Town Hall Meeting

001mrs bailey we live okay foreign good evening everyone and welcome to the garfield heights city school district town hall for updates on the 20 20 21 school year we're so grateful to have you take time out of your busy schedules to join us for some pertinent updates regarding changes in transition in the district we've allotted an hour for this town hall and we will have the opportunity to address the questions that have been submitted i encourage you that if you did not have the opportunity to submit your questions in advance please feel free free to do so utilizing the live youtube chat there are a few rules of engagement i would like to mention we would ask you just to be courteous and respectful in a chat also please submit your name along with your

002question just so that we can identify who the who the question is coming from i take this i would like to take this time now just to introduce myself my name is yolanda hamilton and i am the diversity equity and inclusion consultant for the graphical height city school district and tonight we are joined by our administrative team who's going to share with you again the necessary updates and questions that i'm sure that the community at large has had regarding the new school year so at this time i would like to take the opportunity to turn it over to our district superintendent mr chris hanke thank you miss hamilton uh and everyone that's watching welcome um we appreciate you engaging with us tonight um we would like to be able to answer uh uh all the

003questions that come in uh however if we if we do run out of time we will get back to you individually uh what i'd like to do is just um go around and uh i'm going to uh introduce each person and after i introduce them uh they will give a brief update as to their area that they're working on as we work to uh on our remote learning plan and also uh um you know who they are uh ms wilson good afternoon everyone my name is gina wilson and i am the family engagement coordinator for the district um and i work with families to tap into different resources needed um imper to provide wraparound services not only for the students that we service in the district but the families as well i like to work

004one-on-one with families as well as students to make sure that we're meeting their needs both academic and in the home setting you can contact me at any time and if you have any questions please feel free to drop them in and ms wilson's contact information is on our website uh she'd be happy to help you absolutely this is morris hi good evening everybody my name is bryn morris and i'm the newly appointed bulldog digital academy administrator so all those questions you've been sending in and phone calls i am the one on the other side of the answers and the phone calls uh this is my 19th year in education and i'm excited and i have a pre-k to 12 experience so we're ready to hit the ground running we have a lot of answers hopefully

005for the important questions you have this evening and i look forward to answering those and getting to know all of you very good thank you mrs morris uh uh mr saluka thank you mr henke my name is al saluka i'm the treasurer and director of business services for the garfield city schools my key role right now has been trying to maintain and upgrade our facilities to meet the social distancing and the safety of our teachers students and and staff and community we've been working very diligently on configuring our buildings to do just that and we're well on our way to making sure that we have a safe environment if and when our students get back and when our teachers get back the other areas that i'm in charge of is transportation we will be social

006distancing on transportation we're currently working on routes and how the buses will be configured with the stay at home we have other ways of trying to fulfill those needs and we have some time to look at the routes and how we're going to do that we will get more information out as once that is finalized for your cvcc riders cvcc will be opening up in august if you are attending in person you will be provided transportation like in the past so we will have transportation ready to go and available on the first day of school for ucvcc students lastly in food service we are working on a plan to ensure that those families in need of food will be able to access food on a regular basis through the schools as if you were in

007school what that looks like right now we are pivoting from the in school to being online for the first quarter we're working on a plan um as we speak and we hope to have information to families by the first day of school how you can access the breakfast and lunch through the school program i know this is mostly for uh the educational side i will be online for any questions on the facilities uh safety security and uh food service and transportation thank you mr henke thank you mr sleuk hello bulldog families i'm brooke pillitz the director of special education in the garfield heights city schools and i first want to say thank you to all of you for your patience as we are developing our plan for our students to return to school so we

008all know we're going remotely to start the school year so i just wanted to tell you that um approximately 730 students in our district um have ieps and every iep and up for every student is different not every there's not one iep that's exactly the same as another one so in order to meet the needs of all of our students we will be providing every student with parent input of course the iep team our wonderful intervention specialist will be reaching out to you to set up an individualized remote learning plan for your child that will show it'll indicate what's what your services will look like who will be providing the services when the services will be provided and you will have input into that so that we're on the same schedule you know what day

009your students getting this you know particular service and we'll work together as a team to make sure all of our our services are met for our students thank you thanks miss pilletts uh mr patton good evening families um my name is sean patton i am the assistant superintendent with the garfield high city schools and we appreciate everything that you are doing and helping us prepare the start of our school year my role in the district is really to help support all the administrators throughout the entire district and as things come up i'm the kind of the person that helps to navigate and work through the issues um our biggest continue working with are also with our teachers as well as our support staff and helping them prepare and get ready for the start of the

010school year we know that this is a unique challenge but we have been working very diligently all throughout the summer in preparation for this and uh and we appreciate everything that the community has continued to do for us um and allowing us to make the right decisions and preparing our uh students coming back in the fall so again we thank you very much for all your patience your understanding and know that we are working very hard to make our the successful start of the school year for our kids and last but certainly not least mrs bailey i would like to say also she's been the the engine behind all of our communication efforts during our board meetings we really appreciate all our efforts to put together um a platform where we're able to reach reach

011the community uh uh effectively so mrs bailey want to introduce yourself and tell them what your role has been and is is moving forward thank you very much mr henke my name is sherry bailey i'm the director of technology of garfield heights city schools um obviously when our school shut down at the beginning of the pandemic in march we quickly made sure that we could get chromebooks home to families because students couldn't be doing work online if they didn't have the resources we even were able to purchase some hot spots to help families as well well now that we know and we have well in advance that our schools are going to be closed first quarter we've been preparing all summer to make sure that we purchase more chromebooks we will have a chromebook for

012every student in the district and we are going to be rolling out the distribution based on the buildings so the digital academy will be a little bit different but every building is going to be then having times where students can maybe pick up resources parents will get information about insurance for chromebooks signing a chromebook policy getting a chromebook to take home that will be assigned to their student for the rest of the school year so um i'm really excited about that and uh more information will be coming and our goal is to have all the chromebooks distributed before september 9th was just the first day of school well and and since i have a an audience here real quick uh you know my role um you know just so people know as leader of the

013district is is to make sure that we have effective communication that's one of my main roles and we hope that this effort really helps with that uh one just uh a brief thing about the rules of engagement is ms hamilton called him for tonight this this uh town hall meeting is focused on parents and families uh those are the questions we will be answering uh that have to do with students parents and families uh certainly we will be addressing uh employee concerns as as things unfold but we really want to get information out to them tonight uh miss hamilton yes and one thing i would like to mention most of us on the call are parents so again we do understand you know the anxiety that has been created by just the unknown factors so

014we definitely ask for your grace um because we understand and are sitting in the same situations that you are also we have formed an equity task force that is really looking at these issues because we realize outside of the general equity issues that we face as a district covet has presented some new things for us to look at and so our equity task force is taking a look um through the lens of equity at those issues so that we can ensure that each student has the proper support in place to be successful during remote learning and also the digital academy so at this time i would like to ask miss bryn morris to give us an overview and update and i know there's a lot of questions that have come about with the digital academy

015so i'll turn it over to you excellent thank you so just i have a frequently asked question form that i had started this week as questions were rolling in and i would like to just go over a few things to just get it out of the way and hopefully get some information out one of the biggest questions that we've received is what is the difference between remote learning and the digital academy it was a lot easier to explain before we had to all go remote for the first nine weeks but really when it comes down to it the remote learning it's for all of our students who are hoping to go back physically to the building at some point so they'll start off nine weeks hopefully after the nine weeks if we're allowed to go

016back to the building they would go back to a hybrid model of schooling the digital academy will be online for that is what we do we will be an online academy online school for the whole time and if you've signed up for the bulldog digital academy we are asking for a semester commitment so for the nine weeks the way i've been explaining it is it's kind of like a football game so if you want to do remote it's the first quarter and digital academy is at least the first half and then when that comes then you would be able to decide yes this digital academy is really working for me and i want to continue on for the rest of the year or you know what i think my child might be best to go

017back to physical school and if we are back in the physical school they would be able to do and there's many reasons for that it's to have some continuity and structure for our families as well as the grading policies and making sure the transcripts are solid there's a lot of reasons behind that um so that's been the main question i've received a lot of questions about when am i going to get my schedule and that is forthcoming right now the deadline to sign up for the digital academy is wednesday august 12th once we have a solid number as to who is officially signed up for the digital academy we then can look at how many teachers we need to service all of those students and once we have that we can start to make those

018decisions you will be notified as soon as we have things in place you will hear from us robocalls emails phone calls but it is going to take a little bit of time to make that happen because we want to do it right um a couple other things where you know we want to offer the same electives and honors classes we're trying to be very creative and getting as much opportunity to our students as possible uh i would say those are probably the three main questions that i've received um that i've answered a lot of so hopefully that's helped and if it hasn't been clear enough please ask for further clarification and miss morris i just wanted to clarify and anyone feel free to chime in for students and families that might be newly um relocated

019to garfield heights that were not currently enrolled in the district for last year can someone speak to the audience to provide information for those families about the process of enrollment yes i could actually speak to that ms hamilton um you do need you do need to enroll your your student in garfield night city schools to be eligible um either for remote learning or the digital academy the default once you register is that you you're opting for remote learning if you decide on the digital academy there is a separate google registration form on the website um registration please call our board office at 216-475-8100 and they will schedule you in for registration we can't stress enough to please make those appointments as soon as possible uh it is helpful for us as we plan for the

020year thank you and before we go to updates from miss pillitz um cassandra graham a parent in the district had asked if we could advise that transportation would be provided to students regarding cvcc and i believe mr sluka addressed that by saying stating yes and that there will be communication coming out regards to transportation to um cvcc so at this time i'd like to ask miss pilletts if she could provide updates on special education in preschool so um so everything i'm talking about right now also includes our preschool so our preschool students all the way up to grade 12 and then we also have some students beyond grade 12. so the way we divide up our district every one of the students on an iep has an intervention um case manager okay intervention specialist is

021the case manager so what's going to happen is the intervention specialists will be reaching out to parents every student on an iep in the district so they will be reaching out to parents to set up a zoom meeting a google meet meeting one of the one of our platforms and they will be sitting down with whatever service personnel also provide services to that student if it's speech or ot or whatever the services so there will be a team meeting and there they will develop the individualized remote learning plan with the parent looking at the services on the iep and determining from there what the services are who will be providing them the the time frame and um you know what day of the week so i just want to make that clear to parents you

022are definitely a major part of our team and we really want to hear from you what worked in the spring what didn't work and we want to fix that so that our students with disabilities are getting the best possible services that we can provide so i'm i'm hoping in the next couple of weeks intervention specialists will be able to reach out to families and start scheduling those meetings definitely before school starts you will have this plan in place so if you have any questions about that please feel free to email me you can call me whatever you'd like to do but i just wanted to make sure that you're all aware you will have an individualized plan so thank you for your patience and i know there's a lot of other questions you may have

023so i appreciate your time thank you miss pillitts do we have an estimated timeline that parents can be expected to be contacted for um the meetings for the remote learning plans or is that still to be determined still to be to to be determined um our teachers come back on uh mr hanky august 31st uh yeah well the the the new teacher august thursday it's september the 1st okay so um hopefully i can get intervention specialists in prior to that but they will definitely be reaching out to families if you don't hear from them prior to that september 1st you will definitely hear from them that week and we'll get these plans in place it'll be a written plan and it'll be signed by all team members as well okay thank you very much as

024we're moving along to get questions answered i want to encourage if you have a specific question please submit it through the youtube chat um and we will try to address that during our time so the next question that we have is from jen lake again um it seems that some parents just want to know the difference between remote learning and the bulldog digital academy and i believe miss morris addressed that also her question was which one would be better for advanced placement for high school students well i think we can probably uh tag team this question mrs morrison um and i i i would like a and miss hamilton i'm kind of looking at the the chat going here um so students uh uh at the high school that are receiving remote learning will receive

025schedules uh uh after the digital academy uh closure in terms of the closure of the um enrollment both programs will offer uh ap courses um the difference being is that the remote learning students may depending on recommendations from the board of health and the board of education have an opportunity to come back to in-person instruction at some point uh those that are in the digital academy will receive all of their instruction online so the ap coursework will look different is that and mrs morris please tell me if i'm if i miss speaking they are going to be offered the same opportunities like you said it will just look different it'll be online they will have the same curriculum the same assignments our teachers are still going to continue to work together plan together make sure

026we're all on the same page so that everyone lines up with the same information uh it would just be done online submitting things instead of in person if we were afforded to go back okay and when can they expect to see the schedules for high school students the schedules for high school students and uh will be in the next couple of weeks much like um much like uh uh in past years um the high school team is is working to schedule the students the schedules are are going to look substantially similar to what they they do in a normal year um and when the when the students get them obviously they'll be receiving instruction for the first nine weeks uh remotely uh i would like to address a question that that that keeps getting repeated

027miss hamilton if you don't mind um about um uh the the division of grades um the high school team as well as our director of teaching learning myself looked at various ways to provide a hybrid model at the high school and it was very difficult considering the amount of courses that are offered at the high school uh what we came up with was that if there is in fact a hybrid model that the ninth and tenth graders would participate in that with 11th and 12th attending virtually um a couple of of of clarifications there we don't know uh quite frankly if in fact we will we would be going back to a hybrid model or a full in-person model after nine weeks we don't know that um our goal is to get every student back

028to in-person learning uh as soon as it is safe to do so our thought uh and research has shown that 11th and 12th graders are uh in fact students that can operate um more successfully in a digital environment given their their their grade level uh in ages um that's not to say that that they don't also deserve in-person instruction it's just the best we could come up with based on the amount of children we have in the school we hope to have everybody back fully once it's safe to do so thank you okay we have another question that came in from a parent i'm not sure who there's no name associated but the parent states other states have started to reopen schools and failed at containing the virus so for me attending school in person

029is not an option will garfield heights offer online schooling yes that has been addressed um will the school semester run for the same amount of weeks the answer is yes in the digital academy i'm in remote learning and will we have enough laptops that was also addressed will the grading systems change very very good question i've seen that um as i'm as i'm monitoring the chat here as well so the grading system is going to go back to a regular grading system when we had the online schooling due to the pandemic closure in the spring we went to a pass fail system to make sure that every student had the opportunity to do their very best and pass their courses we are going back to the a through e system as it is in board

030policy um so the grading system is going to remain the same as if you were in school whether you're in remote learning or in the digital academy second uh uh question that that seems to be on people's minds has to do with attendance attendance will be taken every day attendance is is is mandated by the state of ohio and we are going back to a normal type of attendance uh uh policy that is also in board of education policy uh and we are going to work with our social workers and guidance counselors intervention managers to follow up with students that may be having trouble attending whether it be for access issues or or issues with connectivity or some other uh barriers they may have um the bulldog digital academy may look a little different in

031terms of the ability to access learning if mrs morris wants to speak to that a little bit we're currently uh this is another common question i've actually gotten is is my child going to have to be on at a specific time or what's the schedule going to be there are going to be set schedules for the students for the digital academy uh it will look different i personally have a kindergartner and an eighth grader and their schedules would look very different and the amount of time they would be sitting in front of a computer will look different but they will have a set schedule they will have to be on at a certain time in the morning for attendance as mr hankey said and they will have to be present for the actual instruction of

032the lesson but that's all going to be created once we once we have the teachers on board because i believe that the teachers will have that skill set so we can sit down and really build what's going to be best for our students and families as well at each grade level because we want to make sure it's developmentally appropriate and will work for our families now when it comes to work submission that might be slightly different um you know my thought process is that you know you'll do a lesson i'm teaching okay go practice these problems for half an hour and we'll come back at this time and then they could come back and review uh but for actual submission of work they would be able to do that later on so if you are

033working which we know a lot of our parents are essential workers and they don't get home until the evening you can submit things at 10 o'clock at night and if you ever ran into a problem i would want you to contact the teachers and myself so that we can help remove those barriers and get whatever you need so that would might look slightly different okay thank you so i'm going to take a couple of questions that have come through the youtube chat kept um a question submitted by katherine gentry and mauricio bay are pretty similar um will teachers will the students be able to see the teachers live and ask questions and catherine was concerned about asynchronous learning um that it seems to be the only way it would work and being concerned of having

034like multiple children in multiple grade levels so can you speak to that absolutely thank you so that has been a big question um because you know when this happened in the spring with the pandemic we were thrown into it and we made a plan in a matter of a week really actually a matter of days and i think we did a really good job for what we had but over the summer uh the district has provided our teachers with a lot of training a lot of ways to make learning interactive and you will have a teacher teaching uh most of the day the teachers are going to work their full day schedule you'll get the it's going to feel just like mr hanky said like a normal school schedule where it will be like this

035it'll be a zoom where i'm the teacher teaching my class working go practice come back and it's going to be throughout the day it's not going to be i'm here for 20 minutes see you tomorrow it's going to definitely be a very personalized face-to-face interaction okay also uh there's a question that came in from um a parent sunitra skiller and one of the questions is how will school fees be structured for this year there we go school fees right now school fees uh are i'm gonna have to go back and look at it but i believe they're being looked at by the board right now so i i apologize but let me get back to you on that so um school fees are are under under discussion okay um and she also inquires that her

036daughter did not get to turn in her schedule for this year how and when can changes be made to um schedules if necessary uh bear with us again uh the the digital academy i know this sounds like it is a hinge point it is uh we're trying to get the digital academy uh settled in terms of the amount of students that are going to be in it again the deadline for that's august 12th uh once we do that we can move forward with scheduling uh at our at our all of our buildings obviously the high school is is i'm i'm making an assumption here but i uh i might i think we're probably talking about a high school student uh uh uh yeah so um their schedules will will be out in the next couple

037of weeks once they get once we get everything settled with digital academy can i jump on one thing about the high school schedules generally what we've done in the past is the high school's students receive their schedule the week before we start school so that is the target date that we are working towards and and and as we work through and and staffing the digital academy and and kind of put all the other kind of pieces in the parts that is the goal for the high school to get those schedules out to our high school students okay another question came in via email through from ms genetta killings how are the students going to select their classes for this coming year well for firstly um the the classes are are selected you know you have

038the core classes that are selected uh for the students and then electives are are selected uh the high school is going to be in touch uh uh once we get things settled uh in terms of uh guidance counselors um we're trying to work out how that's going to work in terms of it being um being uh through a platform like this or through a one-on-one in-person type of environment uh being mindful of safety concerns thank you miss jocelyn williams has two questions can families use their own devices or do they have to use chromebooks and will parents be able to meet with teachers before school starts um i i will take that mrs bailey can chime in we would prefer uh that i i believe that you can use your own device who prefer you

039use our device for a couple reasons uh for security uh for safety um they are filtered uh and also uh for us to be able to push out updates onto them did i misspeak on any of that mrs bailey no that's absolutely right the other thing that we do with the chromebooks is we push out all the district purchased curricular software um they that way you know that your student will be able to log into all the accounts that the district depart provides depending on the grade level um filtering is another huge piece as well as teachers will be able to interact with the students when they're logged in and doing work for the teacher okay thank you um the next question came from the email parent kathy berg i think i signed up for

040the digital academy but did not receive any kind of confirmation how do i know my request properly went through and um what if there's an issue with the teacher that is assigned to my student in the digital academy will i be given the opportunity to switch teachers the first question being about uh confirmation of registration we're going to send out an email early next week we can try and send it monday morning and i will take all of the email addresses that i have as registering and we will send out an email as confirmation uh if you don't get that you can email me and i will double check it for you uh and we will do that again i would assume miss bailey maybe wednesday once it closes maybe do it thursday morning and

041then that way you would have that confirmation um for teacher concerns right now the numbers that we're looking at now whether that goes up or down uh i'm imagining we will have several you know a couple of teachers at each grade level but i would um encourage that we conference talk with the teacher contact me and see if we can iron some things out but obviously we want to do what's best for our students and our families okay um we had a question come in email and via the chat for miss melissa sayer she's concerned as to why the juniors are not going back the seniors and juniors are not going back um you know concerns about having anxiety um and the impact on the mental health of the students not being able to start

042off to go to school during their senior year so um i would like to speak to that and say ms sayers um the decisions that have been made we are prioritizing the health of students and following the cuyahoga county board of health recommendations um again after the nine weeks to mr hankey's point we will have an assessment to see if it is safe for students to return we are hopeful that things will be safe and improved but if not we just have to wait a little longer because again the health and safety of our students in the district are our top priority with this decision and we know it's hard um each of us have the desire for our students to be back in school but we just given the pandemic there's so many risks

043associated with that and we're doing our diligence to do everything we can to make sure that the proper protocols and procedures are in place for students to be able to return to mr hankins point when it is a safe environment thank you for your concern we hear you and appreciate you sharing i would like to move on to another question in the chat um which let me see that you're coming in thank you for the engagement and interaction i believe from miss jodie shy can you address plans for junior and seniors before um beyond the first nine weeks i think um i just clarify that that we'll be assessing that once we reach the nine weeks it's really no way to um for us to predict that right we are we are going on the

044recommendations following the recommendations from the experts from the cuyahoga county board of health um i believe that as long as we remain in the red categories we will continue to follow those guidelines and um hopefully if cases don't escalate we will be able to reopen but given um the guidelines as outlined by the cuyahoga county board of health um there is the possibility that we may cases may increase and and if we end up in a purple category um we would not be moving forward with reopening again with the concern of the health and safety so i'll let mr hankey speak more to that as well yeah actually and i can give the uh everyone watching this some uh some insight into that uh every week um area superintendents meaning all of them in cuyahoga

045county plus some adjacent counties uh have the opportunity to meet on fridays uh and the board of health's leadership team including the director and their chief medical officer have been gracious enough and you can imagine they're a little busy to uh to join us um these past two weeks obviously have been um revelatory uh last week uh they came in uh and uh uh said that we they recommend that we we start virtually uh this week they did they did offer us some clarity uh surrounding that um uh in terms of uh you know that these are recommendations most of the districts in the county uh are in fact uh uh starting the the year virtually one thing that is uh you know the board of education passed that all in-person extracurriculars and sports be

046uh also uh not participated in uh during this time there is some discussion going on about that um in terms of contact versus non-contact sports etc so um i i guess one of my messages is because i've received numerous uh numerous inquiries about sports is that again i'd like nothing more than to open up sports fully uh absent that we are taking a look as a lake erie league on what may be able to happen uh for our our student athletes um as far as the again the the 11th and 12th graders in the split we we we did have uh uh we did have to come up with a solution uh to make sure that everyone can get the classes that the a they needed and they wanted and that was the solution we

047came up with uh that's if we have a hybrid model we could easily i could see this easily going to a space where it's either we are um fully remote or we are in fully that could happen it could happen where we have um a spike in cases and we stay fully remote uh and um you know it's it's unfortunate that we don't have we're not going to have clarity until the data comes out each week uh in terms of covet infections and we have to rely on the health experts to guide us because all of our expertise is in education social work etc and and and we have to we have to uh have them help us mr hankey can i jump in real quick on that um from a facility standpoint we're still

048mandated by the state for social distancing of our students which very limits class sizes to almost a maximum of 15 to a class right now if everyone was in school we would not be able to reach that mandate for the governor who says we still must maintain social distancing which is roughly six feet of distance so we really don't have the class size number of classrooms and all our buildings to bring everybody back especially at the high school too if we have all four grades in so if we got to limit those classes to a maximum of 15 per classroom if everybody was back we wouldn't be able to do it from a facility standpoint okay thank you i have a question that came in i can't identify the parent but it's questions in regards

049to logistics about the reopening process in terms of bathroom baits mask requirements social distancing sanitizing i'm sure that that is a question that most parents have about the reopening so i would like to say that that will most likely be addressed in the district-wide communication so that all families can have an understanding of what that would look like um when the school reopens hopefully after the first nine weeks and i would like to also go on through the chat we're moving through the questions aaron holston do kindergartners get chromebooks also it seems like it might be a little difficult for them to navigate yeah the short answer is yes and uh we understand that that that is that is uh something that uh as you move uh into the lower grades uh might be a

050little more difficult uh as mrs bailey uh said we are gonna try to offer we're not gonna try we're gonna offer some training and resources additionally under discussion is uh um we call them an education manipulatives they're the the tactile things we use uh uh to help students learn uh and how we're we would like to try to get the we're going to we're going to get these out to students uh uh our younger students that need to uh have have uh tangible things for them to help their learning okay great um i wanted to pause with the questions i wanted to post something to gina gina again for our families that might just be joining or have um questions and turn to accessing resources and services in the district can you speak a little

051bit about your role and what they should do in terms of working with you to navigate communication between parties in the districts and access to community resources during his time yes so um i am the family engagement coordinator for the district so i work with families in all buildings um to assist them in obtaining resources that they need i work with families hand in hand to work with the um individual in the community to help us assist with those resources i don't um i also work with families in regards to communication between teachers and other staff in the building um my you can reach me by email it's g wilson at ghbulldogs.org or my cell phone number at 216-777-2279 i've been communicating with families all summer trying to answer questions to the best of my

052ability um and if i don't have the answer for you i will speak to the party who i think may help and we will be able to work together to make sure we answer all questions that we have again you can reach out to me if you have any questions concerns um if uh if you're if your question doesn't get answered i would be sure to assist with that as well okay thank you thank you um the next question miss april krause um was just joining looking for information about preschool and for those who attended last year how and if services such as speech will continue um how will attendance work for miss anastasia rashford i think we covered that um how will students with disabilities be set up so can we speak to that

053in terms of um how the services will be set up in for example speech therapy and um i believe miss pillets touch a bit on the remote learning plan but i'll let you speak to that okay so um as i as i spoke a little bit earlier in case you're just tuning in every student on an iep from preschool on up will have the opportunity to sit down with the iep team and develop an individualized remote learning plan intervention specialists their case managers will be reaching out to parents and setting up that meeting before school starts as far as related services such as speech therapy uh that will be what it'll be discussed in those meetings that you have in the individualized remote learning plan and there you will set up how will that service

054be provided who will be providing it what day how much time and so parents will be able to interact with um let's say speech therapist for example will be would be part of that meeting and the parents will have the opportunity to ask those questions at that time okay thank you miss pillars moving on a question from parent mr deshaun milton concerns about um the pass fail system from the spring and that um his student is a senior this year may have many opportunities for academic scholarships which are contingent upon cumulative gpas will my student be able to receive letter grades this school year i believe we answered that and said yes students we will go back to the normal grading system miss diana reeves stated i may have missed this but if i signed

055up for digital academy and it doesn't work and remote learning discontinues can we switch back to a regular learning environment okay can you uh so the question is will they be able to switch back to a regular learning environment for remote learning the remote learning discontinues i believe so yes yes that that's exactly what will happen um um so i want i want to again re-clarify because i know this can get a little confusing if you are a registered student in the garfield city schools by default you will be placed into the remote learning environment for the first nine weeks and then if if and when we do transition back to school you will transition back to school in person if you opt for the digital academy you have to be enrolled in the school

056district and then you have to register through our google form on the website that is a commitment of at least a semester of digital learning uh but uh our plan is to offer offer this program all year and in fact um quite frankly um this this particular type of program may be something that uh hopefully as as we solve the covid issue as a society uh it may be something that that is uh offered in addition to regular learning going forward okay thank you um jen lake just to clarify the same curriculum same interaction with teachers whether remote learning or in the digital academy will be implemented is that correct yes the short answer is yes thank you uh miss katrina patterson can someone speak to whether or not students and band will be able

057to continue with band under the digital academy given there is only one band instructor there there is more than one band instructor actually um all of our band instructors we have five of them uh all have uh um k through 12 kindergarten through 12 licenses we're going to have to be creative in terms of how that's scheduled for everyone um so that's a long answer for yes band will continue one of the issues we are having though is how that's going to look even as students come back health authorities continue to very concerned about indoor singing and indoor playing of instruments uh they believe that that's uh one of the things they call super spreader events that's what the county board of health folks were talking to us about today uh so we are trying

058to get as creative as possible to make sure that those course offerings can be as robust as possible thank you um and just another parent must have missed this but we did determine the students will have access to guidance counselors that is correct during the their remote learning or digital learning experiences um i'd like to go on to miss natasha nichols i wanted to ask about support for the students on their social emotional health are providers still accessible to families are there other programs planned i can answer that one so the answer is yes we will be working with our outside agencies to help support our students the other big component is that we will continue through our pbis work that the district has worked very hard um it will be part of uh the

059daily learning for our students um k-12 as well as the preschool so we will continue to support the social emotional needs of our students we know that there is a big focus since a lot of them and not been in school for almost six months are having that connections and we know especially the first few weeks of school building those relationships with their students as well as their fellow classmates is extremely important and we will be focused heavily on that as we start the beginning of the year thank you a parent by the name of miss lynn frank's will there be activities or traditions for seniors if they are attending fully virtually for the school year we are going to do our level best to be very creative in that respect and in fact um

060uh you know considering what we were able to do toward the end of the school year and with graduation um we we we we will come up with a with a plan to do that uh my hope and again i'm not the health expert is that uh you know we're we're able to con you know community the community is able to come together and um you know lower the amount of infection rate so we can get back and have all those great senior activities in the second semester that's my hope thank you um mr patton may have addressed this but we have a comment from ms lynn franks again who as a clinical supervisor for ohio guidestone is their plan for the agencies in providing mental health services in the district to continue to do

061so in person in person as in like we as unless students are not in the district we will work with dr dupree and he will be working with the agencies on helping to uh support those agencies and their work with our students okay so so it's ongoing so recommendations to contact dr dupree whose information is also listed on our website just to get further explanation regarding that and i i mean cut you obviously i know dr dupree actually had a meeting today with one of the agencies so he will be working with um the other agencies that we work with that help support our students and helping them in developing plans to help support our students virtually for these first nine weeks um and developing systems from there and we also yeah we're working through

062that but it will be with his office okay great next question miss aaron halston will kindergartners be expected to sit in front of the screen for the entire school day what does that look like with screen time and concerns uh i i'll take part of that um as a father of a a four going on to five year old um i think everybody's super concerned about screen time um the unfortunate part well it's fortunate but unfortunate you know as a lot of us that we're growing up we didn't have these types of resources which is enabling us to offer a pretty robust program even virtually we would like our young children to not be in front of screens as much as they may have to be um the first part of that though is we

063don't our expectation is that teachers aren't interacting like this the entire time it's a matter of you know providing activities and and providing those breakout types of uh of experiences for children and again the the piece the piece that i was talking about with getting some tactile uh uh materials to those children is going to be helpful okay thank you miss holly lloyd is there a certain time seniors need to log in on their computer for the digital academy or remote learning they will be required as any other student to do that yeah and we do understand though um there are some seniors that have a limited schedule based on the fact that they have completed much of their coursework and mrs morris is nodding because she was she was at the high school for

064for some years so they will have to log in whenever their course is is is available because there are some seniors with a lot of flexibility because of their coursework got it okay miss chandra books how many children will be in the zoom rooms at one time so the so say a teacher is going to have a regular class of students quote unquote okay so if i'm mr hanky and i'm teaching um ninth grade american history which is what i taught uh i would have a classroom of say 25 to 30 students so if i was doing a direct instruction lesson uh there might be though that amount of students on the team to flip that if uh we were doing some sort of uh group work okay the the students would be in what

065what are called through zoom breakout rooms and then i might be popping into each breakout room to help the children okay you're also going to see that a little differently on the elementary level uh in terms of you know there might be a little more direct instruction at the high school level that is a very long answer for a full it could be a full classroom there could be a small amount of students depending on the activity and we and you know we rely on our teachers expertise to design lessons and we did offer them um pretty robust training in terms of being able to do that uh online for the coming year and will there be an orientation for the student for the families to have a better understanding of how to navigate that

066and access those student lessons yes uh not not only that and unfortunately you know the way the current orders are from the ohio department of health um and the depart the cuyahog county department of health discussed this today that schools should not have uh gatherings of more than 10 people uh however um you know with social distancing is if there's something that can be done for a few more than 10 uh they they understand that probably with the orientation we're looking at a virtual type of environment especially at the high school level because you're looking at hundreds of students uh and we don't want them uh you know we want to keep them safe so i do want to address miss hamilton kind of piggybacking on that uh there was a a question about whether

067or not uh students will be able to meet their teachers um right now uh that that we're looking at that being virtual um if we we are able to arrange something in person we will um but one of our concerns is taking up quite honestly valuable instructional time so um that's that okay um miss gia hinton will students who receive waivers for lunch be provided to go lunches or accommodate it i'll uh i don't mr siluca may be popping on here in a second to answer that question um pretty much yes the um we are going to go title one for the high school which makes that now a sep building community eligible participation so all students in the district will be eligible for a free breakfast and free lunch and we are currently working

068on a distribution plan through this uh through our first uh quarter to get the food to every family that uh would be in need so yes there's uh we will be asking to do waivers because they have other ramifications for free and re excuse me i can't talk free and reduce waivers we will be asking families to fill those out as a um a part of our fee structure but as far as the food service goes everyone is eligible now in the district every student's eligible including high school for a free breakfast free lunch okay um thank you miss renee bolton will separate guidance counselors for high school students and will there be separate guidance counselors for high school students in the digital academy or will they have their same guidance counselors you want to

069miss morris i can chime in on that i mean i i believe we're working on a plan to utilize the same personnel they we will not have separate or different personnel so for example if you're a high school student at digital academy you will be assigned one of the guidance counselors that is currently at the high school okay one one other parent mrs kathy brain will high school students get all the credits that they need to graduate yes okay thank you miss lucy espinoza what are the ode attendance guidelines for remote learning is there a website or somewhere where we can direct her for that information yeah i can uh just very briefly though uh say that first of all again we're gonna be monitoring attendance very very closely okay uh uh the same as

070if we were in school uh the remote learning attendance the only changes is that they are looking at our increments and so we are designing or we're kind of integrating with our computer system how to account for that uh the long and short of it is that students are are expected to be in school uh every day uh and if they if they have an excused absence uh they're expected to get in contact with the the uh the the school um office the school offices including the principals and secretaries will be in in person uh um we are obviously curtailing we do not want visitors at the buildings uh because of social distancing requirements unless they have an appointment but that you will be able to call in for an excused absence okay thank you

071miss janiece kirkwood in the event that school the schools reopen after the first semester has there been any consideration for the middle school and the lack of air conditioning in the in the building and safe air flowing through this older building what um mr saluko taking i can answer that right now the building is not conducive to putting air conditioning in however we have a plan in place and we're currently working with a contractor to increase the air flow throughout the building and uh that will be in place by the start of the second quarter when students come back okay um miss t diamond do the students have to accept the chromebooks i believe the answer is yes we have recommended that for them to access and we would like to just say if you

072have not returned your chromebook from the previous um quarter semester please do so because we do need those um it would be very helpful because they have to be programmed and ready to be redistributed miss renee bolton are we able to meet our students um teachers prior to the school year starting i believe um miss morris did you speak to that and say the answer to that is yes you know mr hankey had spoke about it but yes we are hoping to do it virtually as he spoke you know right now we can only have so many in a room but we're hoping to do that we're trying to work out a solid plan for that okay and i know that we're approaching the seven o'clock i work we have a few more minutes to

073get through a few questions um if the parents are still engaging with us um i'll continue to read off a few questions and we'll end shortly i believe that um also miss diamond was saying do the students that signed up for the virtual academy have to return to school we covered that and said that will the virtual academy if you sign up for digital that's for a semester long commitment and for remote learning if it is safe to reopen the schools after the nine weeks they would be expected to report for in-person learning mr james portick responded thank you um miss keisha bussy is the day shortened or is the school day still 8 15 to 2 45 for elementary that that's a great question so um we are trying to match up the times

074almost the same as last year okay whether it be kindergarten through 12th grade uh and we believe that we're going to be able to do it without a problem because when we transition back to in-person learning we want the times to be the same we are only looking at minutes maybe on either side in terms of the change okay um another question well the digital academy students have the same intervention specialist that they had in middle school so i'm assuming i'll answer that question yes go ahead so um right now the buildings are all working on putting together their their students with disabilities and into their caseloads with the teachers so um i can't answer that question yes or no because some students may have the same intervention specialist but right now we're working on

075on caseloads okay miss um aaron halston will there be parent training for some of these programs the children will be using yes and that was communicated that an email communication will be sent out to the district um we highly recommend contacting the district's office to make sure that your information is updated as well including your email phone so that we know that we can guarantee that the information is distributed or if you've moved within the district and change residents please make sure that your address and personal information are updated as well miss catherine gentry will children in the same family and same grade be in the same cohort if schools reopen as of right now our our remote learning plan um has a hybrid model where we've divided it up um by grade level uh

076so for example would be uh every other grade uh say it's k two four would go together um we are doing uh looking at an analysis of who may be affected uh negatively uh but right now we are sticking with that we had a lot of um logistical issues uh surrounding uh trying to make the other way happen uh however as i said earlier um we're gonna have to look and see where we are in nine weeks in terms of if if we come back fully or if we remain online um the health department just just as an aside has not spoken about these hybrid models at all even though we've put them up we've all put them together um uh in terms of you know whether or not um you know what their recommendations

077are for them under as mr seleucus said though under the department of health orders uh uh we we have to maintain social distancing okay i'm going to go through these others really rapidly miss t diamond again how will students get help with ieps miss pillett spoke to that and said that they will be in touch with parents and the district for the individual remote learning iep plans um miss sinitra skiller where students have to use the issue chromebook yes it is we will require for students to use the district issue chromebook because it's controlled and we're able to put the programming and and if you do a replay after this live town hall you will see that that question was addressed in the earlier part of the hour mr brandon adams what is the level

078of internet speed recommended i also had to miss mrs bailey you know i think that if you have a go ahead mrs bailey i just think if you have internet at home um the chromebooks don't really demand high internet videos of course to demand more but um you know that typical access that we have within the city as well as the hot spots seem to be working just fine okay great miss diana reads children that were assigned to be in the learning center for high school this year how will that be handled that's that's a great question um and uh mr bradford and his team mr bradford's the learning center principal and his team will be in touch uh regarding his program uh but everyone is going to be online uh uh the first nine

079weeks uh the learning center does use a bit of a different program uh than they have for for a number of years in terms of how they access online education so they're they're working through those issues okay darian roscoe who i believe is a student can i drop banned if we are going to do this online and then if i decide to come back can i add it back to my schedule i would i would advise mr rosco not to drop band we're trying we're trying to offer the best the best experience possible uh uh uh for everyone so and we need a saxophone in the band yeah yeah when they come back yes we do so uh thank you thank you miss tanya love will the remote learning be the same hours as in

080school learning yes the short answer okay thank you um miss jen lake on the high school level can teachers please provide approved learning resources links for students to assist them with homework will students be able to re-watch the teaching sessions um i believe that well teachers will provide you know approved learning resources they're gonna they'll provide resources for students that that uh uh throughout their lessons um the ability to re-watch teaching sessions um well um i think mrs bailey can probably address that uh uh but i mean if they're if it's a zoom meeting they are there is an ability to record that is true and we did also one of the things we also did is we purchased the full license of something called screencastify some of the teachers were doing this last year

081to record themselves teaching a lesson and that's another resource that's not going to take place of the online teaching like you know live sessions but it will be another resource that teachers can use so they can post the teaching so students can go back and look at it okay thank you we have just a few more questions and we'll be ending um a question that was submitted earlier will the students have access to a virtual tutor if they need a further assistance in a class yes so the answer to that is both in the remote learning they will have their tutors as well and then uh the district just posted mr patton just posted for a digital academy to have tutors as well so that's going to be a wonderful resource for both ends thank

082you miss mary peterson will class dojo be used um i i uh i don't mean to stumble i i i think that our our aim is to use uh google classroom and zoom mainly uh classroom dojo really lends itself if you're an in-person learning so i mean now stay tuned we'll go back to that once we uh you know uh we're we're in person learning again okay miss ashley brown our teachers require a certain amount of time of interaction with the children yeah so um teachers uh under under you know we we actually have um a contract with teachers uh uh in terms of that uh they are required to work a seven hour and forty minute day with a 40-minute lunch and 40-minute plan so our expectation uh for the teachers is they will

083be interacting uh during their their work time okay two questions are the same for miss ashley brown and miss chandra brooks will the teachers um be required will they be doing instruction from home or are they to report to the school to do the instruction that's a great question and i'm still uh working that out uh uh stay tuned on that okay mr sean ray will school supply still be the same well uh obviously in a virtual realm they will not um as as we uh hopefully transition back to in-person learning uh uh they will they will take on it you know then we'll have the supplies now here's the thing about supplies especially if we go back to a hybrid model where you have social distancing and various things uh supplies will look different

084because you can't share supplies right now uh uh if if we are in uh if we are in uh you know the same type of um orders under the department of health okay thank you and the last question in the chat barbara drobny state testing i'm assuming that she's asking will there be state testing short answer is right now yes uh the long answer is we don't know how that's going to look okay okay so um i want to thank everyone for their participation i believe miss morris you wanted to share um maybe closing words and sharing your contact information for parents that need maybe further clarity following the town hall sure another question that came up today that made me think as we were speaking is you are still a garfield heights city school

085student if you're in the digital academy so if you would want to play sports or do whatever you want to do as part of the digital academy when we're able to do that again you are still a student so yes you can still try out for that so you will be getting hopefully an email confirmation from myself or mrs bailey monday uh if you've registered as a confirmation and then once the deadline ends we'll try and send out another one again the deadline to sign up for the bulldog digital academy is wednesday august 12th so please make sure you're getting those in and if you have any further questions or concerns i know that there's a spot on the website to submit questions and those come straight to me and i'm getting back to them

086very quickly within a day if not within minutes um if you could always call me as well if you want to get a hold of me by phone it's 216-475-8100 and my extension is 51024 and my email is b as in bad morris at g h bulldogs with an ass.org i made this so that you make sure you get everything okay thank you miss morris also um we we went through all of the questions that came up in the chat in the email if you still need further clarity again you can feel free to email those questions to me and i will be glad to direct them to the appropriate party and also um we will work to perhaps put together a faq so that we can share that with everyone to further assess um

087address the questions and concerns so again um we are here we are accessible we are available we understand that um there's a lot of trans transition in moving pieces but feel free to reach out because we want to make sure that parents and families are best supported and that you have your answers to your questions clarified um the district is doing making their best effort to provide communication as it is coming down and as we all know through this process things have changed quite frequently so again um mr henke do you have any closing words for our audience um i'd just like to echo uh miss hamilton what you said um you know and i've said this during board meetings please don't hesitate to call me or call call uh someone uh that that may

088be in the area you're looking for uh you just call the board office number two one six four seven five eighty one hundred uh um we generally have a a secretary that answers the phone uh if you happen to get the voicemail because that person is unavailable at the time please just just say who you're trying to get ahold of and we will get back to you um we we appreciate your patience and understanding this is unprecedented um i i think i said it during the board meeting i've been involved in public education this is my 20th year and i've never seen anything quite like this so uh we are trying to design a program that meets all the needs of all of our students and i thank all of you for watching tonight uh

089any other questions again please contact us okay any other closing thoughts from anyone okay well thank you again for your time and staying with us i know we went over and we um stay safe and stay healthy we also invite you to tune in to our board meeting i believe our next board meeting is august 24th at 6 00 p.m um you can live stream that on our by subscribing to our youtube channel also if you have access to social media please check out the pertinent updates that are being made on social media regarding the information as its transition in the district and also feel free to email or to give us a call thank you again for your time and enjoy the rest of your weekend