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003you [Music] me [Music] please [Music] okay [Music] just [Music] so [Music] so [Music] okay [Music] right [Music] dog [Music] two [Music] take [Music] so [Music] mm-hmm so [Music] so [Music] um [Music] so [Music] so [Music] me um [Music] so [Music] reality [Music] so [Music] this [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] do [Music] do [Music] here [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] clearly [Music] so [Music] so [Music] i think we have everybody if i'm counting correctly jody do you know if kathy wanted us to wait for her i don't know where she is so i would say you can go ahead and start okay you can resume our meeting in open session uh the
004board has been in executive session since six o'clock uh to discuss some contractual matters and legal matters if we could please start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first up is introductions on behalf of the board we have myself holly dellenbaugh christine beck chris meyer willow bear wendy sampson jonathan fishbein and meredith moriarty and jodi monroe and judy kehoe and dave hurst and i think kathy johnston will be joining us uh first up on our agenda is the approval of minutes it is recommended that the board of education approve the minutes from the july 7 2020 organizational board meeting so moved second any discussion all
005in favor aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions that passes uh next on the agenda is the superintendent's report jody i didn't know if there was anything additional you wanted to talk about before we get to the presentation um just a couple things i just wanted to let everyone know that construction is continuing uh we're pretty much on time with the work schedule we do have a facilities committee meeting tomorrow night to get an update on the progress uh so at our next meeting we should be able to provide more information also we have had two forums for students families and community members uh one that they're related to racial concerns and the other was related to gender and sexual harassment both have been very well attended we've had upwards of 50 people parents students
006and staff were able to share ideas about how to move the district forward and offered ideas and suggestions for their continued involvement we have two more forums scheduled actually for tomorrow and our plans will be to compile some of those results and share it out with the community uh and this week and next i'll be offering also town hall zoom sessions for staff and parents to learn more about our reopening plans as well as give them an opportunity to ask questions that they may have i have four staff sessions scheduled for this week and three parent meetings scheduled for next week and that's my report great thank you uh next up is the board report um and i'll just say that i know um i think a couple of us were on um each of
007the forums that have taken place and i personally was on the racial equity um issues one from last week and thought that it went well and there are a lot of good um good topics that came up and good points that were made and we also had a policy committee meeting last night where we addressed a bunch of different policies that including the title ix and sexual harassment policy and are going to take a look at do a little research on uh maybe putting together an equity um or anti-racism policy for the district so we're just starting that process but if other board members have thoughts about that that they want to share with any of the committee members at some point you know we'll obviously give more information down the road any other board
008members have anything they'd like to share chris just that i attended the the um meeting on racial equity on thursday and i thought it was fabulous it was nice because the whole community was there um so it was neat to hear from parents it was neat to hear from high school kids i believe there were some middle school kids there they're younger i mean definitely some big middle school kids i think um but it was just great to hear all the different experiences um i just i was more than impressed with the people's thoughts and ideas during the hour and a half session thanks chris i attended holly the sexual harassment uh one of the first forums yesterday i think wendy was there as well and it was very well attended what was nice we
009had one of one of our students came back who's now a peer counselor in a college setting and gave some suggestions which i thought were great we had some students speak some parents i'm looking forward to the next forum which i believe is tomorrow i think it's a good start i think there's still a lot of work to be done and i think it's just the initial stages of it thanks christine i didn't have anything specific to add i just jody i just wanted to thank you for putting together the parent town hall meetings um you know parents are extremely overwhelmed have a lot of questions and giving them that much access and ability to ask those questions and feel comfortable about the fall is really really important so i appreciate that i know that
010at the district's um reopening task force meeting i sort of interrogated you and i will do that again tonight with the rest of the plan but i just genuinely appreciate all the work the district has done all summer i'm putting the plan together that we're about to hear about you know i serve on the governor's covid team and have drafted reopening guidelines for other industries not schools and sat on state ed's reopening task force um and you know the 145 page guidance document came out less than two weeks ago doh's accompanying guidance document which is not always consistent with state ed's guidance came out um and now we've already seen revisions and faqs and the new cdc guidance which is a whole other thing so i just although i ask a lot of questions i'm
011genuinely impressed with the amount of work that's gone into it i appreciate that we are thinking through things so well um so that we can really feel safe about whatever the plan is for the fall so i just want to make sure i said that before i started asking you a lot of questions anybody else on that note um how about we turn to our presentation for this evening um a review and discussion of the 2020 reopening plans as of today okay yes i'm glad you said that as of today um so brittany has the slide show so she's going to move it along um so brittany if you could go to the next slide which is essentially just our mission statement and our core values that we highlight in all of our board presentations
012so um this is a little flow chart to just highlight the time frame and um what we're planning so as uh willow indicated we received guidance from the doh in state ed last week it it has been updated and revised i expect that we'll continue to see changes uh we do are we're planning to submit our plan uh this by this friday uh so what our final our reopening plan will be is we will have it on our website in a prominent location where people can easily find it by different categories and that will meet the ada compliance for accessibility it also will help our families who have need languages other than english for um translation we are planning to put together kind of a pdf document of what our reopening plan looks like as
013of july 31st but the website is really where any changes and updates will occur after that so um that is our plan we have to submit it to state ed and a test that we're meeting their guidelines we also have to submit to doh in a test that we're meeting their guidelines and then we will move forward and as holly said it will be our plan literally as of friday and we do expect to still we still have a lot of planning to do and things will likely change we will continue also on our website we'll do an faq as things come up to also address people's questions as they come in so that is the time frame we're under currently so if brittany if you could go to the next slide so what the
014governor has said is that schools will be open if the infection rate of five percent or lower on a 14 day average and we will have to close if the infection rate gets above nine percent in a seven day average so that's right now the guidance that he's provided us for whether or not we'll be open or closed this slide actually i showed at the last board meeting for the focus areas of reopening all of these things we began planning on probably almost two months ago knowing that we were going to have to plan very safely and very meticulously of our reopening so we have subcommittees in all of these areas that we're really down to the very specific day-to-day operations of what school looks like or will look like come the fall so obviously
015health and safety is our top priority and we know that our that's our families that's our staff's top priority uh so the the guidance from state ed and doh does require screening it requires uh staff screening on a daily basis and it requires student screening on a periodic basis we believe that we should do daily screenings um which includes their cd questions that we're supposed to ask for screening as well as temperature checks so those will be done at home before students or staff arrive at school we recognize that there may be some situations where people are unable to do that at home so we will work a system out with those individuals whether it be staff or students to make sure that we're helping them with whatever screening needs that they have we're looking
016at an app we're currently using a google form which on your phone acts like an app for our staff who are currently working and our students in esy who are attending but we are looking at um more of a robust app which has better reporting mechanisms when we have obviously a lot more staff and students on site on a daily basis for we're talking about face coverings the doh guidance does suggest and in speaking with them six foot social distancing and wearing masks to the extent possible is the safest way to have students and staff on site so we will be requiring students and staff to wear to wear face coverings and social distance on school buses that face coverings will be required because you can't uh really uh socially distance when you're getting on
017and off buses even when we see students uh one to a c or with siblings there still is there still is obviously the potential that you're not six foot away from everyone at all times there are situations where uh there's medical conditions that prevent a student from wearing uh face cloths we have talked with um doh there are other options we could consider if it's possible where you could do a face shield which doesn't um provide as much protection but provide some protection we also can look at some protective barriers for when students are working with staff if they're not able to wear face masks and we do have some students at esy who are not able to wear face masks and it seems to be working fine social distancing i mentioned six feet in
018all directions in the classrooms and as much as possible on school grounds we will look at travel patterns uh to reduce um that contact when possible in phys ed course and band the guidance we received is 12 feet social distancing for safety and in general just as much social distancing as possible um when we're on campus and and on school buses pretty thanks uh so ppe we are in the process of ordering this as you can imagine there's a lot of things that are on back orders or delays we do have a good amount of face coverings we have a good amount of hand sanitizer face shields we're working on getting more of those um joanne menrath um was in contact with dr daley in town so we have a contact at suny albany to
019get more face shields so we will be providing ppe which includes gloves goggles gowns and then anything else that people need in order to create a safe environment obviously i think everyone knows hand washing is stressed a lot from the doh so we will be encouraging hand washing and when that's not possible we are ordering touchless hand sanitizers to be placed in classrooms and placed in common areas where particularly the middle and high school where there's large areas that you can put multiple hand sanitizer dispensers dispensers and encouraging students to do that regularly and we'll be providing instruction in that particular area as well and then cleaning and disinfecting um we have been working on what is our plan for cleaning obviously we'll be cleaning high touch areas more frequently during the day we talk
020about doorknobs and things such as that teachers will also assist in disinfecting their classrooms we'll be providing them with disinfectant and instructions on how to use that for the middle and high school classes where you have different groups of kids coming in the teachers will be cleaning those desks between cohorts of students coming in so they're sanitized before each group comes into the classroom [Music] um also there's been a lot of questions about covid and how we deal with suspected cases of staff or students so we do have a training uh all the staff who are on site this summer did the training already will be requiring that of all staff which talks about different types of symptoms to look up to look out for with covid we also have in all of our buildings
021a separate isolation location near the nurse's office so if there is a student or staff member that is showing with symptoms the nurse will assess that and that person would be go would go to the isolation area for treatment to again keep the nurse's office safe for other needs health needs that students or staff may have when the other piece that's important for us to consider is how do we help with contact tracing so for example if someone does test positive for covid we work closely with the albany county department of health and the more information we can provide about let's say a staff member how many people did they come in contact with where were they located we'll help doh with contact tracing and hopefully help under um give us guidance on what we
022need to do for follow-up steps with that some other conflict infection control strategies that we have obviously capacity and congestion social distancing i've already mentioned student arrival and dismissal time will be staggered in some buildings and kids will be dismissed in certain locations which i'll talk about a little bit more i'm sure you've heard a lot about ventilation outdoor air exchange to the greatest extent possible opening windows mr nolte has met with our subcommittee several times to talk about our ventilation system and we are in a situation fortunately where we do have a good outdoor air exchange system so that will be increased or has been increased to increase the flow of outside air and then we do we already have installed some plastic separators in office areas we're using some of that for esy
023program again to create more barriers when particularly social distance or mask requirements can't easily be maintained uh this slide i showed actually at our last board meeting to give people an idea of classroom capacity so when we talk about social distancing obviously the room size makes a difference and then other things that are in there already you know we have been modifying certain classrooms taking out things that are movable rearranging them this just gives you an idea about how many students can be in a location given the room size and these are generally what most of our room size fall under across the district so looking at elementary enrollment this is our original enrollment um if you look at primary uh we started with this was for uh when we did the budget actually you
024can see our clash ratios uh were around 19. about 19 and 18 the intermediate were a little bit higher 22 19 19 24 at slingerlands brittany if you could go to the next slide and so what we did in order to reduce our class numbers is looking to add take our rti teachers who typically have provided math support at the elementary school and they will become classroom teachers so you can see at eagle we plan to add an rti teacher to grades two and four at glenma in grade two hammer girl grades two and three and slingerlands at kindergarten uh grades three four and five so by doing that we reduce our ratios but we also were able to make sure that all of our classes were in appropriate classroom settings so prior to doing
025this we would have had to use uh the gymnasiums or cafeterias for classrooms so this allows us to put kids in classrooms with teachers with appropriate social distancing and you can see the ratios that dropped with the additional sections so eagle is about 17 and 19 and glenmont is about hammer girls about 15 and you can see the ratios for slingerland so that definitely helps with the ratios that we had prior to adding the rti teachers and middle school just to give you an idea of our enrollment um we have a little over a thousand students and at the high school uh about 1450 students currently enrolled so what is our plans for instruction um so basically the guidance that was provided is that from doh is we should look to have an online option
026a hybrid in schools with in-person instruction recognizing that as we move through the school year we could likely find ourselves in any of these models so what we have is um we're proposing these options that families with health or safety concerns uh can be remote learning so we will be sending something out to families um in the next week or so giving them specific information which i'll talk a little bit more about on what does our online option look like with a hybrid option looking at certain students who are on site and certain students who are participating in online and looking at also what does it look like for what grade levels for students who are in person um so what we're proposing is that we we're able to with appropriate safety precautions in social
027distancing we can have all of our k5 students in five days a week with in-person instruction we can also accommodate all of our grade six students with a change in schedule to be more along the lines of an elementary model program we also are planning to have for special education our intensive skills and skills students k-12 in every day we're also planning to have our enl students in every day k-12 and we this is still um not certain but we are trying to get our career and technical ed students in in the high school every day so the rotating schedule and online uh would be in grades seven through twelve where we broke it up by the alphabet so we have about a fifty percent split here every day so at the high school middle
028school we're looking at reduced numbers of students on any given day and we would rotate those so if you are a student with the last name that begins with a let's say it's monday you would be on site the next day you would be at home but you would be logging in participating in a live stream instruction with your classmates uh via likely a zoom model so prioritizing in-person instruction who may need additional skills i mentioned k-5 grade 6 our special ed students enl and cte we are looking at um a phased re-entry for the school year to allow smaller groups of students to come in meet their teachers and there would be a combination of remote in getting some students in we haven't quite worked out the details of what that phase re-entry looks
029like but we do believe that the safest way to begin school is to have reduced numbers as we begin the school year so everyone gets used to the new procedures that are in place so grades k through five we'll talk a little bit about the in-person learning so they would be on site every day with social distancing protocol calls um after we do have a phase-in of whatever that looks like the rti teachers were reassigned that reduces the average class size to about special areas will be primarily pushed in a choir would not be offered at the beginning of the year sharing of materials and supplies will not be permitted to the extent possible there is a little bit of flexibility in that if we do have to share supplies that they just need to
030be disinfected between use but we are looking to really limit any sharing of materials and then obviously we recognize that students need to move their elementary children so we will look to provide movement and mass breaks built into the school day to the extent possible recess we are working currently on what does recess look like we believe that kids should be outside they should have recess obviously we need to take into account social distancing what kinds of activities are appropriate so we have a committee currently putting together ideas and suggestions for what recess can look like lunches would be served in the classrooms and then obviously staff will be encouraged to use outdoor space to the extent possible again weather permitting and we are looking to get tents uh covered tents so we'll people will
031have more access to go outside even if the weather isn't you know great in grade six again we're looking to have grade six on site every day with social distancing the schedule would be modeled similar to the elementary schools where stu students are assigned more in a cohort model teachers will still keep teach the content by subject area so one teacher in that court will be responsible primarily for ela world languages would not be offered in sixth grade because those teachers would be helping to reduce the class sizes and they will help co-teach with content area teachers we are hopefully looking for ways where we can still provide some level of language exposure but it wouldn't be an everyday language class that we've had in the past specials would be scheduled like an elementary program
032so students would have music art pe and library pe would be twice a week again sharing of materials and supplies would not be allowed movement and mask breaks would be built into the school day similar to elementary pe choir and band all require 12 foot distancing so this is will significantly limit activities um and scheduling of students so at the middle school choir and band are scheduled typically during home base so in the past many students didn't have home base because of that this year we anticipate that smaller numbers of students would be able to go to choir or ban and that would obviously the activities would look different so we do anticipate more students would be in home base on the days that they in the past would not lunches can't be served in
033the classrooms so lunches will be served in three large areas with six foot distancing those would be in the gyms in the cafeteria and then again staff will be encouraged to use outdoor space to the extent possible uh so let's go on to seven through twelve what does this uh model look like so our seven through twelve students uh we do not have the capacity to social distance and have all of our students in every day so we have a plan for on-site alternating days we're saying orange and black we didn't want to use a and b but that's still up in the air for discussion uh school day will still follow an eight or nine period day similar to the other levels pe choir and band do require 12 foot distancing so it would
034limit activities sharing of materials and supplies wouldn't be allowed students would be assigned will be assigned to a classroom every period which is a change for the high school students who in the past have not necessarily been assigned to a study hall we do need to track students when they're in our building to go back to contact tracing if necessary and high school students will not be permitted to leave campus as they have been in the past um i mentioned health screenings so this is a little image of our current health screener all staff will be required to complete and submit a daily held screen screening that follows the cdc guidance and we're asking families to complete a daily health screening that will be submitted to the school health offices brittany you can move to
035the next slide there thanks athletics and co-curricular activities so fall sports have currently been delayed until september 21st um hopefully we'll hear something in the next few weeks about what the plan may or may not be for fall sports if they are permitted we would obviously follow doh and new york state education department's guidance uh co-curricular activities there are some that could be done virtually and if that's the case we would allow them because there will not be at least in the beginning of the year after school buses cleaning and disinfecting i talked a little bit about some of these earlier so obviously we're following the guidance of cdc in boh some areas that cleaning and disinfection would be increased bathrooms the health offices and isolation rooms i mentioned the frequently touched surfaces and common
036areas cafeterias and kitchens uh classrooms and then the buses and any school vehicles will be cleaned more regularly desks will be cleaned by teachers and staff between different cohorts of students no outside visitors will be allowed on school campuses unless it's for safety or the well-being of students any parents or guardians would be required to pick up and drop off their child outside uh during the school day so we're working out the logistics of what that looks like and then any visitor who does come to school just like our students and staff would be required to wear a mask and follow all the safety precautions that are in place transportation uh the guidance does say we did do a transportation survey um a few weeks ago that when possible parents are encouraged to transport their
037child that is the safest way to get kids to and from school students and school staff must wear an acceptable face covering at all times on the buses and should maintain social distancing to the extent possible and as i mentioned earlier um we can we plan to sit uh students uh alternating seats one student to a c or with siblings however whenever anyone is getting on and off the bus social distancing is not possible so best practice will be to stay as far apart as possible and wear a face covering students will be assigned to a seat and they're not permitted to alter from their scheduled morning and afternoon route arrival and dismissal so we're still working on some of the logistics of this but we believe that at the elementary schools we need to
038stagger our parent drop off and pick up time so they're not at the same time as the buses so we're planning currently that parent drop off would be prior to the buses in the morning we talked about potentially needing to stagger it in an alphabetic way where a certain group of parents drop off between these intervals and another group drops off between the this 10-minute interval um and then the same thing at dismissal parents would pick up their students prior to the buses again in potentially in groups where maybe as well just use a at to k since that's where we're using alphabetically and l through z uh we also are looking at when students arrive having them enter and exit the buildings at different locations uh to avoid having a large congestion of students
039in any one and entrance or exit at the middle school one of the things that we will ask parents to do is please do not drop off um students prior to 8 am we've had in the past sometimes where students are dropped off you know 45 minutes early and that's just not possible during the coming year dismissal will be staggered by grade level and potentially exiting the building at different locations thus high school students cannot be dropped off prior to 7 45 and then students would report directly to their period one class in the past they would typically hang out in the cafeteria or in the central foyer this year they would have to go right to their classroom and then we are looking at dismissing students by different wings of the building at the
040end of the day so some of our next steps in the planning process obviously we receive the guidance that we're currently working from we're submitting our plan at the end of this week governor cuomo did say he would expect to provide statewide or regional decisions the first week in august and from there our plans may be changing i would expect that there will be changes as we move forward so again what we submit at the end of this week will likely change so that's where we will be providing regular updates on our website and communication uh to our staff and to our families so um we are having several parent forums which i parent town halls which i mentioned earlier there will be online a q a between august 3rd and 5th we will record
041those so if people are not able to participate they can watch them at a later time so we are hoping to get information out to parents specifically about the different options that they can decide for their child if they opt to send their child in person we already are accounting for that if they are looking for a virtual option we would like to know by august 15th because that will help us in our planning and our staffing [Music] moving forward so we'll be sending out information with a survey um with information specific to their child about if they prefer a remote option and then we will be able to more plan more significantly with our staff under with the numbers that we have one thing i did want to clarify because i think there are
042some confusion um about a virtual or remote option versus homeschooling and the remote option is certainly a choice that we are providing to our families they would still be enrolled as a bethlehem student they would follow a similar educational path and curriculum although we all know that a virtual program is not the same as being in class but we would align the instruction to our curriculum it would be a blend of real-time daily connections so students would potentially log in i'll take an elementary example uh log in in the morning the teacher would have them participate in their morning meetings perhaps a read-aloud and then the other part of their work would be self-directed or pre-recorded lessons the student would then when the family feels comfortable could return to the classroom with without curriculum gaps
043and they would be familiar with their classmates if they return during the course of the year when a family elects to homeschool their child they no longer are a bethlehem student the curriculum is then determined by the parents and they parents are required to create an individual home instruction plan and provide quarterly reports on student progress students are primarily taught by their parents or sometimes they participate in an online independent curriculum which does not necessarily align with the bethlehem curriculum or new york state curriculum so i just wanted to differentiate between those because i have had several questions and i think there's some confusion about those two options so for our virtual option if families want their child to only participate in a virtual option for students in grades k-5 i mentioned that they would
044log in daily the t there would be an assigned teacher of record so their classroom teacher and they would participate in some kind of a meeting an activity to start each day most of the instruction following that would be done through independent or assigned tasks or pre-recorded videos in grade six students would follow an assigned schedule they would receive live instruction in the course subject areas um which would be logging into their classes as scheduled and participating with a teacher and their classmates to the extent possible students would receive all non-core instruction through again recorded videos and assigned tasks and in grade 7 through 12 students would follow an assigned schedule and receive live instruction in all subjects except for physical education they would receive phys ed through recorded videos and assigned tasks so our
045family forums i mentioned i just wanted to highlight that there will be three of those next week august third fourth and fifth it's staggered time so hopefully one of those days and times are conducive for um everyone's schedule we are also planning to provide student forums for students in grades 6 through 12 following those family forums and the building principles that we'll be scheduling that and providing more specific student information in more toward mid-august students are welcome to participate as well as their parents in those in the sessions listed above and students are also welcome to participate with their families in the forums as well okay so i'm sure there are questions that people have uh jody what the first question i know there's going to be a lot more but um if a family
046chooses the remote learning option can they change their mind at any time through the year and as a follow-up to that if they do change their mind will their child be able to re-enroll at their home elementary school if they're an elementary school child um so right now again we're still working out the specifics but we're thinking that students would be able to make a change at the quarterly marking points so about 10 weeks so if you opt for virtual to begin the year we would ask that parents and students commit to that for those 10 weeks because of lots of reasons for the planning of students returning to school staffing implications as well as transportation um there is we would obviously try and accommodate students back into their home schools but if for example
047i a student wants to return to grade three at let's say eagle and they cannot have any more students in grade three because of social distancing but slingerlands had capacity then the student would would go to that building so that would be potentially there is a possibility that the student would not return to their home school can you just keeping with the remote learning can you help me understand why we can't and maybe there's still time to make sort of a more robust remote plan for the k through 5 cohort with more synchronous learning etc well there's a couple factors in one is in order to get our students on site we are using all of our staff as i saw our rti teachers included to reduce class sizes to make a safer environment so
048we don't have staff that we can just allocate to remote learning they would be part of a scheduled class um so that's that's one factor um the other factor is that there's a lot of research that shows not you don't want young kids online for extended periods of times it's not a great model of learning to be very honest if in fact we have a larger percentage of families that do want a virtual option then we may be able to allocate staff to do more virtual planning but again i think you know we all experience this and i think many parents who had young children who were in kindergarten in first grade to try and keep them engaged for any length of time online is a challenge so certainly if we had the capacity perhaps
049we could definitely build in some more contact time but right now with the staffing um that this that's the model that we can plan for so if everyone has to stay home at any period of time does that change because now you have that classroom teacher teaching only virtually right so if if we were closed like we were in the spring we have a different um plan for what remote instruction looks like which would be a little bit more teacher contact time and i don't know if dave if you want to speak to that i know that we have several different models yeah so we would essentially break each class into smaller pods if you will so the day would start off with a whole class morning meeting and then kids would rotate through live
050instructions say um you know you would break the class into thirds say um so one third of the class would get like 30 minutes of ela instruction then the next third would come through and then in the afternoon you would do like a third would get like 20 to 30 minutes of math the third 20 to 30 minutes of math and then the other third 20 30 minutes of math and during the times that they're not meeting synchronously with their teacher that's when they would be doing social studies asynchronously or science asynchronously or a special area asynchronously so they'd be getting a minimum of this again this is just one of the options we're looking at sort of um you know in about an hour and a half to two hours a day of synchronous
051and the rest will be asynchronous um because teachers would have the capacity to do that because they're not also trying to navigate students in front of them dave if we were shut down like we were in the spring for six to twelve um would they be still following would they continue to follow every day in eight period schedule with live that piece we haven't quite decided yet we could go back to a four and four but students would be teachers would be expected to deliver live instruction regardless of what the struct the calendar looks like every period they will be delivering live instruction it won't be a once to twice a week per class type thing it would be the students would follow their schedule and they'd be logging on again whether that looks trying
052to do eight periods every day is can be challenging for kids um every other day is not as awful um so there's a couple different models we're looking at but the kids would be logging in much more frequently for live instruction um six twelve yeah okay would there be more um accountability for the students with respect to grades yeah so there'd be you know we'd be taking attendance like we always had we'd go back to we'd still be utilizing much more traditional grading practices with flexibility built in of course um but we would not be doing the sort of evidence of learning not evidence of learning um it would be a much more familiar traditional grading scheme of the kids would be that they're accustomed to using uh to be honest you know in the
053spring you know all all the sort of experts were telling us that you know the best practice for online learning was to go to a evidence of learning not evidence of learning grading scheme and most students didn't like it like they really wanted to know like i don't want to know that my essay is demonstrating evidence of learning i don't know whether my essay is you know a 70 or a 90 to you know students were really um i don't know if demoralize is the right word but they just they did not buy into the evidence of learning not evidence of learning so we would go back to a much more traditional grading schema again with flexibilities built in in terms of time frames um and things of that nature knowing that not everyone's in
054the same situation working from home and also just to point out the state ed guidance was very clear that we need to be doing instruction that meets the state uh standards and prepare students for the assessments the regents exams i don't see them canceling regents exams this year again or the ap exam or the college level so what we did last year will not work for the coming year so with that being said i have a couple questions on the pre-recorded videos for k-5 is that the classroom teachers that would prepare that on top of their in person if they have students who are doing remote learning it says they'll re receive all remaining instructions for pre-recorded videos so we'd be using things like khan academy i ready lessons um science we're actually in the
055process right now of recording all of the science labs that the kids would be doing throughout the year knowing that they're not gonna be able to do them in per even if they're in person they're not going to be able to do them um most likely so recording all the science labs so even the in-person kids will most likely be watching the labs um via video um social studies would be again via video um teachers again this goes back to the capacity issue right you can't teach all day long with students in front of you and be recording lessons on top of that so we're gonna have to use recorded lessons that have already been vetted and published and um okay you know yeah so also if we go back to a remote learning structure
056let's just say because pandemic requirements requires to be at home part of the issue in the spring too is having faculty they had their kids at home so where now we're looking to have them teach their their periods their required periods remotely how does that model change if their family life is not conducive to that unless it's prohibitive because of governor's orders um teachers would be coming in to deliver the remote instruction from their classrooms this is actually something many teachers requested in the spring because they just don't have the resources at home and there are those distractions at home um so the expectation would be again unless there's other stipulations or regulations surrounding it the teachers would be coming in to deliver the lessons sort of uninterrupted from their classroom for that very reason
057well i'm i'm just thinking so if they're home though and all their children are home and they have younger children they don't have ready-made daycare available so we have a period of time where teachers may not be available and do we have lesson plans in place and somebody that can deliver them for those situations where we might be in a period of time where they're not available so i think christine to your point um there are obviously options for families who find themselves in that situation um and are able to come in and we would obviously work with them i think if we found ourselves closed like we did last year a lot of things would need to look differently right because you do have those limitations so i think what we're talking about is
058if we're in remote option we have to be closed for a couple of weeks we can transition back and forth between on-site if what you're i think you're referring to is if we find ourselves where we were last march and spring i think things look much differently for everybody for everybody okay thank you oh chris you look like you have a question oh i got a few um first of all on the first slide i talked about the the numbers the state gave the five percent open and then like the nine percent are we stuck to those numbers because those are pretty high numbers like if we get back to those numbers i'd be very worried so are we if we get to four instead of five can we as a district say that's too
059much for us but we have to go with what the state says um that's not really clear i mean that's what the governor said um i believe that at any time we can change our model um so that's my understanding okay um next question i you know i'm a teacher and i'm all for the accountability piece but uh my wife's a kindergarten teacher i had a funny conversation with her earlier about washing hands and the washing of hands and i was like well that's not a big deal and she's like you know pulling her hair out i'm like well how long would that take i don't think like two minutes and she starts laughing like to wash a whole kit so you know with things like that the washing of hands with the arrival and
060dismissal we are significantly cutting into um a student's day in terms of academic expectations you know are we looking at like having teachers condensed curriculum limit curriculum um just because we're not going to have the time in each day to provide what we provided in previous years yeah dave you wanted to we've already been working on that so yeah we have um teams of teachers k5 i mean it's really k-12 but more critically i guess k-5 um because of the issues you just raised working on prioritizing our curriculum um so that we're you know trying to figure out you know what are sort of the critical elements of each grade level and really laying that out for teachers um we're sort of breaking into three components like these are the things that you absolutely have
061to teach these are the most critical standards within a particular grade level um these are the things it'd be great if you could get to them and then these are kind of like you know stretch goals if you will to get to um and these are all based on you know fortunately the standards documents themselves are laid out that way where sort of it's kind of like you know 85 percent of the standards are considered critical um you know like 10 are considered like the next tier and then 5 percent are sort of if you can get to them get to them um so we're utilizing the standards documents as guidance for that um and pairing down the curriculum for lack of a better word yeah but it's prioritizing really is a better way to
062put it okay i have three three more questions and i promise i'll stop um in the 712 model on the hybrid model if i'm a teacher am i in the building every day on the hybrid model or do i like in my home the other day you're in every day because you're going to have half your students in one day and then the other half the next um and then while you're teaching those students you'll possibly be live streaming to the students that are at home okay um this is one that was brought to me by another teacher back in the spring and i thought about and i'm struggling with it in terms of paper and handouts you know if i'm a math teacher hypothetically first um and i hand out a math homework and
063then i collect it and then i pass it back like the the possibility for germs and all kinds of stuff i know we're not sharing materials but in terms of handing out materials are we gonna have guidelines in terms of distribution of paper like i'm even thinking about making my class paperless next year yeah we have we actually have that in our internal kind of you know of all the little things that you don't necessarily have in in this reopening plan but uh the current guidance is that if you're using paper um or even books uh that you know you might give out a student five or six seven books um you have a location for students to put them and you leave them for you know 24 hours seems to be the current guidance
064is relatively safe if you want to leave them for you know 48 hours um that's fine too but that that's the current guidance that you don't just kind of collect and turn back papers um regularly that you let them sit for a period of time just in case although there's and speaking with doh there's a less concern for transmission uh through things like that so their guidance to us was minimally 24 hours let a piece of paper sit before touching it yeah another thing to keep in mind is i mean we're very fortunate in that we did decide to purchase the chromebooks that are both touch and stylus enabled um so i know many students are now used to doing their math right on their chromebook with the stylus um so limiting paper is less
065of an issue for us as for districts that don't have the chromebooks with the stylus all right last question i promise um this the screenings that the parents are going to do every morning i think 80 to 90 of kids are gonna have no problem with that what are we doing what's what's the protocol for that five percent that never bring in a sheet of paper ever i mean are we gonna send them home like how's that gonna play out so we're planning to do it with an app for ease of use for everyone we could do paper if someone needed that or our nurses can work something out with the family that maybe there's a phone call made or something i mean ultimately we are doing screenings for the health and safety of all
066of our kids and students and staff so that is a requirement from doh that we do screenings and we're requesting that everyone do it daily if a student or family forgets to do it one day you know it's not the end of the world we recognize that this is a change and people have to get used to it but if if a family continues to not participate in it we do have a remote option which they could do that if they're not willing to kind of follow our safety procedures that we have in place because i'm sure most families it's not going to be a problem you know but we just there's always going to be a few where it just repeated and this is one of those things where it's not like a field
067trip slip or something else it's like oh well like this is like you know the safety of the entire building we're talking about here yeah i i'm gonna go with i'm not really thinking that 80 90 of the families will actually do this on a regular basis i think maybe for the first couple weeks but if they're actually going into an office or getting ready to go to work i remember what it was like when i had three young kids i i could see myself forgetting not wanting to intentionally but i think we have a high higher standard to know if if if these kids are coming without having their temperature taken i i think we need to have something in place if they didn't do it that we need to do it ourselves like
068somehow we need to check the app before they enter the classroom i mean it may not be doh guidance but i think the fever is one of the biggest factors in determining whether or not somebody's sick actually most of um in our discussions with doh the temperature checks is not um that reliable to be honest really yeah there's a lot of uh people who have coped they don't present with a fever until sometimes not at all and sometimes several days in so that's not necessarily the factor that someone would show um so in regards to the screening we're hoping that most people are compliant with the reason we went with the daily requirement is because hope that it gets people into a routine you know just like you make your kids lunch or you pack
069this up that you know i have it on my calendar every morning i get a little alarm to do this the one um app that we're currently looking at um i think sends an email or a text message i think i don't know dave if you know what's up you'll get either an email or a text every day um and the nice thing is you won't even have to leave that in order to complete the form you just do it right so you open your email you complete it right on the email and you're done right so i'm thinking for the elementary school level where you know they would need child care if their children were suppo would be homesick because they had a fever or whatever that they'd be more likely to say you
070know go ahead people could do that anyhow i mean they could not be honest when they're submitting that i mean we're hoping that everyone is mindful of the fact that this is a safety precaution and we'll be honest about it so we trying to find an app that does send a message every day or a text message will hopefully and then we will there's obviously some people who um will have it struggle with that so we've had some of that in esy i mean it's been a good test for us to see how it works um and we've worked with the nurses have worked with the families to figure out some solutions okay and jody i just i don't remember if it was in the presentation or not but obviously another part of the plan
071right is that school staff particularly school nurses but really everyone is trained on identifying what symptoms look like and there's sort of that monitoring that goes on throughout the day right yeah that's in the training um that everyone's required to take okay um i i am wondering if there's still ongoing task force work on what the elementary remote curriculum might look like i don't want to focus entirely on it but i feel like if we can livestream others i don't understand why we can't live stream the elementary teachers and i just feel like there could be more work there so we don't have to talk about it now but is that still up for debate somewhere yeah so that we're still working on these models to live stream elementary we don't actually have some of
072the technology that's needed for that um in the elementary buildings but um we're yes we're constantly looking at that and we expect that things will change um as we move forward but that would be something we could discuss with the reopening task force okay and i mean there's still time to acquire technology with the older kids um the older students so we have k-6 coming full-time i'm wondering if we've done the math or can do the math about how much more room we would need to return seventh grade in person and potentially other grades in person i'm just i'm not i don't have a good sense of how big of an obstacle that is space wise yeah it's we can't do it um we have i mean i have a spreadsheet mike and mark put
073together of all the rooms in the capacity so the middle school and high school rooms uh many of them are not that big um so they're already looking at some sections you know opening up some of the rooms that have uh the slider partitions in them to make enough room so there's really no way to get more than 50 of the kids and there's also and you have to think about eating where they're going to eat there's only so many locations to get six foot distancing for for that as well so we looked at all of the possibilities for um for that but really 50 is reasonable to be able to accommodate all the different things that have to happen during the day at the middle school in particular i noticed at the slide you
074don't want parents dropping kids off before 8 a.m even at a 50 capacity are we looking at a plan for what that's going to look like if we have everybody coming in to drop their children off at about eight a.m only having experienced the middle school parking lot at that time of the morning on a you know in normal because it's a little crazy it's 50 it's better it's gonna be better yeah it's better um we are looking at um having students go in different entrances where also the buses sometimes get there sooner so in the past they've all waited and held students on the bus till i think eight o'clock so they're not going to do that they're going to the buses are going to pull in drop the kids off and the kids
075will go in and go to their um home rooms so hopefully that will help with all the congestion of everyone going in one entrance uh at the same time um the you mentioned band but uh not orchestra four seven through twelve um will is that different because they can only have to be six feet apart yeah or orchestra only has to be six feet apart and then at the k through five level will there be any orchestra or band um yes orchestra is planned band i'm not sure about yet because of space how that would work uh with 12 foot distancing that is going to be tough okay and then in the same music category with choir um is there any possibility at the upper levels of using the using outdoor space um for kids
076to be 12 feet apart and sing i think that yes that's something we're looking at is for outdoor space i mentioned that we're looking at getting some tents so that is a possibility i know the choir teachers are also looking at alternate you know activities they can do with the kids as well so um i know they've been working on that but yeah singing 12 feet outdoors would be certainly safer um again though you've got still 12 feet is pretty far apart um and we live in the northeast so outdoors is somewhat limited i know i know but i do i mean we do send our elementary school kids outside almost you know throughout the year unless the you know it's pouring rain or the wind chill or whatever makes it sub-zero so i think
077if they actually brought coats to school the high school students could go outside um and it might might be good yeah we're that's definitely a possibility if we can get the kids to bring a coat to school that would be really good yeah i think it would be um i think people would be happy to hear that it's still at least under three absolutely yeah we're still looking at that ali if you're done with the arts can um can we go back to the blocks or the not block schedule actually the eight eight nine period and maybe why not a block schedule um and before i get to ask i'm also interested in the how we arrived at the every other day as opposed to like rotating weeks for purposes of you know if the
078idea is not to intermingle um i don't know i just sort of wanted to hear the the theory there and to understand if i'm the parent of an orange group seventh grader then my child goes in person monday wednesday friday and then the next week tuesday thursday yep so we we talked about different options the staff after experiencing [Music] online instruction last year felt that students would be more accountable if they were on site with the teachers every other day you know a week at a time i i think is a long time for kids who do not do well with online instruction um also you know in speaking with i think dr gaffiri on our task force basically said if you if you're not cohorting kids which you can't do um at the high
079school level or middle school we can to some extent and we we will then whether you have them in every other day or every week probably doesn't make that much of a difference to be honest with you it's the same kids with each other the days that they're on site um and he said really the biggest challenge is just that it makes it a little more complicated for contact tracing but didn't feel like there was real any more significant safety risks by doing the alternating day versus a week model um and dave do you want to talk about the block schedule piece i mean i guess the easiest explanation is the heavy enough lift switching from in-person instruction to virtual to also switch to block scheduling at the same time now you have to train
080teachers in best practices in virtual instruction and best practices and blocks schedule instruction which you know preparing to teach in a block is far different from preparing to teach in a 40-minute structure so to have to sort of retrain teachers in pretty large areas um we just felt like it was just too much to ask of the teachers to to be able to become experts in block schedule training they're taking in virtual teaching in two months essentially right um so to keep things sort of as also for students to keep things as familiar and as comfortable as possible um in a virtual or hybrid world um it made the most sense just to stick with the traditional um [Music] okay is there sorry i just keep asking questions um professional development you just talked about
081how hard it is to teach teachers to educate this way and what is the plan for professional development prior to the beginning of the school year yes i mean so we've already sent out a bunch of sort of asynchronous options um we have our technology boot camp that comes up in august um it's it's this year it's two-day virtual but it's actually extended beyond that because it's not on campus so we can offer much much more than that um we have probably 18 groups of teachers right now working in study teams all summer long um that are more sort of specifically geared towards what it is they're trying to do so we might have a group of six third grade teachers that are all working together to kind of not work a little bit on
082both things like a little bit on curriculum and at the same time how to convert that curriculum to virtual um so there's a lot of pd ongoing right now um there's more to come in august and then we have a couple days in september three days now before the students arrive where um two or three days before the students arrive where we're going to be able to do some pd in regards to professional development how are you so as a teacher supposed to be engaging online students on a day that's a b day if they have their a students in the classroom but b students are live streaming how does that model look and are they engaging anybody online and is there instruction for that yep so we actually sent out instructions and a a
083model video today and we're gonna be sending out another model video soon that basically shows we had five people in a classroom um they were receiving live instruction and then we had a bunch of people logging on from home um to sort of simulate what it would look like um but it works really really well you basically the huge large monitors that we now have in every classroom would have the zoom screen up with everybody's picture that's at home and then the teacher would be using another device to do the actual presenting um so the students the students in the classroom are looking at the large screen seeing all of their um friends at home and they're able to interact back and forth and then the teachers using their personal device to actually do the
084presenting it worked really really well it almost it was kind of a really good flow between students participating from home students participating from within the class um it worked much much better than we actually anticipated that it would so are we going to request that are we would we require the students have their picture available also instead of like i know a lot of times in the spring they had their little avatars going and also making sure that you know everybody's not in their pjs and dressed you know like a dress code appropriate day are those gonna be yeah those are all part of we have sort of zoom etiquette if you will requested a lot of students um but at the end of the day if they turn that camera off i mean i
085don't know really what you know it would just be a private conversation i guess you can but they're also keep in mind that i mean there are equity reasons why students turn their camera off um and if they're on the chromebook they it's not as simple as saying well just change your background um on the chromebooks you can't change the background so you know you don't know what situation a student is in it might not be appropriate for them to have their their camera on um so you just have to be sort of sensitive to some of the equity issues surrounding using cameras i think can i just follow up on christine's real quick because i i i misread something here and i apologize i was being ignorant um so on the hybrid model so
086if i'm a through k i am getting a lesson the i thought and i apologize that the next day l through z would get that same lesson because we'd never make it through the year right i mean but i just i just i just i was thinking that i will admit my stupidity at times so a through k is getting isn't that would that be tricky though at times if it's you know if it was if you're doing the the how-to right in front of everybody like a math lesson you know the first day you're doing the and i mean they'll be logging in and they'll be able to participate in a lesson they'll be able to ask questions they'll on their chromebook at home they'll be getting the the live stream of the teacher
087doing the problems on the board um it you know the only difference is you won't be sitting in the same room but i mean it very much will look like i was surprised it very much looks like if you've ever sat in a distance learning classroom that have been in existence now for like 30 years right um it it doesn't look all that different from one of those models it works quite well and will we get feedback from parents or students or well maybe not parents that are not participating in the class but students and how the model is progressing just to kind of give us some feedback on how the live streaming with the in-person class is going and if it's working or because we can't all be you can't be in a classroom
088all the time checking on every single uh class to make sure it's working appropriately for all the students since it's a different type of learning model how are we going to kind of check in and weigh in that it's working we can get feedback but to be honest um in-person learning doesn't work for all students so i you know i want to be a little bit careful right um there's there's no perfect model um the way that we're going to be live streaming is the best that we can possibly do that i mean we don't have other technologies to make this work right um the best we can do is have students in the front of the room on the big screen and the teacher presenting them from another device like i said it's very
089very similar nature to what distance learning classrooms have been doing for a long time is it exactly the same as being in person absolutely not but for some students this model might actually work better than being in the classroom um kids with anxiety issues um sometimes do better with synchronous and asynchronous learning just because they're in the comfort of their own home um than they are within an actual classroom um so yeah no i just met like what makes it feedback for the in-person learning i think you get similar results in that some students love coming to school every day and they love the in-person instruction and other students do not like in-person instruction i i guess i should have rephrased the question are we going to monitor how the students are performing compared to
090past performance to ensure that we have the same success rate as we did with in-person learning and i understand that in-person learning isn't for everyone but if we kind of see a drop are we going to have our finger on the pulse to make sure that our students are still engaged still successful as they were in previous years i think i understand yes um so i think you're talking more in terms of grades then yeah grades performance um the other thing i would add with christine what you're um there are some kids who do uh find with the online option and we know there's some kids who struggled um one of the things that with a hybrid model if we notice that there's you know a few some students who are really struggling with logging
091on when they're at home if we have capacity because we have on-site learning we could say to that student you know what just like we're doing with our enl students you're going to come to school every day you know so again we have limited capacity but if we can make those accommodations and that is under some of the guidance um that i i don't i don't know if it was stated or doh that um to target students who are struggling in an online environment if you can accommodate them that is our you know rationale for bringing in our skills and intensive skills students we know those students do not do well with online learning and will not because of they it's not a great model for them our enl students struggled um so if there
092are students that we're seeing are really having a hard time we potentially could say that we need them to be coming in every day yeah i can see some kids on ieps in middle school that might need that model every day of uh structure in person or they're not they're not just they're not gonna get the material at home right i wanna make sure that everybody has a chance to talk and i think that meredith um has been questioned for a while so i do have some questions thanks holly um first of all i wanted to be back on something chris was talking about a while ago about um papers in the classroom when um i look at you know kindergarten first grade classrooms and what those children are learning they're learning handwriting they're learning
093how to form letters those teachers are right up next to those kids looking at the piece of paper you know pointing to something on a piece of paper showing the child exactly how to form the letter how are we dealing with the um physical distance that those younger children you know the physical closeness the younger children require with their teachers so one of the um things we are looking at is barriers that can be put between a student and teacher some will set um you can send it on a desk the plastic barriers um i think many of our teachers in esy opted for face shields in combination with cloth masks or some did goggles so there's additional basically um you can use additional ppe to reinforce the safety pieces so you it allows you
094to work in a closer proximity to the child okay because that also has to do just with in general the six feet in the classroom i understand our desks are going to be six feet apart but um the teacher is going to have to be walking around the classroom children you know get up um even even in you know the older kids we just can't actually keep everyone six feet apart at all times so i think we're gonna have to really think about that um and i wanted to um know exactly what the classrooms are gonna look like i think it would be great i know i think you mentioned this that perhaps you would show um families pictures of or videos of what the classrooms are actually going to look like i think families
095would really appreciate this because we're having a hard time visualizing it um if the desks are six feet apart if everything has been taken out um what what are our kids going to be working with especially say the younger years where they have a lot more manipulative um things that they're traditionally been working on what are we going to have in the classroom for those younger kids to work with to learn how to count that kind of thing we're looking at getting students um as many materials and supplies that are theirs and there's the loan they have a little box of manipulatives or whatever that they would use so there's less sharing um if there is sharing i mean there can be sharing it just has to be disinfected and clean between uses so um
096there is guidance that lets us know that what we should be doing if in fact we're sharing materials or supplies the recommendation is you limit that as much as possible so certainly we can have students have much of their own supplies right at their desk um that they can use um on a regular basis okay is that something we have the budget for to to buy you know 20 sets of lego blocks for each classroom or well i mean i don't know that they're going to get lego blocks for every student but that would be a situation where if a student was working with lego blocks before another student could use it we would have a cleaning um you know they would have to be clean before another student used that okay yeah um and
097then switching uh to the middle school i'm not really clear um about the sixth grade i don't understand i guess how we have enough teachers for sixth grade because what i'm envisioning is you know we traditionally have 300 kids in sixth grade and we have enough teachers for those 300 kids to be in classrooms of you know 22 kids um if we now have each classroom to have you know 12 children or whatever is going to fit in that particular classroom how do we have enough teachers to staff all those classrooms we're using language teachers because we're not offering language to pick up sections we're also using some of our music teachers because we're not having music every day music would be as special and they would be co-teaching for lack of a better i
098guess descriptor with a content area teacher uh so for example one of our language teachers would be teaching um atm which is our technology computer program she would work with the other teacher for a couple periods and then have her own sections that she would be instructing a language teacher for example is assigned to work collaboratively with a science teacher the science teacher would provide the lead content and the language teacher would be there to help implement the lesson and they would be in a larger space like so let's take the gym in a period that they're not eating lunches in there you can have two sections of kids in the gym with two teachers the science teacher would be the one delivering the content and then the language teacher would be offering the support
099working with the kids following that up so that was the way we're able to reduce the numbers in each sections and use the staffing that we had with a modified with a new schedule in place okay i guess i'm confused because what i thought you were saying was that sixth grade was going to be similar to elementary school such as there's going to be the same 20 kids are going to be sitting in one classroom and the teachers are going to be rotating in is that what it is so the kids are going to be cohorted and the teachers will move to them so the kids will pretty much remain together okay um but in the teachers we'll move but one teacher will be the ela teacher still one teacher will be the math teacher
100on patroon and the teacher will rotate to the classes so the kids do still stay together okay but you were just talking about like going to a gym first a few classes that okay that they have but they'll still stay with their cohort okay um okay and then uh i had a couple other questions um i just wanted to encourage once again um more use of outdoor space like holly was talking you know we send kids out in weather that we wouldn't normally want to go outside in but we know it's good for them to get movement and fresh air and even more so now i think it's easier to say that in elementary school i know it it's going to be hard to get high school and middle school physically out of their classroom
101outside and back in in the 45 minute period that they have um so i really hope we can work on figuring that out because i think it's the healthiest thing for everyone and i hope that we can use this time to imagine some really interesting ways to incorporate outdoor education i mean this is the time to do it some really interesting science classes i hope that we don't just march the kids outside and then you know make them do math problems while sitting outside that doesn't make sense but if we can really incorporate the outdoors now is the time to do it um i also regarding the masks situation i think this summer is really important for all families to have that discussion with their students um and start practicing wearing masks especially um for
102younger kids who may have like some questions about some sensory issues to get used to it you know wear your mask for 15 minutes you know while you're watching tv this morning and then build it up um because this is going to be a big change if kids have never worn a mask before and now they're being asked to wear it all day and also get younger kids used to seeing adults wearing masks so that's not a scary situation you know for our younger kids showing them what a face shield is or goggles are um i think that's really uh important to talk to them about and just about generally um talk to our students about the hygiene that's going to be required and the social distance that's required so this isn't new information for
103the kids on the first day that they go into school it'll make our teachers um days easier um i did want to ask if we have results on the transportation survey what um how many students we think are going to be using the buses well the for the responses we got and we didn't do it you know family by family we did a general survey um there were a lot who said they couldn't answer right right and about 50 of those who responded said they would want transportation okay but again without knowing um you know which families are eligible and which will ultimately take it you know it was somewhat useful but i think once we have uh more information about who is going to who would prefer virtual option obviously that may reduce the
104numbers on the buses even further right okay and then my last point was just um you talked about um dismiss dismissals obviously and you know anytime in between class classes switching is going to be difficult you talked about dismissing by wing um can is it possible to instead of dismissing by wing but to dismiss by alternate classrooms it just seems like if you're just missing by wing you still have all those kids coming from the a wing and they're all coming out into the same hallway and they're all leaving together but if um if we had 50 of the classrooms in the a wing going out at the same time perhaps that would reduce that amount of flow within the hallway that's a good point yeah i can bring that back we haven't worked out
105all the details of that of course i know i know and i do i didn't get to say this earlier but willow did but i just want to put out now that i really appreciate how much work has been put into this um i cannot believe how much work you guys have done and i really i wanted to thank you for this sure thanks um i think and chris before you go ahead i think we're we're trying to get people um if you guys have questions just put your name in the chat and that way i can kind of call on everybody to make sure that everybody has a chance to speak and ask the questions that they want um chris i know you look like you had one quick question so i'm gonna turn
106to you first so it's more of a comment than a question now that i've figured out the av hybrid um i would just suggest for teachers they're going to need a little training on assessments because you can't give a standard or typical assessment anymore if half your kids are there and half of them aren't so how do i present a valid assessment to show that there is evidence of learning so i think it's something that teachers are going to need to you know yeah i think a lot of our teachers were going to assessments um online anyhow so it may not be as much of a leap as like but if it's half and half like i can monitor the kids that are in my room i can sit there and watch them even if
107they have a chromebook but the other half they could be out googling everything they ever needed and so so how do i make a valid assessment if i only have half my kids in front of me sure um willow it looked like you had a question about um the social emotional piece yeah i just wanted to sort of hear what our initial thoughts were about mental health and social emotional monitoring of students who have been home and now might be back or might be remote or some hybrid and can't play with their friends and can't go outside and everyone's wearing masks and sort of you know one-on-one sessions becomes tricky like what how are we monitoring that and what's our plan so uh we have a group that's been working on that and the plan
108is that our counselors would at the beginning of the year in social workers pushing into classrooms because recognizing that kids just can't leave and just kind of go see their counselor so they would be doing some lessons and provide support to staff and students doing some kind of transitions back into school talking about some of the social emotional pieces that are important counselors kids still can see students like we talked about at the high school we're getting picnic tables to put out in the courtyard by the guidance area so a counselor could get a student and bring them outside and you know take a walk and chat with them same thing for the elementary you know that's a good opportunity if the counselor wants to speak with this particular student to go outside and have
109you know have a kind of break from everything and and talk with them so we are planning on doing um a lot of supports in the classroom so whole class transitions for students coming back but then we also have plans for the students who need more individualized um you know assistance in regards to students who are at home during the spring when we were closed the social workers and counselors were having individual whether it be you know a zoom meeting with those students or families or a phone call with them so they were still making regular contact with students who were home so that would be our plan to continue supporting those those students who need it as we move forward [Music] um dave can you speak at all to how the high school labs
110are going to work um i know there's a lot of the science classes have lab requirements um so you know when feasible students would be able to do the labs themselves um you know it would a lot of it will come down to how much material sharing there would need to be from class to class because that's really you know to turn around to try to clean things just would be difficult um so i would imagine that the majority of the time it's going to be a teacher actually doing the demonstration the students observing and then you know following up with the way they traditionally do a lab report so they're still going to see the experiments it's just a matter of they're most likely not going to be able to perform themselves again depending
111on the experiment thanks uh wendy it looked like you had a quick question and then christine i haven't forgotten i know you have some more yeah i did i just um wanted to know sometimes kids get sick or they have a slight cold and so they're not going to be in class but they feel well enough can they just remote in for that day even if it's their in-person day and then that way i mean they're not like racking up the sick days and actually if they feel well enough to participate can they just because it's not a traditional ab day where you're where you're doing you know the block scheduling it's a it's a total it's a continually moving forward kind of schedule and they'll just miss less right so they can certainly log
112in yeah that's the one i guess benefit of this model um christine it looks like jonathan has a couple questions and he hasn't had a chance to speak yet so i'm going to let him go ahead well i'd let christine go first but that's okay um ed i don't remember if it was jody or or um or dave that mentioned that um high school students um couldn't leave the building once they got there now does that mean that they can my understanding was that they could leave prior to covet that they could leave um because they had an internship or something else going on afterwards or that they could come in and not if they didn't have a first period class they could come in after the first period class are we now requiring them
113to come for periods one through eight or or or not no i should yeah i should clarify that so they're not able to leave and come back um like many of the students would leave they'd have a couple periods off and come back to school that's not going to be allowed if they have to leave because they have an internship or a medical appointment that would be different um so it's it's the that casual i get to leave school for a period or two and come back and i'm going down to stuart's to get a snack that's not allowed anymore okay and we have and and you figure out a way that we have those students covered while they're in the building in other words they have a place to be correct okay um no
114as far as uh parking um for the students to drive their own cars um any thought to having them a requirement that they put their masks on before they leave the car i mean i'm thinking of how tight the parking spaces are and if you have them coming in at about the same time you could have some you know groups of kids parking together and coming out sort of in mass and while you would hope that they would obey a you know six foot distance you may have you know siblings in the same car or friends um although hopefully that would not happen um and you know i would think that you'd want to have their mask on before they leave yeah i i don't know that i mean the high school administrators may have
115talked about that um it's not come up in my conversation but it's a good point to bring up so i'll bring it back to them okay um and earlier we were talking about access to counselors and you know you said you'd have um uh some of the tables out in the courtyard so that would be a possibility but um there will be some times when when a child needs to see a counselor and the weather is not going to be cooperative i'm assuming that you have already thought of that and there are ways in which we can accommodate them absolutely yeah there will be spaces for them to meet with their counselors still okay and um as far as um uh some of the specials that we do like um the technology um uh stuff
116the coding the um or you know a big program like lab school have how are they being impacted any differently than the rest of the than the rest of the school by this no the only thing i think um which we might run into obstacles with and i you know i know we've run into this with special education is having kids go out to internships or work sites could be very limited i know a lot of the lab school kids in the past would potentially go over to let's say eagle to do some hours that would not be permitted so that would be i think um probably the biggest challenge the same it would apply also to the kids in ceip who typically go out for work experiences so i think those those options might
117be more limited than they have been in the past that's the one area i could see being impacted so that requirement would have to be adjusted okay and i would think at the same time whatever community service uh hours are required for um for our students would also likely have to be adjusted has that been given consideration yeah that's something we have to think about because you know kids could uh for example their participation they have to attend a board meeting well they could still do that um even if we're in a zoom meeting but there's certain things that they won't be able to do so yes i think we have to consider that as a possible obstacle for sure okay thank you um one question that i've heard a few times about our ventilation
118in the buildings um and i know you mentioned that there's outside air return but i know that um governor had mentioned um i think a while back about certain kinds of filters that were i think it's merv 11 or something like that um i'm not sure are those filters that we use in our hvac units um i don't know if you can speak to that issue at all i cannot speak to the specific filters um that would be a question for greg okay um i know one of the you know on the school climate survey we've gotten so many complaints about temperature of the building in that whole air flow system the air flow system is actually helpful during now so but i can follow up with greg about the filter i last time we
119had a meeting that did come up and i believe he said that we were we were good with whatever the requirements were but i'll double check that that would be great i know i think it i mean it came up in the context of shopping malls so i don't know if it's a totally separate thing than in a building the size of a school but it would be i've heard it from a few members of the community judy did you were you going to comment on that yeah greg had talked to me about that the other day so he is looking at those options and there was like an intermediate level and then the highest level that the malls were using he was looking at one just below that and getting pricing information and availability
120so more to follow but it is in the works um another question and i think i mean i think the answer was in your presentation um but with respect to the high school start time um there were some community members looking for clarity that the high school start time is still going to be moved to 8 o'clock correct correct yep um and then also um you know i know you've mentioned a bunch of different uh sources but uh with respect to kind of where we're where you've been getting your guidance for putting the plan together um there's uh you know the state doh cdc our local department of health and then i know i know you mentioned dr um geferi i don't know if everybody knows who who that is um so that that's the
121the school physician so i'm not sure if there's anybody i'm forgetting but um and i guess it's more just a statement than a comment but i think there was some interest in kind of who um who the district is relying on to put its health and safety guidance together right mostly and doh is our primary source certainly dr gaffiri has been a great help um we've also reached out to some other local physicians who have been um in contact with us to offer some assistance as well particularly as it relates to ppe um in finding that because ppe is you know becoming more challenging to get but doh has been very helpful and even the state ed guidance actually says that if any of their guidance is not as clear or as in conflict with
122doh school districts are should follow the doh guidance um christine you have a whole bunch of questions dean you're muted thank you so i have some questions regarding safety and hopefully they won't take too long but do we have guidelines too for faculty in regards to social distancing in the faculty lounge what we think is good practice or what doh thinks is good practice i know we talk a lot about students but i wanted to talk about faculty teachers um and see if we're looking at it from that aspect too yep in all of our planning we've talked about the impact of students and also guidance for staff so that they're following the doh guidance as well okay with regards to mask i thought i saw something from zoh it could be a scarf it
123could be a mask so is there something that's going to be put out to parents that state what's appropriate uh pp in regards to masks yeah we are going to provide information i think meredith had mentioned to families about appropriate face coverings and show them suggestions we're also going to provide some guidance on how to help your child put on a mask appropriately take off a mask uh help with visualization of social distancing and things like that so we'll provide that information they will have mass available in a class each classroom like a box in case somebody's breaks or they're available and is that one of the items that's on backorder or would we have will we have enough math to provide in each classroom by the time school starts so we have a we
124ordered a bunch of masks we were able to get them in so i think we're good for the start of the school year and we um we are planning on having extras around for adults or students if they break they get soiled to replace them uh as well so we'll have extra mask i mean the one unknown is as all schools start to open will there be a delay in purchasing more disposable mass so we are trying to get you know what we think we'll need that's appropriate for the start of school so right now we're good we were able to get gloves in the one um item we're having difficulty with is face shields that you can clean and disinfect and a lot of the um the ones that are available our school physician
125has said is not uh the right model it's not able to be clean but i think uh hopefully we have found um a source that we can purchase from um and we're hoping to get about 400 face shields um so okay and are will the touchless hand sanitizers be installed by the time the school starts in all the rooms yeah i think greg said they're scheduled to come in soon right judy do you know i don't know have a date but i believe yes they'll all be installed and ready to go before school starts and there'll be one in each classroom yeah and in common areas as well okay door handles sanitizing strips that i've seen are we looking at that i know you were talking about common touch areas and you had mentioned door
126handles and i know at my office and other places i see these automatic sanitizing strips that are on the door like even at my doctor's office they're on the handle so you don't have to constantly be cleaning them have you seen those i've not no okay i'll see if i can send you that information but the just the doctor's office right here community care they put them right on their handles so anytime you touch it it it's automatically sanitizing it i don't know how it works it seems to be magic um i i don't know how it works but i've seen it in several places cubbies we talked about putting them on the outside of the rooms and it kind of goes to lockers too how are we social distancing the kids when they arrive
127if they're putting stuff in their cubbies or taking off their coats and all that so lockers won't be used to start the school year kids will go right to their first period classes with their backpacks for the cubbies kids would go into their classrooms and then the teacher would have students go if they're outside of the classroom let's say or reposition the classroom the teacher would then help guide the students so there's not a group of students putting things in the cubbies at the same time okay he heat index in september can sometimes be questionable depending on how hot it gets are we concerned at all about that in september for a few weeks and mask wearing and kids pulling them down and not really being if it's too hot being able to learn effectively
128or breathe effectively has there been any thought given to that for that month we talked about it um we don't really have a plan and less i mean we unless we did school as a virtual day if it got too hot i just want to make sure that was on the radar like maybe parents need to be aware if the heat index gets over a certain amount we might have to do remote learning due to it just not being feasible to have the kids in the classroom it might be a you know an unbearable day um we're getting all the heat out now let's hope um i only have two more days in school start date so the date that you gave in the beginning of the presentation that might be different yeah so we're
129still working on the the actual plan for phasing in we do know that we want to phase kids back in and staff uh in a safe manner so we should have that worked out i would say within the next week or so okay and my last question i say the best for last transportation is all i can think of about through the whole presentation with a days b days uh starting later do we feel like this is going to be a transportation's going to be a little bit problematic to do all this scheduling and have it in the system and ready to go by the start of school or what if a kid gets on the bus on the wrong day well those things are going to happen right i mean that's inevitable but um
130when we had a meeting with cindy um in transportation to talk about pick up drop off if we have staggered schedules we were talking about the opening of school and basically because we're doing about a 50 50 split her routes will generally be the same because you still have most of the same bus stops you know you just have less kids at each of them so she doesn't anticipate she doesn't know i mean she'll know who's getting on the bus but if we changed and had one student say you're going to come in every day that really doesn't impact the route for her so she doesn't feel like having the staggered um you know percentage 50 of the kids is going to be a problem from a programming perspective it's not an issue like all
131right so we know intensive skill kids are going to be there um all elementary and so just programming it from that perspective shouldn't be a problem like knowing who should be on the bus or whatever exactly yeah okay all right that was it [Music] willow i think you had another question uh yeah two more that i think are quick um we text choir no choir in elementary school and obviously we can't play like wind instruments but things like basic music class pe art class library things like that will still be modified yeah theater in the high school middle school yeah so um library our in music will still happen will be pushed in in pe obviously we want to get the kids moving and active so the pe teachers i know are working on different
132activities with appropriate um distancing for those activities so yeah those will still be happening okay and then the other question was about um related services i didn't know whether we had to repurpose any of our therapy rooms um whether we had a thought about what related service delivery would would look like and if it would have changed at all um so some related services if it can be done with push in we would look to do that to obviously you know keep kids from traveling too much but there are times where we have to pull a kid out so it would have to be done though by the cohort let's say there's uh you know four kids who get a speech group together um they have to all be in the same class in order
133for the speech therapist to pull those out so it may mean the speech therapist is only working with two kids from this class and two kids from this class but i know that um special ed has been looking at that and working with the related services and you know for esy actually i know it's a smaller number of kids but it's been working quite well and if we have virtu kids who are in virtual instruction um we can still do related services obviously you know pt ot get a little bit tricky to do but uh speech has worked fairly well um in a virtual format as well right and i know i said that was it one more so things like words theater practices things where kids pretty basically have to congregate are just kind
134of on hold right i know there's guidance putting fall sports on hold but everything else seems like we're sort of gonna wait and see right right exactly and if if someone can do that remotely i don't know what that would look like for sports but about sports but hey they did clubs in the spring so we've done virtual theater sure yeah we're looking at doing clubs virtually when possible okay perfect okay i looked it up it's called nanoseptic uh self-cleaning surface strips so they have it so for door handles and okay thank you we'll look it up yeah i'll send it to you great um have we given any thought to reminding families or reaching out to them about um not traveling to import school starts that that will go out next week in the
135communication about um reopening and talking about the different instructional models and asking people to decide which model they would prefer and please don't travel prior to labor day and you'll include a list of uh the 46 states on and dc i i think i could just include i could just include what states are are permitted that would be easier um and then uh i've seen a lot and had a lot of questions about those um those masks that have um the the clear part in the front um have we determined whether those are okay to use are you know is that an option for families that are you know looking into masking coming back to school yeah our school physician and department of health both have advised against using those um because they're not able
136to be cleaned effectively and the one model that um one of the parents shared at the reopening task force that had the built-in plastic piece i think it was the task force uh we looked at that a little bit closer and that uh has does not does not provide a really good barrier protection so we've not yet found um in a mass with that that's uh effective that our school physician or department of health would approve of us using and what about lines and masks of masks um i know i've seen uh some masks online that look like they're theoretically designed for things like singing um are you aware of whether those are actually something that work yeah they're um our contacted department of health has said that all of these companies who are saying
137they make mass for these specific activities are not legitimate that there's not an effective mass made for singing there's not one that is made for running that there you know that doesn't really exist that you really want a mass that is a barrier protection and anything that is allows more breathability generally is not effective so that would include something like a bandana which um you know should not be permitted but in the same way they're making their own mass or they're buying mass that are being made and they're being made out of maybe one or two layers of thin material and you know they're being promoted as these are okay but they're really not um there was a on one of the major news outlets there was a video in which they showed how far
138material could spread uh through some of those masks and it was a lot further than six feet so in some ways we have to be careful about what the students and you're wearing yeah i think that's why it's important for us to give families some guidance and staff some guidance about and even recommend a certain quality mass that we know have been given the okay by our school physician or the department of health jody i just have a uh one last quick question about um our teachers it seems like we are asking a lot of our a lot of our teachers um and we are also asking them to do extra tasks like clean um the desks between classes and also clean materials um that children are using before they go on to the next
139person um in terms of um cleaning say desks between classes are do we have a longer period of time between classes or are teachers going to have to rush and do this in two minutes before the first child comes in we have at the high school a five-minute pass time and we already know that those past times will probably have to be extended and and i don't mean we have to say it's seven minutes knowing that some students may arrive late or early because if they want to stop and get hand sanitizer because we need to be flexible in that regard that the disinfectant that greg found is uh one that is very quick to use so you literally as kids leave you can spray it on the desk and by the if you think
140about there's 12 to 15 kids in a class um if you spray that on the desk and then it only has like a one i think a one minute contact time by the time you're finished spraying the last one you can go and wipe the um first one down so it really shouldn't be a huge impact if we had 30 kids in your class that would be a big difference but when you're talking about reduced numbers of students i don't think anyone felt like that was unreasonable to do that between classes and keep in mind not you know you don't always have a class coming in right after your uh your ones sometimes you'll have a break so you might have one where it's back to back but if so if the teacher's still cleaning
141the desk you know the students can wait not too long in the hall and then come in but the five minutes uh should be fairly reasonable to get that done if you have a few you know the number of deaths that we're talking about okay i just wanted to make sure that our teachers um hear that we understand that we are asking them for a tremendous amount um that they never signed up for so i wanted to make sure that they know we really appreciate appreciate them and appreciate what they're going to be doing the next year and you know hopefully we can just all get through this year together yeah i feel um very fortunate to have the teachers that we have and they have been great about trying to work with us to
142come up with the best plans for everybody and it's it's definitely not an easy task um i don't see anybody else in the chat but does anyone else have any questions jody i'd like to just thank you again for putting this presentation together i know and i just want to say it out loud again that this is a work in progress and that this is the plan as of today and that there are still changes that will be made and still things that i know you're looking into um you know with respect to remote instruction in particular and how we can make this work the best that we can so thank you um to all you guys for your work on this yes thank you uh next on our agenda is our recognition of public
143comment uh we received a voluminous number of comments from students parents and community members and first i you know i do want to thank everyone for their thoughtful comments and questions um because i i do think they're uh they're important um and i know we tried to hit um with some of the questions uh from the board a number of the comments and questions that that came in um i'm just gonna do a little quick summary of some of the comments and we had a number of the comments that came in people are looking for a fully online option probably an equal number of comments that came in were from people who feel that online is not an option for their families especially when they have young children um and two working parents um there
144are we had people who are looking for information about how we're going to improve our online instruction maximize outdoor education um and concerns about the efficacy and enforcement of the screenings that we're going to be doing at the beginning of the day all of the comments are going to be provided to all the board members and to the administrative team and will be made a part of the minutes of the meetings so that they can be reviewed um and i just want to reiterate also that they're going to um go to the communications department who's working on putting together um a list of frequently asked questions to go up onto the website um in addition um i think a lot of the information will be covered again at the parent forums and if people have
145more questions that weren't answered tonight uh that's that's a place that they can take their questions or to those parent forums which um correct me if i'm wrong jody those are going to be recorded um so that if people are interested but are unable because of their schedule to participate they can watch them at a later time next on our agenda is our future meetings and events uh the um parent forums i'll just reiterate the dates for those because i know there are a lot of interested people monday august 3rd at 6 p.m tuesday august 4th at 3 30 p.m and wednesday august 5th at 9 30 for the a.m on wednesday july 29th at 4 30 p.m there's a facilities committee meeting um our next board meeting is on wednesday august 12th at 7
146pm i'm anticipating an executive session at 6 00 p.m um and our meeting following that is on wednesday september 2nd at 7 p.m anticipating executive session at 6 pm and for both the august 12th and september 2nd meeting um uh we would obviously love to have them in person but are going to keep an eye on what the doh guidance is um before those meetings take place i don't think we have any need to uh go back into executive session um so if i could have a motion to adjourn the meeting [Music] uh all in favor aye aye aye anyone opposed meeting adjourned thank you thank you have a good night [Music] you