F-M BOE Meeting - July 20, 2020 (Part II)

001okay and someone let me know when that live stream goes back up should be going back up it says it's streaming can you believe it i'm very happy that it's working hold on one second okay there we go so does everyone see that who's on the live stream who can see it does everyone see us up again dan do you see it i think he's naughty perfect i'm glad that worked okay so we have adjourned from executive session and now we are going to item 3.01 the reopening of schools dr tais certainly thank you president mims in your for docs under public content is a powerpoint presentation which i'd like to walk you through there's some additional materials there under administrative and executive but let's start with what's under public at this point can everybody

002access that so in terms of the reopening of school as you know as you go to the second slide uh the information was just released we've been talking about this for what seems like months now speculating guessing what the actual guidelines and guidance was going to be and certainly we made decisions thanks to dr coughlin and bill and laurel in terms of purchasing chromebooks to go to a one-to-one uh situation even though it means tweaking our obsolescence plan in terms of phasing out older machines but this guidance was just turned out last week you may recall that the state said they were going to send theirs out in mid-june and state ed would be mid-july and as you can see there certainly witnessed and i included in this past week's thursday letter both sets of

003guidance were released last week for the most part they are in alignment there are a few things that need to be sorted out some of you may have picked up in terms of students on buses both said that they should be wearing masks one said they should be socially distant the other did not we did ask along with a lot of other districts for clarification on that and the final ruling is that they should be wearing masks and socially distant wear practicable so they do line up but again it isn't perfect if you go to the third slide right i'm sorry can i just i hate to interrupt marissa just i'm just looking on the youtube thing and there's two different feeds that are showing one was the old one that there was at least

004one comment of somebody asking if this was going to go back live and so i i just i'm just concerned that maybe some people are still watching the old one waiting for that to come back so i'm sorry to interrupt i just wanted to uh i will see if i can fix that um one second please go ahead and continue i'm not sure how to fix that but i will try okay i'm going to text christine and have her work on that while we continue with the meeting because i do not know how to fix it or even just post a comment on the first one that there's a second stream that's live currently that might let's see if i can do that i don't know i can even do that um let's see if

005i can do that i don't know if i can even do that i'll text christine and ask her to do it i can't do it if someone who's able to can do that is anyone are you able to text to type on there okay i'll have christine do it then do that's there now so we should be also okay great all right i will continue on the third slide are the mandatory guidelines you will recall in the thursday letter i provided you with the interim guidance along with what they call the mandatory guidelines which included best practices and what was required and then there was a checklist to go along with that so the things that you see on the slide the social distancing face covering gatherings operational activity hygiene cleaning disinfection communication screening and

006tracking are all key mandatory components of the plan and what does that plan look like that we're developing based on that checklist goes into four categories reopening monitoring containment and closure so we have already in even anticipation of this talked about the covid room for example we intend on taking the uh mike the computer clusters offline because they would need uh routine cleaning between usage and make that the covid uh room in each of the buildings it will require require staffing to go with it but certainly in the event that a child starts exhibiting cis symptoms we would certainly go for that containment and then finally we are going to have to decide on what is the closure factor i know we're assembling a medical review board in advisory committees next week but certainly one

007of the questions for that medical review board would be what triggers a local closure on our part much like the governor has indicated what would indicate him to close schools for a particular area region or the state taking each of those four categories on the next slide on the checklist under reopening you can see the things we're considering capacity social distancing the face coverings and that includes giving the children time a mask break if you will the operational activity moving in the hallways not using lockers having water fountains available one per every 100 students the bottle fed that water fountains not necessarily the spigot ones that would require routine cleaning and disinfecting restart operations the cleaning that we've talked about not only for high touch surfaces but also one of the things we're looking at

008is a deep uh cleaning in between cohorts and a hybrid model extracurricular activities we spent a little bit of that earlier to discuss it but what are we doing with extracurricular activities in sports before and after child care which doesn't necessarily fall into our district but whether the y is able to use the space and things of that nature should be discussed vulnerable populations transportation i know bill furlong's been working with john cunningham we feel that we're able to transport about half the students on the buses which is a good thing we anticipate that some parents will drive and transport their own children to and from school as well food services rather than students going to the cafeteria we will be bringing the food to them they will have to order uh ahead of time

009and certainly the options will be limited uh in terms of probably not being able we wouldn't necessarily be able to keep hot food hot so chances are it will be cold food to be distributed to the classrooms but we anticipate many children bringing lunches from home regardless we will certainly have to provide lunches for students even in a hybrid model for those in attendance as well as those students who are at home looking at mental health and emotional supports and programs that's even tied into attendance and chronic absenteeism so we know students are struggling everybody wishes we could hit rewind and go back to yesterday but what are the supports that are available to students how can our counselors and homeschool liaisons reach out to ensure students stay connected with the instruction and then certainly

010communicating all this to the family so even though we know the governor is going to make a decision between august 1st and 7th we know that our work is not done when we hit the submit button so to speak on july 31st a lot of the work will take place going forward in anticipation of starting in the school year next slide monitoring screening testing protocols testing responsibility early warning signs we're having discussions on whether the testing and screening will take place at home and be self-reported are we going to do temperature checks on the bus with aids meeting the buses with staggered arrival times keep in mind with the monitoring as you know children can be asymptomatic so just doing the screenings that we're doing is more for the contact tracing that would occur should

011there be an infection so that is something that we know we have to do in terms of the bookkeeping and record keeping and being vigilant on that because that will help the contact tracing working backwards next stop containment will be a part of the plan the health offices as we said the isolation the covid room uh providing the nursing staff mr gordon dr gordon has done a great job getting the n95 masks and for the nurses he's delivered that them already he'll be meeting with them tomorrow as well but certainly protecting them uh they will be the point people but will need the support of having somebody in the coveted room on being able to call home so that the parents are able to pick up the children as required and then closure what are

012the triggers how do we communicate that to the general public when when are we going to be compelled to close locally because of a surge in the virus so that was all the department of health and believe it or not that is the main thrust uh certainly the state ed guidance helps talk about the different areas and how we formulate our teaching plans but the driving force and i will be meeting with the chief school officers both tomorrow and wednesday will focus on the department of health in fact if you go to your executive materials in board docs you will see the draft plans they are not finalized by any stretch of the imagination they appear there as elementary middle and high school but again they are in their infancies they will be meeting as

013teams this week to go through them in anticipation of being able to roll out those draft plans to the advisory committees in order to get some feedback there is a quick turnaround which politically i think says a lot but uh the group is you know we're under stress and certainly trying to turn this around in a matter of a couple of weeks is going to be a challenge but as we said before we know our work is cut out for us in august going forward so what's in the state ad guidance as you can see all the areas and some of you like marissa and dr kilmer we were representatives on the regional task forces for state ed they looked at a variety of those areas as you can see communication and family engagement health

014safety facilities nutrition transportation social emotional schedules the attendance and chronic absenteeism i can read this to you but what you see here if you will go to your administrative tab click on that for me and you will see all the assurances 89 of them to be exact that i have an answer of yes as you can see i'm waiting for people to break character and smile the choices i have are yes or yes or yes or yes so uh you can write your letters of recommendation for me i'm going to have to attest that we are doing all those things i don't i'm not certain what happens when i can't make an attestation in a particular area i don't have the choice to say no you will see the red asterisk there which means that

015is a required field so i will be kicked out by the computer so something is going to be done with this the fact that these are all yes or no so it goes beyond 20 questions it's 89 questions we had a chance to review it at the district office administrative meeting today uh dr coughlin shared it with the principals during the principal meeting this uh late morning early afternoon the devil will be in the details you will see the checklists of all the things that we will have to do mr furlong was kind enough to finger count in terms of just the masks and ppe that we would need for a district our size and it's pretty daunting this is going to mean redirecting money that was earmarked for other things towards our uh you

016know the personal protective equipment so for example we cannot deny and correct me if i'm wrong mr furlong we cannot deny a child the ability to get on a bus because they don't have a mask we have to have a stash of masks there to be able to give one to the student for example teachers are to have a new mask every day students a new mask every five days just as a rough uh benchmark is that correct mr furlong we we have to give them a mask and so they can yes it is and based on our size we're probably looking at about 300 000 masks for the year so not only is there a cost involved but there is a concern in terms of as the stockpiles run low that districts will be

017competing for the same amount and hoarding much like we've seen with the general public on different products from the grocery store so to speak so feel free to take a look at those 89 items that it is pretty interesting uh some details some things are gimme putts they're easily done but others i think are going to merit some further explanation so if the what's if you think of the plan of the what's and we always talk about curriculum and instruction curriculum being the whats the instruction being the house if you can think of the doh is the whats that's what the building administrators worked as they crafted their plans that are in the executive content for you those are the what's the how we go about is going to be in those 89 assurances and

018attestations on how we pull this off in terms of the availability of masks the frequency of cleaning and so forth so finally just to bring you back full circle the reopening plan components you will see are those four areas we will put them on the website the state has not given any of us a template unless i will be surprised at tomorrow's chief school officers meeting the state has not given a template so we will have to formulate our plans for opening in full hybrid and closure with remote learning and we will have to post them on the web on our website we will have to surrender to state ad of the hyperlink to those plans so that they can check them remotely so last but not least the last slide is a bunch of

019things that we have to consider rethinking as it says there are food to classrooms the transportation and screenings do we bring the aids out to the bus on a nice day can the students line up socially distant outside in the sunshine but yet when it's a torrential downpour or a blizzard do we keep them on the bus uh do we stagger the arrivals of the buses i think so mr furlong thinks so mr cunningham thinks so in fact some creative uh routing i guess i should say mr furlong in terms of transportation being able to pick up the kids and deliver them to the building and then to go back out think many little runs as opposed to longer runs uh so looking at that the disinfecting how often do we disinfect trying to keep

020students in the classrooms as a cohort especially at the elementary level using our counselors for checking in in terms of the attendance the connectivity the engagement of the students and social emotional supports we talked about the covid rooms already and then the top item is something we've talked as a district office team do we need a medical coordinator do i recruit a retired physician off our medical review board or we post it as unavailable we need somebody with that kind of expertise as my father used to say buying and i'm playing to the auto dealers in the room buying new tires is cheap insurance for a car so is this a way to get a medical coordinator here to give us that cheap insurance at least to have somebody that the nurses can turn to

021at the drop of the hat i mean i think you would find the administrators ready willing and able but also nervous and not having that expertise especially when it comes to containment and closure so having somebody that could be the resident expert even beyond our current school physician i just think we may want to discuss that further as a group i know i'm kind of springing it on you i'm not looking for an answer right now this is something that we can sort out it's more about the how we go about doing it than the what's but i think that it might make good sense for that cheap insurance to have somebody who is our go-to especially because this is all new ground for all of us so any questions on the powerpoint or what

022you saw under administrative or the draft plans and again i urge you not to get too attached to the draft plans because they will be slicing and dicing this week i just asked them to deliver something as a deliverable by friday so i know they at least had a chance to go through the department of health guidelines because i knew the state ed guidelines were coming out thursday and that would only add some confusion so i think right now they've been through the doh guidelines and i think the next step is for them to review it internally whether it's their instructional forums or site-based teams or taking a look at it in order to prep it for the advisory committees and the medical review board i'll start i i'm just wondering from a facility's capacity

023well from an everything capacity perspective um is fully reopening even an option to have whatever that means like not a hybrid model but students having daily instruction if they relax the social distancing requirements if they say the governor says they can wear masks but they don't have to socially distant we can distance we can bring them all back i'm not saying it's a good idea but we do not have another six buildings even if we split the schedules as we've talked about as a district office team and did kind of a morning and an afternoon as some districts do because of construction capital projects we would require additional staff you know almost have the morning staff and the night shift coming on so there are increased cost obligations whether it's trying to find additional space

024or find the additional staff for those districts in our area that tried to reach out and find additional space they are already in the swamp because that space has to get approval with the department of facilities planning and stay dead so just because there's an abandoned gas station on the way to work doesn't mean you can put students there without running through the fire alarms and ventilation and all those good things so there's a lot of districts that tried to take the governor of his word and look into the community for other spaces but it still requires clearance and worse as we've talked about as a district office team students let's say or at the fire hall or a grange hall or a church or synagogue the point is is you would need a nurse

025there to administer medications you might need an administrator there to deal with student discipline depending on the size of the cohort that's at that satellite location so the bottom line is we could reopen we could use our six buildings but we would need some relaxation of the social distancing guidelines or if there's a treatment or if there's a cure something like that might happen as well so does that mean that the hybrid plans would be our fully reopening plans right now well in all likelihood for efficiency the hybrid stands the best model right now we've already seen and you may have picked that up in the newspaper that syracuse city has already gone on record saying they cannot have all the students back we could but it wouldn't have to be without the social distancing

026we made that clear to the county executive when we met with him on friday he was hoping that all districts would do something similar and not be different from one another and the only way to get all of us back in session together are to relax the social distancing guidelines and sorry just one more is there any consideration of outdoor classrooms for the fall uh they're saying to put fizzette outside they're saying to put coral vocal music outside um winter comes early to these parts as we know so i think that's a big concern as you see in the guidance deep windows open a lot of air circulation but certainly living where we do i think presents a lot of challenges in terms of that ventilation and doing things outside so could we do it

027absolutely would it be problematic in the winter months most definitely yeah i was just thinking the the the i'm sure it would be very difficult to start that way but we might have a couple months where we could utilize more outdoor space yeah agreed i have a question to follow up on rebecca's first uh question about the um the full opening plan that you say isn't possible without uh relaxing social distancing it looks like from what you said i don't know if it's in any of this stated guide guidelines that you do have to submit a plan for full opening um is that something that you will work on and then know that it will be rejected or what's the logistics there that's exactly and maybe that's what stated is trying to look at i

028mean this is a pretty quick turnaround as you can imagine just releasing all this information to us last week and then asking for a detailed plan in two weeks so they may have gone into this little research project already knowing what some of the answers are going to be and i think it's going to be problematic not only for us but for a lot of districts to open fully the one question and i was saving it i just didn't know sherry was going to be the one to ask it sherry asked the earlier question what about parents being given the option of keeping their children at home from the start and we suspect although we have not heard from the governor but we suspect that's what will happen much like it's occurred in other states

029around the union the idea of parents having the option of keeping the children home remotely fear of having elderly grandparents in the home you know parents with uh that have comorbidity type conditions so i suspect saying as you saw in the survey we may have 20 to 30 percent that's choose to keep their children at home if that's the case then maybe having a full reopening with only 70 percent maybe we can make things work especially if we are able to use swing spaces like gymnasiums or cafeterias for purposes other than gymnasiums or cafeterias so i know some districts like shenandoah are using those spare facilities to is kind of places where the students can bring their chromebook and do online learning in mass you know in a gymnasium in a cafeteria and so forth

030so that being said maybe we can pull off a full reopening by using those other locations especially if 20 to 30 percent of the kids are staying home i just just want to just clear if you could clarify for me i on your part about parents choosing to keep their kids at home did i did i hear you say that we don't have guidance on that yet because i thought we did have guidance on that i'm not aware of the guidance on it yet i mean we've heard seen it and heard it in other states and so certainly the logic is that our governor will follow suit but i mean right now parents are allowed to keep their children at home as you know and i'm saying this tongue-in-cheek it's called homeschooling but is there

031you know will the governor allow the remote learning to take place so as we've talked through these plans as a district office team and an administrative cabinet and as we invited the fmta president in last week we do see the devil in the details but we also see a need for a commonality and that's something dr coughlin and the principals are working on there needs to be a teacher of record so from september to october to june there needs to be one teacher because we don't know if we're in hybrid full opening remote and so switching teachers on a child is not the way to go there needs to be that continuity going forward but with that being said in theory a parent could keep the child at home and remote learning would be provided

032even as opposed to a full opening or hybrid model so just just to clarify because i was look i know this is a very very long document from the state but it did speak to that on it was on page 31 of that document where it said if the parents or guardians choose not to send their child back to school schools will need to provide instruction remotely so i think they did speak to that not at great length but i don't have it open dan is that under the um heading of uh high-risk students medically vulnerable yeah so that would be a parent who can prove that these child is high risk already not just the child it's are they family members but that being said dan i do fully expect the governor to do

033something similar to what his counterparts have done in other states high risk or not so just just to follow up the i guess what you know i i didn't see the draft plans until we started this meeting on your current thinking on a hybrid model what what is it that you're thinking in terms of a hybrid model is it split days is it alternate days is it do you have a sense yet of where you're going with what a hybrid model plan would be but one that seemed to generate a lot of traction and we did uh use the survey as you know the survey that we just sent out about reopening the cover letter in many ways was more important than the survey itself the survey merely tried to showcase to parents and guardians

034all the different options that were being discussed in the regional meetings uh that being said though we did go through some of those different options and the one that appears to have the most traction believe it or not was not necessarily listed it's analogous to one of the choices that was in the survey the monday wednesday tuesday thursday but the idea is students would come on monday tuesday and then stay home students would come on thursday friday the second group and then stay home the other five days with a deep cleaning on wednesday with asynchronous and office hours but also help for the parents one of the things that's been intriguing in our conversations and you saw that from the first survey as parents are looking for pedagogical help so the idea that wednesdays would

035be in office hours not only for students but parents but also asynchronous instruction would occur on wednesdays while there's a deep cleaning of the building between the cohorts so one cohort would come in for continuity on monday tuesday another cohort would replace them on the thursday friday so that's the one that seems to have the most traction at this point so so just just to stay on there for a moment because i i think this is at least my sense is one of the biggest questions that's out there is what would hybrid look like i think we i think we all know that the grade levels that need the most in person are the elementary ages and in high school is more adapted remote learning than that so one one question in terms of being

036able to space out at the earliest class levels is i did see some talk about universal pre-k but not necessarily in k is there flexibility within the guidelines if we needed to to roll kindergarten for this year back to a half day program so that you could cut class sizes in half but yet still have them in the building more days of the week we hadn't talked about that option uh we certainly could do it uh we wouldn't generate any more aid like we did a few years ago for going to full day kindergarten but certainly it might be a good stop gap during the pandemic we've also talked about special area teachers flip flopping with the classroom teachers to try to enable more of the elementary students to be able to come to school

037for a longer period because we want them there as well we're just trying to think of a space issue and certainly keeping the cohorts together and not necessarily have them moving about the building and limiting that as much as possible so that is something that we've talked about um just related to that i was wondering i have no idea if the um in terms of cleaning would there be a way to shift that custodial work to the weekends we don't have to lose a whole day of instruction and the concern was being able to clean from one cohort to the next we probably would have to do something on the weekend too to go from the friday to the monday cohort coming back we just there's just a lot of disinfecting and cleaning that needs

038to take place so instruction with i'm sorry when instruction would still continue on that wednesday it would just uh be more limited than what the students are exposed to on monday tuesday and thursday friday we have talked about cameras using cameras so that videotaping the micro lessons and then having them available for the students even at home uh that probably could be continued on the wednesday as well but the idea is that it would be more asynchronous than synchronous and is it a lot more work cleaning wise to i'm assuming i'm assuming the answer is yes to have kit the students come in during the day and switch that's probably completely impossible to disinfect it is in part because of the requirements whether it's bathrooms or water fountains things like that we're going to have

039to have probably more custodians on the asia than on the the years overnight ship so we're going to have to have more custodians deployed for more frequent cleanings in the high-touch areas while the students are there rather than as we typically do wait till the end of the school day and we put the lion care of our staff on the evening so craig when you're talking about cohorts and keeping them together on this on this hybrid model if you did the monday tuesday thursday friday are are you envisioning just so let's just talk about that in the middle school world for for a minute as an example are you envisioning that being fifth and sixth would be a monday tuesday seventh eighth would be a thursday friday or are you envisioning splitting each grade in

040half i think what we've been talking about and the other administrators can correct me it's splitting each grade dan just to clarify the idea behind this and it's like just that an idea is that if you look at whether you're looking at a fifth grade classroom whether you're looking at a third grade classroom you would have let's say 23 students in that classroom half would go on monday tuesday half would go on thursday friday so it's the same teacher and on the days that they're not there they would be watching the lessons at home in a synchronous fashion if they're available to do that but also it would be taped so that for those that couldn't watch you could watch tonight um the only way to do that you can't do that by grade levels

041because that would mean that teachers would have to teach two grade levels hey i i assumed i just that's why i just wanted to ask for clarification but thank you the other just to mention the the split by alphabet and keeping families together um is a major consideration so the school level where the split becomes more difficult which is why i was asking about kindergarten is that's that's our one building level that's got five grades in it instead of four um it just it becomes harder which is why i was asking if we could drill that back to a half day as opposed to having them home because kindergarteners learning remotely is i to call it a challenge would be an understatement jason you were you had your hand up for a while there oh

042the just the question i had dr tais because it and this kind of goes back to rebecca's earlier comment about the queen cleaning on the wednesday and on the saturday i know it may not be the most popular option but does the more practical option be a cohort of students come in for a week we deep clean over a weekend and then the next cohort is the following week i know that might not be as popular but is that a more practical solution than what you are in the in the um administrator's thoughts on that uh it certainly would probably be more efficient in that regard the idea was to try to increase the frequency of contact in any given week the concern was the chronic absenteeism losing students and we thought the weekly check-in

043even for two days would be better than students not necessarily seeing their teachers in person for an entire week yeah interestingly enough um in the parent survey which i thought that would be a popular choice uh was if i remember correctly a fairly unpopular choice so we are trying to use the survey as best we can we may not certainly as you saw there were lots of differences of opinion there so that's going to be difficult but that was one that i did notice jason i was kind of intrigued by that because i thought that was an intriguing idea as well right but the parents didn't see it that way if there was an option there of two weeks on two weeks off which medically that would allow for symptoms to show up was that

044at all more popular or was that also unpopular i think it was one week two weeks off because of that you're right i mean it would be that automatic quarantine period correct dr tyson terms of i'm sorry go ahead bill yeah just one thing to clarify we will still be cleaning and disinfecting daily so you know while we might utilize wednesday and perhaps on the weekend to do even more deep cleaning and disinfecting it will still happen on a daily basis oops just the final thought there for sherry and jason the one week on two weeks off is also for thirds as well so the idea was is that we could not accommodate half the population that we would break it into thirds and operate with the one week on two weeks off which also

045has the bonus of the quarantine period being in between the full weeks i had a question in regards to teachers so we were earlier someone mentioned students whose parents may choose to have them stay at home aside from those special children with special needs but we have a number of staff members who are in that older age group and who may have some medical concerns as well i don't recall seeing anything in the guidance that we've got received so far from the state about how we may be able to work with those teachers i'm just thinking i don't want to lose teachers who don't you know because you know they feel vulnerable coming to school because of their age or because of an illness i think that's going to put us in a bad position

046because we're going to be scrambling to replace those teachers in a time when there's a teacher shortage on top of this pandemic brand which is creating a bigger teacher shortage so there's no guidance that i can see about that but is there any advocacy that we can do as far as that you have your meeting tomorrow with the um superintendents and i'm sure they're all having that same problem with facing teachers resigning or teachers not coming in or retiring that is a concern and we talked about trying to stay consistent on how each district handles it there's mechanisms already and protections afforded under the contract already i mean we want the staff here we want them working but you're right there are some that are going to choose to take a particular leave whether it's

047a medical leave or otherwise because of those issues the fmta as we indicated is doing their survey i believe it closed at five tonight so the president mary patrollis promised us a chance to see the results so it will be interesting to see how many teachers are actually thinking about taking those leaves going forward mr gordon is anticipating a very busy 24 7 365 august in preparation for the start of the school year that they could teach have that distance learning component open to the teachers not all of them but that small group who may need it so that they could teach um online or in some other way that leaves them less vulnerable i'm sorry jeff go ahead uh so i just wanted to mention that i have a meeting scheduled uh phone call

048with mary patrollers tomorrow 12 30 to discuss does this however the uh honestly the the models that we're looking at and actually our models aren't very different than most other districts i've talked to we would not be able to break up the staff and have some teachers only remotely and some in person in order to do that you would have to know exactly how many students weren't going to be attending and that you would have them commit to the whole year which we're not sure the governor is going to even mandate that so the way that we've devised this is though that every student has a schedule and a spot in the classroom in the district so that when they choose to come back or if they choose to come back there's a spot for

049them if you take teachers out and put them strictly on remote you lose a couple of things one you lose that ability for them to come back to school and the second is you can't offer a very robust program online because you're talking about teachers who are only certified in certain things so you lose the robust nature of our programs which i think could have a devastating impact for years to come long after coleman is gone um and that was a consideration that we've been talking about as well so we will be talking about who those teachers are and what their options are within the current uh contract and and try to work through that with the association so craig what what is the current thinking or plan if there is one for the online

050component in this hybrid model you know we we know what we did in the spring we talked about whether it was going to be different or not in the coming year i know you're using the strictly asynchronous third-party learning system for the summer sort program what what is what is that planned to look like for this upcoming year would you like me to go dr coughlin or we're looking at common threads teacher of record video recording lessons so that students could review it at home at a later time but also to participate synchronously on monday tuesday thursday and friday wednesday is to provide those office hours and support for individual one-to-one interactions not only for students but also for parents needing pedagogical support so wednesday may look more asynchronous but the idea is to have

051more synchronous instruction monday tuesday thursday friday dr kaufman did i forget anything um oh sorry i'm crazy here sorry about that um we are that's what i'm working on with the principles right now that instructional design and delivery as dr tice mentioned so yes we're looking to utilize the cameras and having equipment for teachers so there would be the opportunity for synchronous instruction also videotaping lessons mini lessons and also using the breakout room feature to group students so there are several components to the instructional design and delivery that we're working on [Music] so kind of all of the above but the goal then is that our teachers are doing the teaching not a third party online tool absolutely 100 okay so do we have the resources if we try and do that synchronous model dr

052kaufman so when you talk about cameras like i when i walk in every room i don't see a camera in every room in our district right do we need to go buy that or where does that fall right so we have cameras uh every teacher has a laptop and there is a camera on the laptop so that will work it does limit the movement of a teacher um so we're we're trying to work with that to see if maybe there is an additional webcam that we that we could use and then we also need to enhance the microphones uh on the laptops so we're working on the teacher equipment with that okay thank you for the wednesday um were you thinking possibly of would it be office hours or kind of a blend of office

053hours and one-on-one meetings what might that look like at different levels okay so wednesdays what we generally have planned right now uh again all of this is planning in more detail with the principles this week and then they're going to be meeting with their building level teams for for input and suggestions both we're talking about utilizing wednesdays for student meetings possibly parent meetings teacher office hours and so those meetings could happen within those offer office hours um some opportunity for teacher collaboration there's clearly a lot of planning that will need to go into this and and teachers teacher time working together the other thing that would happen on wednesday that we want to build into this is the delivery of print materials and books to students homes uh so that we're no not just relying

054on on online activity but that would be supplemented enhanced with uh print materials sounds great thank you mary for not to mention that and that's key that's one of the things as you know that came out of that survey was the delivery of not only novels and things like that uh the higher levels but packets to the younger children and so having the transportation department not have to worry about transporting children on wednesday would allow for those deliveries to occur craig i think you had said last our last meeting that the goal and intent on the equipment side or one of the goals and intent was to be able to provide a device for every student so that we weren't dealing with sharing and rationing devices so there is a tremendous worldwide shortage on laptops

055and chromebooks at the moment um they're available but there's a shortage because everybody's doing the same so where where do we stand is that something that we still anticipate having in hand before the start of the current academic year we we have ordered all all of the equipment we've we inventoried and we ordered all the equipment so we'll have we are set right now with ipads for kindergarten through second grade and we may have a little bit of a delay on chromebooks but we do have enough chromebooks to make sure that everybody has a device uh at home it may be their own device for right now but we can fill the need right now and right now the projection is to at the latest mid september uh late september to have the chromebook so

056we're we're hopeful that will be the timeline and just a quick follow-up on that for when they're in the classrooms um i obviously we don't have enough in the buildings right now for for one to one but they're still doing work on those we've not in the past had the practice to my knowledge where students were able to bring their own into school and use theirs is that something that's on the table so that they're not sharing and going back and forth between students with chromebooks we're going to every student will have their own device and that will go um that will stay with that student so whether they're at home or whether they're in school that that will be their device and that will go back and forth with them i don't i don't

057want to keep speaking because my list is long but i'll stop when i see another hand craig what was other than the social distancing as you went through the doh and sed guidance okay what were what did you pick out or identify as the the most problematic issues for fm to me i'm sorry you broke up at the end there for full return you mean i'm wondering what the items were between the doh guidance and the sed guns that you identified to be the most problematic for fm to meet other than the social distancing requirements that's a good question i mean there's just a lot of as you saw in the assurances the 89 assurances that we shall provide um i mean i i wish we could say not just no but maybe there's just

058no room for any narratives it's just yes and yes and i think that's my biggest concern right now is you know knowing we're trying like the chromebooks as an example knowing we're trying to do the one-to-one but it being at the mercy of back orders and things that are outside of our control so i think from my perspective i'm looking more at the process that i mean we will do the ppe we've ordered the polycarbonate shields could we order more there's things we're considering we've got it had the victory sprayers in since last year i mean i think the team has really done a great job but it's those assurances those absolutisms that gives me the biggest pause for concern because i think we're going to put forth a good effort and do our best

059but i also know that even the ppe for example that was part of the conversation is are we going to reach shortages just because of hoarding of ppe so are there there are things that are out of our control should it be a problem hopefully not but could it be possible craig can i add to that please do um uh the the biggest concern that i think i'm focused on is there's a lot of detail in the health and safety section which causes me concern because it's basically asking school districts uh to become something that we've never been before um so we're in a sense where uh something can work into a medical facility um and with that comes a lot of as craig put them there's these absolutes that need to occur and so

060i look at it and i immediately see uh staffing issues uh that we need just to comply we need more people um to do those kinds of jobs to make sure that we're doing it to the letter of the law which is not an easy task for anybody so um that that's that's the concern i have and if you look at the um document from the state education department you know the section that i sent out to our nurses and we're going to be talking about tomorrow is the biggest section actually it's the largest document um and i certainly can't put that all on our nurses you know i can't do that um our nurses are busy enough before this um so one of the difficult challenges is without without uh more money coming forward

061uh in any way it's as dr tice mentioned it's going to be a lot of reshifting money to make sure that we're as fully in compliance as we possibly can be without causing great staff that we have to uh to depart not because of a medical issue or a medical concern or a child care concern but it's because we're asking him to do a job and then another job um so that's a that's a challenge as an hr person but the exposure i'm sorry the exposure and risks i'm sorry darrell the explosion risk that mark referred to earlier you can see what the assurances and that's where i was headed and maybe i wasn't as clear as i should be if there's going to be a litigious nature as mark referenced it's that shifting of

062the risk from the state to the local district saying i told them to they signed off on it so if something happened it's not the state's fault it's the school district's fault and you know we've had a whole two weeks to absorb all of this and mobilize i was just going to say um april what jeff was talking about it just seems to me an awful lot of things we have to have to have to have to do but there's no money to do it we're on the little it's not a little thing but one of the things i noticed was that we have to report to the state on our children and their ability to get wi-fi and how are we going to do that you know i mean you can ask a small

063child but that's yeah i mean we we had a few students uh was on one hand we could count that did not have access to wi-fi so as you could see from the survey results that was not a big concern of our community that they had access to it uh and we were able to provide that uh support to the families who did need it good it also didn't look like devices were at least at home were a major issue correct and we thought early on given the number of requests that we had for chromebooks the concern was that a household with multiple children would all be competing for the same chromebook so if you recall we extended the opportunities to sign out chromebooks for families that had more than one child in the household

064but yeah i was surprised by that as well are we able to ask families that are choosing to drive or live near schools to kind of commit to not to not riding the buses just to get to free up space for families that really need it are we not able to do that legally i think we can ask i don't think we can insist but to commit to we're going to survey right now are we not mr furlong yes transportation is going to put out a survey and the guidance says we should be encouraging families to transport their own children but we can't you know we still are required to provide it if they if they so wish so i had kind of a tangential um transportation question some of the fine details on this

065so as i read the transportation guidance the bus drivers are required to be masked and it also said and or shields um as somebody who wears glasses i can tell you that when you're masked it's very difficult with fogging of glasses so i have a little bit of concern on on some of our drivers with with that creating its own safety issue and and how it is that john may be proposing to to address or deal with that i know i can't drive with a mask on because my glasses fog continuously we do share those same concerns and you know we're going to see what we can do to address them you know i have talked to some people who do wear glasses and they have found masks that don't have that problem so i

066think we need to kind of explore different options there to see what's available and what works for our drivers [Music] so craig just one of the things that jumped out at me on this i i know you'll address with this medical and expanded committee coming up but that one of the issues that really jumped out at me was in the the doh guidance which was much more strict on the screening pieces than in this ed department guidance and and they went below cdc guidance numbers on temperature now cdc guidance is 100.4 is everything that's been out there and everything that was in the doh guidance was 100 degrees which by any medical definition is not a fever it's just a temperature reading and my concern with that and i know a lot of the local

067pediatric commit community has been grappling with this in anticipation of where this would come is how that's taken because it doesn't say anything in there about repeated readings or how many readings within x minutes or hours of each other and so a lot of the concerns that the pediatricians have that they're seeing with this is if you have a single the way it's worded if you have a single temperature reading of 100 degrees you're out of school until you have a clearance from a physician and no physician is providing any clearance without a negative coping test because they don't know and you're out for 14 days and so what i've been gathered gathering and told by many of the ones i've been consulting whether speaking with on it is that the ideal for the schools

068then would be to not use the infrared sensors because those are measuring skin temperature not body temperature and the examples i was given was if we put our students on a school bus in september on a hot day on our non-air conditioned school bus the moment they walk off that bus if you took a skin temp reading on them they're all going to be over most all of them are going to be over 100 degrees if they go outside we have a class outside and they're sitting in the sun and you were to scan them they're going to have a skin temperature over 100 degrees and same thing with gym classes so what what i was being told and i hope you would address with this committee next week but it also goes to ppp

069and other acquisition is that the disposable probes would at least provide a more accurate temperature reading than the infrared scanners and lead to a lower incident of students and staff and faculty being forced out of the building for 14 days based on a one-time skin temp reading that's not necessarily reflective of anything other than it's a hot day or they were in a hot environment so that was just a really concerning piece of this guidance to me damn we have the probes we've had them prior to kova my recommendation however would be that we use the thermal checks first because they're a lot faster and a lot less germ related um and maybe that's the follow-up should someone get a test that's over 100 or slightly over 100 but we can discuss that the other

070piece of the guidance and std that's really interesting is um is that it encourages parents to do it at home and then have some way of knowing that they've given the temperature before we get to the school and that's something we're looking at too and how that might work because only because of the concern of how do we get kids in socially distanced outside of the school we don't want kids waiting outside of the school to get into the school certainly in winter time that compounds the problem so um there's pieces like that that need to be uh still need to be worked out and that's some discussions with the i'll have with the nurses tomorrow but thanks for bringing that up so just just to follow up thank you really for that i i

071guess where i was going with that was either on the probes or to make sure that our plan if we're able to do it that way is not based on a single thermal reading it's more of an if a thermal reading of x then follow with why in a fixed period of time and if you're using the probes on that i just it it's already happening with a lot of the daycare centers where kids are getting sent home with a single reading um uh yeah that makes sense i didn't i didn't get this sense that we were um i didn't i didn't pay as i paid a lot of attention to the state ed document obviously once that came out and the oh document kind of went a little farther back but um i didn't

072get the sense that that someone who tested at a you know either at home well at home they wouldn't be coming but if they tested uh on the way in at 100 that we wouldn't or any other signs or symptoms that it says that a teacher might notice in the classroom they would be going to our school nurse that's why i think it's important to not have our school nurse be outside just doing those thermal checks we need other people to do those so that those students who may have issues could be sent to the covert room and or or to our school nurse and do follow-up and let let the only medical professional we have in the building make the determination of the next step right there are some districts that are using an

073app that you may be familiar with dan where the parents self-report again because of the fact that with this virus you can be asymptomatic so it doesn't matter what temperature reading is that the idea is for the contact tracing to allow the parents to self-report and that has its own risks because we've we've always worked on it on our system of self-reporting and keeping kids home when they're sick and and look we just know the practical reality is kids are sent to school with fevers and different illnesses because of a wide variety of home-based reasons so there's there's a whole nother inherent risk of outcomes based on self-reporting are districts hiring medical assistants or people that can take temperatures and do data entry because this is just it's so medical and but it some of

074it isn't is not even nurse level i mean it could be administered by other people can we even do that most districts are looking at teaching assistance or aids having been trained to provide that we are too dr tice i had a question about um the social emotional learning aspect of planning where are we at in that regards i know guidance is meeting but where are we at as far as that aspect of planning and do you have any specific areas of concern as far as school reopening it's more targeted attendance chronic absenteeism making sure that the children are engaged so certainly part of our continuing services in that area as you know their counselors homeschool liaisons made calls home with regularity uh especially for students that were not engaged uh the spring so i

075do see that continuing wednesday also provides options i'm sorry kelly wednesday also provides options for parents and students alike to reach out to the counselors as well i'm sorry kelly no um this is on a different topic um i was what are the thoughts about extracurricular activities i know that you know myriad different things um you know and maybe that's i'm sure that's obviously that's something on your plate but just what your initial thinking is on that our initial talk i mean you're right it's buried so far down one thing at a time there are many districts and we are considering it as well not starting off directly after labor day i mean starting up with instruction teachers reaching out to students but it is incumbent upon us to train the young ones especially the

076incoming kindergartners as dana's reference even before they get on the bus so we have to consider what training is needed uh provide that training ahead of time i think as a board you may recall you talked about is our way to do videos or desensitize the students especially for the returning students so they know that school is going to be a little bit more uh you know sterile so to speak thank you to sherry for sending that one video out uh i mean i think it just speaks volumes uh you know in terms of i know parents are saying all the kids have to go back to school for the social piece and but looking at you're right some of the classrooms in that video that sherry sent out you just wonder how much of

077the social piece is going to be there and i think extracurriculars falls into that i think we want to make sure we don't face plant right after labor day so i think we want to start incrementally make sure we're able to juggle it and then add more variables more children to the equation as we go along so would you consider that as in in that vein where is something on the table where we would look at the possibility for example of elementary starting in person on on one date but middle and or high school starting there in person on a later date than that possibly and that they may be not related to each other maybe starting with the elementary um working them through the training of wearing the masks and so starting you know

078with the groups more frequent maybe all day like you said monday through friday but they only stay part of the day so we want to make sure we give that some thought to be able to desensitize them get them used to the routines especially the returning students who are used to going to the gymnasium or the cafeteria for physical education or lunch so yeah that is something we're considering we haven't obviously in a few days here in a weekend haven't thought it all the way out but it's certainly something on the radar but that goes to kelly's question extracurriculars just hasn't bubbled to the surface yet given everything else that we're juggling i'm sure we'll talk about this more of the medical advisory committee but i'm sure you saw the study coming out of north

079korea not north korea south korea on um children 10 and over being much more spreaders than was initially thought and i guess coupled with the thought that younger children are really needing that in-person instruction is there any thought to you know possibly more distance learn i don't know that that would help elementary school kids be able to be in school more because you still need the teachers but just is there any consideration to that just in terms of putting our teachers at risk with those older school age populations yeah we had if you remember one of the survey questions was to bring elementary in and then have the older students work remotely but as you could see there were a number of parents that want you know the children no matter what the age is

080to be in school and participating yeah of course the top i mean i know we have our commencement coming up uh another few days here and i you know your heart goes out to a lot of these kids that just didn't have a ceremonial closure that their predecessors did so i've talked to some parents that are adamant like do not do not pick that one option i want my older children to have at least some closure having gotten this far you know there needs to be some closure to their experience but you're right that your research does weigh heavily in terms of the spreading of the virus craig obviously this is all this is all new nobody planned on a pandemic but we've spent the last however many years focusing on safety and security in

081our schools in a totally different context and and what i'm seeing now in steps and plans being taken to address today the the covet piece of this is this push for opening up more entrances to the schools having more access to the school so they're not all funneling through a single place but but obviously that runs directly contrary to everything that we've been working on for the last several years with single point of entry and in security for non-medical security so do you have any sense of where and how to draw that line between the two so that we're not forgoing one for the sake of the other i mean at this point uh you know i think it depends on the staggering of the buses i mean we're multiple entrances are important if the

082fleet arrives and you know we're it's customary for us to hold all the students on the buses and release it once in a mass way i think we have to get away from that as the buses pull in i think they need to discharge and you know i agree if we can hold it to fewer entrances it's going to be because we're able to choreograph the buses so that they're not all synchronized for the same time if they're all going to offload it once you're right that creates the problems the corollary to that is as we're encouraging more people to drive their kids to school we know we've got a colossal mess at many of our schools as is with what the drop-off was before this so have have there been any conversations yet or

083do you foresee those shortly with uh for example the local police department on some traffic assistance with that at drop-offs and pickups because i i can i can only envision ender's road as a street for example being just a parking lot if we're increasing the number of people that are driving their kids to school and picking them up yeah our intent is to have the cyros and possibly uh one spo at mott road so yeah traffic control would be in our purview keep in mind though while the 180 day requirement is required the minutes are not so yes nobody wants a parking lot but at the same time if it takes a while to get into a routine and to stretch it out i think we're just going to have to have that permissible i

084don't think we have to be punching the time clock or i think traffic control is important but at the same time we have to have a little attitude to get everybody in and there any additional questions or thoughts on the board i guess my only other question is can you just kind of give us a sort of a high level overview of i mean we've got i say we but we know it's on your desk we have 10 days essentially to piece this together um what what does that look like are you is this a divide and conquer thing across the administration and the building principles or what's the process that you're working through to bring this 86 point list together i think we're going to give it our best shot i mean everybody's stressed

085and tense we've been talking about this for a long time but now we have the details and the devils and the details so i think as with our continuity of learning plan in the spring we put it in in march it came back in april fix this it came back again in may fix this so i suspect a similar process here i think we're going to submit something on the 31st that will at least let the governor make it the decision he needs to make between the first and the seventh but i do envision us going back and fine-tuning it as we go forward i do not think july 31st will be the end of it all oh sure but is what i appreciate your concern for everybody we're just all stressed out these are

086all cardboard cutouts of all of us here on the screen right now we've i i mean everybody is stressed to the max and it's frustrating and that's why i started where i did with the powerpoint i mean the doh guidelines were promised in mid-june had we had them in mid-june i think that would have given us some of the what's a little bit earlier so the state ed howes and the attestations could have been you know augmenting now it's a collision i mean everything's colliding at once we're trying to sort it out i believe in the team but at the same time it's what every other district is going through right now i'd like to tell you they're all you know not just trying to stay afloat i mean everybody's working hard right now once

087the plans are submitted i mean how much flexibility is there to make changes in practice again the plans are on our website so i think uh we i think we can certainly edit as we go forward it's the attestations that go into state ed okay so i guess my last thing is to bill is just to reiterate what we've talked about before is i know you've talked about some of the difficulties of acquiring some of the ppe and other equipment whether it's cameras whether it's masks whether it's whatnot we are fortunate to live in in a community where we have lots of people who are deeply connected and lots of critical industries right now and if there's anything that you have a sense of there being any difficulty in acquiring i would really encourage outreach

088from the district to the community and say look we need the following and we're having trouble sourcing or procuring it we we have people in this district uh who have already been working on sourcing this stuff and procuring it for many many many months already so i would highly encourage you to leverage that to the greatest extent that we can and we will do that if necessary um i probably get about 10 to 12 emails a day uh from companies wanting to sell me masks hand sanitizer plastic dividers between students you name it many of them you know promise that they have currently items in stock so there's there seems to be at least our experience recently in ample supply but that could dry up really quick if you know every district is buying 300

089000 masks so but we will obviously um leverage uh from those in the community that may have connections that in case we do run into a uh a supply chain problem does the state have a stockpile that they've let school districts know about i was watching governor cuomo's press conference from savannah today where he gave over a hundred thousand of the mass to our friends down in savannah so i'm hoping that means that there's a stockpile in new york state for an emergency have they mentioned that at all we were given a a certain amount of samples on masks that we received and we're having people try them out um the one thing that we are definitely looking at and have already placed in order is for uh children size masks because and i know

090definitely the mass that we got for free from the state um either smaller adults or children they would not fit so we really need to get something that's age-appropriate as well um you know for the students in our district i just wanted to i don't know if i mentioned this before or not but i on a very positive note i wanted to mention that we were able to get ppe for our um nursing staff uh it's not enough for the whole year but it is a great start um that includes shields face shields included wipes which are very hard to find it included disposable gowns uh n95 mass as dr tice mentioned which they are being going to get fitted for um and that all came from monada county so i just wanted to men

091that the on center is literally i had to drive and pick it up and the on center is entirely filled with with ppe um and that was quick it was a day and they turned around and they had my order ready and i picked it up and this were actually better than many of the suppliers we usually usually use so nice to send some some positive vibes for that to our tour account the county executive indicated that on friday as well and the support will be there i i just wanted to say that your five cutouts are remarkably remarkable likenesses but secondly just thank you so much it's incredible the stress you're under and the daily grind i mean you're worrying about children you're worried about staff hopefully you're a little bit worried about yourselves

092but we can't thank you enough for all that you're doing so hang in there we're behind you under you wherever i'm above you right now greg thank you okay i believe we can move on now to item 3.02 discussion of district goals and board goals i did ask everyone to have handy the year-end letter to dr tice because i think there's a number of items in there that we can use to develop board and or district goals or focus items for tonight i'd like to see if we could just get not the wordsmith perfect version of the goal because that is what gets us uh takes us a very long time to do um but if we could just identify what the goal is and then sherry and i can wordsmith it and get that

093back to the board that would save us a tremendous amount of time and in some ways i think the goals are kind of waving at us as far as a district you know the biggest one being the reopening of schools and not just the the three plans that we have to submit in the 89 questions that have to be sent in but the entire year and um making sure that we just we making sure that we and the administration stay on top of a lot of different issues related to the reopening of schools so i see that as the biggest red flag goal waving at us at the moment how we were that is a different matter does anyone have any thoughts on that as a goal the reopening of schools and of course throughout

094the year so it would be worded to include the entire school year keeping in mind curriculum budget issues all those things are going to pop up including remote learning as well i say right yeah it's it's reopening schools and navigating schools in light of coved the openings just start but yeah i completely agree because we may very well find ourselves in all three plans as the year progresses with my luck it'll all be the same week but that's just i'll say that don't say that [Laughter] we might just find ourselves with that situation any other thoughts on that topic being a goal for next year and again we do have to wordsmith it but i just didn't want to spend all of our time this evening wordsmithing individual goals because we'll be here until around

09511 if we do that isn't isn't this really our only goal right now is to find a way to have a safe environment for our students our staff and our faculty in which they can be provided in an appropriate education consistent with fayetteville manly as historical education i i'm just having trouble in today's environment seeing how there's anything else that we should want our administration from top to bottom focusing on other than that and i want to make sure i'm going to go back to the recording because i really liked how you worded that so that's probably going to find itself into that goal the first part of what you said but that being the case there are other items that we did ask dr theist to continue looking at this year and we do

096have the issue of diversity equity in our community and something that we've also said that we wanted to look at this year so i agree opening schools and and you know making sure that we're able to offer the best education to our students in these circumstances is very important but i also think that we're going to have to do more than one thing this year now how many things is what we're here to discuss but um that certainly is the big goal but i think there are other things that we also committed to doing this year that we do need to make sure that we consider as goals i i just think perhaps a way to do it is that that that's that's the goal that's the most important most critical thing we have some

097other focus items i think that can continue in those would be that the goals that are carrying over from last year the the long-term start time the facilities plan talking about the diversity issues that we need to talk about in this district i i think those are some i don't want to say they're not important they are absolutely 100 important but but in the context of providing a a safe place for student staff and faculty to learn appropriately i think a sub component of learn appropriately is this diversity education and discussion and evolution that we need to continue working on is working on are there start time adjustments i think those are to me at least bullets that fall under that larger goal i think i agree with you that some of that does fall

098under that larger goal but i think on the issue of diversity and equity in this community i would hate to i would not want to call it a sub goal i think the um level of interest in that from our community and the work that has that should be done to to look at it to look at that issue and again i'm not identifying what the area is that we need to focus on specifically regarding diversity and equity but i think the work in doing that is very important and it should be translated towards as a goal and not just tucked under um the goal of reopening schools um i think when we spoke about this in june you know there's a lot that was fresh and a lot that was happening at that time

099and people seemed to be in agreement that we would do that and we've talked to this board as a board about doing that and i would hate to see this now because there has been some time that has passed that we water it down i've been reading a lot of the things that have been shared online and i don't know how much of that is accurate but i would like to know as much as it is important that we reopen schools it's really important that all of our students feel like they belong to this community and that when there are certain issues and not just racial issues but issues related to bullying sexism et cetera how are we addressing those issues i don't want to push this off for another year i don't want to

100make it less important than reopening schools i think they're both i think they're both important i i just want to just just i just want to be real clear just because there were a couple phrases kind of tossed out there i think i understand what you're saying but i i'm not suggesting that it's any less important and i'm suggesting it's not important i'm not suggesting that it be watered down i'm just suggesting how it gets categorized in and when and where administrative time is able to be dedicated to it to provide the focus on that so i just want to be clear i wholeheartedly agree with and support the importance of it i'm just concerned about administrative focus on it at what point in time in the school year so that they have adequate time

101and resources to focus on it as opposed to the very simple thing of being able to unlock a building and get our students into the building yes oh yeah oh your hand up well i'm just going to say i mean you're both correct so simply put we put it down as a goal the reality is we've got an issue we need to tackle right now but we are being cognizant of these matters that we need to address and focus on and to that extent we have our book reading that we'll be doing i'd like to know when it was due so i can budget my time appropriately dr tice but uh definitely we'll get to that reading but i don't see why it can't run you know why these things can't run together it's just

102dance correct we're going to be focusing on something extremely important at the moment but there's no reason why we can't have another goal out there that we're going to get to it's just a matter of when you're on mute marissa right again i don't i don't anticipate we're going to solve this problem this year or i should say solve this problem but address the issue and and figure it out in one year this is a lot of years of um that we have to look at a lot that has to be done um so i perfectly um understanding that there is you know we prioritize things that's what we do in fm but we recognize where issues lie and in doing that um kelly and then i think rebecca had her hand up okay um

103yeah i mean obviously we're just we're trying to get kids back into school and figure this whole mess out um i think though the way i always i looked at diversity equity and inclusion is you know that thing i think that needs to the importance of it the focus on it should come at least start at the board level um i would you know while the administration is trying to create these plans to get kids back into school and you know i mean it's written into the guidelines they taught it there's discussion about diversity and equity about even anti-racism it's explicitly within those so that does fall under the school opening however i think on a parallel track i would like to see us as a board start to you know certainly the book is

104a good start um but you know i think from there i'd like us to really focus as a board on where where do we go with this um you know i mean we can discuss the how you know maybe once we've had a chance to kind of you know debrief from the book and have a real discussion but um you know i would learn a look like where do we need to focus as a district where do we first need to focus on the board and then where do we need to focus at the district so i mean the issues are myriad when you talk about diversity activity inclusion it touches just about every aspect of a school district and certainly a community so you know i would maybe that's maybe i'm i what i'm

105thinking of it is a a board goal for the year is to figure out you know how do we tackle this how do we start to tackle this um you know do we start meeting with a dei expert to kind of figure out where are the pockets that we should start looking at first um you know is it policy you know maybe that's a place to start that's certainly under our purview um but you know that's just an example so i think you know i think this would be the perfect board goal for us to kind of wrap our head around for this year and then figure out you know god willing this pandemic is burns itself out by next summer then we would have some real good direction and you know have had these

106discussions you know certainly with craig as well um where we could kind of decide and think where does this district need to go and you know do we bring the community in to have more targeted discussions um based on what we've been um learning about and and discussing all year so that's my that would be my you know thought would be to have this the dei piece be a board goal and maybe you know obviously we're going to be to have that in whatever way we can help support the um administration with getting through the cophi crisis you know we i guess we can put that as a goal too but i i do think these are such heavy lifts that we do need to minimize the number of goals that we're addressing this year

107i think we definitely do need to address it at some point and i and i don't know where it would fit um in terms of a timeline perspective but i don't see this as being um a board goal to begin with i think that in order for the board aside from the summer reading that we are doing along with administrators there's so much information that we would need to get from our administration and buildings in order for us to work effectively and having a in-depth conversation as a board all that requires time and effort from our administration um and staff so i think we just need to be sensitive to because we don't know what this workload is going to be we have no id like we already we only know what we have to

108do now and our our building staff administration they know how much work it's going to be to check off those 89 insurances in the next 10 days as craig mentioned that could all look very different by time the middle of august rolls around so marissa i'm not in favor of putting it on a back burner but i i just want to make sure that we all understand that i don't believe that we can work independently of our administration with regard to any of these conversations anything that we do as a board with regard to this directly involves a time of cred and other administrators as well could be um counseling staff as well so i just think we need to make sure that we're being very thoughtful about this so that once we begin this

109we we can make positive strides moving forward so how that how we can write that as a goal or and and again i don't want to say underneath a lingual either because it it's it's not that it's not important but i think that it may be very lofty of us to feel that we can um achieve this goal without knowing what the opening of school will look like or whether that opening turns into a very quick closure depending on how things go well to your point about administrative time i think where you start with as a board is making sure you understand what the issues are and this board and when i say this board the only people who were on this board the last time we had any diversity train as a board were

110out with ellen and i we were on the board i think it was four years ago now we had a very short two-hour diversity training with a professor from su and so yeah there's a lot of detailed work that comes into this but there's the work before that the work where you you read the book you understand you try to gain an understanding of the perspective of the students and the staff who feel that there are concerns so you have to have that foundation before you go digging and saying okay what issues are at fm and involving the staff we as a board have to make sure we understand what it means to be anti-racist we as a board need to make sure we understand what equity is so there's that foundational training that we

111as a board can do before we go and get into the weeds for lack of a better word at the moment with the district staff and having them go do particular things which i agree there's a lot on everybody's plate right now but i do like the idea of this being a board goal because i think we really need to as a board develop what is it we value in this area um some of these things we would not read the book and not get that understanding i did make it very clear that that is something that we are doing right i didn't say you did i'm just saying that that's the work that we're doing now that's the work that we should be doing now not having the administrators take them away from what

112they're doing i'm saying we as a board need to get on the right spot as far as this issue get the right training get the right level of understanding about why this is an issue now get some of the historical um issues that have taken place over time in this community get that understanding because we can't do the rest of the work that needs to be done until we understand that i'm sorry my squares just really confused me because alan disappeared and then jeff showed up in his place and all of a sudden so that just took me for a loop there but anyway i've spoken to rebecca you've been waiting for a second there go ahead um so i'm just sort of integrating everything that has been said so far but um to me

113the safe reopening and um of the schools and the safe i mean basically what dan said in a nutshell i think is a district goal in the only district goal for the year i don't see that as a board goal because i really see that as administrative driven work that we are supporting so i'd love to hear other people's thoughts on that but i don't see that as our own board work i do see diversity and inclusion as work we can start to do and so to piggyback on what kelly and marissa said i think we can do that to the extent we need specific information on the district that does pull on the administrators so with all with this goal and with this year i think we have to look i mean there's no

114wiggle room and making sure our schools are safe that's an absolute but with this board goal i think that we just need to have some flexibility and maybe get more granular as the year goes on as to what exactly we want to achieve this year um people may disagree with that but i just think we have to build in flexibility and then i guess just to pick up on the school start time piece to me that is a focus item underneath you know all the work we're already doing on operationally to kind of reimagine and re-envision our transportation systems and in light of what's the new normal now and and may kind of permanently shift how that looks so i would think that could be a focus item or a sub-goal um under district goals

115and those are really the three issues that jump out to me anyone who hasn't spoken i haven't spoken on this issue but i personally would like to see the board go i agree with mark and kelly and and rebecca um i think it's something that we really have to do the whole country is working on this issue i think it behooves us to be part of that but i agree that our job is to support our administrators in getting this opening of school right but it's we can't do that they have to do that but we can support them well let me go back i never said it shouldn't be a goal and you're all twisting things around here what i said is we need to be cognizant of what work we can get done

116before pulling in the time of the administrators given the fact that we have no idea what their time restraints will be with regard to opening these schools safely for all involved so i what i had said was we need to be careful with how we word that goal that's all elena i don't think anyone's i don't i don't think anyone's saying you didn't say that i think we were just maybe clarifying ourselves that you know i don't the way i think i was thinking of it and i think the way what what rebecca's and said and marissa was that we we want to take a more maybe start with a more global look so we don't we wouldn't need to pull the administrators in to the extent that we might in the future so i

117think we're all saying the same thing um and i don't think anyone's accusing anyone of not wanting this not thinking this is important because it clearly is i think we're just talking about the how and i do agree that we need to um we need to have a global understanding for you know dii issues and i think that's something as a board and on a global level again that we can tackle you know while we're supporting the administration through the covet crisis and by the end of this we'll you know hopefully be in a position where we can start to tackle it as rebecca said on a more granular level jason you were waiting for a while i think no it's fine i just want to reiterate it and i think we've all said it

118right the school opening is just the most utmost important thing whatever whatever happens this year we fail as a board if the schools don't open safely at least on par with other districts right so that that's gotta be number one um and everything else you know i don't want to say it comes behind it but it does um you know and and definitely i like the idea kelly that you brought up that we can as a board and marissa you said it as well we can start to do our our homework and get a better understanding of the diversity and inclusion issues and work towards that the other thing i guess that nobody's mentioned yet so i'll mention it is that um and god forbid that we start thinking about next february and looking at

119a budget for the following year but to the extent that bill has somebody that can parse out a little bit of time or maybe we even outsource it to look at that long-range plan to start to think about what we need to include from building in facilities and again that may all change with the kova crisis because we may need to spend more money in transportation and spend more money on buses as opposed to buildings um but that that somehow gets included again way down the list but that long range plan is something that we probably need to sneak in um again more the second half of the year but something that you know that we start to look at so i i'm just i'm just concerned and i just want to make sure i

120think some of us are saying the same thing maybe just different ways but but you know i i think we're nine different people who all have perhaps our own perception or thought as to what's happening with nfm and what the current issues at fm may or may not be but i don't really want to rely on any of our individual thoughts or perceptions on that um and so to me you know as we've been starting the discussions on this what what's really important to me is i want to hear from administrators within our buildings from our building principals from our building counselors and from our students as to what the things are that they're actually seeing and actually experiencing and actually concerned about in our schools today not in our schools when i was there

121not in our schools when when others on the board were there um and to me that's just i think i think this may be where eleanor was going with this is is that does take time you know i would want to hear from the high school principal the high school counselors some of the high school teachers and certainly many of the high school students to get a better more complete more well-rounded understanding of of what they're seeing sensing and experiencing in that building today and same thing across the district and so it's just again it's just it's to say where it falls in terms of actual availability of staff and frankly access to the students which we're not going to have access to the students in many ways to to gather that type of information

122the way that we might have had in in the past um so so i you know where it falls how it gets phrased i think everybody agrees it's a very high important thing to do it's just the how and when and how it gets phrased in terms of the goal what and and where it lands with that at the end i think what you said a lot of what we were most of us have been saying is that there is a global aspect to this and then there's the the minute detail of it where we do need to find out what's actually happening in our schools um i don't think i actually i don't think i know specifically what is happening in our schools i think we need to you know find out from our

123staff and our students what they're seeing every day but i do think step before that is that you have to understand what the the global issue before you do that granular work so what i'm hearing other folks say in agreement is that you were gonna this year a board goal may be to look at this globally and then as we progress we're gonna identify through that process what we need to do as far as detail work and prioritize that so we're not going to come to the administration in october and say we want a survey of all of our students you know a bullying survey or a diversity survey or whatever survey would be that's not going to happen this year but what we can be doing as a board is examining these big picture

124issues because i think we need to understand what it means to be anti-racist what these issues are that are being brought to us globally before we can do that that detail work that you're speaking of so i think as a board goal it's a good board goal and we prioritize it the work that we're doing on it throughout the year just as we do anything when we're doing agenda planning we look for where we can put things on the agenda and i see that similar process this year rebecca and then sherry i mean i i guess i we're kind of speaking for the administration craig what do you think about kind of starting that this year starting that conversation at least as a board which would inc which would incorporate you at the very least

125but i agree i mean i think realistic and i'm trying to pull all your comments together i think we just need a batting order i mean to go to dan's point first things first we do not want to face plant at labor day but i think as the year goes along we can delve into some other areas i just think we have to be cognizant you know just to spread it out a little bit over the course of the year which as mark said would give them more time to finish the assignment right i mean i think we can do that i think we can so from my experience the past two years on the board um the goals that we set never not never but rarely are finished in one year we don't look

126at them as one year goals but my first year there was a lot going on with with facilities and then the safety and security task force and then you know once we got a handle on that it took two years on each we opened up the start times which then become a two-year goal so this also we can start with the understanding it's not a one-year goal it's i mean obviously this country has had 400 years of different diversity issues so you know we have more than one year to educate ourselves and then to move it into an action plan for so i would go with uh saying that it could be a board goal for this year and then shift it into more of a district goal in the future when it fits better

127i know all of you usually evaluate me and i don't mean i rarely evaluate you but i think what's important here is your goals are interrelated so when you're debating or having the discourse here you're right sherry i mean the school start time ties into things with the facilities committee the you know knuckle of the building how we can see the bricks and mortar going forward as jason pointed out with the long-term plan so i think you know the fact that the goals are overlapping and tying together that's what a governance team does that's so important in terms of because we've said that at facilities for years now that our programmatic decisions should impact how we decide with bricks and mortar so i think it's huge so i i'm not i expect some overlap and

128you're right some of them are multi-year goals and that's a good thing i mean you would not want a yes or no answer like the 89 assurances that i have to do i mean if anything merits further discussion it is these overlapping goals so to the point to that point about you know keeping the the district goal you know around the reopening of school the successful reopening of schools and and this year there are a number of things that we asked dr tyson his letter that we felt were very important to get done this year um the district-wide mobile emergency uh tool the long-range facility plan i mean that could become a prioritized list of items that we would like him to get to this year but with the understanding it's a prioritized list and

129because there's so much uncertain this year and so much may happen that all of those boxes may not be checked so it might be good for the board to go through this letter make those focus a prioritized focus item list so that you know he knows this is the one that's most important to the board to get done this year whether that's the long-range facilities plan we really want to have that done this year or the prioritization of the um security audit items some of these do require more intensive work than others and some of these you know he's give me will be done by other folks obviously than dr taish but perhaps that's a good approach to it you know you have the board goal global goal of looking at the diversity and equity

130subject and then the district goal of the reopening and maintenance of the school during the school year and then the prioritized focus list which we will draw from his letter of things that we'd like to see done this year i can i just say i'm i'm a little hesitant and not terribly comfortable with this part of this discussion because i don't want to be parsing out a private letter in a public meeting and so i'm just i'm just a little bit uncomfortable on the direction of this is there something that you want to have potentially as a goal or a focus item that you could not say publicly because i think these topics in here are things that we can discuss publicly the major issues in this letter or major things that we'd like to

131have done is there something that you would like to discuss in executive session i just think we can maybe do them without reference to things that we that are not public i think i think the goals i think the topics are one thing i think the reference point is is not okay appropriate for a little discussion so then i'll rephrase then so a goal of reopening schools uh for the district for dr tais with over the year a board goal global goal of looking at the diversity equity question subject and then the other remaining items in the letter as a prioritized list of focus items for that we would like dr thais to achieve this year does that address your concern dan i i guess i don't want to go deeper with it i i

132i just said where i'm at with that i think i don't have an issue with the items i don't have an issue with the list as you just described the list okay is everyone else okay with that of course we would share and i will sit down and wordsmith this and then bring it back to the board for approval i just think one other thing that you know we talked about as a pending agenda item before and that i think may fit as a board goal since since it's the board that defines and sets policy as its primary responsibility is this discussion that we've had about visiting the code of conduct and some things that could or should be looked at and revised potentially in the code of conduct and that that's much more of

133a policy issue and that's much more in our purview than some of these other issues you know that i mean they talk about that in the guidance too and i guess that's something i saw as part of like a larger you know dei discussion but it doesn't have to be because there certainly can touch you know there are definite definite diversity and equity issues there but i think just in terms of restorative justice as opposed to you know traditional um i guess consequences as would be outlined is something we can certainly talk about but um but that's something i also want to be thoughtful and thorough with and i don't know if i don't know what kind of attention we have to you know put on that this year but i would love that to

134either spring from you know plans that the building plans for the you know reopening as well as you know our education as a board around dei and you know each committee this year i think should develop a charge that's related to these goals so that our work is supporting um achieving these goals whatever that may be based on the committee um i think that would be helpful to do so that we are directing our efforts towards supporting the district goals this year okay so do i have a consensus of the board for this approach then that we will sherry and i will wordsmith two different goals one two goals one for the district focusing on the reopening and maintenance of schools during this upcoming year and then a board goal related to global diversity and

135equity issues and then a prioritized list focused item list based on uh items that we've discussed the doctors heist we'd like to see happen this year i i think as i see heads not i think on the district goal side of that i think the process didn't i recall how it was written out was to have this discussion with with all of us and with the administration and then that f dr flushed that out a little bit more to becoming more of a measurable goal and bring that back but obviously i don't want again i don't want to spend any time parsing that out certainly not in the next two weeks um so just in terms of process of how we land on a district goal but i think that was the process we had

136laid out and if it helps to the buildings as you know completed an assessment of the strategic plan accomplishments through the first year and are meeting with their teams to plan ahead if you recall supposedly in september as we re-imagined our elected officials dinner to more of a reception and get together as the building administrators roll out their goals what i can do in the interim is summarize their targets for the year because there should be alignment all the way through the organization and we don't have to have this on our next agenda or this could be trying to think when our august meeting is there's plenty of work or september even to approve this i wouldn't want to go past september but we can look at it doesn't have to it's not something we're

137expecting on monday at the retreat so we do have some time to do that okay okay i think i can move to item 3.03 personnel actions is there a motion for the board for the board of education to approve the following personal actions is recommended by the superintendent oh thank you darrell second from kelly all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i alright anyone opposed or upstating okay next on the agenda item 3.04 is there a motion that the board of education the faithful manly essential school district hereby authorizes the district treasurer or his or her designee to authorize one wire transfer in the amount of three million two hundred thirty nine thousand one hundred eleven dollars and eleven cents to the depository trust company for repayment of a construction bond anticipation loan

138thank you mark second from rebecca any discussion this is in accordance with policy it has exceeded the threshold so it must come to the board for approval all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining okay next on the agenda is a proposed executive session is there a motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing the superintendent contract jason and then mark any discussion i just want to say i'm gonna have to jump off and jump back on with my probably my phone so if i leave i'm coming back okay don't worry i'll check make sure you get back in all right all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i hi anyone opposed or abstaining all right so dr tyson dr coughlin are going to

139oop and bill we're going to leave with hope and jeff is going to leave us and then i will cut the live stream as well good night everybody have a good night guys have a good night thank you good night everybody good night guys thank you