Special Meeting: CIGR and HR Committee Meeting of the Whole

001e e uh I'm vice president Cynthia Elliot from the Rochester Board of Education uh we are holding our meeting this evening uh this will be a meeting uh a committee of the whole uh with the community and intergovernmental Relations Committee reporting as well as the human resource committee reporting um this evening uh and so welcome thank you for joining us uh we have a number of speakers who are who are coming before us to speak on various topics but I wanted to uh speak with um my colleagues about um the way the format that we will use for uh the speakers uh section tonight we have about 27 speakers um and our bylaw uh say that um um each Speaker gets three minutes uh but it also says that we only have we're limited to

002uh 60 minutes and so I wanted to have a discussion with uh my colleagues in terms of how do we proceed with the speakers list um any comment on that I'm willing to hear all 27 if if okay at three minutes or two minutes or because the bylaw talks about three minutes um and 60 Minute limit for U the the speaker's portion we' probably have to limit it to two minutes to get the 60 Minutes in okay all right any other comment uh commissioner Malloy thank you um it was my understanding and forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the um bylaws but it was my understanding that the first 20 speakers were allotted three minutes a piece is that correct pal um well I don't have the bylaws open in front of me so I won't

003speak to the bylaws but let me speak to um our past practice which is when we know that we have more speakers than can complete in 60 minutes then we uh generally uh apply a a rule of two minutes going for um for all speakers not just the ones not just the first the the ones after the first 20 okay well it it's my opinion that we should have all 27 speak I'm happy with the reduced amount of time okay commissioner that's you you're muted uh commissioner Powell sorry I concur with the first two Commissioners okay so we're saying all speakers to speak at two minutes yes and commissioner vice president Elliot there was um an email from staff also asking for some feedback and so I just want to put my feedback on the

004table now because I recognize that President White's not here but I would imagine that next week we will get a large amount of speakers as we move closer to school reopening and so I just want us to be consistent with this um so whatever is decided tonight that we allow the same opportunities next week as well and not have this conversation of changing the practice because I imagine that both sides will continue to come out in large numbers to so so if they come out in large numbers next week we're saying two minutes minutes and 60 Minutes Max uh commissioner Adams you okay with that or you got some um any other alternative oh no I I I support um all speakers getting the opportunity to speak okay all right so we'll go with that

005we'll go with all speakers speaking at two minutes at a Max of 60 Minutes yes that's what I support too and I was going to say 27 speakers is more than 60 minutes but I'm okay with that okay all right okay so we will um Kia um and can you let uh the audience know how if they want to speak what's the process that they must uh take sure um I just want to before you start if you want to do a motion to to to just uh suspend the um bylaws for this evening um really quickly so I can all right can I get a motion motion who's second I heard a Amy you motioned and and will is second thank you all in favor hi hi hi all right thank you all right

006so good evening everyone welcome to the Board of Education special meeting uh tonight we do have 27 speakers with us um just before we have our speakers uh come into the room I just want to do a couple reminders if you like to sign up to speak at a board meeting please be be sure to do so by calling the board office or emailing Board of Education at rcsdk12.org to sign up to speak you must do so by noon of the day of the meeting in order to make it onto the speaker list at that point uh you will uh be contacted by our board staff and provided the zoom link to enter the meeting um that evening uh also want to remind folks that when you are in the waiting room that you must

007rename yourself um we need to be able to identify you from the speaker list and let you into the room so if you are in the waiting room right now we do ask that you have your first and last name spelled out so that we can let you in according to the list um right now the board has said that they will accept speakers to speak at two minutes uh right now and accept all speakers to the list usually board uh speakers speak for 3 minutes so just as as a reminder that you will be cut off after two minutes to facilitate everyone on the list tonight so our first speaker on the speaker list is coming into our into the room and I just want to make sure if Dez Garrick that should be

008a student addressing the board regarding returning to in-person learning is Dez coming into the room right now no Miss okay so then we have our next speaker should be Gareth Warren app parent regarding reopening of schools Gareth welcome good evening you have two minutes my name is Gareth waren Dr Gareth Warren I'm a parent of two sons at Anna Murray Douglas Academy school number 12 on South Avenue and I also represent on behalf of all the parents who support the office of parent engagement and advocacy for the City of Rochester school district let me first by saying that I'm in full support of the reopening plan and allowing an opportunity for families and Scholars to have the ability to have a choice for in-person learning versus hybrid I find it so ironic that here within

009this County as fractionated it is on multiple social levels that within the educational system we as a city as a school district are so struggling to have naysayers bullers bystanders on the outside in determining the fate of our students and our Scholars as we grapple nationally with the issues with social justice and Injustice and systematic systems of racism I find this a pure example of the disenfranchisement of our Scholars and our families who happen to be predominantly black and brown of low economic status here in the city of Rochester for many having to be faced with the opportunity or lack of opportunity to be able to have quality education and choice for hybrid or in-person learning I please ask that the school board support the effort of the school superintendent its parents and families its

010Scholars to put them first in any decision-making support efforts to gain reopening of the school system system as quickly as possible in this opening phase as scheduled for February 8th please do not allow distractors unions policy makers from the outside in making judgment calls for our families and our students we need to make a difference thank you very much thank you Mr We Appreciate You addressing the board tonight our second speaker who is actually our third speaker is Urena SEL a parent addressing the board regarding reopening of schools uh Miss SEL are you on with us yes wonderful when you're ready can you please unmute yourself and uh make your video clear thank you you have two minutes great thank you uh dear commissioners of the board of educations thank you so much for allowing

011me to speak tonight I'm a parent of a fourth grade in the Ola program at amda school number 12 and a upk student at Asbury daycare I was upset by the January 19th RTA resolution opposing School reopening and I urge you the Board of Education to support the reopening effort to begin phase two hybrid learning as planned and to support our teachers as they adapt to hybrid Ed instruction the RTA resolution reiterates the idea that going back to school is not safe yet the evidence on Corona virus spread in schools suggest that schools are not major sites for virus spread and that rates within schools mirror The Wider Community teachers are more likely to bring covid into schools through their exposure in the community activities than they are to get it from students so I

012don't believe that K opening K through six schools poses a great risk to teachers staff or families especially with the social distancing plans and PPP that the district is implementing um I am believe do believe that the RT resolution overstates the risks to teachers moreover teachers concerns about safety must be weighed against the Deep harm school closures inflict on students and families especially in a district at rcsd where students struggle to achieve online learning threatens academic success and students social and emotional well-being evidence from other states shows that unequal access to education during the pandemic is widening the achievement Gap along lines of class and race doctors report a disturbing rise in anxiety depression and suicide among children and teenagers and I have seen a rise of anxiety and apathy in my own son who

013feels imprisoned um at the computer for six hours a day the inability or unwillingness to open for in-person Education this year does a grave Injustice to our children rather than flaming fears over risk the RTA should have sought ways to reopen schools in the fall when Regional covid infection rates were low now the RTA should be collaborating with the superintendent and the board of educ ation to design a reopening plan that serves students needs yep I must apologize your two minutes have elapsed okay thank you so much of course but please submit your uh comments and writing we would also appreciate that as well if you can okay thank you our next speaker is Brandon apic but it looks like he is not with us in the waiting room so I will move on to

014the next speaker who is Leah Elliot Leah is joining us now she is a parent talking about the reopening of schools Leah welcome hello hi hello you have two minutes thank you and this is my first time addressing the board so I apologize if I don't know all the ins and outs so thank you Commissioners for hearing us I am also a parent of a child at amda school 12 um my son is in first grade in the Ola program he's six years old and I know that I'm just one person and also um it doesn't feel like my views and the views of my child have been represented in some of the concerns coming out lately um about how a lot of most families have chosen or or chose at least not to return

015um maybe they were undecided but um that seemed it is still a significant percentage of us that do want our kids to return um I can share about my child that um we were a little unsure about returning because the rates were higher before but now we feel calmer and more ready for him to return and we also have heard from our principal um about a lot of plans for reopening and a lot of um collaboration with teachers and I would Echo what the previous speaker said that my son's mental health has been negatively affected by remote learning not being able to see his peers or his teacher in person he has meltdowns and he's irritable um he really has a hard time even with testing this week he was crying most of the testing

016since he wasn't with his teachers or his peers to see what was going on um and being in the Olaf program his Spanish in particular has been very hard for him to keep going with that learning that language um but I do feel like his teacher is amazing she's very engaging with the kids in remote learning um I know some kids seem to be doing better than my son which is wonderful but she has a way of being flexible and creative that feels I have hope that she will be able to work with her other teacher in the team um and be able to support the kids in a creative and flexible way as we all have been really trying to figure out all these adjustments and changes and I feel like at least for

017my child that it's in his best interest to be back in the classroom um and to have that support and as he learns to be flexible and adapt as well which which all of us have been doing so I just wanted to make sure that um you know that his voice was heard some so thank you so much thank you very much much Miss Elliot we appreciate than you all right so we have our next speaker is Martha King but I don't see her in the waiting room so I will move on to the next speaker kilolo MOA white is joining us as a community member regarding parent choice to reopening um to the reopening plan are you there yes I'm here wonderful welcome and you have two minutes thank you my name is Kila

018Moya white and I am a parent leader Dr kingan said the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort but where he stands at times of Challenge and controversy where do you stand in these times of challenge today I stand with her superintendent Meer Smalls hold fast to your commitment to the parents and families of Rochester City Schools we deserve the right to choose an option for in-person learning learning for our children if we feel that that is the best option for us we do not accept a decision to take that away from us it is unacceptable for Rochester to be the only big four school district and the entire state of New York to be remote learning only this time last year the scholars and fames stood behind

019the teachers of the district in their time of Challenge and controversy today who will stand with us as a school board are you comfortable with the condition of the school district as it stands I stand with her because as she has set a vision for the district with parents and students at the center of the support system we deserve a confident leader that is unafraid to face a challenge and offers a plan to give direction the fears and concerns around any plan are valid and in this D of day this age of living through covid-19 we must all be careful and not Reckless but to face the ramifications and impact on what another five months of learning loss could mean for the children of rcsd is frankly put criminal and unjust please keep H open

020the schools thank you thank you thank you Miss moyo white we appreciate your comments tonight I'm moving on to our next speaker who is David worse a staff me member who's addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Mr worse are you with us yes I am I'm sorry about the mute button no problem you welcome and you have two minutes thank you um I'd like to address the board specifically about the reopening schools and my concern about safety for our students um we really need vaccinations for all of our staff which is not not being done and proper testing for our students which is not being done but to get away even from the safety aspect which I know we all have our hearts and Minds on I'm actually more concerned about the academic component

021there has to date been no model lessons for teachers to do simultaneous teaching um it's been promised and promised and it's coming soon it's coming soon well February 8th is coming soon too and if we want best practices for our children and for our students um we need to model that for our teachers who I have been begging for proper instruction on how to do this and also begging for Quality Equipment there are no smartboards anymore which would allow one to at least project what they're doing on their computer screen as they're teaching remotely to the class as a whole rather than individual Chromebooks um the technology component isn't there the letter from the technology person basically said we're doing the best we can and we work really hard and and that's great we all

022work hard and do the best we can but the best we can is not good enough in this case if we can't um teach effectively to our students so I would ask the board to please look into the educational component and to please allow teachers to not have to take sick time to get a vaccination um I believe Aldi and um Dollar General are actually paying their employees to make sure they're vaccinated to keep their to keep everyone safe um we just simply look to have the same cancer screening uh you can usually you can go on cancer screening and not have a day taken this is this is something that should also be done for vaccinations for for our staff thank you thank you Mr worse we appreciate your comments tonight all right I'm

023moving on to our next speaker uh we have Kimberly Jones a staff member who is addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Kimberly are you with us yes hi welcome Miss Jones you have two minutes thank you um thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Kimberly Jones I'm a teacher in one of our high schools my concern about um the reopening of schools is specifically related to the um 7 through 12 reopening that is supposed to happen on the 22nd um I know that many families both staff families and possibly some of our student families as well um kind of had child care for their children on hold or in waiting in the wings as we were waiting to find out what was going to happen with the rest

024of our school year um and then when it was announced prior to Christmas break that school was going to stay remote for 7 through 12 many of us gave up our spots at um Child Care Centers dayc carees wherever our kids May um have been having a spot held even at schools in some places um because we were told that we would be staying remote and I understand and I agree that our kids need to be in school and I understand that that is driving this change of decision but the problem here is that that decision was made and people acted based on that decision and now many of us are left without being able to find child care for our kids especially if they have special needs that really limits what's available to us

025and then if we put in for a child care um accommodation they were denied so now we're looking at either having to take a full leave which means that those students are going to have substitute teachers um both virtually and in person or many p families are possibly looking at having to take their sick days on the two days that they would be in person um which again would create a situation where substitutes are needed and I'm not sure what the plan is as far as substitutes are concerned for people who are taking leaves or need those accommodations but um I know that there are several staff members at least at our school who do have a need and I don't know if there's enough substitutes to fill it so I guess um I'm just

026looking to see what has been considered for that and if there is be shared thank you Miss Jones thank you your time is up but I appreciate you uh commenting tonight uh our next speaker is Jeffrey um just checking to make sure Jeffrey is able to join us Jeffrey are you with us yes I am wonderful welcome Mr you have two minutes whenever you're ready oh yes I'm listening to the other one right now I'm sorry okay we are a little bit delayed so it might help if you turn that other one off okay hold on let me turn the other one off and then if you can give me my time from then yes go ahead okay hi all right let me get back on I am sorry I am sorry for the delay

027my name is Jeffrey Ven and I'm actually a special ed teacher in the high school aspect um my thank you for letting me speak my major concern right now is I don't think we should open right now and the basic thing is I don't think it was actually planned out very well um being a special ed teacher I'm a lot more effective actually teaching in person but only 24% of the parents actually want their their children to come back and we're worried a little bit about technology about the ability to actually teach them um in person at the same time also dealing with the virtual aspect of it most of my students are now virtual well all of them are now virtual and many of them didn't really and parents didn't Express an interest to

028actually come back I'm also worried about not being able to be safe on the aspect of the covid aspect and trying to get a vaccine um a lot of people have already scheduled to try and get a vaccine for us to be safe for the children to be safe and the appointments are being cancelled 91% of all the vaccines right now in New York York State have already been used and we need more um to actually bring the kids back right now I feel would be unsafe and what I want to ask you is what kind of meeting are we actually having right now everything is virtual everything is online the reason for it is it was deemed that it was unsafe to have large Gatherings or Gatherings of people in person right now so

029I think the superintendent and the school board right now is sort of asking us to go back and actually go back in person I don't think the environment is actually completely safe I do agree that person but I just don't think now is the time Mr thank you very much for addressing the board tonight your two minutes are up so we do have to move on to our next speaker I'm now moving to Miss Shelley Rosenberg a staff member who will be addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Miss Rosenberg are you there you may unmute yourself and you have two minutes welcome hi everyone thank you for having me um like most people I am try I want to discuss the reopening plan I am not only a teacher in the district I also

030live in the district and um my boyfriend's son is is a student for all intents of purpose my stepson is a student in this district and um I'm just going to beg you and community members and especially our superintendent please don't misunderstand our teachers concerns about going back to school um I 100% agree with some of the parents who said that it is unacceptable to be remote it is it is absolutely unacceptable um um because area schools are doing it and they are doing it pretty safely and what's unacceptable though in my opinion is not the push back of safety it's the lack of a cohesive plan we keep asking very very basic questions of our administrators and and those who came up with this plan and there are no answers or the answers are

031contradictory to what we've been told the opening the reopening plan is not safe so I asking not just to not reopen right now I'm asking actually please have a cohesive logistic plan in place so that we can reopen our kids do need to be in school they do but it is more important that they stay alive and right now they will get sick our community is disproportionately negatively affected by covid and I do think that that will continue at a higher rate if we go back with the plan that is currently in place because it's not a complete plan please don't take these complaints as teachers being lazy like this narrative is that's been going on in the news it's not it's purely out of it's it is shameful the plan that is in place

032is shameful Miss Rosenberg I do apologize but your two minutes are up to address the board but please if you have additional comments please send them to our email and I will ensure that all board members get them all right have a good evening I'm moving on to our next speaker who is Gavin be staff member addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Mr Barry welcome you can unmute yourself when you're ready I got it sorry I just had to shut off the other video like okay so you have two minutes sir to address thank you very much uh thank you for having me Commissioners um and everybody that's representative at the board this evening my name is Gavin Barry and I am a teacher at World of inquiry School number 58 um I'm also

033a former student in the district um Dr Myers small you may remember me a long time ago is H one of your students at Wilson nice to see you um and so I agree with that this is a very complicated decision and I understand and that there are so many different stakeholders with so many different positions um this pandemic has put tremendous strain on families throughout our community um on businesses I I do understand the complexities of this one of the things that has been challenging for me uh as an educator and a and a parent is the effective communication from the district um you know in December before we went away for winter break we were told that we were going to be going remote for 712 like I said I teach in the

034high school um and my family had to adapt and make preparations for that and then just a few weeks later um we were told that things were changing so that I think has been a challenge and I've I've talked to a number of my colleagues about that is some of the inconsistency in terms of communication um when you have an organization that affects roughly 30,000 people including staff and families changing um major aspects of reopening plans within the span of just a few weeks is highly disruptive for the planning that families have to go through um not only for staff but also for families within the district who are trying to figure out what is best for their children I do agree with the parents that have spoken up and I think every teacher knows

035that in-person instruction is superior to any form of remote or hybrid learning um in this environment safety is a major concern I think we can all agree that you know we all want to be back in front of our students I miss seeing my students I'm I miss having the interaction with my students on a day-to-day basis but I also am concerned about the safety I know that many of our families in the district live in extended families um where the transmission yeah my apologies am I already two minutes yes you're two apologize so I I would really just like to see a more effective communicated plan for the district to reopen thank you very much thank you Mr Barry our next speaker is Karen mundorf a staff member uh speaking about the viability of

036the simultaneous instruction model are you with us Karen yes I'm here thank you okay you have two minutes good evening Commissioners and superintendent my name is Karen mundorf and I've been a teacher in the district for 15 years my husband is not only a teacher in the district but also a proud graduate from Wilson Magnet High School I've joined you tonight to speak about a fear that all teachers have it's arguably the most common know this fear I'm sure the very first teacher in the very first one room Schoolhouse had the same fear it's a fear of being unprepared it's what keeps us up at night when you dig deep into the feedback collected through rta's reopening survey you will see this fears what prompted 89% of the respondents to say the district does not

037have the needed Readiness level to begin hybrid instruction it's all about preparedness teachers have been told we will be required to implement simultaneous instruction we've been given three and a half hours of PD on this and we'll have another hour tomorrow the surrounding Suburban districts received anywhere from one to two weeks of PD before being asked to implement it why are we not worth the same investment does this sound like we are prepared during the different PDS over the past two weeks teachers were encouraged to put questions in the chat we were promised they would get us answers hundreds of articulate questions were submitted two weeks later all we've gotten is a fax page with two questions answered when we asked for examples during these PDS we were told to Google best practices does this

038sound like we're prepared I understand the pressure you are all feeling to get our kids back to some sort of normaly we all want it every teacher I know wants to be back in the classroom rather than teaching virtually yet it still falls back to are we prepared I know we are the only District in Monro County not offering some type of hybrid right now however I also want to remind you that we of something that often escapes attention Miss mundorf like other districts in Monro County we hold the distinction of the most economically segregated School District in the entire country Miss mundor can you wrap it up please wrap it up please thank you Miss mundorf we appreciate your comments tonight please submit them in uh writing if you can as well thank you

039our next speaker coming into the room is Tina bianche I hope I pronounced your name right a staff member addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Tina welcome Miss bian um going to set your clock now for two minutes for you to address the board welcome thank you if you go to the district site and read the FAQ pages about reopening the instructional delivery model page says teachers have the flexibility to utilize a combination of instructional materials and should connect with colleagues this sounds like everyday normal business that equates to figure it out on your own like you always do moving on to the PD page there are many phrases there such as we will be and we are going to and other districts are but nothing answers some of the most important questions being

040asked what's the phase one data around attendance in covid testing who will administer the invasive covid test to staff and students on a weekly basis why are we sacrificing months of hard work to get remote teaching under control only to upend everyone and lose out on much more instructional time than we can possibly gain with vaccines on the horizon for educators why can't we allow for most of those who want it to get it why is our professionalism and our safety so undervalued why aren't the board and all of the CEO staff also returning to inperson work the superintendent has stated that schools are safe to open but safe is very subjective where's the objective data to support this claim if it's available why isn't it being shared but here is some data approximately 70%

041of parents chose or defaulted to continue with remote instruction 89% of staff do not feel confident that the current plan is sufficient to keep us safe this data is being ignored if I taught a lesson in which 70% of my students did not reach the desired outcome and if I ignored that data what kind of educator would I be so it's deeply disturbing that no alternative plans have been considered at this time there's a history of earned mistrust in this district and I feel our top leaders are on the cusp of either helping us to heal are continuing to divide us rowing harder does not help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction and this boat is headed in the wrong direction uh thank you miss biani your two minutes are up but

042if you do have additional comments we encourage you to email them as well okay I actually see our student who uh was not here at the beginning of the meeting and is in the room so I'm going to allow her to speak um first um that is Dez Garrick so we're going to allow Dez Garrick to speak first um and is just being L into the room right now after that we will move on to the next uh staff member Dez oh you are muted but when you're ready you have two minutes okay thank you sure um so basically I wanted to talk about the reopening plans and from a student point of view um sorry I'm just not getting home but um I'm a senior at East High School I've been very involved with

043various activities over the last four years of high school um I like to think of myself as a um strong minded student intellectually and mentally but these last few months I've really struggled with maintaining um on Pace with the curriculum as is in a remote setting um I've really lost my will for wanting to go to school um I find myself longing on to zoom and just sitting there or scrolling to Facebook or watching Netflix or doing anything other than school work um and as a student who's like typically I would never miss school I had perfect attend attendance throughout all of high school I never miss school I don't want to go to school and I really just like crave to be in the building and um just recently I know a lot of

044my peers are really struggling with their mental health and not being able to be in the building and the fact that there's like push Backs from some teachers of not wanting to come to the building for reasons um being vaccines or health reasons and it's like well our Suburban counterparts have been in the building in their schools um since the beginning of the school year um and inperson model it's like well why can't we do it why is it any different for us and why is our Health not really taken into account as it should be um and it's like the end of the marketing period is coming up I have to get my grades up as a student I just got into the U ofr so it's like okay I have to maintain those

045grades to be able to like continue and keep my acceptance and it's like really hard to just keep that um focus and keep being driven and I don't think a lot of teachers understand how mentally broken a lot of us students are um we're really going through it and it's really hard and it's really depressing so that's all I really wanted to say thank you desri we appreciate your comments tonight if you have any additional please feel free to send them to us as well okay moving on to our next speaker who is in the room uh that is Cindy or Sydney Friedrich a staff member addressing the reopening tools welcome uh Sydney and you have two thank you okay so um I have concerns and questions regarding the change in bell schedule as well

046as the reopening of schools the new B bell schedule proposes an additional 90 minutes of screen time per day one of the district's Arguments for offering a hybrid option is to reduce screen time but we are doing the opposite secondary students will now have six more hours of screen time per week under the hybrid model my main concern with this additional screen time is the impact on myi data usage for our Scholars at the moment students have 10 gigs of 4G data which according to an infographic released by The District in October of 2020 um students will run out of data after 10 20 hours of Zoom if a student were to keep their camera and microphone on during their classes this means that we are currently only providing students with enough data to actively

047engage in four days of classes per month although students are still able to access the internet through 3G data once the 4G runs out this creates lag garbled and delayed speech frozen screen shares and it makes it all but impossible to meaningfully participate in synchronous Zoom class CL will students receive an increase in their 4G myfi data now that they will have an extra hour and a half of screen time every day or will Scholars only have enough data to actively participate in class three days per month we are encouraging passive learning Behavior through the inequity of internet access and prioritizing the quantity of instructional minutes over quality furthermore the bell schedule reduces lunch to 30 minutes our Scholars that are remaining remote and received bag lunches from school buildings will not have enough time

048to go to the schools to pick up lunch ether meal and return to their afternoon class without being tardy how can we better support these students in December secondary teachers were informed that they would spend the duration of the school year fully remote I was excited to have consistency for both me and my students rituals and routines are crucial to our Scholars how does it serve the best interest of our students to upend all these rituals and routines as soon as students have gotten used to remote learning I don't understand why we are adding chaos and confusion to our students during a tumultuous time in history we will lose precious instructional minutes teaching new rituals and routines for hybrid prioritizing the needs of the 20% of secondary students who choose hybrid over the 80% of

049students who opted to stay remote in order freck I apologize your two minutes are up uh I want to remind our speakers that you do have two minutes to address the board that is only so that we can get through all of our speakers tonight um also the second thing I want to remind our speakers is if you are in the waiting room at this time uh please make sure that your uh Zoom name is is according to the speakers list I do see a couple uh folks that have uh names that are not on the list and um I do want to make sure that you get a chance to speak so please rename yourself uh so that you can be brought into the room our next speaker um is Dara a staff member

050but is not in the waiting room so I'm going to welcome Mr Pablo Sierra a staff member who's addressing the board regarding phase two of reopening plan Mr Sierra thank you I'd like the board to know that as a parent of two young children in the district I'm 100% of support I'm 100% in support of reopening our schools under a hybrid model having two days a week of inperson instruction will help my first and third grader immens they have been struggling with their socialization with their writing with the reading and with remote instruction generally we all know it's lesson ideal and we all know it's causing considerable mental health ches T our children access to Chromebooks in the school building has never been the foundation of the K through six education and it cannot once

051again the return to inperson instruction I firmly support Dr Meyer Small's reopening plan which is backed by Monroe County medicali I also support the principles and teachers who have gone out of their way to develop safe instructional plans for our be very clear about the statement issued by the RTA this organization does not speak for the City of Rochester for its families and much less for its the vast majority of RTA members do not even live in the city of Rochester their lobbying must not prevent our children from leing some of Education the irony here is that while most RTA members benefit directly by having schools in their preventing children in this urban community from receiving inperson instruction our children deserve the option of attending school twice week if that is what is best for

052them their families and for this community give us the option of having in-person instuction just as you benefit from that option with your communities thank you for your time thank you very much Mr Sierra We Appreciate You addressing the board tonight uh I am moving on to the next speaker who signed up who is Lisa Tilly a staff member who's addressing the board regarding reopening of schools is Miss Tilly with us doesn't appear so so I'm going to move on to the next speaker who is Amy Shram a staff member Miss Shram welcome you have hi thank you thank you much thank you everybody for allowing us to speak tonight and um I'd like to first um totally say that I am 100% in favor of being in front of my students in the art

053room and for us to be able to work together for us to share supplies for us to be working that's nothing I want more than to be back in my art room but because of covid I can't do that because of covid and because of the plan I'm being asked to push into every single classroom hook up my computer hook up a webcam hook up to the zoom like hook up to the Smartboard if there is that technology in the classroom well I don't know I'm going walking into having to um you know and I emailed the board I emailed uh Dr Myer small asking them if there's any way that you could lift the force pushing um for Essentials teachers in the elementary level because I believe it should be a building based decision

054I think that um a blanket call for all Essentials teachers to be pushed in um is uh Reckless and it's unnecessary it's putting um us and the students at risk because I have to travel from classroom to classroom to classroom some days seven classes a day that I have to go around the school not to mention we have a lot of um Blended classes so therefore we're pushing and put we're pulling students um and I just feel that because the numbers are low that the students should be able to come to the art room and I would be able to control the space I would be able to control my technology ensuring that I can do this um you know the way that you're asking me to do and so I'm asking you to please

055um turn the force pushing into a building based decision um so I'm asking that I'm also gonna be asking a couple questions that are coming from other teachers Anonymous is that it yes your two minutes are up but if you do have additional comments please submit them in WR will app apprciate the comments tonight so our next speaker is rakia Hardway a staff member addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Miss Hardaway are you with us not so so I'm going to move on to miss oh wait Miss welcome sorry I wasn't fast enough to try to get the video started no problem welcome you have two minutes thank you good evening superintendent Meer small and commissioners of the board um I am a proud second generation graduate of the Rochester City School District I

056also have the privilege of being a second generation teacher in the Rochester City School District um and I am a proud resident of the city uh both of my parents are retired teachers as well I have compiled some questions that have been asked and would like we would like them to be answered so I'm just going to read them off until you tell me I run out of time okay okay um so what research shows that changing schedules and structures in the middle of the year are beneficial to the students will teachers be given a camera so we can move around the classroom easier will teachers be given wireless microphones so they will be able to be heard by students who are remote While others are in person we are told the safest place for

057kids is school we're ignoring that they go home at night if someone in the family or circle is infected the student will carry it into school been addressed how do we conduct small groups between remote and in-class students with one teacher are we going to have webcams for zoom and microphon uh so students can see and hear us under our masks our students have been through so many changes in trauma over the last year and a half why are we changing their programs again this doesn't seem to be what is best for students how many in Phase One have been covid tested and what have results been what happens if a student refuses to wear a mask who will clean the classrooms in between Class sessions how will we get the answers will they be

058posted for everyone how will we maintain a distance of six feet apart how will this work with multiple teachers in the same classroom if hybrid students should be working collaboratively how shall the remote students get Equitable time having to filter that out to hear teachers how will resource and consultant Services be provided to students how will any of this work with kindergarteners are are our atome students really going to be expected to be on their computers all day what Happ oops I last one I'm sorry and finally will we be receiving answers to these question to these concerns brought up and if so when and how and I thank you all for your time I understand these are difficult questions and decisions that have to be made thank you thank you Miss Hardaway before you

059go I just want to encourage you to please email those questions to the to board um Board of Education at rcsdk12 it's really important for we for us to document and if you do need a response um that is how we can facilitate that um thank you all right I'm moving on next to our next speaker uh that is Adam McIntyre Roth Ross a staff member regarding uh reopening of schools Adam welcome you have two minutes thank you for having me um first uh to all the students in the parent parents who are concerned about this the teachers are there with you we all want to go back and teach in a classroom nobody thinks that remote is the most ideal way to do this I'm an art teacher and this is definitely not the

060most ideal way to do this um it's hard to get people the supplies they need and so on but for me this isn't the the bigger issue is not about being able to teach simultaneously in in hybrid model um I think it's maybe not the most effective way to do it um but my bigger concern is a health and safety issue uh the district has released plans on what they want to do what they want to see in the classroom they want to see the the cleaning supplies that are readily available and things being cleaned between uh lessons they want to make sure that there are plexiglass uh plexiglass dividers between students when whenever possible in all the rooms um and I got to say I'm I'm not seeing that so far I'm already part

061of phase one and I'm going into a school in teaching for one period um because it's a high school and the the special uh requirements are have been met but the the promises and the the plans that have been made for this the safe reopening the safety part of it are it's not happening I don't blame the administrators the administrators are trying their darn just to keep up with everything but it seems like there's a large communication lag in addition to a lack of clarity and I don't blame Building Services either because we're not funded you know it's it's very frustrating to hear people say well the suburbs these other schools are going back and they're being successful well that's great but they also have a lot more uh resources than we do right it's

062no secret that that we're struggling for cash for just to keep enough teachers in the district you know I was laid off over the summer and got called back fortunately um but I I think that there's a major problem that's going to be Brewing here um especially in light of the new strains of of Co that have been appearing um with without proper uh safety and health um supplies and techniques being employed across all the buildings in every room all the time Mr McIntyre it's gonna be a problem thank you Mr McIntyre I apologize um but your time is up uh if you have additional comments though please submit those in writing and we'll be sure um to make sure that all board members receive your comments and they're posted to the website I'm moving

063on to our next speaker who is Mr Anthony mccab he should be entering the room now a staff member addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Mr mccab hi there give me a second because I have two things okay you have two minutes sir sorry about that I had a a stream going and I had two feeds going in my ear um so I had something to read uh but I'm I'm just going to kind of go off the cuff because of the two-minute thing um but you know and after seeing some of these parents speak um I I'm kind of sick that our our parents are now in this situation that they have they feel that they have to be um angry and pitted at somebody and it it seems to be coming against

064the teachers um this situation is no win for anybody I think everybody understands that uh parents are rightfully angry um a lot of it's probably a lack of communication um in consistent miscommunication um I mean I had students today asked are you guys going back are you planning on going back they didn't even they didn't even know that was an option A lot of them um you know and some of them said well we're trying but we don't know how and we haven't gotten a response or we're on a waiting list and it's just it's screaming just dysfunction which is just you know a Hallmark unfortunately um but um some other things that I was going to address you know at the beginning of the reopening process we were told that teachers would have their

065own rooms at least in our school a teacher at Franklin um we got an email yesterday saying we can't accommodate that um now uh it's just one of the many 180s we've gotten uh no less than the major 180 of finding that we would be remote in the beginning uh you know finding out in December and then two weeks later finding out okay no we're going back um we need to go back uh and I think everybody agrees with that but it needs to be done right um I have students who really want to go back and they think it's our fault as teachers we want to stay home and it's really it's it's really awful and I think that um that needs to be addressed it this isn't this is literally a matter of

066life and death um and you know I try as a science teacher to explain the science I apologize yes um but I just please we just need more time just please take more time for a better plan make us feel like we'll all be safe once we go your time is up thank you yes thank you thank you Mr mccab and we do have uh five additional speakers but I am not seeing anyone else in the zoom room who is labeled to speak tonight um if you are in the zoom room and plan to address the board please rename yourself uh I the names that I'm seeing are not um they're not accurately named uh with with with actual uh first and last names we have some kind of funny names here so if if

067you are trying to address the board please rename yourself um a real name so that we can let you into the room aside from that though uh vice president Elliot uh Nancy brayman John Pavone Jenny stanbury Leah Elliot and um our last speaker Matthew lavonas I do know he did just email us to let us know that he will not be able to make it and has submitted written comments so um outside of them uh we that should be concluding our speaker portion of the meeting thank you um I know that this is a really difficult situation we have some of our parents um who want their children to attend school students want to attend school you know we have um you know teachers who who are concerned it really is a um difficult um

068decision that we have to make um but we're going to do the best that we can and making sure that the students and the staff who um will attend our schools are safe uh we will be aggressive about that um but at the same time this is this is a moving Target uh we don't always have all the answers to this uh I know that the superintendent is doing the best that she can do and her staff um we thank you for uh those um uh criticisms that we can take back and can um investigate those um this is about continuous Improvement but it's also a moving Target and so thank you for sharing um your concerns uh thank the parents and others who are supporting the district and the board about the decision to

069uh reopen and um we just thank you for um thank you for your comments so with that being said we'll go to to um the superintendent and uh the reopening Plan update Madam superintendent thank you vice president Elliot good evening to you to all of our board Commissioners our staff and those who are listening on Facebook and YouTube tonight we did hear multiple perspectives on reopening and certainly many individuals uh expressed their concerns or wanted to have questions answered tonight we have two staff members two of my colleagues uh Dr Kathy black and Mr who is our chief academic officer and Mr Glenn vanderwater who oversees information management and technology or IM andt are going to be addressing the board and others on two areas that uh predominantly have been uh common commonly discussed tonight

070and that's the learning structure the the instructional plan involving simultaneous instruction as well as Tech technology so I give the floor to my colleagues who will be presenting information to the board and others thank you thank you um good evening oh Glen you want to go I can't even see myself sure I'll go first uh good evening Commissioners uh tonight I'd like to give you an update from IM andt I'm going to talk about uh phase two phase three our hotspot deployment and basic basically where we stand with technology as a whole so I'm going to share my screen and begin my presentation very good thank you uh so again this is an update from IM andt phase two and I'm just need to readjust my screen here talking about phase two and as we

071enter into phase two I know that there's been a lot of concern around one to devices for our students in Pre kindergarten through fifth grade as we look at our pre kindergarten through second grade students that will be returning in phase two they will have access to iPads in a onetoone basis we'll be able to distribute iPads um amongst the school that have already been deployed to students that are there if there's a need for additional iPads we do have some additional iPads that we can deploy to schools to ensure that every prek through 2 grade student that is coming back in in the hybrid model will have access to a device for Sole for their sole use for students in grades three through five we're going to take the existing Chrome boxes that uh

072reside in some of the classrooms the Chrome boxes are very different than are somewhat different than a Chromebook the Chrome box is basically a monitor with a keyboard and if you can imagine basically an Apple TV V is the Chromebook that adheres to the back of the monitor so when students interact with the Chrome box it's the same interaction that they have when they're interacting uh W within with use of a Chrome book so once again with students coming back in grades three through five will'll be able to redistribute Chrome boxes we'll also be able to provide Chrome books for if there's any shortages so all students in grades 3 through five will have sole use of a device specifically for them our students that are coming back in sixth grade we will be issuing

073a district issued backpack so that they too they will be able to carry their device to and from school therefore they'll also have a onetoone opportunity talking about phase three all students in phase three will carry their device to and from school will'll be deploying Chrome uh Chromebook backpacks computer bags for our students grades 7 through eight this will allow them again to take their their devices to and from school also our students who are eth graders last year and are now ninth grade students they will be issued backpacks also so all of our students in grades 6 through 12 will be able to bring their devices to and from school I'm going to talk a little bit about uh classroom technology uh webcams and microphones will be made available for teachers that request them

074and I'm going to show how teachers can simply go into our Rock connect page and um order a webcam or a microphone uh it's all plug-and playay no software needs to be downloaded I I'll talk a little bit more about that when I show how how that how that um how how those devices are ordered uh front of the classroom technology all of our technicians um will go through each of the classrooms for each phase two and phase three to ensure that every classroom and all of our classrooms do have a Smartboard in them and the far majority of our classrooms if not 100% of our classrooms will also have a desktop computer in the front of the classroom uh Chromebook repairs so we will continue and I understand some of the board members have

075had this experience uh Chromebook repairs will continue to happen at the electronic lockers and we have electronic lockers located at the Wilson Foundation campus the Franklin campus Monroe and Jefferson so that again as uh students may have issues with devices that need to be repaired they can go to those um locations again and swap out a device at that time the instructional technology toas are offering office hours four days a week Monday Tuesday Thursday and Friday these are dropin opportunities for our staff members to come in ask any questions they may have concerning simultaneous instruction or the integration of Hardware Andor software Technologies um into their lesson plans and hotspots and myi and I'll talk a little bit about that now before I um share my um my screen the hotpots in myi as you

076know we've deployed close to 12,000 hotspots that came with 10 gabyt of data and over the past three months October we didn't count September because there was a half month in there October November and December we pulled the data usage from the 12,000 myi that we deployed and approximately 1,500 students use 6 Gigabytes of data or more per month all of the students that use six gigabytes of data or more per month have received or in very short order will be receiving an unlimited hotspot so the concerns of um devices running out of data the interruption of instruction due to uh data um expiring uh will no longer be an issue and again we took this data over the past three months I'm going to go and share a different screen here quickly as many

077of you know this is Rock connect um if teachers would like to order a webcam or a microphone they can come here to our help desk icon and wait a moment to get logged in once logged in scrolling down the page you'll see uh click on request a device once you re click on request a device what kind of device would you like to request would you like to request a webcam for simultaneous instruction or wireless microphone for S and you may want to do both that would require two separate tickets only because we keep good track of the equipment that we deploy but in this case we'll select webcam what is your location a teacher staff member would select their location their room number we would also need to know which phase the teacher

078is returning in is it phase two or phase three this will help us prioritize our work we'll select phase two the teacher will then agree to return the equipment when im and request and the teacher will also agree that they intend to use the device and will engage in any necessary training the last piece I would like to talk about as I manipulate my screen here a little bit will be the online professional development opportunities that teachers have just need to go back and share my screen by going to the rcsd learns web page the staff icon coming down to online support we talked a little bit about about this earlier or I talked about this these are the off office hours that our instructional technology toas are available to answer any questions or concerns

079staff members may have we also offer um on simultaneous instruction PDS we've offered several of these so far these have been um um advertised through the office of professional learning they're um advertised on rcsd learns which is really our hub for information and also on the professional development to North logic so with that being said I would uh be available or be happy to answer any questions uh you may have thank you Glenn appreciate the presentation are there any questions let me just look at the uh screen okay commissioner Malloy thank you I have quite a few questions actually um first and foremost thank you um Glenn for for that presentation that actually answers quite a few of my questions that I have um but I do have a few more just follow-up questions um

080first of all I'm glad to see that the students will have access to Chromebooks um you know that's that's very important because as of just the end of last week teachers were under the impression that students wouldn't have access so I think that's a great example of a concern that the the district has worked really hard to address and has found a solution for so thank you um for that that that helps me understand a bit more um I it's my understanding that there were over 2,000 either webcams or microphones that were just recently located or found within the district um so I'm assuming those are the ones that are being deployed now we're actually we purchased them through title four funding and they are being deployed upon request again every time a ticket is

081submitted we push that device out as quickly as possible to get it into the hands of of of of the staff members so that it can be put to use and Glenn how long does that normally take to deploy once there has been a request for a webcam or microphone how how long will that take until the teacher has that to practice with we're able to get it onto the delivery trucks we receive a ticket on day one no later than um the second or third business day is on the delivery truck now once it gets to the building it's really in the custodian's hand so that may vary from um uh building to building but I can say that the following day or the day after the device is put on the truck and

082delivered to the building and those those delivery trucks make make uh daily deliveries uh throughout the district and how many have been deployed thus far for phase two re um we had not pushed them to the buildings yet because no teachers have come in but we have just over 1,000 requests for webcams I don't know how many we have for microphones but I do want to say we are prioritizing staff members and the reason why I'm saying that is because many of our schools take number 17 for example had an audio system built into each classroom through FMP so teachers already had the lapel mic and all of those and and and that piece of equipment so there would be no no need for unless it may be like an art teacher or a pull

083out room there there'd be very little need for lapel microphones uh so again teachers can use proximity as a um instructional tool I used that all the time when I was in the classroom getting around walking around the classroom and that provides Freedom around the classroom but we prioritize deployment based on the um technology that's already at the buildings right so we've had 1,000 requests so far um how many have actually been installed as of right now how many been inst none have been installed at this point they will all again they're all Plug and Play we're asking people to come back in one week they they'll be there none have been installed as of this point so we need simultaneous instruction to happen next week but none of those 2,000 webcams and microphones have

084been installed at this point the teacher will be installing them by simply plugging them into their computer and placing them on top of their Plug and Play So I am will not be installing yet no we're pal pelletizing them now actually I should say okay all right and then I guess another question that I have is um how much time do we anticipate that our phase two teachers will have prior to opening for their own classroom preparation um how what are what are the anticipated um number of hours that they will have I'm assuming they're not going to be able to get into their classrooms to do a lot of the heavy lifting that needs to be done until they have all of that delivered to them so they can practice and get set up

085do we have any idea like when that'll be completed by when teachers can return um I would I would ask um maybe Mike Schmidt to pop on for that that it's an operational qu uh question when teachers can enter the buildings it's my understanding is that teachers can um begin coming in even as of today um they would start start to able to come in but um anything further than that I would defer to maybe Mike and I'll I'll ask Mike then at some point um so I guess another tech question that I have um would be you know when are the specific I saw in the presentation that there will be some office hours in professional development times right um and that's good we all need that um but can you tell me specifically

086when are those office hours and PD times have they been made available to our staff do they know when those hours are so yeah they've been they've been they've been communicated through three different modalities through the office of professional learning uh through the through our basically our Learning Hub which is rcsd learns and also on the teachers professional development web pages uh through true true north logic and again if I share my screen very quickly here and I go um back you can see the dates and times of when on January 27th there will be a simultaneous um uh live stream uh professional development and you can see that it's offered on two different uh times on January 27th also here the 25th 26th 28th and 29th these are the office hours for instructional technology

087toas excuse me um that are available and If you like for example we want to go and visit Brian's office hours here we're going to type in our first name and their employee ID number submit that and um Brian will have you in the room and be able to answer any specific question any staff member has so we try to make this very individualized for every excellent um can you show me the perhaps the calendar for the week prior um what were we offering the same professional development last week for teachers or the week before I don't know if I can go back we were yes to answer your question we were offering the same exact office hours off of the top of my head I don't I know last Wednesday we offered I believe

088two simultaneous um instruction PDS Kathleen will be able to talk to that during her uh tnl information okay and then when do we anticipate the myfi devices for our students being deployed they're already actively being deployed uh We've deployed like we talked about earlier 12,000 of the 10 gigabyte hotspots any student that uses six gigabytes or more per month and this is collecting three months worth of data any student that uses six or more that not even exhausting their 10 gigabytes does receive an unlimited hotspot so that there should be no student in the Rochester City School District that has any kind of interruption in terms of connectivity currently we have 2,900 of those hotspots we're also going to be identifying students with multiple CI pardon me families with multiple siblings for example uh we

089may have a student that goes to Edison Tech and then may have three siblings at school number 17 that would be a great family to identify to get four hotspots back and give them an unlimited device so that they can stream 247 we can take those 10 gigabyte hotspots back and redeploy them is what we're doing right now to our pre kindergarten students because as you may be aware earlier we that was um that was something we weren't allowed to do through our um agreement with the 1 million project but there's been some flexibility there okay thank you and then my my final question is um where can board members go to find the professional development training videos that you've talked about for simultaneous instruction have those been made yet because as of yesterday afternoon

090on the connection show we were told that those hadn't been made yet and wouldn't be available until the end of this work week week so I'm just wondering if those have been made and if they're available for people to get started on yes when you come and I'm sorry I'm going through this again hopefully you can see my screen okay when I come here to online support and again I'm apologize my screen is reloading here if you look at pre-recorded tutorials here at the bottom so um all of those pre-recorded tutorials are right there and available for anybody that's missed any of the profession developments they can look back at um what was shared um in previous professional developments but do we have the specific videos related to simultaneous instruction yes those are the simultaneous

091instruction live streamed videos that were um that were recorded and teachers can go there to to look at those historical videos okay thank you you're welcome than you commissioner Malloy commissioner LeBron oh commissioner malloyd asked a lot of the questions I had but I do want to just hone in on the deployment of the 1,000 um request that you mentioned and I just wanted to understand if that was that request is coming in for phase two or for the teachers that are currently already in the building in Phase One it it's it's a it's a smattering of the the the teachers that are there right now I know that we've been deploying equipment as they requested because they're there uh live live right now our teachers that are in phase two and phase three uh

092will receive the devices based on based on the the um their priori so phase two is our priority and again we're going to be deploying those I can send a notification out when they'll go but I believe they'll be going out tomorrow or the next day um that's okay Sor I I just wanted to understand like if it was the teachers that are going to be coming in and I just want to clarify that it's not next week but it's closed we have till February 8th cuz I'm on a clock down for Sophia to return too um so February 8th is when we are opening um the other questions I had um I I'm glad you mention the FMP schools that had the technology upgraded because yes we do have buildings who as part of

093the FMP were upgraded and I call that we actually had resolutions come before us for additional pay for training on those both last year and the year before and I questioned that I was like why do we have to pay the trainers and they should have been but we approved it and so hopefully um hopefully some of those individuals that received the training are still here because that's you know that's an unintentional consequence as well from midor cuts um I did want to go back though and ask about the Chromebook repair here um so yes I was I have been one of the Commissioners who had a repair done during Co had to come to the locker but how do parents make a request for their students Chromebook if they're having issues with it to

094get repaired is it through that same locker system yes it is so staff come to the central office locker system um students parents go to the four locations that we have again Wilson Foundation the Franklin campus row and Jefferson and right now we have 10 building technicians that service all of the equipment for the Rochester City School District we have four technicians on full-time Chromebook repair so that when a parent needs to have a Chromebook swapped out right now we're in the position that a parent can go to a locker drop off a broken device and immediately pick up an a a device that works we don't want to have parents have to drop off a device go home wait three days for their device to be um ready ready for use so we have

095that ability to we we have that ability for instant drop off and pick up again we have four technicians on 100% Chromebook repair two technicians on window device repair two technicians on help desk calls and then two de technicians for all of the classrooms in the city school district all of us are all all hands on deck getting classrooms ready making sure that the uh soft soft ware updates because a lot of these devices haven't been turned on in 10 months and you know what it's like when you turn on a computer that hasn't been turned on in 10 months the amount of time you wait for the everything to happen in the background and all of the packages all the package updates so that's how we're deploying our staff that's how we've deployed our

096equipment and that's how we uh do the transition of devices okay um so I do appreciate that there's four sites um but I also am concerned about parents who don't have transportation um if there's any way that they could essentially communicate it to the school and if we've created an alternative system for those parents who don't have transportation to make it out to those sites to do that we our whole team um IM andt along with working with um building Administration when there's a parent that doesn't have um transportation or has Transportation obstacles um I don't know of an instance where that's been a hurdle that we haven't been able to overcome whether it's a building based administrator or somebody from IMT uh going to the house picking up a device dropping off a device

097and such so it's not come across my desk as an obstacle okay thank you and then the last um kind of comment feedback I have um is so the deployment you guys at IMT get the service tickets and then um fulfill the request by making sure it gets loaded onto a truck and then into the schools and have having worked in our own District so this is our district and not under this leadership and team so I always want to remind folks that I'm not talking about this leadership or team but I do recall plenty of times where materials and books came in and pallets and they just sat um somewhere in the building and we would have to try to figure out and try to track it down where it went and and then

098it could be months before we even have ever had access to those books and materials so I just would feel better if there was an opportunity I think this is an opportunity to clean up that process and ensure that every building is following the same protocol um that the devices are coming in and that they're deployed right then and there to the teachers in the classrooms that requested them um because of and I'm this is not to accuse anybody I just want to put it out there this is my own personal experience having seen pallets just sit in rooms and nobody know what happened to the request um and and I've I've known staff that try to track down things that they've requested like printers or paper and just trying to figure out what happened

099to it um I would just personally ask that we figure out a way to clean up that process so that it's more streamlined EV every principal in the district was emailed yesterday a specific email for their building what to be on the lookout for in in terms of Chromebooks and and other devices that are coming their way so really we we we put it into the hands um of you know IM working with uh facilities and and Mike's team we work really well as far as getting the devices there and we've tried to communicate or I know we have communicated to each individual building what's coming to their building so that administrators the the principal as the building leader knows what's coming um but that's a great point you make and that's one of the

100remedy that we've implemented to resolve it knowing that um there's a lot on people's plates and so that these important pieces of equipment don't um get forgotten or or left in place is that it commissioner LeBron yes thank you thank you Glenn for all of your hard work you and your team uh Madame superintendent you have a question um yes it's a question just a logistical one Glenn your presentation tonight can we isolate that and post that as a resource just from start to finish with yours so it goes over the technology aspects or so that's my first question and if not absolutely we can so if we could just isolate that and then update that and then maybe even just send a communication that tonight at the Board of Education meeting a presentation occurred

101relative to technology on both the student and the staff side it's located at this particular Lane L and then people can click on it absolutely I'll work with mol on that and um we'll get that up great thank you commissioner Malloy thank you sorry Glenn I don't mean to Pepper you with so many questions tonight I know I'm giving you a heart that's okaye I love you come on um I'm wondering if you could just um perhaps is there a way that you could just share the simultaneous teaching video with ask can you play it somehow so that the community or at least the start of it is there any way that you could just show us what that looks like so I just want to clarify that my expectation because I made this request

102last week was that Miss Black was going to demonstrate that with some staff so I just want to put it out there I don't know if there's a video but I I saw that he mentioned the video but I would like us to have an actual live demo oh yeah of course can understand what it looks like and Kudos commissioner LeBron for for asking for that last week yes entirely I guess I'm just curious to see how that how that looks if you could just click on it maybe for me and show me what's what's there sure commissioner more Malloy pardon me just want to make sure that there's Clarity because n we don't I don't think and correct me if I'm wrong we have not taped yet actual lessons so if that's what you're

103asking for commissioner Malloy there's not that there is p no I just wanted to see what terms of simultaneous instruction what's already been put out there that's that's all can you see my screen okay here the video okay very good okay down here one second that's power teacher Pro I'm sorry I'm navigating here oh here we go I'm sorry I I clicked too high up here's here's uh Kathleen Mohan this is about a zoom oh simultaneous instruction pardon me um simultaneous instruction I haven't navigated this deep in yet student views Chromebooks Chromebooks in the classroom seesaw so it's nice to see that there are resources there I'm I'm just very curious about the uh you know the actual simultaneous instruction which that our staff now has they have to start in in a week you

104know any resource I'd be panicking as a teacher right now you know if I had to do this nope I I understand completely um it's power I'm going to have to go back and and look here to see where those are posted I'm I apologize I can't and it should be easier to find teachers shouldn't have to go through this many clicks I'm I'll put that down as something that'll be advertised and easier to navigate to thank you I appreciate that up but that shouldn't be that difficult um to to to navigate to that so thank you thank you thank you commissioner Adams yeah I'm I'm one of those um board members that had to utilize both of my daughter's um Chrome books um at different times um broke down and it was a very

105very easy process of getting them replaced um strictly on their lunch break I was able to take them different times there and within five minutes it was a replacement thing it was no drop off and come back um so I really me and my kids my daughters both appreciate um the way that was set up so I just want to uh thank you for that Glenn thank you and that means a lot to our team from from everybody here on this it it doesn't just come to me it's everybody within IMT working together so thank you okay thank you so Madam superintendent we're on to Dr Black's presentation yes all right Dr Black all right let me share my screen oh oh I don't have to yay all right good evening board members commission board

106Commissioners and community members I am here bringing you the instructional update on simultaneous instruction where I'm sure you have a lot of questions and concerns to address so hopefully through our time together we'll be able to unpack some of what we need to address next slide all right so just as a highlight I'm going to remind everybody that simultaneous instruction is when our teachers deliver instruction to both their in-person students and the remote students at the same time next slide so I'm going to some time here and on the back end of this presentation there's an additional memo that will help unpack some additional pieces of information but I'm talking about the phase two and phase three launch of simultaneous instruction and at this point I want to remind us that phase two instru phase

107one instruction is already happening and so there are already teachers in buildings doing simultaneous instruction for our phase one students we recognize that phase two and phase three brings another number of students and teachers to the building and I'm going to share with you a little bit about what we've done in preparation of that launch um the first thing I want to highlight is around our professional development experiences we've offered sessions on best practices and content for simultaneous instruction throughout the month of January so we had a live stream session on the 13th and then we had a number of additional content sessions on the 20th of January and we have another set of sessions being offered on tomorrow um we're constantly adding sessions and revising based on what we hear from the field and

108teacher need um so we look forward to continuing support both through the launch of phase two and three and through the implementation of phase two and three we've been asked around models and demonstrations I heard um commissioner LeBron asked me to come and demonstrate um so that is underway but I want to also add that video collection is also being done for teachers who are in phase one who have rcsd students in front of them and have been implementing the model for about two and a half weeks now um our first video with raw footage is scheduled to become on board on Thursday and there are also some videos that have been done by the math department that breaks out math instruction more deliberately um as we go into phase two and phase three we're

109hopeful that other teachers will be willing to have themselves videotaped and captured in addition to myself so that we can use those opportunities and examples to build our practice and the third thing we've done in preparation for phase two and phase three is doing a not a lot of knowledge Gathering and management um so the tnl team our content directors our requisite toas have been scouring lots of places to look for Best Practices um both Lessons Learned and lessons don't that people don't want to learn again to find additional resources to share with our teams and build our content we are also scheduling additional opportunities for us to visit and collaborate with neighboring districts um some of the in-person visits are a little bit more challenging to negotiate because of covid restrictions but a lot

110of our partners both far and wide have made themselves available for both our internal central office staff and then um upcoming our teachers to be able to then see other examples of simultaneous instruction in play so we're doing a lot of building our capacity to provide supports for our teachers who have to implement simultaneous instruction next slide so I want to just kind of highlight the two things that have come up a lot I won't spend a lot of time on instructional technology because Glenn covered that um exhaustively and that's very exciting for us to know that our teachers and our students will have onetoone option options to build out what's happening in classrooms in terms of instruction materials what we're asking what we're thinking about or what we're recommending is that when teachers think

111about their instructional decisions that they're making when they're planning instructional lessons when they're trying to figure out whether it's a shared reading lesson or a direct instruction in math that they are figuring out and working with both their teams and their colleagues to determine what instructional materials are appropriate for each lesson so when we're thinking about planning we know that sometimes kids have to have text in front of them sometimes it's good for them to turn pages sometimes it's good for them to use a screen and as we're building out lessons and instructional supports we're asking that teachers think about the kinds of lessons we want to create and then how we can offer supports to make that so there's also been a lot of conversation around instructional materials like books and pencils and paper

112and we know that those things have to be provided both in classrooms and be provided to students who might be remote and we've been deploying materials follow along so that won't stop as we move into our hybrid environment next slide so in terms of ongoing supports so one of the things that's really important about teacher development and implementing any model is the ongoing supports that occur after you begin so there's one thing to offer professional development as a sit and get or professional development as a long-term engagement there's another thing to be able to support and develop teachers once they're in the midst of the work and so as we move from giving professional development prior to phase two and phase three launch we are committed to doing and implementing job and better professional development

113once simultaneous instruction launches so no better way to help teachers um get better or to figure out what works for kids than to be in the midst with them and say Here's how we Chang things what have we done differently what would you imagine doing and so we're really leaning into some job embedded professional development supports in addition to as Glenn mentioned the kind content directors are amping up their um increased office hours from all of our departments um so we also will have office hours for teachers to get individualized one-on-one support on content areas um and then we're outfitting and thinking about how do we provide opportunities for teachers to lesson plan and collaborate both across and within the district on how to articulate instruction at the end of the day we know that

114we have Wednesdays where we're providing professional development and we're hopeful that we'll use Wednesdays also for collaboration across the district um next slide so I wanted to take a moment and I know there's a lot of questions but I want to take a moment and just provide some additional supporting rationale around why we opted to elect to do simultaneous instruction so there was a conversation there's been conversations about instructional minutes and time on task one of the rationals or reasons why we selected simultaneous instruction is because it increases the amount of instructional min that students have access to in both veins while we have given guidance around the instructional diet to how many minutes should be in a um content area we've given additional guidance to teachers on how many of those minutes should be

115direct instruction and how many of those minutes should be asynchronous or individualized instruction so using the simultaneous model we are actually increasing the amount of direct teacher time that students get across the board additionally there was a big concern for us to work very hard to maintain the classroom teacher assignments in the student cohort so that students and teachers could maintain and build upon relationships they had previously established the simultaneous instruction model allows that to be so so in most cases we were able to keep our students and our teachers together and students and teachers then have the ability to build on what they've done over the course of the past four months and getting to know each other figuring out who wants to speak how to use accountable talk and do that within their

116classroom communities that they've already established finally while not high on the instructional decision-making Matrix there were some Financial considerations and resource allocation things that we thought about in terms of if we were to do an a different hybrid model and there are other models out there what would the implications that that be on Staffing could we accommodate increased Staffing could we accommodate equity and parity around who's uh receiving in-person kids and remote kids who do we um think about equity and parity around class size and what we came back down to is that with a lot of effort and a positive facing orientation for all of us myself included that being able to have teachers support their students who want to choose the hybrid model and be in person and students who want to remain

117in a remote model at home keeping that classroom Community as a collective and asking instruction to happen in that way was our best decision um so I'll pause there and poise for um any questions that anyone may have for me look I and I see I see my two I'm not facilitating so let me St back ma'am commissioner Malloy you have a question all right um thank you Dr Black she's like oh gosh ready here we go all right so first and foremost I am um as a teacher incredibly excited to see kids back in our buildings finally right um we need to be back in school um and nothing compares to that face-to-face instruction um I have some major concerns however about how quickly things are happening and just making sure we're you know

118dotting our eyes and crossing the teas um so I have a few questions we're gonna ask here um first and foremost I I was unsure when you mentioned a videos underway can you explain what does that mean I was unclear on that terminology so in um the previous board meeting there was a request for both demonstration and model lessons um both for myself and from others in the field we recognize that it's really important to get videos of our teachers and our kids in time permitting we were able to secure some phase one teachers so teachers who have been with their kids for about two and a half weeks who were willing to make their P their practice public um and so our first teacher is being videotaped on Thursday okay so that's not being

119done until tomorrow or Thursday rather sorry today's Tuesday so Thursday and then that will be like edited I'm assuming when will that actually be available yeah for our phase two teachers who have to start in a week so I think that there's some I'll take I'll take a step back so there's gonna be some raw footage available and we all know how raw footage looks when we're getting it from kids and I think out of respect for the teacher and the kids there's a notion of can we look at that as raw footage or do we have to edit it to make it receivable for people um so I'm see we're turning it around pretty quick quickly and that's only our first teacher so there are other teachers who are in the wings um ready

120to go so we we only have one video at this point available yep so we're video that starts that we're only gonna have the first video that gets videotaped tomorrow there are subsequent ones that are going to be made available okay so there are currently no videos out there on simultaneous instruction so let me be so I want to be real clear there are video there are so demonstrations of teachers physical teachers with physical babies doing simultaneous instruction are not available yet there are videos of Staff members giving best practices around simultaneous instruction but those are not demonstrations the first demonstration video will be collecting raw footage tomorrow with more to come okay thank you so that was one question um and then my next one um in your experience in visiting our various District

121buildings um which of our buildings in your opinion will need the most support oh so I'm gonna actually say I can't speak to that at this point I've only been in one building to now today I've been able to visit some classrooms via video instruction and I actually think that despite building configuration that all of our teachers and given the technology capacity that we have being the laptop the desktop the Smartboard the potential webcam and microphone all buildings have the potential to do this well we just have to work together to make it happen okay all right thank you for that and then um I do have just a couple more questions um so how many of our schools currently have weight lists for hybrid instruction I've just told you how much I support hybrid

122instruction um we need that face-to-face instruction taking place I know that 70% of our families have opted to remain remote um which I respect that decision too um but I'm hearing well my own children are on a weight list and stuff too um how many schools currently have weight lists for hybrid instruction and why aren't all families who want hybrid like don't we want choice for our families like why don't all families have access to hybrid if that's what they want and need okay so I can talk to the first part in terms that all schools who have children who want to come back for hybrid are maintaining a weight list I do not have the the actual number of how many schools but all schools have that option to have a weight list running

123should space become available in terms of responding to choice we do have a process in place where when space becomes available and we're able to accommodate for transportation and if um the school Chiefs and their Mike want to jump in here as this is partly operations um we will have the opportunity to reach out to again as space becomes available to accommodate additional students who want to opt into the hybrid model follow up with that commissioner Malloy also um we certainly in the Friday letter can send where we are as far as weight list that's not an issue by school by grade level we have that information the other thing that we have to be mindful we did choose to for elementary k6 on Monday Tuesday right and then 712 Thursday Friday um our classrooms

124and Mike correct me if I'm wrong Can Only Hold 12 so if they go above that then they would you know we could potentially I suppose look at them having another teacher but then you get into teacher of record and some of those other pieces so yeah I understand the beds piece and stuff but I guess my concern is what if in that original survey that went out um what if 70% of our families had chosen hybrid would we have been able to accommodate that in our planning um I I guess my concern is it seems to me that there are a lot of families out there who want hybrid who want to be in the science is telling us that it's safe for kids to come back to school I guess I'm not understanding

125how we're about to start phase two and then phase three and we can't really seem to guarantee a hybrid option or model to me that strikes me as like like inequity in a way that we can't make that available to any student who would want to come back in person um well part of it is that um again we built our uh our plan right on how we were going to move forward based on the responses that we had and at that time you know we had said that's the decision we're opening it up to make sure that it's more flexible to accept more students had we had 70% we'd have to look at a different model and um we would have a different phase two and a different phase three frankly so um and

126it may have looked like a Monday Tuesday and a Thursday Friday but given what we had at that time um that was the that was the model or the the time frame that we went with so School District as you know yours as well are going through this where they are um also looking at they have to minimize they don't necessarily have weight list but people who want to switch from remote to hybrid or vice versa in some instance instances aren't able to do so so we are working through the list each one of our chief of schools Sheila Shirley and Carmine are closely monitoring that they are reach they're reaching out to see if there are any and they're as soon as they are getting the information about parents who are making the choice

127to to come back out of hybrid into remote then they're they're going through that they're they're looking through it very very carefully but again given what when we did that survey back in December the 32% at prek 6 and the 26% at 712 was what we had um but again should we make some additional moves we're going to get feedback that yet again you're switching the plan up or and or you are now my child is goes from Miss Malloy to Dr Black so we continue to look at this but I I certainly understand the concern thank you any other questions yeah I have a couple more um I just I'm wondering you're talking a lot about um collaboration between teachers and all the resources that are out there which I love collaborating and I

128think that having those opportunities as teachers and looking at Best Practices is from you know neighboring classrooms Etc it's just so vital to our craft and um I'm just wondering in a week's time when are teachers supposed to get all of this collaboration and planning done over the course of the next week for phase two maybe a lot of that has already started um but as they look at the simultaneous instruction and the demands on them um I I I worry that they don't have enough time for the planning um I mean they have Wednesday day for professional development do we have things in the evenings after hours are there things that will be offered um further professional development over February break right so so that they could come in if they wanted to um

129what are we offering to make sure that that collaboration is taking place yeah so I can respond to that so even as an upgrade we added some uh an afternoon two afternoon math sessions for tomorrow that are after hours for teachers who want more deliberate support and and math and are looking to add additional sessions through February and through the rest of the year quite frankly on how to improve instructional instruction overall simultaneous instruction being just a delivery model there are a lot of pedagog pedagogical knowledge and understandings that we have to build and so our team is committed to helping to build that I think to answer your question around collaboration and planning in the next week we got a plan to open plan to be ready the nice thing is teachers are not

130engaging in new content and so you might be engaging in New standards or new stories or New pieces of your math content or science content but you're not getting brand new kids and you're not getting brand new curriculum so some of the planning expectations that have been in place up to this point continue and I you just think about if I have these four babies in front of me and I'm teaching an Ong grade level story in shared reading what do those four babies need from me in person and what do my babies who are in remote instruction at home need and how do I make that connection so are we giving them in person um textbooks to turn pages are we putting up the Google Docs and slides and reading shared reading um and

131then how do you do that you plan that how you've been planning that thinking about your babies and what each one of them needs knowing that some of them might be in front of you and they might need something slightly different or you might need to position yourself in your classroom slightly different or your opening your closing your do now might need to be slightly different in service of doing the good teaching you've already been doing and you continue to plan and you continue to collaborate okay thank you and uh this is second to last question sorry um a lot of people have expressed concerns about increasing screen times for our remote students 70% of our students are going to remain remote um and and I think there's been talk that there could be an

132increase in screen time of up to one and a half hours per day so what breaks have we built into the schedule to ensure that um our students are getting those breaks kids are so kids disengaged from remote learning they're you know we had a student earlier this evening from East High School who got into uvar yay okay that's awesome anyway um but was completely getting disengaged and distracted by YouTube videos Etc um you know and that's a problem even for my own students um what are we doing to make sure that they're not getting further disengaged because my my fear is that with the simultaneous instruction teachers will now have less time to actually um do that RTI that's needed for our most um at risk Learners kids who have not been engaging on

133a regular basis in the remote instruction we've got to be able to reach those kids or we are not going to see uh graduations happen right um so we've got to be able to reach those kids what what kind of breaks are we implementing so different than breaks and I'll come back to that question on the back end because we're returning to our bell schedule we're increasing the instructional diet to the pre-pandemic levels and so where we had 45 minutes to 60 Minutes of ela in elementary school where're increasing the instructional blocks back to their pre-pandemic which means that there's 120 Minutes for instance for literacy that's allocated on a schedule only 60 Minutes of that needs to be synchronous simultaneous which leaves an additional 60 Minutes for teachers to plan high quality instructional things

134for kids to do away from screen so by default um in most of our instructional blocks of time returning to our block schedule there are built-in times where teachers will have to continue to plan asynchronous learning experiences that do not require screen time while also having some deliberate time to have direct instruction increased for all children in which they can have access to whole group small group independent activities they're teacher-led teacher designed and high quality so in terms of breaks they're in there um but I will say that even though there's a screen break there shouldn't be a learning break because we should be maximizing all instructional time so that 60 minutes that's not simultaneous which is asynchronous should be built with having quality learning experiences for kids that maybe put away the computers and

135go screen time and write or Draw or create or recite or experiment and do all the things that we know make a well-rounded learning experience that do not need a teacher in front of them deliberately okay thank you so much Dr Black yes ma'am thank you commissioner Malloy commissioner LeBron yeah I won't have as many questions but um M kathle when you were talking I was like oh I'm going to have to have you spend some time with Sophia um because I wish that she could be a model student um but unfortunately I know the challenges her teachers face every single year um and so I you know I'm very honest with her she's a great child but she is very challenging and will challenge every adult um but I'm also her mom so that

136makes sense so couple of things the 70% I know Cynthia is laughing because she's always like apple tree and it's true um I just want to talk very briefly about the 70% number that keeps coming up and just reiterate that the 70% number of parents who chose to remain remote is really accumulation of a couple of things there were parents who intentionally also did not want to answer based on the information that we had at at at hand and when the survey was open and who also emailed board members and the superintendent to say given the options as how it's presented and lacking information I'm going to just select remote because I don't really know what this means to go hybrid um and now as they're finding out what it means many of them have

137reached out because they want to switch over to hybrid but we had to move forward and create a budget and a plan and in addition to that there were a number of families that we were unable to get in touch with and by default those individuals also landed in that 70% um and I know that that number keeps coming up but I just want to be very clear um that I personally don't think it's a true accumulated number of parents who said I'm keeping my kid home for safety reasons or that they didn't trust the plan um and hopefully in the future we'll look at different ways to do those things and make sure we have um better results that are clear and that parents have the information that they need to make the decisions

138but I just want to clarify that because you guys know I I like the data to be as clean and or as clear as possible um but it's being used right now to say that 70% don't think it's safe and I don't think that that's a fair assessment to use that 70% given the information that I'm sharing right now that this board has discussed with the superintendent in December in the beginning of January like it's it keeps coming up um so I am going to still ask for this video even if it's a raw data you know raw material by next Tuesday to be presented and there's a couple of reasons why I am Mak this request Miss Black first and foremost As Leaders I do believe that we should not be asking anybody to

139do something that we ourselves are not willing to do um two we have I have never seen the model and as a parent I do want to know what this is going to look like what is my daughter's fourth grade experience in a dual model and trust me I will be at schools too I keep repeating this I'm putting it on my calendar um but and and I will be at my daughter's school just to kind of observe a little bit too cuz I'm very nervous and it's a big change in February um but I do think it's important that we demonstrate it for our families as well so yes for our staff because we're asking them to do something that they may have never done or experienced so we should demonstrate it and be

140able to stand on that if this is the model that you um are both pushing forward or this Administration and and the district um but two I also want to be very clear that we tend to speak in jargon um and our families are not part of this jargon world of Education I wholeheartedly appreciate it that some of our parents that did come out tonight talked about our students are Scholars um and I I personally appreciate it that that's the expectation that our kids are Scholars that they have black and brown Excellence um and that I I love seeing that from parents um but I want us to be very clear to our families about what they can expect what this means and move away from the jargon talk and try to make it as

141real for them as possible um and so I think the visual of a video as well would be helpful so that we're all on the same page because again I I know you've presented the model have discussed it and the Dr Myers Smalls it's in your plan but I just can't even picture it so I personally I need to see a visual not only as a board member but as a mom to understand what my own child will be experiencing in this District come February 8th um so I anticipate and hope I know you said Thursday I'll look for the link I'm sure we'll get a link as the board but I do think it's equally important for this entire Community who um Tunes in every Tuesday to watch these meetings and every board business

142meeting to have that opportunity to view it as well um and so I look forward to that next week thank you thank you commissioner LeBron commissioner Powell yeah thank you I have a question for um superintendent um when um commissioner LeBron said something about you know going to her daughter's school a little alarm Bell off went off my head and not because she said it as some people might think but because it occurred to me what if what if every nervous parent decided to go to their child's classroom uh when we reopen just to see that everything's okay would that present uh would would that present a problem in terms of you know managing the co the covid environment and and social distancing what would you recommend what is your advice to parents who might

143be watching um about um whether to you know drop the child just drop their child off at leave or or you know put their kid on a bus and and Trust what is your advice to parents uh who are planning to go back send their kids back to school so we actually have um outlined this I think this is in our document that we have um developed for parents and we we aren't allowing visitors unless we've called a meeting or we we need to have parents in we're really trying to make sure that we minimize the individuals who are coming out and that they're just the staff and the students um in that particular school um correct me if I'm wrong Chiefs or Melody I thought we did that's I just I want to make

144sure it's in the right one the one for parents and caregivers we outlined that right yeah we have it on both we have it h sorry good evening everybody good evening Commissioners and good evening vice president Elliot sorry I'm in work mode but yes we have it on both documents we actually have it on our reopening plan guidance for visitors when they are coming for appointments or bringing students for um testing for example and then on the welcome back um shorter version that we did for families we have there too where we are um letting families know that we are not because of covid right now we are not going to be allowing um like visitors to the classrooms having lunch with the students so we have that communicated on both plans thank you it's

145just I think this is a demonstration of just how easy it is for Mi mixed messages to get out into the community it only takes one person to deviate from the you know the prescribed plan and and say something different for a whole bunch of of of confusion and and chaos to ensue thank you commissioner vice president Elliott I Dr Black you had a question you wanted to respond I mean I just wanted to respond to commissioner Run's push about jargon um and then to piggyback on commissioner Powell's notion about visitation so um most of us know that the best way to figure out what our babies are doing in class is to ask them and so whether your babies are coming in remote or they're in hybrid when they come back to you you

146need to ask what did you learn today and show me as a parent a pseudo parent of five children ages 3 through 12 who are all doing remote instruction and two college students who did distance learning the best way that I knew what was happening is to say show me what you're doing show me your Google Classroom show me your Zoom link show me the text that you're reading how do you know what you're supposed to be doing what did you learn so absent being able to walk into a classroom and say let me see it um the best gauge on what's happening in classrooms that we have available to us right now are our students to say tell me what you're learning and I'll tell you that most students when they get consistently asked

147by the ones who love them or taking care of them are often times eager to share the wonderful things that are happening in classrooms so while we may not be able to visit whether your babies are doing hybrid remote they're in person or at home or in another place outside of the school building ask them what they're learning ask them to show you the text ask them is at grade level ask them what they learn today and I guarantee that we get a good notion of what's happening in classrooms and good feedback on how to grow our practice and do things different in service of our kids so you can't visit them right now but you Dar can ask them to tell you what they're learning and ask them to show you anything else commissioner

148LeBron I see the your hand is still up yep um my hand is still up because I do want to respond back to a few things so one I do think that actually this board and legal need to readdressed parents visiting so and I say that because this board went through a process when Melanie funz was the commissioner on this board where we went through an extensive process around parents visiting in schools and then we had this whole Community Forum on it and then it was discovered that contractually it's written under the school based planning teams that they make up the rules for their school and most of them require a 24-hour notice which is something I personally don't agree with although I understand why they have that rule in place um and so I

149would just like some legal Clarity around that I don't need an answer today that's one two I'm a parent that nobody's going to tell me I can't visit my kids so we really will have to figure this out um especially if I'm giving notice in advance that I'm coming and I'm going to come mask and do all the precautions of taking my temperature um and so I want to put that out there so that we can put this on a topic for conversation perhaps next week before February 8th as we move forward um but third I'm also a board member who assigned schools to be a liaison for and I've said this multiple times we all are liaison to a number of schools and we should be visiting those schools whether it's covid or not

150we should be in those buildings I know some of us have met with some of our principles or have relationships with them where we're meeting virtually um but it's not the same as being in school and Visually seeing what's happening dayt day and so I will repeat it again that I will be doing school visits come February 8 and I will be taking time off my day job to accommodate that and do that both in February um and I plan to continue to go until the end of the school year so I'll make those on a rotating basis I will absolutely notify all of my principles because I do respect my the leadership at the school so that they have a heads up that I'm coming but I will also notify the superintendent and the

151administration so that they also um know which days I'll be visiting schools um and I just have happened to be very fortunate that this year I have school 15 which happens to be my daughter's school as one of my liaison schools so either way I will be on site to see what's happening in the classrooms and do a walkth through thank you commissioner Malloy I'm back okay sorry um I know hi Dr Black okay so I just a couple more questions so um I am wondering let's see here right is there any way that you could provide me um just as a teacher with um the breakdown of maybe direct teaching that's both synchronous and asynchronous by minutes in class by grade or by content do we have breakdowns that we've given like of expectations

152for for our teachers um because right now it looks like the video that's being offered is is a phase one special education classroom so what what's the breakdown of direct teaching synchronous and asynchronous by minutes um by each grade level on content where can I find that so uh oh come on black screen share um so um there has been I was going to share my screen but there has been guidance given to uh teachers via our professional development and through our instructional um instructional diet guidelines um from our pre-pandemic expectations um and then we from our previous so you have them already in your email but we'll put them at the top of your documents in your previous phase to and phase three outlines you have the blue scale schedule that says 60 Minutes

153direct instruction 60 Minutes whatever we have um put them side by side so you can see that again in 120 minute literacy block 60 Minutes of that is direct instruction in a 90 or 120 minute math block 45 minutes to 60 Minutes of that is direct instruction and in the content sessions the content directors have gone and spelled out if you have a 60-minute math block here's how much of that time should be spent on a do now or direct instruction here's how much should be station rotations here are specific examples you can do to interact with small groups of students which are either same ability or different ability so we've been giving those strategies continuously in through after launch um through the office hours and opportunities to plan and be in classrooms to visit

154as instructional supports we're more than willing through job embedded professional development to provide updates guidance and strategize alongside teachers who want to want our support or want to engage with us around how to plan differently great well I am excited um just to see this in action and just understand how all that's going to work um I am visiting school 12 actually next week um just to watch some tech get some rolled out I was invited there um so I am excited to get into schools and and see you know how these plans are developed um just like commissioner LeBron was was stating um but yeah I really want to see those breakdowns for the instruction and and how that's going to work if we could you know get by grade level just more specific

155information as Commissioners that would be helpful thank you yes ma'am thank you commissioner Malloy uh Dr Meers small do you have anything else that you want to present I'll just summarize I certainly want to thank both Chief uh Glenn vanderwater and chief academic officer um Kathleen black um this was incredibly informative um and I hope that it certainly um continues to show that we are being thoughtful of the concerns of not only our staff but maybe that parents or the community has about how we're moving forward in phases two and three um we we are continuous Improvement and and one of the things that um I said on air yesterday this is not a perfect situation we recognize that and vice president Elliot you said something similar to that we continue to move forward and

156so recognizing that this is not a perfect process we don't expect teachers to do this perfectly um and Kathy did mention this we did we do have teachers doing this right now in phase four in phase one no there's no phase four no no scratch that there's only three in phase one and they're doing it four days a week right so um I I think that I mentioned this earlier that as we move forward we're going to have to have some flexibility we'll have to have some patience and you know I know that individuals are frustrated we're working to get information together that addresses uh the questions we'll continue to update information on the website as I asked Glenn will take the snippet of his presentation we'll send that out we'll put that on the

157website we take Dr Black's presentation take the snippet of that get that out put it on the website we're going to continue to develop resources so that our teachers um can feel comfortable and that they feel like they have the supports that they need and you know I certainly want to thank each one of the Commissioners for being supportive and um and uh and just helping us move forward so we thank you for your time tonight and we certainly hope this was informative and that it answered some of the questions that even you have either individually or collectively thank you madam superintendent the next item on the agenda is the discussion of the fund balance policy 6500 and commissioner LeBron I'm going to turn the gavel over to you so to speak so that you

158can lead this discussion thank you so kie are you pulling it up to the screen yes I am um I know that that um before I uh uh start I know that carlen had prepared a response um to a question that was posed last week regarding a concrete example uh yes I was like can we start with that first actually um because I do think it'll kind of tie into the conversation around the fund balance but then also really tie back to um this resolution that's before us tonight as well they're all kind of tied together if that would be possible okay all right carlen I'm just going to share the screen for you um whenever you're ready I was on mute I apologize um I know that Carrie couples was joining us this evening

159as well so if she could be led into the room that would be great so um we did put put together what we thought the board had asked um with regard to our fund balance history and then more importantly um the comparison between the different levels of um of fund balance uh in accordance with the policies that we had submitted for consideration we also had attached a couple of um different drafts um in addition to the the previous draft um and I know that commissioner pal had presented uh a revised version as well so again this particular slide is just showing the breakdown between the different types of um fund balance um that we have and and our historic usage and if you could take it to the next slide I would appreciate it um

160and and again I know that the board had specifically asked show us the numbers show us the numbers and the difference between the different um uh options that were presented so in that peach type of color orange whatever you want to call it in that particular scenario that is the scenario where we're looking at the two months of operating um expenditures and so if you follow that through the course of history um with the district um the last several years you'll see the difference um in the amount of fund balance that actually can be and would be put aside under that particular formula um underneath the second line there or the bluish color you're seeing um The Proposal that had been presented at the 4% of operating expenditures and then the very last line is

161the um the 5% are actually the existing policy so it it's an effort to show you um proposal over proposal what the difference would be um it's our goal to reach a desired level of fund balance um so that in years to come when we have such challenges as we did this year with the pandemic um that we are able to sustain ourselves and and that we can carry on operations um those districts that had stronger fund balance um had less of an impact than what we did um as we fac these challenges they had something to fall back on where we had absolutely nothing we were totally completely depleted I believe there's another Slide attached here to CIA thank you so if you were to take The Proposal number two that was presented to

162you with this packet um that would be an immediate um impact to the district and so if that proposal were to be utilized um where we are using the two months of operating expenditures which is again it's aggressive um that would be quite if you if you flip back again K I apologize for going back and forth here but you'll see the difference in that final column on the right hand side um you can see the actual differences in the um amount of fund balance that would actually be allocated in that particular year in The Proposal number three which is felt to be a compromise when we listen to everyone and we tried to bring um all um all the considerations together if you could flip back K to the final slide um in that

163particular proposal what you read was a gradual phase in of of the fund balance so that's taking it over for a period of time we'll be making progress because we' be at the rate of 10 million per year um and it would take us a few years to get to that level would not be as aggressive as proposal number two but it would put us certainly in um alignment with where we needed to be as we move into the future so um I don't know if the board has any other questions this evening um with regard to these proposals I like I said I do know commissioner pow put put forward another um revision um but we'd be happy to take any questions I think I'm I'm monitoring so um commissioner Clark yes well my

164first question is how realistic is proposal number two because it's so aggressive it appears that that's something that we cannot AG go we canot realistically meet right and and so um again that's why we we took a look at that and we said it you know and from again from our perspective we're trying to align ourselves with the gfoa requirements of of two months of um operating expenditures or two months of um revenues which again revenues are um so unknown at this point in time we're we're so unsure exactly what's happening with with revenues um as we move through these challenging times um that's why we would like to say okay let's step back a little bit and take a look at prop proposal number three with the gradual phas in where it's over a

165period of time we're we're coming into compliance with gfoa um it would take us a little bit longer um obviously to get there but to your point exactly it would be um a realistic approach to take Mr clerk did that answer your question yes yes it does because when I reviewed it I thought a proposal number three was really the best way to go it's more conservative and it's fixed amount that we're setting aside each year to reach our goal okay thank you commissioner po I saw your hand up but I see it down now did you still want to it's up no I was looking to speak next okay so just to put these proposals in perspective the administration's original proposal was 4% of annual operating expenses which was a reduction from the existing

166policy which puts a floor of 5% and a ceiling of 15% if I'm reading it correctly both the second and the third proposals um replace the 4% with the gfoa recommendation of two months operating expenses um now you uh carlen used the word uh compliance uh and and keeping in what I want you all to keep in mind is gfoa is a recommendation we are already in compliance with gasby 54 what we're we're talking about here is which uh recommendation of gfoa we want to follow the the original gfoa of 2012 stipulated a range of 5 to 15% and that's why what we have in our policy today is what it is the the conversation uh last time we talked about this revolved a lot around the gfoa two months of operating expenses only because

167nobody had a real sense of what what that the impact of that was and you'll recall from our last conversation that um that I said uh at the time I said uh we're reviewing this now therefore we're complying with the um fiscal monitors uh expectations she came back and said no I I do expect a modification to the policy so from that night on I um would tried to engage our fiscal monitor in a an a Very explicit conversation about what what did she think needed changing what what modifications did she think really existed now uh Dr jallo if you're on the call I I want you to fact check me here we we finally did connect on Tuesday a u Monday afternoon and uh Dr jallo articulated to me that the dollar amount of

168the uh of amount set aside in fund balance is not what she had had an issue with what she had an issue with was in fact the fact that we were raing that fund balance and doing so without a clear articulation of whether that was whether we were violating our own policy or not I felt I had an aha moment there so I you know I used some active listening I asked her if I understood her correctly and then I went forth and I drafted the new paragraph that you see uh in the emails that I sent uh about specifically calling out uh in in the case of where our budget calls upon us to pull down funds from the fund balance in order to deliver a balanced budget um I suggested language that would

169um simply uh articulate that we are either in compliance with the fund balance or or are are waving the fund balance policy uh in in the act of approving the budget um this really would bring great clarity to the whole issue it basically says everybody knows that we either we're either we're violating our our own policy which the board can always do you know we always have the prerogative to wave our own policies um or uh you know that drawing down the fund balance still keeps us within the policy requirements so it it if I understood the fiscal monitors expectations for this policy review my understanding was that that she was looking for clarity around That explicit point where we in fact were drawing down from our fund balance we were told that that's what

170in in every single um uh budget proposal that was presented to us it was made very clear uh that that's what was needed to balance the budget but what wasn't made clear was whether doing so would keep us within the um compliance with our own policy or not um so that's why I offered the additional paragraph now it seems that carlen and I went off in quite different directions as a result of last week because she saw the conversation as a need for a larger set aside than what was Pro provided in her initial policy uh um proposal I I continue to think that the 5 to 15% range is acceptable because the gfoa language that is the the recommendations continue to recommend that all institutions adapt those Reg recommendations to their own specific needs

171and circumstances and just as carlen pointed out a week ago other big the other big five districts don't um set aside that um uh they don't set aside 15% at least not by virtue of their policies so I continue to advocate for my own policy Proposal with the addition of of policy language around um our uh budget adoption resolutions and um I'm open to any questions you have about that carlen did you want to respond um or Dr jallow did you want to respond yeah I'll wait for carlen and then I'll respond okay well first of all um I I thank all of you Commissioners um for the time uh that we've spent on this one particular topic and I also thank you for all of the questions that you have posed uh in the

172five months that I have now been on the job I have um really expanded my own knowledge base I think that every day there's an opportunity to take a look at things um in a in a different through a different lens um and in further discussion um with our um with the osc Auditors that are on site um with external Auditors with um other colleagues I think it's always uh a it's always prudent to say there's more that we can learn when we take a look at something through a different lens so um I will say that um I know Carrie has had um much time that she has spent into or taken much time um on this matter she has researched it thoroughly and um I I appreciate the work that's gone into it

173and we do believe that um draft number three is a very solid policy to bring forward but again um it's not the administration that sets policy and we respect that so we're just trying to bring to you what we think we know to be the best at the time from all the resources that we've tapped into and um we're appreciative for you entertaining our recommendation thank you thank you Dr jallow good evening everyone uh I wanted to state that it's a both-end position that I'd like to take uh as in regards to the statements made by commissioner pal I do agree that um you should as a board uh not freely um for lack of a better term raid your fund balance to a point where it's risky and leaves the district uh fiscally at

174risk because those amounts are so low that if you are at a uh you you put yourself in a risky position uh if something comes up and you need funds and there's nothing there in your fund balance to help you out uh on the other hand I don't think this is in Conflict I also believe that um whether you decide it's 4% 5% 15% that you want to put in your fund balance that um because of your fiscal situation it should be um option three where it is phased in so I do believe it's a both and whatever amount you decide um I do believe it should be phased in but on the other hand I do like the language that was drafted by um commissioner po that alerts the board when they decide to

175dip into their fund balance as a as a strategy for balancing your budget um so I hope I've made my position my lonly position uh clear as it relates to this particular matter yes thank you President White I see your hands up yes thank you um couple questions and then a comment um and Leslie whoever you deem to be the appropriate person answer that question that's fine with me and and and I apologize I just came in so I might have missed some of the answers to my questions the first question is what is 5% of our budget just quick answer I'm sorry President White we had a presentation and I don't know if it would be helpful if you would like Kia to put it back up there are some numbers with the different

176recommendations and what they mean in Context that that that might be helpful but it is I I did happen to see that just as I came in the room but can someone just quickly tell me what 5% is f if you just if you're just looking for a back of the envelope call it 30 $30 million million 38 right I'm sorry 38 million or 30 million 38 38$ 38 million okay so the next question is proposal three just for clarity sake does that uh mean 5% um a and $10 million a year for three to four years or is that just 5% until we get to for three three to five years how what's your thought about how that was to work it's a departure from the percentage methodology that we originally uh presented it's

177uh we actually had weighed all of these different options you're seeing now before before we presented the first one um then after the the dialogue last week I mean I I thought well let's present everything and let the board make a determination and then show the amounts as you had suggested in the last meeting um the so option three is using the current um recommendation of the gfoa language of two months worth of operating expenditures so so you know not a real fancy calculation you basically take your oper writing expenditures and divide by six and that's the goal to they to shoot for um and so looking at the numbers on the chart it seemed like I kind of CED it to saying okay I want to lose 100 pounds but I need to do

178it by March well let's not set something unrealistic that that's going to De demotivate and deflate us let's make something realistic so the phase in approach seemed to be more reasonable uh giving so thus option three so so I just want to make sure I understand that as I was reading it um that's five the goal is um 5% which would be about 38 million and $10 million annually to build up that fund explain that to me that's what not okay so uh two months worth of oper can we go back CIA to that Excel graph please and thank you I think that'll clear it up yes thank you thanks so if if you look um let's take the the most recent year for example uh option three the the blue line so if we

179had taken um sorry no I'm sorry so if we had taken um option three which is actually the Orange Line sorry um we would have needed at the end of this year if that had been placed an extra $38 million in our fund balance to co to to pass that parameter and that would be a whole lot in one year especially during covid when we're not uh there's so many variables and there's so much instability right now um operations are not as per usual uh which makes it even more complex when making these decisions so it seemed like a reasonable Target was to ramp up and try to achieve that level over three to four years now the only thing I'll say is the the commonality and all the research we did whether it be

180the osc or or whomever the everyone seemed to to think that we currently don't have enough in there obviously we didn't have enough last year but that we should be somewhere the osc had said somewhere around 100 million now so you know we're trying to take all of these different factors and come up with what might be the most practical reasonable approach without having to make uh you know more cuts to the district uh if it's too drastic then we're you know we're facing that scenario so while this is 5% when you crunch the number it's really just happens to be 5% more we would have needed what it's meant to represent is if we two months worth of operating expenditures would have been 108 million we came in at at at um a fund

181balance needed we came in at 6970 is we would have theoretically needed 38 more could you go back to the proposal listings it had two and three proposals number two and three okay so what I'm looking at it seems like there's some conversation on proposal number three it says the fiscal year all things held equal rcsd would phase in the fund balance increased at a rate of 10 million per year requirement is projected to be three to four years at which time the goal is to maintain two months of operating expens so so is is does that plan say putting aside the issue of the 5% does that is that plan saying we're gonna um uh put aside 10 million for the next three to four years totaling $40 million is that what that's saying

182that's the goal um the I mean it's the the the target so when you you know that's what we keep in mind as we build our budget we want to have revenues and excessive uh expenditures of 10 million uh for any given year over the next few years um and then gradually get to the goal and try to maintain it so the the choice is between 10 million for the next three to four years to build up that fund balance or alternatively doing 5% which is 38 million is that how you look at and that would just be too honorous a year um well doing it all instead of yeah it would be a one shot uh leap theoretically all things being equal which is really just very aggressive and not realistic I in my

183opinion commissioner honest it could be any amount you're comfortable with this is just something we threw out there as suggestion I mean of course it's up you know it's your comfort level as a board when you say any amount we could be comfortable with you're talking about the 10 million it could be another right I mean if you wanna if you want to say over you know X number of years a rate of I mean a suggestion based on the numbers that we ran I mean ultimately we we believe that proposal three sets a goal if nothing else it keeps everyone the fiscal responsibility aspect IM blaz blazoned on the brain uh as a district as a whole and and um you know I I think I understand commissioner PO let me ask you this

184if if they're talking about a number of 10 million to build up that um Reserve to about 38 40 $40 million um and even indicating some level of flexibleness to meet Comfort level and we were to add as Dr J seems to be supportive of the the the policy language it says you cannot it has to be 5% we're working on it at at this particular point but it has to be 5% and you cannot raid for lack of a better phrase your fund balance um is there some deficiency in that approach yes commissioner pow and you explain to me what it is yeah two two issues okay um I I agree that 5% of all unrestricted funds is too low I do agree with that and part of the reason I agree with that

185is that we have substantial funds that are committed now committed funds are part of the UN of the unrestricted uh the committed includes our post-employment uh um benefits it includes our um uh our several others uh committed funds it includes the um it should include the um the rate stabilization fund that's one of the resolutions we tabled so what I would suggest the easiest way and the cleanest way from a language perspective to increase our required set asde is to change the language in the PO from unrestricted to unrestricted and uncommitted okay um there's already language that describes in our existing policy that describes the gradual replacement replenishment of the fund balance if the if it is the will of the board to set aside more than the the the best way I can Envision

186doing that is wherever in the existing policy it says unrestricted change it to in to say unrestricted and uncommitted there's another reason van that I that I I want to caution against proposal three okay on on the bottom of the first page I don't know if uh Callie wants to put it up propos the draft um d draft proposal I can't see the title of it um but you trying this was a poison pill there which one in there as well that says any res resolution for committed fund balance must occur prior to the last day of the fiscal year okay what are you trying to pull up right now commissioner Paul I'm sorry you broke up around that time the the third proposal uh track changes first page commitment of fund balance okay so

187for those who are steeped in this committed funds are funds that the board by resolution has set aside and when we set it aside we set it aside from existing fund balances and only the board can do it by resolution so the idea that any resolution to commit a fund balance prior to the day last day of the fiscal year seems like it was put in there the ex and and again I don't mean to be paranoid but it seems like it was put in there as a direct response to my proposal that funds that are currently set aside as assigned funds be recharacterized as committed funds um it's one I'm sorry Carrie it's it's it's one thing for the uh our policy to constrain the administration between unassigned and assigned but I don't under

188I don't see any reason why the Board needs to be constrained in writing a resolution to move funds from unassigned to committed I'm are you done commissioner Powell yes okay so I have a couple of points that I want to make and I don't know if you're done president white but I'm going to go and then I'll let you go because I'm listening to all of this first and foremost I support the proposal to go into this gradually for several reasons one we still have a deficit two we don't know what the final impact of Co is going to be on this budget and ALS so my concern is that if we create this threshold that we have to save 40 million while we have a deficit while we also borrowed last year that 10

189million we asked for permission from the city um to allow us to use that Capital 10 million out of the 119 million from theou that we're going to end up putting Administration in a position and essentially this board where we have to come up with 40 Mill almost $40 million on top of a deficit when we're already trying to close a deficit and what that means to me as a board member is additional Cuts so I I want to try to minimize what where whatever scope and Avenue that we can to minimize the cuts that are coming uh ahead in in this budget season which we know that they're coming and I don't want to talk about them like they're not going to happen so I just want to be straightforward on that the other

190piece I think that the language is there because as I was doing some research for resolution 578 which is on our agenda tonight um there are some tie-in pieces to the language so first and foremost we approved the cafer back in I think it was November it was last year towards the end of last year we approved the cafer that cafer had specific language about what is in our restricted unassigned committed and so forth this board approved it the external Auditors came and presented it and so when we make those type of changes after the caffer has been presented and approved by this board then it goes out to um creditors for the mood rating and all of those things and all those things are really tied back to the city and their rating and

191our rating and their our ability to borrow money so when we make those changes on a document that we've already approved that we've already said this board agreed to based on what the external auditor presented us and they presented this to these outside organizations that are giving us a rating the first thing I thought about as I connected these things was that we are still under an SEC investigation around the 2018 budget that we presented information on a budget that turned out that there was a deficit and wasn't accurate and that's how we got a rating and that's how we had the ability to borrow not borrow I don't want to go into down that rabbit hole and not understand unintentional consequences to things like this um and furthermore I feel very strongly that we're

192paying a CFO and we're paying a superintendent to do this work and lead us down so that we don't get in trouble with those out outside agencies on these conversations um and so for me all of that ties back in together now I do support that the board should have the the highest level of authority decision making and if there are going to be major changes in any of our budget items and lines where again this is why I propose a budget transfer policy before this board so that we have an overview and oversight when large sums are being moved from a budget that this board passed into another budget item line um and for me that language in there kind of ties back into the budget transfer policy so I'm okay with that language

193again it goes back to do we do this gradually and realistically yes for me I I'm going to support that we do this gradually and realistically and we can in the the policy it says that we go into this um and we give it a deadline three to four years let's give it a deadline four years from now we go back and revert to the gasby recommendations that could be written in there that could be done through a resolution that's passed that we constantly monitor it every year and review where we are at financially and who knows with a new administration at the federal level we might be in a different fiscal position next year to say we don't need to be conservative in 10 million let's save 30 million because we have extra funding

194from the federal government to the states to to down to us so I share all that to say you know at the will of the board but I also want to point out that I looked at the agenda again and we are way over in time for this and I I just want to put that out there too Carrie I see your hand up yeah I just want to address one thing I had sent out an explanation I don't know if you guys got or not about the 6:30 date and why it's referenced and this is why I keep encouraging like perhaps you might want to get an independent like osc or our external Auditors to consult with so it is actually an audit issue if funds aren't committed by 6:30 which is the financial

195reporting date um if the resolution is not passed by that date and then we decide after the fact to pass the resolution in August you know we want to commit These funds for this amount if we retroactively report it on our financials we'll get dinged now there's and I I'm not gonna theorize about I think it's just best to maybe and that's okay if you if if you don't want to use the 6:30 date just know that there is a possibility or that we would get a comment in the audit and that's all that's why the 6:30 is there and I and it's hard for an organization of our size I mean to say okay have a finite amount by 6:30 because our books close two months later we don't get our Actuarial report information

196in or excelis uh health insurance information in until the August um September time frame and those are the reports that we use to determine those BS so it's it's a matter of and and I I encourage you to to please get get guidance from the osc there is no hidden agenda here I'm just trying to I'm trying to do what you know I was asked to do which is make a ra recommendation based on my experience it is up to your discretion or decision and I you know maybe you want to get some independent guidance and and go from there if if you're not comfortable with the recommendations or the the okay thank you Carrie um President White I see your hands um commissioner Clark and then commissioner Powell um yeah um I guess my

197my question just for clarity sake and I appreciate Carrie and uh the administration's Indulgence here this is an important issue and it involves the board roles of fiduciary AG so Carrie correct me if I'm wrong um you're proposing just for clarity sake the administration is proposing $10 million a year for three to four years and that's without regard to what the gfoa recommends which would a minimum would be 5% is that a correct characterization of of what you're proposing or is there something else I mix two things so there's one proposal our our current policy says that we should have 5 to 15% of unrestricted funds unrestricted are comprised of three categories committed assigned and unassigned so that's our current policy and and that would mean $38 million for the committed assigned and unassigned no

198no no what would that what would that 5% of the committed assigned and unassigned amount to so Cy I'm sorry could you go back to that chart thanks in fact bottom rightmost the the rightmost column bottom corner I think that'll really point right to what Van's asking this is the okay so yeah if you go to the green bar there it shows you let's go to 2020 this year so our curent zoom in current policy says we should be between 5 and 15% and if you look at the green bar we fell we came in at 11 so we're right on the mark this year 5% of our that that balance would be 32 million if you look under the green pass there the top level would be 97 million if you came in at

19915 and we came in at 11 or 69.9 million so that's the 5% to 15% what's currently in place so 69 is 11% that's what we actually put in that's what we set aside the fund balance yep yep okay the 32 million is 5% right so again and and commissioner P when it comes to your turn you can respond to this but Carrie this is to you now um instead of putting up the 5% or the 11% you're proposing a graduated restoration of the fund balance to the tune of $10 million a year that's it correct me if that's wrong or right um correct but not based on a percentage anymore right the new the most recent jfi guidance uh is not the five to 15 it's now they've replaced the language with two months

200worth of operating expenditures so it's a lump sum rather than aage so if we went with that new guideline this year we would have had to had 108 million what we actually had was about 70 million so we would have needed 38 million to reach uh an additional 38 million in there to reach the guideline of two months worth of operating expenditures so hence option three we said oh that is really steep considering we have 70 in there that is really aggressive especially when we're in unpredictable times and on the heels of two years worth of cuts so we did a proposal to gradually phase it in make some progress over the next two years so so so Carrie so Carrie let me ask you this so right now there is and you I know

201you'll correct me if wrong there's 6970 million in reserve fund balance unrestricted unrestricted fund balance yep so three out of yep so so we technically should have I think you put the number at 108 million or something like that in that account we should have that and we're about 40 million short of that what's that yeah if we went with that that that uh option that's what it would be just in black and white it'd be8 million so so the goal of putting 10 million for the next four years is to get us to that 110 108 million is that what you're saying because we already have 70 million in the bank so to speak correct correct okay now keep in mind as as future years evolve are you know the numbers are going to

202change a little um but you know operating expenditures and the budget are going to there's going to be some variance but but you know all things being equal holistically that was the idea and again go ahead no go ahead I'm sorry I just wanted to say that it again it's based on that 108 million is based on two months of operating expense so what car's saying is that if our expenses continue to increase then it's two months of those operating expenses each year um that's what would actually be the goal then of um of the fund balance level so it it's not going to say stay stagnant necessarily at 108 million it would change but what Carrie has proposed is that it's taking it in gradual steps to get us there versus placing the pressure

203saying that all of it needs to um be realized in one year in order to be um in compliance with the proposed policy I I'm interested to see what commissioner Powell has to say commissioner LeBron but also let me just add and and I don't need to spend a lot of time with it I'm concerned that now that we all know we have 70 million in bank and I hear what carlen is saying that number of 108 million could go up or down depending on what you know our needs are as a district uh I'm concerned though and that's why I appreciate hearing the flexibility in that 5% or whatever number we want to have added every month that a $10 million a year to set aside could have a when we already have in

204my mind 70 million in the bank could dramatically affect the services that we're able to offer children if we already have 70 I know it's not where we need to be but we already have 70 million in the bank and what we're trying to do is get to 108 million slash whatever that number might be I'm concerned that and I I know there are people who look at this differently I'm concerned you take $10 million out of our budget every year and that's going to have a devastating effect on our as I've said frequently we are already at the bone we're sucking out marrow now so so I'm interested in hear what commissioner P has say but I'm good commissioner LeBron okay uh uh commissioner Clerk and then commissioner Powell yes thank you um in

205reviewing the report I noticed that the uh committed funds are also included in the unrestricted which means we don't have $70,000 we've already committed a portion of those funds you know to be used uh for the what what the board has directed them to so my question is why don't we break out the committed funds from the unrestricted funds and that way we have a true P picture of what we have in unrestricted because I I was missing that point I agree with proposal three but we also need to know the amount of funds that we really do have at our our disposal that are truly unrestricted thank you um commissioner Clark and I I will uplift that to and commissioner Powell um okay so uh uh commissioner Clark uh you what you just articulated

206is essentially what I just had proposed earlier which is in the policy language to replace unrestricted to unrestricted and uncommitted um and um to Van's Point um a couple of things um van would you stipulate that the difference between 16 and a fraction and 15 is negligible y okay so if you um callia can you blow up this uh chart Focus unfortunately I can't it's a PowerPoint presentation mode I'm not sorry to know that um the the upper limit of 93 and a half million is pretty nearly what carlen said was recommended which is a 100 million okay our current policy not my proposal not proposals one two or three from the administration but the existing policy gives a range of one to 15% and then it says um if a balance drops below 5%

207it shall be recovered at a rate of 1% per year uh until the 5% is reached the 1% a year from where we are right now if you to get from where we are to the to the 15% would be about seven and a half million over over five years I think I think that's very much in the range it's better it's better than 10 million it's better than all at once but it moves us towards the ceiling finally the thing about the thing about the ceiling is in our existing policy we say let me find it um should an unassigned fund balance uh ever exceed the maximum of 15% the district will consider fund balance surpluses for one-time expenditures right now those considerations if you will are are currently being earmarked as assigned uh

208there's what was it a five or a seven million dollar set aside by rights we shouldn't be setting anything aside until we reach this 15% threshold according to the existing policy um but the existing policy is not inconsistent with these goals and I would um I would view it as a friendly Amendment if we wanted to change the application of the 1 to 15% to unrestricted and uncommitted oh one last point before I still have the mic the thing about uh our cafer to respond to commissioner LeBron's point cafer is essentially a a a discussion about our yearend uh finances it's our balance sheet um and um so any action the board might take uh I agree with Carrie that we wouldn't want to take action for one fiscal year that would affect a different

209fiscal year um so the language of any resolution to commit funds would have to be crafted with a with a recognition of when year end is however the the concept of of um limiting the commitment of funds just doesn't belong in the policy because only the board can commit funds it's one thing for the board to give guidance to the administration on what can be assigned versus unassigned but since only the board can commit funds that language is just not appropriate and that's language is in proposal three um and so I'm I continue to advocate for my policy draft rather than any of the three District administration drafts so I just want to just reiterate to the board I don't want to debate this all night long I'm going to go ahead and support the

210administration and their recommendation and trust their expertise in this um in addition you know um this is not the same Administration that was they they walked into the deficit so they did not create the deficit it was none of their leadership or their decision makings but certainly it was some of our my board colleagues and we got to be honest about that so I'm not going to trust the individual personally who was shering finance and did not see a deficit to make recommendations over new leadership new Administration that I do believe in um their knowledge and skill set so with that said I I don't know how we resolve this and how we move forward but I personally do not want to continue having the debate um and so I don't know if there needs

211to be a motion to vote on this or a motion to retable but I'm done having the debate and the discussion and I do trust the administration and our CFO and will support the recommendation that they put forward Madam chair I I move that that my draft version two be uh cons brought to a vote for consideration are we talking about resolution 578 and 579 we're talking about the policy itself she's talking about the policy so I don't know someone somebody has to bring it to the floor I'm not going to second I'll be voting no on it so I just moved it I'm just waiting for a second there's a second yeah all in favor no um nay nay I'll do nay as well U so it did it pass five2 okay correct so

212I just want to clarify we have four board members that voted to support the board member that shared Finance it threw out a deficit and decision of administration and their expertise in this matter on the record all right thank you thank you um commissioner uh uh I'm sorry who's chairing this who who's the chair take I was actually chairing at this up until this point so for van to call it it was on me so I will turn over the gabble to Van um Madame vice president is that your pleasure because I I don't mind continuing to listen in I you were chairing the committee I I asked you to do that you're doing a fine job it's up to you I I I can be continue to be a participant or I can chair

213whatever works for you Madame vice president oh I'd rather turn it back to Vice no no no I said Madame vice president who was chairing the committee I'm sorry commissioner LeBron I know I'm saying I was cheering it so I'm going to turn the gabble actually back over to vice president Elliott and and I'm asking her what's what's her PL yeah I'll continue okay thank you very much appreciate I have one question I just I didn't see commissioner Adams on for the vote so I I I I recorded a for to vote with commissioner Adams absent if that the will of the board commissioner Adams the vote you're muted sir I still don't see him he's on there you are yeah um I'm going to vote um I okay thank you so commissioner so that

214is um 52 correct all right commissioner power you got your hand up um I think it's for when we get into the uh commitment resolutions okay so and that's 578 and correct correct all right so can I get a motion for approval for these uh for 578 and 579 is it okay take them together or would you like to have those separated out from the table I I move that we lift the two resolutions from the table seconded all in favor I I Madame chairperson I now move uh for the advancement uh and approval of resolutions 578 and 579 or at least for discussion can I get a second second all in favor open up the well I guess what I was thinking is is just to to bring it back but um discussion yes

215I have um some points to make on number 578 um this again goes back to my conversation about the caffer that this board already passed with these numbers in there um if you look at the dates now we're talking about assigning fund balance to insurance for there's some dates from 20178 but the 2019 2020 budget Year is already been um discussed through the cafer and again this goes back to to that SEC investigation that is still occurring I just want to put it out there that we cannot give false information to um The Moody folks and also those who are lending US money and so I am not supporting this resolution and furthermore I do think that if this was written in a language that says this is what we're going to do in the

2162122 budget year that it is something I would considered supporting but as it is written I can't support and I will not be a part of giving false information to the SEC about our budget and how we're budgeting certain um line items thank you commissioner LeBron any other comment questions all in favor of a resolution I do have a rebuttle um on 578 that resolution does not identify a specific fiscal year that resolution calls upon us simply to move the rate stabilization fund from its current assigned fund balance status to a committed fund balance status and if we do that before the end of the fiscal year we will be well situated for the next cafer it has no impact whatsoever on the cafer that is already completed any other comments um yes I just

217want to point out to the board that it literally States assigned fund balance health insurance and has the date June 30th 2017 through June 30th 2018 June 30th 2019 through June 30th 2020 and again I will support it for the 2122 budget year but I'm not going back and if there want you want to make an amendment to clarify it so that anybody who picks it up read it including those in the SEC I would support it in that regard for the next budget year but I'm not supporting it as it's written commiss let me rebot once more the the dates that commissioner LeBron is referring to are in the whereas clause and they only capture the historical data it it show and and the and the data that you see actually came from the

218cfers from the last four years it does not suggest nor imply nor intend to alter data from previous years it it it's a a resolution to redefine the rate stabilization fund from an assigned fund balance to a committed fund balance now from historically speaking the the gasby 54 came into effect in 2012 the agreement to do self-funded insurance did not come up until 2013 so my thes my my theory is that what after we did after we made a decision what funds needed to be committed in 2012 with the guidance of our budget director Vern Connors we set aside specific funds and the rate stabilization fund didn't exist yet the rate stabilization fund is functionally exactly the same as one of the other funds that we commit to the workers compensation fund because we're self-insured

219for working workers compensation the concept here is simply to treat the um rate stabilization fund the same way that we would treat our workers compensation fund and I believe that after we created the committed funds um in 2012 with Vern Connor's guidance that we simply didn't look back and nobody gave it a thought as to whether the rate stabilization fund ought to be treated one way or another thank you commissioner Powell um can I um all in favor of resolutions 578 and 579 Madam Madam chairperson yes sir yeah I um I had a question and I appreciate commissioner Powell's uh clarification but I don't want in the event that no one looks at the record event that no one bothers to look at the record and what she said my question to the admin ministration

220given commissioner LeBron's articula concerns uh and the prospect at least according to her interpretation people might look at this as something inappropriate is there any language given what commissioner PO said and assuming that it is accurate is there any language that could provide the clarity so that if people just looked at the resolution they would know this was all above board because what commissioner LeBron has suggested and I apologize commissioner LeBron if I have ly interpreted you that there's something wrong about what we're doing and I I just want the record to be clear if in fact what we're doing is right and I assume that it is I just want the is there any clarifying language that could be brought to the resolution and I'm asking the administration is uh so that that so

221there is no question about whether the board has acted appropriately if someone looks back in history and looks at this the language looks fine to me but you know I I well uh Chris LeBron uh is an intelligent person and she reads it a different way and so I put it on the administration to provide to respond to her concerns not just say okay well the board's going to vote on it and uh let it just happen youve heard commissioner LeBron's concerns are they legitimate and if they are is there a way to correct the language so that people don't look back in history and think that this board did something inappropriate illegal superintendent Myers you're you're G to you're putting me on the spot I I would need to do a little bit of

222work with klen and Dr jallow and want to get back to you with all due respect and I appreciate that is there a time constraint that that requires that um I know we passed the the the resolution related to fund bounds but is there a time constraint that we require that you provide a uh resp uh that we act on these 578 and 579 tonight no there's not think so there's no reason so so I I I and I don't want to cut off debate Madame chairperson but president I'm sorry I before you cut off the debate because I know you're going to and I'm I will support that commissioner R before you say that c is Raising her hand let me just see what kie has to say yes I just want to um

223ask um Steve can we table for a third time I know in the past we've been told by um legal councel that once the resolution are tabled twice after that the resolution fails and has to come back in another another number the the that's what that's what we've acted on in the past is that the resolution is dropped and then we bring it would need to be brought back under under a new resolution because at this point we've re taed it from the uh December 17th business meeting and then again at the January 19th special meeting okay but there may be there may be a very subtle nuance that says that but we're also we can operate under the small board rules I mean this quite frankly the way we table isn't even part of

224the the original Roberts rules so I would say that if this body wants to choose the table for a third time I'm not going to say that it's improper okay sorry about that yeah commission it's okay I just want to remind the board where the resolution came from it came from commissioner Powell Administration did not put this resolution up before this board so I I know that van you're asking lesli her team if it's going to have an impact on anything um TimeWise I appreciate you asking them but they didn't give us this resolution this is being driven by another commissioner so so since there aren't any um uh time constraints as I heard Dr Meers small say uh and I want to be respectful of others that's why I mentioned I was about to

225make a motion to table because as you all know it goes directly to a vote um it seems like everybody I haven't heard anybody oppose that we can straighten this thing out maybe commissioner maybe the the resolution isn't necessary maybe uh there there is some adapting language that could bring some clarity to it so I'm making the motion to table for a date certain Madam clerk could you give me a date that I can put in my motion I'm sorry can can I let me offer an alternative also sure you could make a motion to commit it you could make a motion to commit it to the appropriate committee which I think would be finance and that would that would do that would that in essence take care of the same thing but it's not

226the same as a tabling motion so you can make it a motion to commit it to the next finance committee meeting which is in a couple of weeks I'll support that I'll second it if you make that motion President White uh that's that's my motion then I just need a second and the next Finance meeting in January oh do we need to I mean February I'm sorry the next one is in February we're at the end of January need a vote do I need a vote yep all in favor I thank you now Madam chair before we before we go too far off of the conversation about committed funds uh CIA could you pull up that resolution um and let me just let me just also V it it's off the floor we have to

227move on let me just say that do not allow we we we are far off of the Tim taes of our agenda so we we we need to either not have any times um but we need to be we need to be reminded of the times that we've associated with the agenda item so I I'd like for us to be mindful of that is that something that you need to ask right now commissioner Powell we can call it new business y okay uh let me go to uh commissioner Adams turn the gab over to him for the cigr and if we could catch up on on time that would be great commissioner Adams and I'm saying that to myself when I get to HR commissioner Adams yeah um so let me see my scheduled time

228starting was supposed to be 6:30 so that's what I'm working with so welcome to the cigr um committee purpose of the uh the cigr which is the community and intergovernmental Relations Committee is twofold to increase public awareness of the Board of Education and the ways in which board oversight and decisionmaking improve student performance and achievement in the district and two to facilitate the board's working relationship with stakeholders to advance District interests stakehold holders include students parents grandparents Guardians rcsd staff and members of the community and elected officials at all levels with an equity and advocacy perspective cigr seeks to increase equity for all students in conjunction with the superintendent policy and finance committees in accordance with 2020 21 board goals so first thing I'm going to talk about is um the state monitors action plan

229on racial bias PD under the state monitor academic plan table five recommendation four the Board of Education shall incorporate racial bias training into the onboarding process for new Commissioners and the PD plan for all Commissioners by January 31st in order to facilitate this action Island I would like to have a a brainstorming um focus going on right now um in in regards to that to the racial bias training so um let's hear it commissioners commissioner Adams um can I speak for a moment you're M thank you um so what Commissioners and everyone is seeing on the screen now in conjunction with the governance committee um and cigr preview meeting team we um meant to discuss some of the components that Commissioners may want to see within that racial bias PD and so that's what you're

230seeing on the screen and commissioner Adams is asking for input to um figure out what other components you would like to have included and then board staff will take that information and find appropriate facilitators to um host the PD and I'd like to take a moment and go back for one moment and um welcome our parent rep Jessica Gustaf who's with us this evening as well thank you commissioner Adams yeah and and just be clear if you have any uh specific facilitate facilitator uh suggestions please email that directly to K Dr jallow has her hand raised okay Dr jallow okay so um good evening again I I appreciate this um template and outline and while I think it is is fine um one of the things that I think would be very crucial for the

231organization ation and the board members in particular is training around how to identify and unpack institutional racism um I think there's one level where you're talking about a personal um perspective on how you view yourself and how you handle yourself in your organization but I'm really also interested in institutional racism how it impacts your students how you might be contributing to it how you can um dismantle it and I think that that type of training is just as important as what you have on this document as well because I think that's what's impacting your children of color and their performance in this District yeah I I would have to agree with that wholeheartedly um there's a lot of um people just don't even realize they racist stuff that they do I mean uh they're talking

232they be talking real loud in this district and it' be real racist they don't even I say I can't believe they said that it's it's so much I mean even as today today I was I was found out by the email got the all button reply to all got hit and people we just people be coming out their mouth with some really really racist stuff and these are people that are in power I I would also like to offer another example when you look at your high school graduation data for instance why is it that black boys have a lower rate of graduating than many of their counterparts there are some that the institution is doing or not contributes to that kind of data point so I also want us to look at things it's

233not just what people are saying or not saying or how they're treating each other but there are things that are established within this a organizational structure that somehow contribute to the outcomes of different groups of students and I think that as a board that's something that needs to be examined and that um can start through our professional development training um that could be offer so can I ask a question I don't know if people have if you got hands up uh commissioner Adams I don't see any okay so th this training for board members would help would inform Us in terms of how we um develop policy I think how you develop policy how you view your data um how you make hiring decisions what structures do you have around that what structures do you

234have around making decisions which schools get what what structures do you have around which children get access access to what you know just examining some of the practices and protocols and structures that you have within the organization that contribute to certain groups of students Andor parents feeling or being marginalized I I would also um want to add something around and maybe it's embedded in here but something around uh White Privilege um and and it being racism being so inherited in people that they don't even understand that it's racism so I don't know where that would go but you know somehow we've got to talk about um and bring it to the Forefront about white privilege you know we saw a lot of that tonight uh unfortunately then they may not even believe it's white privilege

235but um you know we I think that's something we need to include in this um uh PD well then we would have to include um white fragility as well yeah well I did have my hand up Commissioner Adam okay my bad um I'll go with you first I don't know if yours was up before beatric but I'll go with you first okay I just wanted to indicate that I uh reviewed the program and that you laid out I think it's very comprehensive I think it's definitely something that we need to do but I also wanted to talk about um diversity and inclusion and maybe I'm too early in the report but when we when we indicated that we're going to review all of our policies we stated that we need to look at it with

236an anti-racist uh attitude so one of the things that I did find uh liking even though I think the report is very good the fact that we're not advocating for the state regarding their seniority uh policies because whenever we have layoffs you know people of color protected classes are the ones that are usually impacted the most and we probably need to go to the state to Advocate that if if there are going to be major layoffs and I guess we could Define that that uh the reduction in staff have to reflect the percentage of that protected class in the total general population if we're laying off a 100 people and say 20% our protected class then no more than 20 people in that class can be laid off instead of going with the lifeo model

237right now where you last in first out because no matter how great a job our super intendant does whenever there's a financial crisis the diversity is walking right out the door with the layoffs so we really need to and almost as vice president Elliott when she talked about the uh the school of prison pipeline it seems to be something that we need to be advocating across the state so that we can protect diversity and inclusion across the state because I mean we're figh so hard to attain it and then to lose it with layoffs we're starting all over again so before I pass it to to bees I need to tell you that we've been having that conversation ever since the the layoffs happened last year at this time because it was a whole lot

238of not just good teachers of color good young teachers um ACR the board who connected with the students they had to they had to leave and the h guy Harry I forget his last name you know he had did put a lot of work in trying to bring some diversity into the district but soon as the layoffs came those were the people immediate I'm talking about some amazing teacher um they were immediately um let go because they were the last in and so they had to be the first out I agree wholeheartedly we have to that's why I say um we have to march on um albony man because that's what it's going to take um the the the unions are going to fight ridiculously against this they're so and they're real powerful in arony

239but I'm telling you ain't no more ain't nobody more powerful than the people man if the people come together and we go to albony I'm telling you man we can we can do this be on you I'll be on the bus with you yeah so I'm glad you mention Mr Adams that this is a a point of topic of conversation because as I mentioned before there are states where black and brown in the individuals who are part of a collective bargaining unit which are an underrepresented representation become a protected class and cannot you know you can't cut from that group um based on the ratio and that is something that we can address with the state I don't know we'll win over seniority because um I think that extends across multiple States that's not just

240a New York state thing but certainly I do think in New York state we can Advocate to have black and brown teachers um be a protected class within our district and the big fives and I think we should also um start having that conversation with the other big fives who also tend to be in the same situation that we're in um because that would then give us a little bit more umph right if we are all going as a big five collectively and perhaps there are other districts out there that also want to be a part of that conversation and are also struggling with maintaining that diversity in their school districts across the state of New York um but what I want to add to this piece here in front of us is um a

241couple of things one I I definitely feel as a board member we have to address our own racist um issues that have come before this board multiple times we ourselves don't have our stuff together so I know that we're working on it and we've Mr Adams and I were grouped together um for some of the board retreat pre-work um but we as a board of not there and um I I think that would be helpful if we were a little bit further along in that conversation the other thing I want to add is that you know I do attend a fellowship to learn how to write anti-racist policies and it's a full year and you know when we have these conversations they can't be had in 10 minutes and they can't be had in you

242know as we're rushing through them um and so I would be okay with supporting this being a full day of professional development for the board to even start having the conversations because I I certainly don't think that this is um we're going to even touch or scratch even a little miscle scratch on the surface to the issues and this institutional racism that exists in this District but I would be more than willing to dedicate whatever time um if we come up with an all day Saturday and half a day Sunday two Sundays in a row whatever the case may may be I just want to put it out there that I will commit whatever time is necessary to address this more in depth as a board and then have a collective understanding of how we're

243going to use a tool to evaluate and um our policies and a lens for anti-racism against our policies and further our practices within the district um but that's something I think we need to spend a lot of time having conversations on coming together collectively as a board to even Define what anti-racist means right I think we all have different meanings on that I I think we all actually have different meanings on racism although I use the textbook definition and I am not a power of the uh racial makeup that holds the collective power let me put that out there so but I've had other people on this board right try to call me a racist and I just want to put it out there that I use that textbook definition so um I don't know

244what your thoughts are Mr Adams and since you brought it up as the cigr chair which I think it is appropriate for you to lead this work um because this is going to be impactful to our entire community and how we interact with the government as well so I would be willing to do that that's all okay so next up I gotta go to um to my pant W Jessica um good evening Commissioners um I just wanted to share a little bit about um a parent perspective on this issue of race racial bias um it comes up over and over and over again in conversations and in meetings that are um geared towards District advocacy or parent group meetings um parents are it is not uncommon to hear parents talk about feeling profiled and feeling

245that bias um many parents have expressed needing to go into school professionally to speak a certain way so that their teacher can see them and will then treat their students more equitably um white parents have expressed feeling preferential treatment um wanting their counter black and brown counterpart parts to be treated the same way um even if they don't have time to come into school and participate and volunteer in various things um and parents and Guardians have expressed things that been shared in classrooms that are rationally insensitive so this I just wanted to impress upon the board um the importance of this issue it comes up all the time um I'm really excited and really encouraged that it's going to be addressed and I agree um with commissioner LeBron it can't kind of just be this

246sideline thing it has to be a part of a robust um plan and um procedure that is really looking at tackling this um racial bias that's happening throughout our district we are all aware of the um racial dispar I mean the disproportionate um ethnicities we have among our teachers and our students the the best most recent um statistic I could found is that we from 2014 we have 18% black and Latino teachers with 87% Black and Latino students and so if this is our demog graphic we it it is um our respon your it's the board's responsibility to um make sure that we are doing a better job with this for our students and our families um I think it's imperative to the success of our district and I know that there will be um

247push back um but I do urge the board and the superintendent to really uh make this a priority um and as we move I'm excited to work with cigr to move this forward and prepare um and and look for vendors um but I just wanted to share that parent perspective that this is um it has it's a it's a you know a very important issue yes it is um next I'm not sure my thing doesn't tell me who hand was up first between um President White and and vice president Elliott commissioner am was vice president Elliott then um President White and and Dr Myers okay so mine doesn't tell me that so vice president Elliott um just just a couple of things to L to the conversation you know everybody should want to have this

248kind of effort towards um racial Equity fact of the matter is is the next Generation Um the next generation is going to be quite different it will be the majority it will be black and Browns in this nation who will be the majority and whites will be the minority and so it is in everybody's best interest to make sure that we have these kinds of um protocols and these kinds of processes in place because you know 2050 you know this is going to flip where the minority will be um um white people and then um just an example of a situation that expresses this uh I happen to be getting my car um service and one of the um uh car PE car repair people indicated to me that uh he wanted his child to

249go to school 25 because of a tickle program at school 25 and the placement person because he was a white male they were white um had them to go over to school 46 and said that that school would be most more appropriate for them so you know this this thing is very deep within um our school district in placement um you know there's racial bias and just just all over and and um and the syndemic is in people's head you know the way which they think that there's a certain group that think that they are superior over another group who think that they are they're inferior you know the way in many cases the way in which they come and present themselves to the board you know so um we got a lot of work

250to do and I'm willing to participate in that work thank you okay um President White yeah sorry about that um so um first of all I want to thank you commissioner Adams this is important work and um unfortunately all of this stuff has been going on for decades centuries we're just getting around doing it here in the district I would let folks know I'm sorry I just ran up the stairs um that uh we we have been doing some of this work already and I folks may not know that the board has retained Dr Malik Muhammad who was working under the guise of restorative practices but the subject of race has come up and that is an area that he has extensive experience and boy I'm out of shape so so the board has begun

251this work and the the the fact that the subject of race has come up has come up in a number of our our our restorative sessions under Dr Malik Muhammad and otherwise the other thing I want to add because I know it's late um and I know you all know this so I don't have to spend a lot of time doing this in my professional capacity as a civil rights lawyer let me tell you something we could do all that we want to do I don't mean to be a negative n Nancy here but we could do all that we could do and it might have very little impact because a lot of what's going on in our schools does relate to race and racism I get it but there's a whole and you all

252know this I'm not saying that do y'all don't already know there's a whole big world out there that is racist as they can be and the teachers and the students are all impacted I I I can just I won't go into any detail I was before the Appel division fourth department but this boy he was 16 years old at the time literally picked up by the police slammed down to the ground jaw broken in six places wire chut for six months Boy no record whatsoever um the kinds of questions that I was peppered with by the Appel division forth Department told me that they didn't understand their own biases so so there's no doubt in anybody's mind that we have discrimination in the district our district wouldn't be made up of human beings if it

253weren't discrimin atory but there is and you all know this yall work in this profession I'm just telling you as a lawyer it is so pervasive out there that the children and families that we deal with either come into the district racist or having felt the impact of racism and and that has to be part of our training too the understanding that try as we may there's such a big world out there that is so and it's beyond Trump this has been this part of America's Fabric that the reality is it it will be very challenging and difficult even if we were to come to some level of understanding on our own as a board or even if a principal in a building was able to figure it out with some of his or her

254colleagues it is such a pervasive historical part it's the reason why I am employed as a lawyer by and large I don't make money off of my criminal defense work which sometimes I make money to the extent I do off from discrimination and it's so per and you all know this so pervasive and so wise that I'm I'm committed to what you've proposed commissioner Adams but the reality is that's the tip of the iceberg tip of the iceberg thank you um Dr Meyers yes thank you commissioner Adams I just wanted to Circle back to work that's going on in the district and we actually had a meeting last night I'm not sure if our district knows um that by resolution we the board created um what was called The real team which is the racial

255Equity advocacy leadership team we actually had a a meeting this is our third or fourth one for this school year um and they the team is comprised of both school district and community members um and our Community Partners last night we had pretty in-depth conversations and part of what we are moving forward with we have benchmarks um that include um anti-racist professional development so I certainly think that it is critically important that the board certainly lead that being the governing body in our district we also um have a benchmark of um ensuring that members of each Union are able to Avail themselves of professional development that deals with Equity anti-racism inclusion Etc additionally we um have a benchmark of um look looking at uh and creating a comprehensive listing of those who we partner in

256contract with to make sure that they understand anti-racism diversity and equity and then another one that I think is really critical that um we are moving forward with is to ensure that we have common language when it comes to some of those things that were just posted around what does anti-racism mean what does institutional and historical racism mean how does racis isn't play out in the school district and we're looking to complete that task hopefully by the end of the school year so we can Implement that starting September 1st so that work is happening across the district um and we do have a a a partner a a group of community um Partners who we work with individuals who we're going to move this work forward so I'm committed to every time we have a

257a board business meeting regular business meeting that give some updates to show the work that we're doing our commitment and to make sure that the board understands where we are as well thank you commissioner Adams okay um I'm gonna ask if there's any last minute um input that the other board members um want to bring to the table uh I I'm really feeling some kind of way that I have to fast track this topic I'm really feeling some kind of way about that but I know I need to a fast track it it's 9:30 you know what I'm saying and and my AP sir yeah so um if anybody else has anything um there's another the next cigr committee meeting is going to be on I think it's February 7th or February 9th um I'm

258gonna try hope hope that a whole lot of other stuff ain't getting scheduled when my stuff is getting scheduled um because we do not need to be fast tracking um this topic of all topics does not need to be FASTT tracked um with that let me see is jerny hands up nope okay so we're going to move on to the um talk about the legislative agenda um we got some Medicaid items for the let legislative agenda um we're going to develop a mechanism for school districts to receive Medicaid reimbursement for non service provided to students we're going to reallocate the distribution of certified public CPE certified public expenditures Revenue um we're going to provide a process to assist schools in matching students for potential Medicaid reimbursement must not be looking at the right one and

259I'm not going to go Point by point on here because we we definitely I'm doing doing some fast tracking here but um if anybody has if any commissioner has a specific question um it can't get answered because we do got Mike Sosa here with us tonight can I um make yes yes you may Dr J I just want to say you know we can go into detail if you want or or I guess you can ask Mr SAA later or during this meeting if you like but this is an attempt often times we talked about cutting and and reducing and cutting expenses but in this particular instance these are opportunities to increase Revenue uh these are Revenue generator um generated um type of items if we can get these three items um in front of

260legislators for consideration in terms of lobbying on our behalf these are opportunities for us to um receive uh access to more Medicaid reimbursements if these three things are um done and done correctly we asking for our fair share of Revenue um as relates to reimbursements we're asking for opportunities to receive more monies um uh for non-ep services for which our students take uh full advantage of and I think the first one um is uh I think Mike can explain this better a service that we used to have to help us identify children who are eligible for Medicaid so um I know it's late in the evening and I don't want to tank anything from Mike but I just want to make sure that you understand that we're asking for something that would help the district

261generate more monies um back into the district I think that was a good point that you just made there because that's what the all what that's what march on Aly is all about getting Revenue getting some Revenue so uh I see nobody else has their hand up yeah sorry Commission LeBron yeah I just want to also reiterate why we should be advocating for this because Medicaid is also an area that the governor is trying to cut which is a necessary um it's just necessary for our community and our families who definitely utilize it including my grandson and my daughter because they out of work because of Co well my daughter is so I want to put that out there but we do need to be uplifting um that there are no cuts to Medicaid we

262have thousands of families that also utilize Medicaid and chip for their own you know Medical Services um but that is a big concern for me when the governor starts to talk about making Cuts in Medicaid making Cuts in school that we're going to be impacted um in a double negative way um by not having the opportunity to access these resources through Medicaid um for our students so I think we have to also highlight that for our our legislators our state legislators who may not always make that connection um that it's not just School Cuts but it's also not cutting Medicaid that impacts our families and that we also utilize to make sure that our students are getting a lot of the services that they need um and making that connection for them thank you yeah

263so um and we're here talking about this legislative um breakfast planning we we already sent out the save the date which is like January 15 2021 excuse me Commissioner Adam that's when we sent out we sent out the um save the date on that date commissioner Adams yeah I'm sorry just if we could go back for a moment the reason that we're looking at these Medicaid items is because we need to um have them added to the legislative agenda you all already um voted and agreed on the legislative agenda these items came um to our attention afterwards and so you'd like to have them added to the legis the existing legislative agenda so we needed to vote on I don't know what you need to vote well the legislative agenda was adopted by resolution Kalia

264um can maybe clarify if this portion needs to be voted on you you need a you do need a motion to amend the um to amend the resol the motion to amend the agenda second all in favor I I I oh does coun need us to we're voting yes well that I couldn't hear that uh commissioner Paul do you need to see us for that vote do you need to take down the screen share um yes I do I well I I only I I can I can see most of the the Commissioners but I do need to see the remainder um yeah so we have a motion in a second and just need to vote on that okay thank you all right um so let me tell you really quickly um what the L

265what the breakfast consists of um we'll have um participants from SLC student Le uh conference president um of that is Ania Simmons she's going to speak we're going to have some me SLC members to support the breakout rooms um we've asked for administration participation um the superintend is is going to speak a Department chief to be present probably possibly in breakout rooms um content expert administrators to facilitate breakout room discussions we are in the process of identifying the school Community present as well our parent rap Jessica will address the participants have we have invited one of our legislative Partners to provide the keynote um we've extended a presenter invitation to a community partner if you would like to view the attendee list or suggest attendees please email Francine um we're GNA have in addition we're

266going to have um I'm proposing that we try to do a possible spring paent event um parent development it I don't know if it would be a open form or some other format um we'll revisit this um next time when we're not FASTT tracking um at the next C committee meeting and with that I'm going to pass the gavl to the vice president Elliot thank you commissioner Adams and I do apologize for that because you're absolutely right you know we should not be fast-tracking you know the issue around uh racial Equity so I do apologize for that you know but I really would like to be able to when I'm really alert to be able to lend to the conversation and so um I'm sort of winding down here um but the next item is

267the HR committee uh discussion um the HR committee and um I'm going to ask if um I can get approval for the September 22nd um minute so moved second seconded all in favor hi hi welcome uh Christopher um Christopher is going to present on the vision and the reorganization of the H of the human capital initiative department and um also you'll be doing a presentation on um District Staffing so welcome Christopher can I um can I just jump in really quickly before that commissioner Elliott we tabled that because of the length of the meeting so we're going to do the Staffing update next week as well as the PD for um for this evening just in the interest of time okay so it's the vision uh the presentation on the vision and the reorganization all

268right thank [Laughter] [Music] you thank you Jesus uh good evening Commissioners thank you for having me this this evening I'm here to talk about uh the office of human capital reorganization and uh next slide um so this evening uh just to put some context on this I started in the district um having previously worked in the Syracuse City School District on October 1st and as part of my entry plan I engaged in a purposeful and planned um entry plan to plan do and study um and that's an iterative four-step process to ensure that I uh could really understand uh the the the needs um and the feedback in the school district around human resources and uh one of the things that I did in that process was I ensured that I had entry meetings with

269um everyone within the office of human capital as well as the executive cabinet um with our Union leadership meeting with them talking with them learning from them um studied documents um such as the independent monitors uh academic and financial plans the real teams uh recommendations and their action plan the superintendent's uh District strategic plan was also an important part of that process um in addition to other conversations um bringing with me my experiences in other school districts as well um I'm a certified professional human capital leader so bringing best practices and research from the field of human capital to my thinking and my work here in the district next slide um so the next couple of slides I'm not going to read those for you you have those um and I know we're we're we're

270late into the night but on these next couple of slides what you'll see is some explanation about the differences between what human resources is versus what human capital is is and I encourage you to take a look at those or people in the public that that are here that are watching this evening that we need to highlight uh where we are and where we need to go and when you look at the list in the green those aren't negative things but the list in the blue um is much more strategic and Innovative and a place where we should be and where we need to be relative to how we care for Value respect and work with our staff in the service of students our families and our community um really important to that is an

271emphasis on people and that we believe in our people that we support our people that we develop our people next slide um and so here on this slide you see uh again some differences between um what is human resources versus what is human capital human capital is much more Strate IC and thoughtful um and intentional about trying to change mindsets um CH change practices change processes and um it speaks to the importance of doing work not only from a specific office or from A specific group of people in a school district but efforts and work that the entire School District should be engaged in so human capital work is not the function um of a single office it's ensuring that the entire district is thoughtful to and working to support and grow um everyone in

272the school district certainly our students but our staff so that we can do the best for our students and our families and so what the office of human capital does is the Strategic work to help ensure that the rest of the districts in particular our district leadership at the the the district level and in the school building to ensure that they're working uh to develop uh the people in the organization and the office of human capital should be providing technical support in leadership to help building leaders and other department leaders across the organization do that work well next slide um what I don't want you to come away from in my conversation here is that human resource work is somehow un important it's actually really important it's really important that the um work in the

273green box those transactional items that those are done well that they're done effectively that they're done efficiently and that they're done um in a way that uh reflects best practices so we need to have those transactional pieces really tight but we also need to be shifting and and thoughtful and strategic to how we are doing the work that is in the blue box and so that's where I want to ensure our office of human capital um the work that I do and the work that our leaders across the district do falls into that blue box next slide so again I just want to emphasize that it's really two parts of the whole the transactional and the Strategic work um all very important and the combination of those two things helped to ensure that we as

274a district are attentive to recruiting developing and supporting the most effective diverse staff that we can and that we're providing excellent customer service and Technical Support to the leaders in the organization to ensure that our staff are the best that they can be in the service of students so next Slide the office of human capital um is literally um plays a role from recruitment through retirement and on this slide you see a wheel of all of the things that go into play um in terms of an employees life cycle uh again from recruitment through retirement literally the office of human capital has the ability uh to touch and impact the entire life Cy cycle of a staff person and in that work we need to ensure that we have the most effective teachers School leaders

275and support staff next slide so coming to the school district um one of the things that uh was really important for me to look at was the organization of our office of human resources and when I looked at this organizational chart um what I noticed was uh a lack of clarity um specifically around the organization of the people and the reporting structure that you see on this slide I also noticed that there was repetitive work functions and division of similar work that is we had people doing the same thing for civil service employees versus certified staff and they weren't necessarily um fully connecting with each other to ensure um consistent practices or efficiencies what I also noticed and experienced was that the team uh very willing to do strategic work um some great people on

276the team however much of their work is has or was focused on transactional efforts and and it was not set up for um a real focus on that strategic FOC focused work next slide so we know this but in terms of context Rochester and context is really important we know that we have great things to do we have great expectations uh for our students and our families and our staff um we also know that we are an incredibly uh diverse School District but our Workforce does not necessarily um match up with the student population next slide more specifically um we know that there's a need for greater diversity not only in our classrooms but across the organization in our schools and in our departments more than 40% of public schools in the United States lack

277a single teacher of color on staff and and uh unfortunately only 2% of the entire teaching population um is a male of color research clearly shows that students of color benefit from seeing teachers that look like them and all students benefit from being taught by diverse teachers next slide so our work is Guided by this idea and and this is a great quote and I'm actually going to take the time to read it it's really important that students have people who reflect back to them their language their culture their ethnicity their religion it doesn't mean all people all the people in their lives have to do that mirroring but they should have some and we know that in the teaching profession there really are not enough mirrors that is so important next slide when we

278look again at our district uh students of color represent 90% of the student population and our teaching staff represents uh only 25% teachers of color we have great work to do and increasing that percentage isn't going to happen by accident we have to be really intentional we have to be really strategic we have to be really thoughtful and based on the conversations we've had earlier tonight uh we all know how important and critical this is and how creative and and intentional we need to be to change this next slide so we uh we we uh were recently called the office of Human Resources although I'm not sure everyone in the organization uh knows us as the office of Human Resources many people have referred to it as HCI or maybe even human capital initiatives um

279but who we are and what we do moving forward is that we will be the office of human capital and our aim will be to recruit develop support and retain the most effective diverse staff so there will no be no longer be HCI it will no longer be human resources um it will be simply the office of human capital and the work that we will be doing is human capital Focus next slide so what I'm proposing is that we have four specific teams each with a strategic human capital focus and you can note on this slide you'll see the the name of each team the aim of each team in the white box and then some of the critical important innovations that need to take place to ensure that these teams each have and are

280working to develop a strategic Focus so there'll be a recruitment selection and retention team an employee benefits team a staff and educator Effectiveness team and a staff relations team and so what I want to do is take a moment to talk about some of the the key uh key work that will be of the focus of these teams next slide so having some focus at least initially um the emphasis of the human capital team's work will be ensuring Recruitment and Retention because everything we do as a district attracts or discourages perspective teachers and staff and conversely everything we do is either attracting or discouraging current teachers and staff and it's really that simple and we each everyone in this organization from the Board of Education from the mayor from the city to the rest of

281our employees staff and students we all can impact how we recruit and retain our staff and so we all have a role to play and how we change perspectives and change experiences for people next slide so more specifically and I'm not going to go through this whole slide uh tonight but what you begin to see on this slide is that there are specific mindsets levers and processes that we can be attentive strategic and intentional too to change the uh reality for how we recruit fruit in how we retain our staff and as I mentioned um these mindsets levers and processes are are work that not only the office of human capital should be attentive to but across the organization and so how the office of human capital works with leadership at the district level and

282the building level to think about and impact these mindsets levers and processes is the work that we will do and it's work that each of us has a role to play at next slide with respect to educator and staff Effectiveness this is a second big area um for my focused work um ensuring that we are strategic and Innovative in this area this is work that we are currently um not focused on and we must do this work to attract prepare support and retain our staff every child and every school deserves an excellent classroom teacher and and a solid buing leader who supports their professional growth we have to work with our leaders to ensure that they are attentive to how they develop and support staff how they are providing feedback to their staff and how

283they're having consistent expectations for what best practices are across the organization embedded in that is the importance of providing feedback and feedback can be provided informally and formally next slide APR is something that I I think most people are are well aware of the annual professional performance review process um our Educators and our staff they can change outcomes for students and when we have targeted differentiated professional development we can develop people when we believe in people we we can work with them we can help them to grow APR is intended to assist with that through ongoing individualized feedback to to staff however it cannot be simply a compliance activity so we have work to do to ensure that our systems our practices how we approach them um is done well and with Fidelity and that

284it is more than just a compliance activity that we're really taking the time to invest in our staff and grow them next slide so another piece uh of of critical importance um and I say this and I I I like to remind people in central office not just on my own team but across across teams that we exist in central office to support our schools principles are the single most important talent that we have the teaching staff added together um is certainly uh quite impactful but when we talk about a single person and when we think about people our school principal are the single most important individual that we have Beyond students of course students are the most important individuals that we have in our schools but when we line ourselves up to support our

285principles it will help to ensure that we are in turn supporting schools in supporting our students and our families because the role that principles play is critical so we must support them well and we need to be set up to support them well through customer service models so the office of human capital will be set up such that a staff relations director is linked up and working directly with a school Chief we have three School Chiefs um in the organization we will have and we do have three staff relations directors that will be realigned to um be married with a a school Chief and with them will be a recruitment analyst when you think about a principal and their challenging work there are a couple things that they need from the office of human capital

286they need someone that's going to help support them when they have vacancies um and and through the recruitment process and they also need someone that's going to help them with staffing needs and staffing needs could be a variety of things it could be how we evaluate and support the growth of our staff but it also could be um when staff need to be reminded of expectations or held accountable and so having this team that is working to support principles will be critical our school Chiefs also have difficult jobs and that they have a portfolio of schools that they're working to support and so we want to do what we can to support our school Chiefs well next slide uh so this is the proposed new Organization for human capital and and if you look back

287or think back to the previous slide that had uh the organizational chart on it this one certainly has color on it but it it's clearly aligned to those four teams that I spoke about earlier having four specific teams that are aligned for strategic human capital work it actually restores Labor Relations um and career and teaching to be within the office of human capital at the moment Labor Relations and career and teaching uh which is the program we we work with the uh RTA to support our first your teachers those are outside the office of human capital so by bringing them into the office of human capital we can ensure more connections and strategic effort on that on that level um I'm proposing that we create a director of staff and educator Effectiveness and we've identified

288uh grant funding to do so again this is really important work that that we are not uh well focused on as an organization and other school districts of our size or larger have folks that are that are focused on educator Effectiveness we will ensure that we strengthen transactional organization and the service that we provide not only to our schools our school Chiefs and our principles and to our staff um and we will reduce two FTE positions on the general fund to ensure that we can do this because we are in challenging times and and we want to ensure that we are um being lean and smart and efficient um and again there'll be the addition of the grant funded position but a reduction of two general fund positions and so the green boxes represent positions

289that are transferring into human capital and the orange being the new position that would be Grant funded next slide so uh this has been um uh a process as I mentioned I joined October 1st um at around a 100 days at this point um and so reviewing we reviewed this plan and developed this plan within the office of human capital working with the superintendent the independent Monitor and our executive cabinet for feedback we've had to connect with the um Monro County Civil Service uh we are working to uh develop our reorganization by branding and communicating and and developing uh new systems and processes within our team and tonight we're reviewing this plan with you with a roll out and implementation to follow over the next couple of weeks next slide and that's it thank you

290Christopher are there any questions for Christopher commissioner LeBron no I'll be ready I be writing them down too um I just have three questions um so one I appreciate the reduction of the two FTE and highlighting that because I did see that there was a new position created um so before I even go down that rabbit hole I do want to uplift that um I do appreciate your model Chris um there is a model similar to that with Rochester Regional Health when they had the merger with unity you was not here for that um but there was a major merger between two Health Systems um and what they did in their Human Resources is created individual ual that saw um had oversight of clusters of departments and sites and organizations to kind of help manage

291that and what I liked about that model is that I wouldn't have to go through anyone in HR to get an answer specifically to my site or my clinic or practice I can go to my HR that was assigned to us and then that person would also come out to our team meetings and just reintroduce themselves periodically and things that we can go through that individual for and so I share that so I hope that that's something that we can get those HR representatives to also do with the teams is to go out and speak to them and and talk about the services that HRS offers and what questions they can answer um and I just think it is an effective type of model that just works when we're talking about a large organization um

292but my question is if you said the position was going to be Grant funded and I was just wondering what what Grant specifically and then if you've thought about some foresight if a grant runs out how would we retain that position um primarily just because in the past we as a district have retained or created positions under the grants the funding ran out and then we moved those positions into our general fund and in the non for-profit world we call that soft money into a hard item budget line and we just simply can't afford that and continue that practice here so any thoughts around that tonight and if you don't have any thoughts around that Chris I can let you Ponder on it and bring it back up but just want to put it out

293there no you thank you for raising that question you know it's really important that that when we look at when grants ends that we're thoughtful to how we're going to fund or or will we be able to fund those positions and and that's a process we're going through right now in the district actually um across the board but what I would say is this is uh through title two and um I I know an easy way where we've talked about it before was these tend to be more of the Perpetual type of grants that that are committed to the district year after year um and so it would be through that okay and then one last question and it's um related to the position that was titled the new one the director of educator Effectiveness

294um just curious how that would tie into the chief academic um the academic chief that we just that position is a position to the district to um and if they will be working together or if there's any plans for them to work together because one would we would be embedded through human resources and the other one is embedded in the cabinet so just some thoughts around that yeah thank you so uh the director of staff and educator Effectiveness would would really be focused on a portfolio of work that would ensure that we are um evaluating all staff right and and we oftentimes focus on teachers and principls and and and school districts don't necessarily go beyond that and so what we need to do is ensure we're doing really solid work with our teachers and

295principles but we have a whole lot of other staff we need to be attentive to so how we evaluate how we work with and support um leaders in their work to evaluate how we work with our unions to develop those systems um that's a piece of it but also how we develop our career ladder work how we help help for example pair of professionals to maybe work to become teachers and so there's a partnership with educator Effectiveness that works with recruitment but then also as you're pointing out um the office of human capital and you know it's my understanding I'm one of the first Educators to be in this seat uh perhaps in in in decades right so I have an educational Focus I I consider myself first and foremost an educator and the office

296of human capital particularly my role in this staff and educative Effectiveness director should be working very closely with the chief academic officer to ensure that we can support each other and that our our efforts are well aligned and and and smartly done so um I I see that as being a a critical partnership okay thank you thank you thank you Chris I don't see any other hands raised thank you so very much um and then the um the the next item of agenda do I need to close these meetings do we need to close these committee meetings and then go to the next item is that how Kia yes um yes based on what I'm seeing to um I believe the meeting that's it for our meeting agenda um we postpone the other two items

297until next week okay all right now commissioner power you were talking about your question that you wanted to have asked under new business business what is worked with callia to um convey my concerns directly to the superintendent Anda carlen the CFO um and hopefully we'll be able to uh bring it as part of the finance committee agenda along with the resolutions that were uh that were uh what's the word Steve uh moved to that committee meeting we committed it to the ref referred to committee I lost the word for a minute there so we're good thanks all right thank you and we have no executive session items correct correct all right so before I ask for a motion to adjourn we we've got to be more mindful that we got to stay on time because

298at some point I just sort of sort of zoom out um after a long day so let's be mindful that we we need to keep our convers good conversations don't misunderstand me uh but towards the end of the meeting I'm done uh so uh I um commissioner Adams so I I just want to say that even in my frustration I know the real deal um all of this came from um all the speakers you know we got some serious stuff going going on and so the same thing is probably gonna happen again next week um it's just the nature of this business um so we just have to hold on okay all right all right motion to adjourn well we've got the surve the survey and uh you all you all know what to do

299when it comes to was the chair Fair y'all know what to do now you're not supposed to in you're not supposed to influence the vote like that I did that the last time man you're not right my good was good that's number 10 y'all been telling us the number on the survey wow no shame Madam superintendent was that a dog or a cat that was walking across the top of your chair that was the Chihuahua oh was a Chihuahua is it like does it have different lengths of hair no does it have a tuft of a tail or something yes ah okay cuz gota go wow wow it didn't have like a fluffy tail all set CIA I am all set now um what was that I'm sorry you CH do a Jour okay to

300a germ second all in favor good night everybody good night everybody