can what makes sense and not not to give too many days
136but also support and we relied on five you heard tonight uh there was a mention of maybe seven or nine but we felt like five was a really good number because you can test out you can test out and come back to school now that's seven days but again within seven days that's two days of um a weekend and we feel like this is until december and then you guys can vote again for next so we were basically and then last year even the mandated piece was if you if you had if you were helping your if it was your spouse or you had to sit home with kids we actually the mandate said mandated resolution said it's two-thirds of your pay or you can just take your own leave we're saying five days flat
137even for the people who need to be home with their kids because that would help that would basically guarantee everybody to have basically one quarantine that we would help them out with with days that's how we came to five but it's up to you all you can obviously do zero you can do ten but we felt like at this point and where cases were going and just that we're still in this pandemic that we thought that supporting them with five days really made sense yes we would bring it back to you we could do if we felt like it needed to be more we'll be smackdown in the middle of winter maybe we need to do more and then if you do but if you just simply just said i'm gonna do another five days
138they would get they would get another quarantine session so we're pretty much feeling like you're going to have at least one that people can say hey all the tenant purposes i can have one quarantine episode in my family and be covered for the most part if i if i test her out early and we just thought that was a really good um medium road for five days i i think it's a i think it's a good start but i would be more comfortable with seven days i don't know about the rest of the board but i feel like a full week because if you're a teacher and you've got a you know a child who gets quarantined i mean i know you can test out and get back but i mean the pizzas really have
139to fall into place for that to work out to your benefits and just remember though too they have we have we have sick days as well i mean it's not like they're i mean they i know but kobet you know and they've really showed up and showed out and like i'm i'm comfortable with seven days if if i i don't know how anybody else feels about that i feel like maybe we should incentivize vaccination by not giving unvaccinated staff believe you know not mandating that they take the vaccine but you know you have a choice and those choices carry consequences and if you're not vaccinated and you get covered well you know i think the argument could be they could have children that are not of age to get vaccinated though and so if they
140have children that are quarantined it affects you know if we're saying this applies for them to stay home with children and there's unvaccinated children in the home then you're eliminating teachers with young children well one day they qualify for fmla leave wouldn't they qualify for fmla yeah but they would take their own leave under fnla oh uh yeah okay so this is this is yeah like essentially benefit it is your point and we want to do seven or ten we just thought five made sense for us to your point ellen we feel like because i we did hear i heard this from stetness from well i actually heard from my from uh my own wife from her district like there's a lot of people who felt like you're giving excess days again people can be
141vaccinated but they're basically giving extra days to people who are on vaccines right because at this point right you're so what we're saying is we're giving you five days of course you have your sick your sick days as well you're pretty much covered i know it's quick but you're pretty much covered for a semester and then we'll go from there so but that's up to you all if you want to we're also well into this semester so i mean it's already i'm just more worried about people who it doesn't matter for vaccine or not i'm worried about my more worried about teachers who are quarantined at home because of their family you know like that's that's kind of where my mind and i think something we have to consider is i mean part of the
142quarantine guidelines there is it's reduced from 14 days to seven days correctly if they're symptom-free and get a negative covid test so it's very i mean i know several young kids who have been quarantined because of lunch and in districts and at day five they're testing negative and you've got weekends wrapped into that i mean at the max you're going to be out five full days in a weekend i'd like to consider the motion as it is and if you don't like the motion as is and turn it down then we can re bring it up again okay but i would like to ask charles if there is from a risk manager's perspective uh is there any reason why we shouldn't do this the only the only reason that uh you might consider not doing
143it is if you felt strongly about the point that ellen made making a distinction and vaccinated or not if that's not a consideration then i mean there is additional cost to the district for people that use those days because right now if i were to be quarantined for the next week with covid i'd use my leave that i've been granted by the district every employee has new leave to begin the year beginning july 1. so even those people that through through whatever circumstance causes them to use their leave use it every year they would have new leave leaf we have many people who have a fairly large leave bank so what we're saying essentially is we're setting these five days or seven or ten out in front of that sick leave for anybody who is
144quarantined or has coveted so there is there is a cost to that i mean we it would be a guesstimate for us at this point right now as jason said we have no one on the staff who is out because of covent so if that holds you know then there's very little risk but i think at this point it would be um difficult to guess what our exposure would be well the five days seems the middle uh sort of a middle ground uh to be re examined for the second semester um and we're already into our september so would this be have anybody has anyone had to use sick days for covered leave i don't know we have no idea oh okay so there's no doubt five days is the middle like i'm not going
145to argue that it's not down the middle i'm just you know i'm just thinking of a full week to to get your situation together and get back to work just seems to make sense to me yeah especially since we're not using a ton i just want to make sure you all knew that we wanted to we we really thought about this a lot and there's a lot of school districts that are doing zero sure oh i'm sure yeah and then i've heard some feedback back and forth we just really thought this is a good start and we'll see what happens and then we'll bring it back up again in january because then if your child's positive or you know you can't return then you tap into your sick after the seven days and because you'll
146have to be out the full 10 at that point so you'll miss that i'm hoping it's better in january but i'm assuming that we will have some type of code still happening and i'm assuming you would probably want to vote again if you're using five you're still looking at ten days of extra days on top of what they already have to take scope oh let me make sure so you're saying if you don't use your five days this semester they carry over okay but not accumulative no okay just want to make sure it's five days every semester but if you use the if you use five now and use five right that could give you a second time thank you that's what i'm saying yeah okay you know i'm sure i'm going to create enemies
147by making this statement but i'm going to make it anyway we are i think an extremely generous school district and we care very much for our teachers and we a number of times have gone out of our way because we care and i cannot help but think what other profession is doing this for their uh employees you understand what i'm trying to say sure and it's not that i am being uh not empathetic or anything like that it is that at some point in the lie you know we have to we have to draw the line on how much we're going to do and we have to be fiscally responsible for you yes and and so i am all for the idea because i would love to give our staff everything but i'm not sure
148that that is really why i'm here to me the the proposal that that has been presented seems seems reasonable for for this first semester we went just so you know fernsworth like ronnie and i would go back and forth back and like i'd come in and go okay ted and then the next day i come back no five i mean we just we we really try to come up with a uh that can make sense and really help our teachers and to your point marina we've done some unprecedented things i know we have and that's why i mean no set no school district i know of gave two days back and winter break like that was amazing that you all did that so we're doing good things for our staff we want to make sure
149we take care of our staff i feel like five is middle road and i feel like it is it is a response you know it's a responsible thing of saying hey we're trying to help our staff out but not going overboard and the story for me so do we have a motion okay all those in favor say aye aye opposed all right so uh that passes we're ready for our district financial report oh boy he's taking your mask off typically this month we would have had employee benefit plan recommendations for you however two factors have intervened one is just this is a fairly early meeting september 9th here we are and we're already having our meeting so we didn't have a whole lot of time with the um also squeezed back start of school so
150that is going to be a continuous factor i think for us but the other one is that we really have run extremely heavy meaning expensively in our health plan for the last several months and so our consultants from cbiz recommended that we somehow close a 12 and a half percent gap starting in january 12 and a half percent increase it would be unprecedented a little bit higher than medical trend and we have been over the last eight years at about 4.2 percent so significantly higher than what we've been doing on average um just and we'll we'll present more of this to you next month but just i wanted to set the table for you it's that's why we didn't bring that to you this month it gives the benefits committee more time to work more
151time to get renewals on all the other ancillary lines of coverage life vision dental stop loss but among the one of the benefits of being a self-funded plan is that we reap the benefits in a good year one of the negatives is in a bad year we eat the expenses so the self-insurance fund is dropping a little bit right now we were more than two hundred thousand dollars high um on our medical plan which is about a fifty percent overage in both june and july uh and so as that if that trend were to continue we you know we would probably need more than 12 and a half percent so we think that's um a little bit of an anomaly we were already prior to that running at a hundred percent meaning the premium we're
152paying is about what we're paying out we can sustain that as a self-funded group but we would still have been looking at some kind of increase so another one of the benefits of self-funding is that we control more of the levers so we can not only choose to accept or reject a premium rate but we also can change some of the plan design change some of the ways that we do a lot of things and so um we have had a preliminary meeting with the benefits committee i also um invited all the presidents of the employee associations just so that they were informed and what we're talking about we're probably looking at a combination of things one will be some kind of premium increase at least to the district of somewhere in the neighborhood of
153five percent but then we're probably looking at increasing deductibles for the first time in four years increasing out of pocket maximum for the first time in four years out of pocket by the way is one of those it sounds scary because it is like your maximum exposure as an employee but only about five percent of our people ever get the out-of-pocket maximum in any given year and then we're also probably going to be recommending that the district move to paying for the base plan um rather than paying for the premium plan we would leave the premium plan in place but as a buy-up option for folks that's likely to cause the most disruption and by that i mean ugly emails to me and probably to the boss too you know he gets them anytime any
154of us do because we have about 600 of our employees of 870 give or take that are on that plan right now so they would either have to begin making a contribution of somewhere around 50 to 60 dollars a month or they could opt for 100 paid but on the base plan which is also i would say a very strong plan it's not a not a bad plan at all so the um the way we left it with the benefits committee um is that we are returning back and i think it looks like it'll be september 21st to consider final recommendations to you they kind of narrowed it down to two options one would cause us to have a planned spend down of about 200 dollars in the uh self-insurance fund the other would plan
155for us to be a break even and uh but i wanted to give the employees on the benefits committee some time to consider those two options before we brought things back to you and we also will be again presenting dental vision life renewals for you as well so and again um the the two more points and then i'll move on one is a 12.5 percent increase that's the kind of the gap we've got in the plan right now that's a one and a quarter million dollars that's real money right and so we we'd plan to spend about five hundred thousand dollars additional in insurance costs moving forward at the mid-year increase in the budget but at that per at that sizable number that really impacts our ability to then consider what what money do we
156have for raises it all comes out of the same pot and so you know the benefits committee has been looking at the option of moving to paying the base plan as a district for four or five years and we've just never come to a point where we felt like it was necessary for us to do that we feel like now is probably the time but that doesn't mean that that goes down any easier for the people that are already having the premium plan paid for them it just doesn't and we specifically know we've got some folks that because they are benefiting from being on the highest pay levels of our teacher salary schedule they didn't get the step that the other teachers got this year so it impacts them a little bit more than our
157other teachers they are on the highest paid level but still they would they would be impacted if they chose to stay on the premium plan if they choose to go to the base plan then they still have the plan paid that's not a firm recommendation from the committee that's my reading of that's my recommendation to them in my reading of the tea leaves from our initial discussion but like i say we'll bring that committee back together in a couple of weeks or actually i guess 10 days and then we'll formulate recommendations that you will then get to weigh in on next month and that's still for a one-one renewal uh january 1 of 22 renewal uh questions about that okay um secondly i just uh wanted to give you a very quick update on bond
158issue you'll see it when we get to the financial report but we are moving ahead with a number of projects the led lighting project is continuing but it's still slowed because of waiting on supplies that's still is we still is seeing some supply chain issues the beauty though of that process is they're working second shift teachers and students go home anyway and so it doesn't really matter if that project lags a little bit we just move room by room and then they have to clean up you know in the morning before teachers come in but we are getting ready to again have a lighting bid for the remaining buildings for led lighting interior and exterior for the lewis and clark hvac project those will both go out within the next month so before christmas time
159we'll have those bids back to you to consider approval monroe renovation i think i mentioned last month there'll be a two summer basically 18-month kind of process because we obviously need to keep the building in service during the renovations there but we should have that project out to bid um before uh christmas break and for your approval soon thereafter the same with the success campus and that the success would just be a one summer uh renovation but we're moving forward on all those projects pretty quickly okay so um chris the other one uh the one that says 08 2021 board report is the one i'd like to look at this shows our balances and is again broken out in a variety of ways so the self-insurance fund you see this is um we show at
160the beginning balance of 2.6 million ending at 1.7 but that's a little bit of a misnomer because you'll notice we have no revenues to that fund we only paid expenses out so we are actually owed about 1.2 million dollars to ourselves so it's sitting in the general fund it just hasn't been transferred into the self-insurance fund yet and then i wanted to call your attention to the bond issue the same thing is true there you'll see the bottom line we've spent 5.2 million dollars of our bond issue proceeds that money is in our most sip account but has not been credited in budget account at this point so that that actually throws off the the total ending fund balance by that 5.2 million so we actually are at 27 point almost 8 million in ending
161fund balance for the month because of that lack of of the transfer in the in the bond accounts the only other things that i'd highlight are we still continue to get a little local revenue some of that is depend delinquent taxes but most of that is state sales tax federal revenue you see there's not much on that line either but this month nidra willfolk our federal program specialist is getting ready to ask for reimbursement for our summer school expenses and our transportation summer school expenses from the esser funds that are available to us so you'll see a little bit more federal money jump into that line next month and then of course uh our big dollars are always an employee salary and benefits and you see we're back up to a more normal expenditure because
162we this reflects the 10 month employees back at work on the august line so that's all i have to share unless you've got questions no questions what i'm getting used to the new uh look the new format but okay well do i have a motion to approve the district financial report i move to approve the district financial report as presented all those in favor hi those opposed all right financial report uh passes do i have a motion to adjourn the meeting second all those in favor aye