001thank you good evening and welcome we'll now call to order the regular meeting for the akron public schools board of education for monday october 26 2020 roll call please dr akbar here mr alexander president ms autry president mr bravo here dr hall aye mrs mansfield here mrs mckittrick here thank you and if everyone could uh mute their microphones and join me in the pledge of allegiance at this time i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much at this time we'll open it up to the board for any community and school reflections please jump in line in the chat if you would uh and just in case i don't
002see you is there anyone that would like to start mr alexander go ahead okay yeah i just wanted to and i know other board members will speak upon this as well but uh our condolences go out to coach jones uh the garfield kenmore girls basketball coach um this is kind of tough for a lot of us who who knew her because she was such a dedicated uh individual uh to the students uh she was a a good coach but even in her time when she was a athlete she was a good player at the university of akron and also uh had an opportunity to uh try out in the uh wbal for the ladies world basketball association but uh she was well respected in the community uh with the people who uh surrounded her her
003family and uh others in in the community all her coaches who are her peers and uh she was also not just a good coach but uh someone who taught well who was respected in her in her teaching of the kids and coaching she was a great role model i say not just a good role model but a great role model for all the young ladies and and young men who she worked with because she did a very good job uh very active in the community just i mean gonna be someone who's uh uh really miss and it's just sad to to have to give condolences uh to her because she was still young and still i think had a lot more that she could have gave to not just akron public schools but more importantly
004to the the students that we serve so uh that was all i wanted to say mr president she's going to be greatly missed thank you mr alexander ms mansfield i almost forgot to unmute it's been a long day um uh thank you mr alexander for bringing that up i do want to echo those sentiments i would also say the policy committee should get ready with that naming policy because i've seen some things circulating online and um what an honor that would be so um just hoping that that's ready because i know that the community is wants to honor coach as in as many ways as they can so um just wanted to give one other um call to my fellow board members and also a thank you i was um approached to be on an
005equal board of review and they're looking for community leaders so that eagle scout reviews are not just done with scout leaders that they also have community leaders and community members who are involved um i have one son who was an eagle scout i had scouts so i was i thought i might be a decent choice but i was a little terrified that's a big responsibility but they were very kind and it was actually a fantastic process i got to sit down on one um in the last two weeks for a young man this one happened to be from from copley high school but um a lot of the students that they would be calling us for would be akron public school students so i would encourage my fellow board members if you get a chance
006um that you would accept that invitation because it was really a fantastic way to see how young people give back in our community thank you mr president thank you mr rittenhouse did you see the message that someone sent us regarding the live stream if not if you could check that out thank you and we will keep an eye on that of course there is a built-in delay so it could be the delay as well um all right hearing and seeing no other community in school reflections i didn't see anyone in the chat but before i move on anyone else would like to jump in miss autry thank you mr president i just wanted to uh quickly acknowledge uh the continued uh engagement that we are getting from families and teachers and community um that is
007one thing that this pandemic has brought about um and i just wanted to recognize um all of the folks who have been communicating with this board um i also wanted to acknowledge the hard work of our teachers as they continue to perfect uh remote learning as well as the families and students who are continuing to adjust and smoothing out the process and then i just wanted to acknowledge the community who i have been seeing really step up over the last week and trying to support our students uh with some type of uh fun and entertainment through trick-or-treating i've been seeing a lot of that going on sponsored by the community um in a safe way of course and i just wanted to uh uh acknowledge those uh community groups and members who have been doing
008that trying to bring some form of normalcy uh to our community and then um lastly i just wanted to mention um there's been a lot of violence going on in the community uh lately and it's it's starting to be so much that sometimes just hard to even remember but um to those families and friends and loved ones who've been affected by it i just wanted to acknowledge them and let them know that they are in our prayers i am praying that we can work our way towards healing um because many of our families in the district have been affected by the violence so i just wanted to uh bring that to the forefront and thank you that's all thank you dr akbar and then dr hall so um diana uh just says much of what
009i was going to say so thank you uh miss autry for sharing about the violence um and uh also sharing about um the engagement from the community and emails and phone calls i specific specifically want to um just mention something that one of the students shared in an email and receive the email from one of the students whenever we get emails from students it's actually really good to hear directly from you regardless of what it is you're sharing it's just good to know and hear your voice and so i want to thank the one student who shared how difficult it's been uh being away from friends and being away from the school but how he appreciated that he still felt safe um where he was and i just want to say that that is something
010that we know that some of our students are dealing with that just position of wanting to be with friends but also feeling safe during this time and i just want to also note that i know that not all of our students are feeling safe right now and i want to acknowledge that as well um and and just share my my my deepest heartfelt um you know sentiments that we together can get through this um unfortunately this uh we're not in the clear um and that is the unfortunate thing i think we all wish that this this bad dream would be over um and we would have you know be back in the life that we we once lived um kind of like doing the wizard of oz um and would go back to um kansas
011so um the other piece that i wanted to share is i did go to award meeting and uh presented uh one of the things that i received emails about afterwards is the aps uh i think it's called aps plus or aps after school i can't remember which one um because i think we might have both actually um so uh the the additional supports that students can receive after school um i think that that's a lot of parents have uh shared that that was something they wanted to know more about and be able to um get involved in with their kids so i just think that's a good thing that we do have um that additional support for um for our families and lastly uh again another um just heartfelt condolences to the family of coast
012jones that she will sorely be missed um in our district as well as in the community thank you dr dr hull yeah thanks uh again so i i'll begin with condolences as a coach jones family uh as well um it's you know it's it's it's it's rare to find uh mentors with with that length of service and and you know and and just positive results uh as a result of their work um you know and so i think dr akbar must miss oprah said a lot of what i was gonna say so i'm not gonna repeat all that um instead let me sort of say two things one um want to acknowledge uh the lengthy emails that i'm sure a lot of us have been getting um with respect to school reopening um you know
013there's i think the one conclusion we've all come to at this point is that there's not going to be a plan that this board approves or disproves that is going to make everyone in the community happy um and so having said that you know i want to thank those of you that have taken the craft emails on yeah you know i'm ready i'm ready to say on both sides of the issue because i don't see it as being two sides i see it as multiple viewpoints on how to best serve our kids um and so again we'll acknowledge a time that you all have taken to craft your emails because these are not quick two-sentence emails that take you know that their throwaway lines where it takes 25 seconds to send an email these are
014emails you can tell folks have spent you know a lot of time uh you know thinking through and crafting um you know so want to say thank you to the parents and teachers um and caregivers um you know of our kids uh and then lastly you know i want to emphasize that um how important it is as parents and teachers and community members that uh to remember that our children are watching and so when we don't agree on on a path forward we don't agree on certain things in the community it's integral that um that as parents and as teachers and mentors and coaches that remember that our children are watching and so they hear the things we say in our homes about other people they hear the things that we say on the phone
015and that we stay in the community and things like that and so it's important you know to remember that our children are watching us and and they're going to emulate you know um those actions and so in times of adversity um you know where especially now where it just seems like no matter where you turn there's just there's vitriol um you know in in in in great amounts uh i just want to just sort of ask respectfully um you know that as we move forward that we remember there that our children are watching and this is this board and this this the senior team superintendent you know um if we agree on nothing else you know we'll just ask that you concede one point and that is everything that we're doing has your children's best
016interests at heart whether you agree or disagree with those actions you know those are the intents of you know of of the folks who are on this line and so again um those are my ask and those are my reflections and i'll see the four back to mr president thank you dr hall appearing and seeing no other uh community or school reflections i'll just add i want to say thank you to the folks that have been reaching out on a number of items that we're going to be talking about tonight including our reopening plan as well as winter activities winter sports um and the passing of coach jones and i too want to offer my condolences to her family and those who knew her best our thoughts and prayers are with you but thank you
017all for reaching out and to that end we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda which is our request to address the board and we do have a few of those this evening i have spoken to each of those individuals [Music] just before we started the meeting i'll remind everyone here uh y'all we're gonna go in the order that they are appear on the agenda so we'll start with mr reynolds uh we'll move then to mr and mrs hardy and then to miss vincent you'll each have three minutes to address the board the board does not respond during the meeting but we'll follow up with you after the meeting mr pendleton our cfo will help keep time and we'll let you know when you have about one minute left with that
018mr reynolds thank you for being here tonight thank you for your patience as we get our meetings started and i will turn it over to you whenever you're ready board members thank you for your time my name is william reynolds and i am the vice chair of policy council at akron summit community action as well as the representative on the board of directors i understand and appreciate the hard decisions that you have to make more importantly i am the father of three amazing girls two of my daughters are in kindergarten at helen arnold clc yes i'm making them stand next to me and they're not happy i'm going to remind you what the stated purpose of the board of education is the akron public schools board of education is the public body representing the citizens
019of akron on all matters of public education the board of education determines needs and priorities in the school system allocates resources within the school system evaluates the overall performance of the school system at this point i witness every day our elementary students not being properly educated this online in term online learning does not work for young children it is proven that children six years old can only sit still for 20 minutes of screen time not two hours see how i'm trying to have my six-year-olds join in in this meeting i along with you are very concerned about the current numbers of covet 19 cases in our county we cannot fear covet 19 but we must respect it i would like to share some stats about covet 19 and children as well as our community in
020the entire country there have been 39 recorded deaths from covet 19 ages 5 to years old during the same time there were 53 deaths for flu and 193 from pneumonia we have never closed school for flu or pneumonia the number of cases to hit the age group of 5 through 17 year old has been 467 000 or 7 of the nationwide total cases in 2019 there were 50 million kids between age 5 and 17 nationwide now in ohio there were 13 500 total cases under 18 7 of all cases 402 in summit county of the 13 500 only 300 were hospitalized or 2 total under 18. in ohio there was only one death from code 19. head start has been open statewide and there has only been two coveted 19 cases statewide head start has
021rigorous safety guidelines that they are following the hudson school district uh had has 400 4 600 students and they had 10 student cases and 3 staff cases and they are open as can be seen in the monthly stats which i gave to you earlier in an email the accumulative number of cases are in line with previous except months except for one week that had exceptionally high numbers uh 42 of the zip codes in akron don't actually appear on the covet charts out of 67 53 total in summit county 37.80 total were in akron approximately 360 cases were under 18 as of october 23rd our stated goal to be the number one urban school system in america is not just a lofty aspiration but one our teachers and staff of 4 400 students are dedicated to
022daily aps is always at the at or near the top performers among the eight largest urban districts in ohio let me share apart from hudson school district superintendent the hudson city schools believe when prudent children need to be in school the relationships our students from form with their teachers and peers are a large part of a successful school experience for all ages the hudson ready plan is flexible and prepared for changes in covet 19 cases with continued strict informant of enforcement of multiple mitigating safety layers already in place and the willingness of parents to keep children home when ill and to minimize student gatherings during the day and after school we will achieve our goal of providing our students with the academic experience they need while navigating through a global pandemic that is challenging for
023all of us my main point is that the covet 19 occurrences to children under 18 is very low i ask you to be courageous and think about the education of the students especially kindergarten through fifth grades these children without the proper foundation will struggle throughout the their educational life if they are unnecessarily doing fully online learning too long with all the technical issues and at this point it has been too long i encourage you to vote to bring k-5 back either full-time or hybrid i also encourage you to consider the fact of the risk at the building level there are certain zip codes in akron about 10 of them actually with zero cases and there are certain areas that have high occurrences of covet 19. the best answer may be to look at this on
024a building by building basis if there is a breakout on a certain community the effective schools could be closed and put back to virtual i would encourage you to keep an online model for the at-risk population let's get back to properly teaching our students if the health department or governor feels a shutdown is necessary let them make the decision thank you very much for your time thank you mr reynolds this time mr mrs hardy whenever you're ready thank you mr president board members my wife christy and i come to you tonight as the parents of two aps students as a graduate degree holder in public health and as a registered nurse who has served at the bedside week in and week out during this pandemic we can report that our seventh grader is doing okay
025her age and maturity enable her to gain from her virtual instructions stay on task manage her assignments while it's far from ideal she is hanging in there our third grader however is not despite incredible teachers careful planning and dedicated parents he is struggling we can testify to the tears the outbursts even the tummy aches from the stress virtual learning is harming our son and we're sure he's not the only one little ones are not built for this they aren't mature enough to be self-starters and manage both their learning and this isolation we have all said that we want to listen to the science so what does the local data tell us it tells us that with proper protocols classrooms are not a significant source of transmission and spread family gatherings sleepovers birthday parties and yes
026sports something aps allows are all creating more transmission than classroom learning when we look nationally and globally studies are showing time and again that students 10 years old and under in the classroom are nowhere near a risk for community spread harvard johns hopkins the new england journal of medicine electric association have all published safe reopening guidelines and have recommended in-person instruction in some form why because unfortunately this virus is not going away anytime soon and if virtual school becomes policy for the rest of this year and beyond the impact for so many children and families will be severe and long-lasting it will exacerbate existing inequities and we cannot allow a situation to persist where suburban and affluent children have access to their classrooms and urban students do not and so as parents as health professionals
027we are respectfully asking the board to please offer the choice of in-person instruction beginning with elementary and special needs students surely we all can agree that these two populations need their classrooms the most if the board decides not to allow this at the very least it must publicly articulate specific criteria under which it would surveys every nine weeks to gauge feelings is simply not an acceptable strategy the science shows us that prepared classrooms are not super spreaders and our local data has confirmed it please allow akron public school families an in-person option or at least put our district on a firm and detailed path to do so thank you very much thank you mr and mrs hardy and i just want to point out many of you would be uh are probably familiar with mr
028hardy who is also a former akron public schools board member and past president thank you both for being here tonight next we will hear from miss angel vincent alrighty well thank you all for allowing me the time to speak before the board today um sorry i get emotional so you have to just sorry bear with me um i'm angel vincent i am a proud kenmore graduate i graduated in 1988 and i had the honor to go to school with y'all to me um she was a great athlete a great person even back then i even went out for the track team because she swore i could throw couldn't do it but she swore i could she tried to teach me it was bad anyway um so when i heard of her passing and um i'm
029pretty involved with the alumni from kenmore um you know a bunch of us you know we're just chit chatting and talking and we thought what a wonderful honor it would be if we could find out how to go about getting something named in her honor um she did so much for the girls at that school i mean the the the progress she made with some of the some of those girls she had she had some rough teams i mean i mean high school girls are rough i mean i had one she was she was something and you know she led them with love and by example and taught them how to be right in the world she showed them how to be proud of who they are and where they came from um the fact
030that she came back i mean she could have went anywhere in the world and played basketball and taught anywhere she came back to home so that you know speaks volumes just for how much she cared about her community um so like i said i did start the petition um to in order to you know find out how to go about naming the gym in the new in the new building we want this to live on for a long time um you know i understand that the the current building how the the old garfield building gym was named after someone i don't know who that was i didn't go to garfield i know nothing about it um but i do think that moving forward it would be a huge step to show support of a especially
031a woman of color who led by example someone who was proud of who she was and proud of what she did and proud of her kids and every one of those kids were hers one minute i mean my daughter played for a uh one other schools in the area she didn't go to kenmore but my daughter wanted to play freon to me i mean she was she was willing to move back to kenmore to play freon to me um so it just she she did so much and she left us way too soon um at current count the petition um was started i believe wednesday of last week and we're at 7 512 signatures the comments alone in the um in the petition are heartfelt and moving i mean people really want this to happen
032and whatever we need i need to do or needs to be done i am willing to help with that i just think that it is vitally important that we show support for her family and this community and honor her and her legacy um the petitions had has had over 21 000 views and it's been shared 2700 times just in the in the last five days um so i just hope that you know once you guys decide on how the policy is going to change um let me know i will get whatever it needs to be okay i think we may have temporarily missed vincent thank you thank you for the kind words thank you for reaching out today and again our thoughts and our prayers are with uh coach on tommy jones family and those
033who knew her best we appreciate you reaching out i did get a copy of that thank you for sending it along i'll make sure it gets out to the rest of our board and we'll be in touch as soon as we update our policy so we appreciate you all right thank you thank you at this time we are going to move to the recognitions portion of our agenda and i'm going to turn it over at this time to our instructional policy and student achievement committee for a very special recognition from some of ours for one of our staff members thank you president bravo i don't know if anyone else is having internet issues but i'm hearing that it's fairly widespread tonight so hopefully we can get through tonight um it is my great honor to
034get to recognize our director of community relations diversity equity inclusion then that is our own carla chapman she's been named as a recipient of the ohio stem learning network that's osln she is their 2020 ohio stem innovator winner the ohio stem learning network is composed of seven regional hubs of which akron is one that are committed to helping the state to inspire and train the next generation of scientists and technology leaders sam cruz is the osln akron hub manager for the 13 counties of the akron region during the spring he related the fantastic work that carla and her team were doing over scheduled calls with other regions around the state from there the formal recognition followed quote the ohio stem innovator award recognizes an ohioan who has demonstrated an outstanding contribution to the support of
035stem education and outstanding within his or her region this awardee is a leader that identifies supports and promotes innovative practices and addresses diversity equity and inclusion challenges to ensure expanded access to quality stem education unquote from the osln keep in mind that stem also is an acronym that stands for strategies that engage minds the connectors demonstrate that the principle that demonstrates that principle in a big way we all know that congratulations to carla and her dedicated team under the leadership of carla l chapman district director of community relations diversity equity inclusion a team created the connectors program through the program 254 trained non-instructional staff members called akron students to determine their needs logging more than 10 000 interactions during 52 days of remote learning that that needs said again 254 non-instructional staff members called akron
036students to determine their needs logging more than 10 000 interaction during 52 days of remote learning the program helped many of the approximate 22 000 akron students with such things as uni using their unfamiliar technology at home to accessing food health care and child care the program is underway again for the new school year for her efforts chapman has been named the recipient of osln's 2020 ohio stem innovator award as she has demonstrated an outstanding contribution to the support of stem education and outreach within her region congratulations carla thank you mrs mansfield i appreciate the recognition but you know that i'm gonna say there is an awesome team of folks who helped make this happen so i have to thank yvonne culver desiree bowden april porter and andrew zaccardi teamwork makes the dream work so
037um couldn't have done appreciate it thank you so much well deserved uh miss chapman thank you for everything that you do we're very proud of you carla thank you all right with that we have uh no other communications before the board we are ready to enter the business portion of our evening so i will look for a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from our meeting of october 12 2020. thank you a motion by miss audrey a second by dr akbar any comments question or discussion on the minutes hearing and seeing none roll call please mrs mckittrick dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall aye this is mansfield yes thank you thank you superintendent's recommendations personnel uh yes mr president and i wish to recommend approval of
038the personnel recommendations presented in categories 5 through 16 and again highlighting item 16.1 um the death of uh yotami um uh jones um who has been working for the akron public schools for 26 years thank you do we have a motion second thank you we have a motion for miss mansfield a second from dr akbar any comments questions or discussion mr bravo just wanted to also mention the retirement of mary dean she'll be greatly missed i know that she likes to give dr james a hard time so that could be one of the reasons she's chosen to retire because she won't have him to go toe-to-toe with all the time too so um she she's gonna be a tough one to replace i know when these come around that that we say that i and
039i don't want it to be ever become flip it because she is an amazing principal thank you for highlighting that any other comments questions yes mr president the other principal retiring is also uh sharon hill jones uh who's another one that got on my case because i couldn't deliver her a new building at firestone park thank you anyone else congratulations to both of those retirees a lot of opportunity to work with principal dean and ms jones was also my son's principal when she started a case so congratulations to both of them and hopefully enjoy enjoy the time off aaron seeing no other comments questions or discussion uh roll call please dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall hi means phil yes this is mckittrick yes thank you next
040mr president i wish to recommend approval of the resolutions and motions presented in category 21. thank you do we have a motion for the consent agenda items sorry thank you uh motion by dr hall and i believe a second by ms mckitcher great any comments questions or discussions on the consent agenda items doctor doctor yes i just have one um i i noticed that the um the akron stephonic wins um is as a 10 min a 10 week 30 minute private virtual lesson which is of great value i just wanted to point that out for that donation for our students we know that this time has been very difficult for students and just having that type of resource for students who may be missing a connection to something that they love is definitely valuable so
041just want to point that out and thank them thank you for that any other comments questions or discussion on the consent agenda items hearing none roll call please mr alexander yes miss audrey yes mr bravo yes yes dr hall hi yes this is mickey frick yes yes all right and finally mr president i wish to recommend approval of the business affairs recommendations presented in category 22. okay do we have a motion second second we have a motion for mr alexander a second from miss mckittrick any comments questions or discussion on the business affairs agenda items hearing and seeing none will call please ms autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall mansfield yes yes mrs mckittrick yes yes dr akbar dr akbar yes mr alexander yeah thank you so much for that and at this point
042we will move into our superintendence report to review our school options update and as we begin that conversation i want to echo something that dr hall said earlier this has been a very difficult discussion as we've gone throughout this school year and i would on behalf of the board that we greatly appreciate all of the feedback that we've received all the parents and teachers and community members and even students who have reached out to share their thoughts and their feedback with us we appreciate it um we also know that it's difficult to come up with any plan that is going to satisfy everyone uh but we are listening to you and we are uh hearing what you have to say um and we appreciate you taking the time to reach out to us and share
043that feedback with us and know that whatever decision we make it isn't what we feel is the best interest of of your students but not different students all of our students and the faculty and the staff that support them so thank you again for reaching out and mr superintendent i'll turn it over to you at this time uh thank you mr president um the first uh item that i'd like to go over uh will be uh winter sports i know there are guidelines from the ohio high school athletic association to proceed with winter sports and i'm talking about girls and boys basketball swimming bowling and wrestling um swimming i think we can follow the same procedures we did for the fast programs they're very very similar i'm limiting the number of people who can be
044in and around the pool and we had identified uh procedures for that um when we looked at all sports and ultimately approved that the swimming program could continue bowling those are done at a variety of bowling venues in the city and typically those students are separated uh if you're you know a typical bowling rink are separated to one area and that is not a contact type uh sport wrestling and basketball are a little different um we know that in wrestling uh there's a lot of contact uh primarily one-on-one and of course basketball running up and down the court um there's some physical contact now i'm waiting on some guidance from summit county public health again we have the guidance from the ohio high school athletic association which mirrors what happened with fall sports the one
045thing i am looking at a little differently for these winter sports wrestling and basketball in particular is the potential to conduct a covet rapid testing on our athletes so we are talking with a vendor um right now it looks like we can get those tests for about 35 each and i would uh estimate i know mr vasilati is on but um you know with 35 a person i'm sorry um and at least once maybe twice a week per athlete we could be looking at uh maybe uh as low as 12 to 14 000 you know per instance of testing to cycle through all of them so there are some details i need to work out uh you know with that and which i will do and then report that back to the board but for
046the most part all the other processes and procedures limiting the venues limiting the number of tickets for spectators who can actually see one of these uh events during the winter sports period will certainly be in place similar to what it was for boss sports are there any questions about that thank you we'll open it up to the board for questions and comments and to facilitate our discussion tonight and make sure everyone has an opportunity i'd ask that you limit it to either two questions or one question and a follow-up and then we'll move around the table we won't limit the amount of time on discussion for any of these topics but we just will limit uh the questions until everyone's had a chance to go around mr alexander yes uh we're taking the proper precautions
047and i'm glad we look at all these and i i am concerned too because basketball i'm an ex-basketball player uh ex-football player but uh there's a lot of contact in basketball more than people think and so and definitely a lot of contact and wrestling uh at 99 percent of the time they're basically in contact with each other uh so i do have some concerns with that but my question is basically uh i know we have the the schools that we're going to be certain schools i'm using a ventilation the ventilation is okay for everyone who may be coming in from the outside as well as those kids who will be uh participating yeah there was a question from one staff member about ventilation so um for the for indoor sports we would be using um
048three coc venues uh if i remember correctly so we have bukto which is a new clc so those systems were designed to provide the right amount of air changes inside the building tell it of course and um so uh but we have firestone which is another one and we also have east that had their systems uh upgraded when that building was done so the two that primarily wouldn't be used for that uh you know we have kenmore uh garfield and then we have north high school you know those are two that haven't had the upgrade so our cocs are um they're in compliance with uh what are called ashrae standards um they should be fine and they will also have which you'll see in our next report on uh some of the sanitation uh which
049i'll say is state-of-the-art that we'll be using as well okay great thank you thank you mr alexander anyone else i don't see anyone in queue i have a question yes ms archery thank you mr president um do we know the number approximate number of student athletes we're talking about this go around i know for fall it was about 800 students yeah we do and i'll uh i'll beg mr vasilati to come on because i think he sent that to me in an email i just can't remember the exact number either he or mrs folk would have that number at least i'm keeping my fingers crossed yes hello everybody uh the numbers the numbers are a bit less than the fall uh dr james mentioned testing for basketball and wrestling so we crunched those numbers uh
050today for sure so we could get those to miss this folk and she could put together an estimate but the approximate number of basketball players boys and girls combined for jv and varsity throughout aps would be about 250 and then we have approximately 80 to 100 wrestlers total in our five schools that have wrestling teams so those are the numbers for the two contact sports and we could certainly adjust schedules like we did for the fall as dr james mentioned to focus mostly on city competition use the limited number of venues at basketball we're looking at using outlet firestone and brookdale and we use separate venues for wrestling to help with scheduling so but those are the numbers for basketball and wrestling with bowling we typically have teams boys and girls combined about 15 to
05120 per school for all six of our schools bowling of course the non-contact sport and then the swim program at firestone the only one in the city but it's amazing there they do a great job and they have a number of swimmers there and they're used to the protocols from the fast program what's unique about the firestone swim team is they would compete outside of aps of course because they are our only swim team thank you thank you mr good question yes i do actually don't know what the locker rooms dress dress right i'll let mrs full answer that question because she works closely with summit county public health on developing those guys yes mrs audrey we will be able to use the locker rooms we actually put that protocol into effect at the end
052of the football seas as we were ready uh to do a district type of game and those protocols include the new sanitation process that we have put in the board has approved to disinfect and anti-microbial in those particular locker rooms so those services have been started already and then the students will follow the sanitation health checks and requirements as they use the locker rooms and then we will completely re-sanitize them after they're used which is what we did exactly at elliott when we use the football stadium thank you ms autry dr akbar yes so my question um i guess my biggest uh concern is not necessarily basketball i think that based off what i heard you know if we're following the same logic from the the fall sports that seems like um if we can
053get the testing we should be good my greatest concern has to do with um wrestling uh specifically to the meets that happen with the multiple teams um i don't know exactly what they're called but i think they're meets um with multiple teams coming together i don't know if that's necessary in order to make it to the state championship or what have you but i'm wondering if um when mr vasilati mentioned they can modify the schedule i wonder i'm wondering if we could um limit the amount of outside teams if we're implementing the testing for our wrestlers in the city uh would that be a necessity to go against people outside the city um and if so is it could we avoid it for the entire season and just focus on the meats or external competitions
054in the finals or playoffs or what have you and i don't know who that question is directed to maybe mr vasilati or deb or dr james i don't i don't know mr vasquez yeah yes it's a great question dr akbar so um wrestling obviously a high contact sport we could certainly set up the schedule so that it's focused on dual meets within the city at some of our schools numbers are such that we typically can't field a full wrestling team but say we have six to eight individual wrestlers in that case we could possibly do a try me within the city which we do the point there being we would stay within aps and the numbers would still be relatively small certainly our teams would benefit eventually from competition outside of the city as they
055prepare for the ohsa tournament but i was just thinking as you were asking the question about cross country in the fall and obviously that's much less of a contact sport than wrestling um but i was thinking of it because initially we just ran cross-country meets within the city dual meets against ourselves and then towards the end of the season we were because the protocols were being followed and it was going smoothly we were able to open up to invitationals last couple weeks of the season and um you know firestone in particular jumped on that and had some good success in invitationals they still have a young man competing at regionals right now so that could be a possibility maybe down the road as we get closer to the ohsa tournament in february uh to perhaps
056open it up to non-league competition but we could certainly set up the schedule initially so it's just within aps for wrestling thank you as i shared this morning with dr james i mean i think that the sports is very um it is a high risk uh but we i've already uh started um allowing sports so i think at least at this point we should try to figure out how do we um help all the sports uh play as much as possible and one of my biggest concerns is if we're going to do testing with our players how reliable or helpful is that if we're having multiple different meets with teams outside the city who aren't receiving the same level of testing as often and so if we want to maintain our safety i think that
057as much as we can maintain um the season within the house until you get into that playoff season or whatever it's called uh that would be uh something i would suggest if if necessary thank you thank you dr akbar i don't see anyone else in line but are there any other comments questions or discussion on the winter sports it's not true i just want to clarify that indeed there would have to be a waiver as well for families who wish their students to participate i'm assuming that's the case i mean there's a language that performed that the state athletic association had our athlete sign for false course and i think that same uh form is in place for when that they're going to follow all the guidelines and abide by the rules and also as
058we did for fall we set up a few extra items uh you know with uh curfews and um you know making sure that people are aware of their behavior when they're off of campus there there's a lot to say about that both with our students and employees another question comment or follow up miss autry yeah thank you anyone else okay hearing and seeing none mr superintendent do you need anything from us uh on that item then i you know again i have to um get some information on testing that would certainly be the plan you know to move forward with uh sports um and so we'll have to you know work through those details and then get something to board for that i would certainly um uh agree or feel like our student athletes could
059still do their you know preparations for the actual competition which you know we still have a little bit of time left but we may need to have a special board meeting or something to approve um whatever testing regimen that we come up with in our firm to do that thank you uh and for me i'll uh would you be able when you bring that back to the board to also make some clarification on conditioning for spring sports yes i can do that thank you which will make it easier yes all right thank you so much and at this time we will uh move on to the school options update if you're ready yeah so um before we do the school options update i want to uh have mrs folk talk about some of the procedures
060uh that we'll be following just in terms of safety good evening to you all i would like to bring you a presentation regarding a student day with the modifications that we've put into place for the student day when they are coming to school going through the school and being dismissed from school so if you will allow me to proceed i will begin to process that with joanne's help who's going to help process this with me the modifications do include some cleaning procedures that we have already put in place and we will continue to use throughout as we move forward as you can see we're going to cover several areas tonight in the presentation we're going to talk about transportation controlled movement social distancing breakfast or lunch modifications and these will help make the school safe
061while the students come in to school no matter what kind of process you approve for us to move forward the first i'd like you to do is go to us and arrive at school so we're going to have the students riding a school bus are also into place for band transportation for our students so we will allow you to see the students watch and enter a bus good morning vicki don't forget your hand sanitizer good morning you don't have your face mask today but that's okay because we have an extra one for you thank you you're welcome and go ahead and proceed to your seat thank you thanks you're welcome good morning good morning as you can see all our students are required to wear masks they do sanitize their hand on arrival okay we
062will provide masks if they do not have one whoa [Music] goodnight and what's very important is as vicky was the first one to get on the bus she has an assigned seat in the very back of the bus this bus is actually used to travel students currently to one of our uh non-public schools and if you could see it a little bit better there's an actual assigned seating above each seat with the student's name so they know exactly where to go beth then takes the attendance which is exactly what you watched her do so that we if we would need to find a student for a covet related issue on a bus or a van will know exactly where they sat and then the attendance is taken into the office should we need this please
063be aware we have not had to pull any student that is currently transported for a covid related issue it's been a very successful process in the same process is already in effect with the teams that are traveling on our activity buses for sporting events as well whether football band related or volleyball related as we have done those sports in the fall or we're going to enter the school building so the entry is very important so we're going to go ahead and watch a student enter the building they'll go through the door and they will pick up their grab-and-go meal have a good morning today thank you you're welcome all students enter one by one they will continue to wear their masks their grab-and-go breakfast will be available for them at the entrance upon arrival and
064then they will proceed directly to their local classroom or cafeteria depending on which is the best model for the student meal in the morning start going through the school day so we're going to go to the classroom and this is where it gets very instructive as to how we have set up the classrooms for the students to be properly socially distanced so these are socially distant students so seth i want you to take your stick and i want you to place it from chris to vicky to show that they're six feet between them and take it from chris to julie okay and then from julie to jeff okay that it's six feet between julie and vicki and then it's six feet between vicki and chris and that's why we didn't have to take the furniture
065out of the room between you and the teacher and then from vicki to julie and then from seth to julie and there's our six feet guys because this is the teacher work area as well so we wanted the teacher to feel comfortable to know where the work area is for the smart board but we also wanted the kids to have an idea where that balance is so chris come up and stop right here for a minute there will be sanitizing solution available for her to come up the teacher can come over here and then chris can come over and work on the board so this is also a workstation so that we can continue the actual opportunity to go ahead and do that type of interaction between the teacher and the student and then i
066can come back up and teach as the teacher for the classroom what's important about this is please look at the color of paper on the desk should you have a blended model anytime in the future we wanted to show you an a day which was the yellow paper and a b day which is the pink paper so that the students are actually assigned to the specific desk or in the room so therefore that desk is owned by that student if they were in school five days a week or two days a week or even a small group and this is set up throughout the building using the various classrooms for every location that we have we've currently started and completed the elementaries we were working on the middle schools and we are starting on the
067high schools so we will go ahead and continue to do the floor markings and the students will have access to the distance to the smart board and then hand sanitizer upon arrival in the room and at various locations throughout the room should they go and do small group with the teacher or be also working on a project so that they can keep them their hands safe and sanitized during the whole process we're going to the next slide and we're going to show you about lockers lockers are the one thing in classrooms that are still not operational but we want the children to understand that that's something they can't have easy access to so in the classroom at the elementary buildings they are actually located so we have a slide to show you two things in
068a classroom one is a sink that is currently available with a water fountain in this classroom and then one is the lockers so i'd like you to look at the next slide please this particular sink is got a water fountain attached to it so therefore they will be covered although we still want the water to be accessible to wash hands while they're in the classroom and locks have been ordered this one happens to be just covered we had extra furniture so we went ahead and placed it in front of the lockers teachers are more than welcome to use these lockers for some of their supplies but we felt by putting a barrier between it students would get used to taking their book bag and their coat directly to their assigned seat while they're in school
069for the for the time that they are there i wanted to show you how you travel the building and so we're now going to show you hallway markings and stairway markings so that it's very easily seen by students and visitors or even our own staff how you travel throughout the building in a hallway you can see from this slide going forward we have exact directionals and i want you to think driving a car everybody travels on the right this is a single mode going down the hallway directly to a classroom by the staff and this is a pass it by each other these are not considered direct contacts everyone will be wearing their masks everybody is moving quickly in a time fashion so therefore this kind of movement is not considered a direct contact the
070next thing i wanted to show you is elevators and if you've been in any buildings there are always markings and elevators to limit the number of people that should be there it depends on the size of the elevator most of our schools now have elevators so we had to properly mark them this particular elevator is limited to four people they each stand in the corner during the travel and they should have their masks on it is a short uh period and students do not get to travel by themselves on an elevator if it is in use they usually have an accompanying adult our next issue is a lab class this building happens to have a k-6 configuration so should we need additional spaces beyond the time that a lab may be in use we wanted
071to show you a socially distanced lab i wanted to make sure that we could still do the lab and we determined if you sat the students at the end of each side table and the student in the middle of the middle table you could easily get six feet between them enough students to be in the class at the time with the teacher and i have 16 students being able to sit here so this is also an opportunity should we bring younger students back as opposed to always having the lab in the building we have additional spaces throughout the building where students could be assigned a desk or time and space to do the work when with the teacher there is assigned to them our next travel is to go the stairway because this building is
072a two-story building so the same type of markings that you saw in the hallway now start to move you up through the corridors on the stairs professional stickers at the bottom of the stairways they are on the landings they're at the top of the stairways so again the floor markings indicate that you will be on the right side of the stairs going up in the right side of the stairs coming down it indicates at the top bottom and landing in between and it's one-way traffic and then there are safe distance between them now i did have a couple of people asked should all stairways just be one direction going up say on the north side of the building and one say on the south side of the building going down that is not a practical
073use of stairways it does not meet the fire code and we wanted the same pattern to be held throughout the district because our students sometimes are visiting other buildings whether they are there for a special event they are there for some type of additional class instruction or sometimes just because they move so the same pattern of hallway and stairway travel is throughout the district in we set them up the next thing we're going to do is we are now going to go to the cafeteria is to socially distance we now can have two students to a table not our standard four but we also have everybody six feet apart so we can use the cafeteria to service a meal as well this is where it becomes important to understand just how the tables are used
074they usually do sit four to five students and sometimes in the past they have been grouped together so the tabletops touched similar to what you and i would do with a family dinner at our house distancing requirements and our covered requirements we now have all the tables facing the same direction and at the elementary where these tables are located the room can be used for two students to a table which in this building allows us about 60 students if at one time so we could offer congregate feeding at breakfast or lunch if needed if not everybody's in the classroom and i can advise at the high school level with the tables that have the seating attached we've already started working on those and where they used to be 12 c's to a table they're now
075limited to three so that we can socially distance so the principals are now working on how they would use these types of rooms or additional class spaces well so from here we want to take you back to the end of your day and go into the office as a visitor so that you could if you were picking up a student what would an office look like if i was visiting i was then this is how the office is set up for them to handle it so again we have floor markings so that we can assist our visitors at coming into the building again all people are required to wear masks unless they have a medical reason not to but for a visitor it would be required and then we have placed plexiglass dividers in the
076reception area now we want to take you to a clinic because this is an adjustment for our services if a student is reporting to the office not feeling well their first stop will be at this location where they will be asked to sit in the chair or stand on deck the health aide then will realize that they are out here and they will ask the student to go in to the clinic and once they get in the clinic they will then stand on the appropriate socially distanced location and then they will stand here while the health aide begins to do the assessment if they are perfectly fine they may be returning back to class but if they truly do have symptoms that may be related to something that needs to go home such as covid
077with a proper temperature take and other assessments the student will be taken over to what is the isolation location and in this case for this clinic it is located here and vicki at this point is going to sit back here she will be asked to wait while the health aide then calls the parents to say that vicki needs to be picked up and she will remain in the isolation location until the parent arrives and the student can be released if we have more than one student at this location and i have somebody in this particular isolation location i can then also provide the restroom as a location as well this particular setup has been modified throughout the whole district we've actually taken some particular small clinics and found other larger areas within buildings so that
078we could do this setup we want to make sure that we're following the protocols for proper assessment and we will ask parents to pick up their child within one hour of notification so that we can get them to their parent or guardian as soon as possible removal from the building and to a health provider for further assessment from the clinic i think now we're done with our day so we're going to go ahead and put them back on the school bus and hope that they've had a great great day with us and we will be loading the bus good morning vicki don't forget your hand sanitizer stay you don't have your face mask today but that's okay because we have an extra one for you and go ahead and proceed to your seat thank you
079thanks you're welcome good morning good morning what's important about this is the fact that at the end of the day the schools will be lining up their students according to their bus roster so that we can get this first student that sits in the back of the bus to be the first person on the bus and the last student off the bus to our vice versa first person off to be the first person off because the routes usually start at the end of the route and move outward so we wanted to line the students up as well you have done a wonderful job approving of the sanitation application at the last board meeting we wanted to show you what it actually looks like so we have a slide for you to see it being applied
080now this is the uh two-step process he is actually showing you the end of the process for the anti-microbial that is currently also used at summa health and at akron children's these will be applied to all restrooms monthly in classrooms cafeterias reception areas gyms bleachers locker rooms on a 90-day basis although lockers probably will get a monthly because they also have restroom rooms so this helps alleviate and helps distance together it helps us be safe it helps us to put in the processes to make the building ready for us to accept students and staff in a safe manner throughout the time that they are in the building i can tell you this sanitation procedure is currently going through its full process and we will be completely done with all buildings including ancillary buildings as of
081next tuesday so we will be ready for students and the staff as they return or continue to work in the buildings all right mr superintendent do we want to open it up for any questions on uh building procedures before we move forward if you guys want to let me know uh in the messages if you'd like to line up with any comments or questions two questions or a comment a question or a question and a follow-up if you would and i see that miss mckittrick would like to kick us off and then dr akbar thank you mr president um are temperatures going to be taken at all during the day i thought there was some conversation about having temperatures taken before the kids even got on the bus and then my second question is what
082kinds of cleaning processes are going to be in place during the day when the kids are actually in the buildings thank you to answer your first question originally when covet came out it was a discussion of having temperatures taken upon entry to buses entry to the building because of the information that has come forward since then it is not the leading symptom that is currently the lead to determine covid obviously we are going to have all students do a self check at home and instruct parents they should not come if they have any symptoms the same as we've already done with staff and because of the change in the cdc guidelines it is not a requirement that temperatures be taken as they get on the bus or as they arrive to school however they will
083be taken upon any issue that comes during the day at the clinic and the offices also have handheld thermometers should there be an issue at a time when a health aide or nurse is not available the second question i'm sorry mrs mckittry can you just state it again please sure i just wanted to know what kinds of things are going to be the cleaning procedures during the day there actually is a specific schedule of routine cleaning all high touch areas that goes into effect every two hours once the building actually opens so obviously if we're feeding in the classrooms we'll be removing the trash from the areas because it is not sanitary to have it following breakfast as an example and the custodial staff will continue to touch all high touch areas with the proper
084solutions every two hours as we have established in the administrative buildings and in other locations and continue to do that process until the end of the school day and then begin the regular full cleaning at night thank you thank you dr akbar yes um so i so uh miss mckittrick just asked one of my questions um so i asked i have a question which you mentioned about uh backpacks um and not being able to use lockers and i know that um many of the schools actually have policies or rules against carrying backpacks in schools and i don't i looked in the policy manual and i could not find um a policy on book bags so maybe it's in administrative guidelines or maybe each school gets to decide that but i do know that that's also
085a big concern for staff that work in the buildings considering we've had quite a bit of violence in the community and i hate to have to ask this question but i'm wondering how do we mitigate some concerns from potential staff that may have when they see increased use of book bags in their classrooms our general policy regarding book bags dr advar is that they are to be clear or mesh so that you can see in them i've already worked with mrs um with this um regarding the type of materials that are used most of the instruction is done on the chromebook we do not have a lot of a lot of it's necessarily that students need to pack back and forth so there is limited amount that needs to be in a bath path at
086the elementary level they will be just sitting next to the chair it is assigned to the student at the middle school in high school they will travel with the student but they should be able to be small and see through and mesh similar to what we've done before okay um thank you for that the other since i get to ask another question since my first question was take it i um i think you did a great job with the videos of showing how things could work in school buildings at pretty much every space um and again i know i didn't teach in akron but i taught in detroit and i just i it doesn't seem plausible for all the complexities that happen within the classroom building i'm sorry classroom walls so inside that classroom walls
087at any moment you can have brad walking back and forth in the back of the room you could you know have a student needing you to help them at their desk with a question and i'm wondering just thinking about how you know the practicalities what happens in the classroom um how do you um what are your thoughts about that because the what you showed was um what we hope will happen everyone's sitting nicely at their desk um but we know in reality that's not what happens so can you share um and maybe is miss gg i don't know but um what what are your thoughts about how do we manage that well obviously um we have or ordered additional safety shields for staff members so staff members can certainly wear a mask and a shield
088if they would like to have that extra face covering students will need to wear their masks and i realize that students will be walking around the room but we are in the process of working with our teachers our guidance counselors and our instructional specialists to help learn exactly what is the best way for every student to be safely maintained in the building we truly are waiting to see in small group we have plenty of distance for us to be able to do that and i've been in a number of elementary buildings and our teachers do a great job of having students sit in an assigned seat and usually when called upon they go directly to the teacher when called upon so i think we have great management skills in our classrooms and i'm sure our
089teachers will help put that together as we bring students back in thank you dr mr alexander folk that was a very very good presentation and i have several questions but i want to ask you too and i'll send the rest to you later to get your answers but the two questions i'm going to ask um how we how are we going to handle uh disruptive students in the building uh with the the covet virus because if there's a fighter or you have a kid who is just you tell them to sit down they constantly get up and move and do how we're gonna handle those situations that's the first question i'm sure that our building principles along with their staffs are putting some of those issues together as we train them to teach how the
090classroom needs to be set up and remember that sometimes mr alexander even if the clinic is currently being used there are conference rooms and other locations in the buildings that our staff are very able to take a student to as they need to to blow off steam and be able to get control of their emotions if that is what the issue is while they try to deal with it so i trust our principals will handle that along with the staff members as they feel the protocol is required by the student okay because the only concern i have is a physical contact maybe they have to kind of break up a fight or something now it becomes physical and now you got contact with the with them okay we will certainly use our best management skills
091to prevent those and to go ahead and address them should they arise okay and my second question is with the sanitizer uh that we use um if you have a person has some type of respiratory problems will that affect them uh as far as a respiratory kid who has asthma or teach you have some type of breathing problem or issue how is that sanitizer going will it affect them in any type of manner it is completely non-toxic it once it is applied and dried it actually self-seals and completely dry so therefore it does not have any residue on it and it does not provide any problems with it we have as we've applied worked with the principals in the staff that are currently in the building they ask them not to report the day that
092we currently apply it but once it is completely dried it is not an issue for any kind of exhalants or fumes that would bother somebody with a respiratory issue okay yeah that was just a concern that i had with a reference to that and someone else brought that to my attention as well uh beforehand all right thank you thank you thank you mr alexander miss mansfield and then dr hall thank you deborah that was absolutely so enlightening i think that um it gives great reassurance i i can tell you i've tried to limit my trips to the grocery store since they started loosening up rules right because for a while they had one-way aisles and there were you know all kinds of extra precautions in place and i feel like all that's gone away and
093yet we still are grocery shopping so i think that seeing what a fantastic job especially in those hallways and knowing that that's not contact is is really reassuring one of the things that i'm sure will be asked or that will be pointed out is that that was one of the newer buildings that was a clc and we do have several that are not i don't didn't really see anything that i think wouldn't work in a non-clc do you foresee anything that won't because i'm sure we're going to get asked actually to be honest with you the same procedures have worked the same floor markings but as an example one of the things that we found in this in the older buildings is we had to readjust the clinics so we had to work with the
094principal to find larger split spaces so we've adjusted couple at the older buildings to allow us to find a space that we can put a socially distanced and isolation piece together in the clinics but we will continue to work on all of these items as listed and we have been successful in doing the old buildings as well as all the new ones and just as a second you don't have you've done obviously the same process at the middle and high school level um are there some i know there are some classrooms that are extremely large i was reading um a post not classrooms but class sizes that are extremely large i was reading one from one of our ap teachers who has some classes that have 40 students so assuming that they're somehow blended assuming
095some don't come back right away um i usually take half and then half again that's still a rather large class have we looked at using some spaces you mentioned the cafeteria for other classes that need to be in bigger spaces for example if there's an auditorium or if there's a the gematoriums or whatever uh spaces libraries that might be able to be used have we looked at what that might how that might help those larger class sizes we actually have so i can tell you at barber as an example because that was our pilot building we actually went into the lrc we actually counted the tables and we know exactly how many students we could fit in that lrcc we've also worked with mrs williams the principal and should we need to because we don't
096know exactly how the specials will work we might need to use the music rooms the art rooms the large group areas to your point with the gym if we're doing gym classes differently also present seating availability and obviously because we social distanced the students in the classrooms we would move the materials such as desks or chairs to those areas if it was needed so we could help set those up we have been very creative we just haven't got a building with students in it yet with a large enough group that we have not continued to continue to be able to address that issue but like you we are looking at class rosters we're getting numbers from principals so that we can determine based on what the families elect to do no matter what model it
097is that we can help uh students comfortable and socially spaced during the day that were there with us along with their teachers and the supporting staff thank you so much thank you thank you mr president uh miss mansfield i was just going to ask if you have any more questions i mean i i i'll defer to you if you've got one more just wanted to before i hopped in no i'm good thanks okay sure sure okay um so uh yeah so you know as i was watching the video um you know they were and i think i think i've got two comment slash questions um not two of each but two comments questions um you know as i was sort of thinking through the emails i've gotten from parents um many of the emails have
098talked about a desire to see their kids back in school because um of the importance of socialization right they've a lot of value that's been placed upon the socialization aspect of of students in schools um and i i have to confess um socialization looks like it will be looks like it would be seriously truncated or abridged um in in in what i'm seeing here um and i'm not saying that's wrong you know i i you know the precautions that we're putting in place are are the right precautions um i just think that the parents who are watching um you know punting on this topic i think it's important they understand that that their your kids going back to school it's not going back to school like it was um what you've seen presented today that's
099the new normal um you know and and candidly um you know i've got two young daughters that are not school aged yet but candidly you know and i'm just being honest for the folks who are watching this i think we owe it to them to share our opinions candidly it i found it depressing um you know that that this is what this is this is the environment that kids are going to go into when they are back in school uh and again rightfully so right i'm not being critical of what's being presented i think the videos did a great job of kind of spelling out folks this is the new normal you know so so we're putting kids back in school this is the environment we're putting them back into you know um i think
100i think that has to be said clearly and and i may get some pushback from saying this publicly in a board meeting but i'm sorry that's just the reality um you know the other thing that went through my mind is my second comment um is i was trying to visualize um because we talked about the special eds and the kindergartners you know which again i think rightfully so those are the two groups that we have to you know be thinking about you know first and foremost as well as our high school seniors too right to be candid um you know but i'm thinking about kindergartners for example and i'm i'm trying to visualize a classic kindergartner staying six feet apart all day and keeping their mask on all day and i have to admit a
101certain degree of um trepidation when i when i think about it even though in my mind i'm like we gotta find a way to get these kids back so i guess what i'm saying is that you know maybe you know maybe what we have to do is just be candid and say hey you know um we're not gonna keep these kids six feet apart and it's it's it and it's a part of the risk that's gonna go into it and as parents of young kids and or especially or any kids just accept that as a as an administration and as a board you know that the plans that we come up with they're just that their plans right and and so and just know that this is the reality that your kids are walking into
102um and you know and and this is a and and you may find that if that this reality that your kids are walking back into it may be it may in some ways be more depressing um than what they're experiencing right now in a remote model um so so those are i guess those are my two comments and and if you ha and miss folk or anybody else that has that i'd love to hear a comment on that you know whether you think i'm you know way off base you know uh and that's fine too uh because i think this is where we have you know honest conversation is here right um you know and if you've got if you've got other thoughts they think i'm way off back i'm sorry way off base that
103that's fine too but uh again i'd be interested in hearing the kind of the collective feedback on this no um dr hall i think you hit the nail on the head it is not going to be the way it was before there you know kids are going to have to be maintained you know there's going to have to be appropriate space being maintained um you know between students and i also have you know uh concerns about you know we always talk about you know how much time our kids are spending you know in front of their teachers and i don't want to get too much into the next presentation but there's going to be a lot of issues you know how much time do we expect learning to happen when you know my teachers may
104have to constantly remind some of us particularly our youngest students you know not to touch each other not to hug each other you know to stay distant keep your mask on that's uh you know that is a tough situation for um i think staff to have to deal with um in a school and then just let alone lunch you know you go in any of our lunch rooms doesn't matter whether it's elementary middle or high school it's you know it is a very robust uh time of day and we can't have that you know as long as we're under this uh pandemic um i understand you know what many of our speakers have said but you know um it's it there's a lot more at stake than just what the kids might bring or not
105bring to school it's also the adults as well thank you dr hall and dr james um before we go back around again right miss audrey did you want to jump in or should i go back around nope there's no need to uh repeat the obvious thank you i concur with every one of my fellow board members thank you thank you ms archery would anyone else like to follow up okay hearing and seeing none dr james okay next i'd like to turn it over to pat hype and dr mc williams words to talk about uh the next uh phase of our work thank you dr james and mr bravo it is great being here tonight once again talking about our instructional models as we're moving forward we're now at the place where we're sharing this next
106wave of heading into our second nine weeks that starts on november 11th so we've been looking at that week of november 9th um tonight before we talk about the the actual reopening plans and hear from the superintendent on his formal proposal we thought it was really important to look at um two data pieces you know as as you've heard from mishap and from me and from many of my staff we always are trying to look at the data to help uh informed decisions not just code the data but also at some of the academic data and then we will look at some survey data that we had promised you that we would provide tonight so first of all looking at the this is all october progress data and looking at how we're doing across three
107key areas at our level of engagement and attendance we'll look at some preliminary reading data and some math data so this first slide captures our attendance engagement and our basic connectivity connectivity not the digital kind but are we connecting with students on a regular basis so that they can keep engaging with their school work we broke this down by weekly data and most of our data that we get from our analytics tools are weekly snapshots so that's why this is a data by week so when we looked at comparing from last spring from that march to may which we call our emergency remote you know that was more quickly making that flip and the model that we're doing right now is obviously very different where students are connecting into their classes and into their teachers
108using the video conferencing every day so when we look just at students logging into their chromebooks everyone knows we're one-to-one preschool through 12th grade last spring we were at 90 percent now we're at 99.1 percent of our students we see that activity of them logging into their chromebooks every single week then when you start drilling down what are they doing when they log in the google meets is probably the most important in terms of them connecting into their lessons we didn't require google meets for every lesson last spring so we we had 34 was the average weekly data during that time frame and now this uh for this first nine weeks a little shy of nine weeks now we're at 90 which means during the week 90 of the students are connecting into their google
109meets that doesn't necessarily mean every single one but that means we're seeing students connecting into their google needs and then students logging into their google classroom our learning management system where all of the lessons and assignments and all of the grading happens last spring it was 69 this fall it's uh 91.3 and our attendance the daily average when we track the daily attendance we're right at typically we're right around that 93 so we're not too far off of our typical average for our attendance so just in terms of when we step back and look at our overall attendance engagement connectivity um it this it's very strong in terms of the student engagement and their lessons and our ability to see that connection especially into the google meets the google classroom and especially reflected through that
110attendance i can tell you that this is not just because uh that we're lucky that this is happening this is because of the incredible work that our teachers are doing and our connectors and our counselors and all of our support staff in making sure that students are being successful and those relationships with the families that are being formed and it's also because families have set up those schedules that we talked about at the beginning of the year and are supporting you know we know lots of families are are spending and figuring out those ways to make sure that their learning environment is strong at either at home or in a daycare or at the boys and girls club wherever the students are during the day when we look specifically drilled down to our connectors which
111is you know you've heard the the award that carla chapman had who started this program it is a hallmark to that success of that engagement compared and i spend you know every day of my life i'm spending talking to chief academic officers all over the state and to some degree all over the country so this really is something that were we are known for that is unique the formal way that we're connecting with our students um right now we have 300 trained connectors we have it's 924 students have been through that formal referral process and assignment to the connectors and then we also through dan rambler's office and student services we also can send the connectors and the principals and counselors can ask for student services to send the staff member out to the home
112and last year all of last year we did 2000 wellness checks and home visits from that same office and this year they've already done 700 so far just at this beginning of the school year now getting into some of the academic data and this is such critical important data some of you have even said this in board meetings in the past about that early reading we do something called oral reading records where teachers individually assess students teachers in grades key through five and the data that you're seeing here is for grades one through five because it's comparing last year to this year for grades one through five our teachers individually conference with students and assess their reading now obviously a year ago from march 2019 to october that was uh face-to-face and now it's a
113remote administration this october but it's doing it remotely but it's still individual from our teaching staff to the student so this is pretty reliable data even though the environment is a little bit different and we obviously have to take that into consideration we look at reading levels and our expectation is obviously that students keep improving their reading level over time when you look at students moving up at least one reading level back in 2019 from march in the spring to october so that includes any kind of summer slide in there we had 66 of our students moving up at least one reading level when we look at the same time frame march 2020 last spring now that was right before we went out uh for the pandemic so obviously that's important to note um to
114october we just did the assessments now we see 34 students moving up at least one grade level or one reading level not grade level but one reading level so obviously that isn't as it's not the same pace as we've seen previously knowing that the conditions if you think of what happened last spring march through june which was more of that emergency kind of remote that we did and not quite the same face-to-face site base during the summer time for all of the students who were struggling readers as well we did do some remote summer school though which was very successful then students staying at the same level it was 32 previously and 54 this past march to october and then students dropping at least one reading level obviously we never want to see that um
115two percent in 2019 and 12 now um we so we we we do these regularly these types of assessments through the year i've told my staff that we don't want to panic about this because of all the different conditions that were happening in last spring and through the summer till now but obviously we want to pay attention to this and dig deeply and make sure that we have the supports in place to support students so that we get everybody kind of back on that progress and that trajectory we do another type of reading assessment called i ready this is very different it's not a face to face with the teacher this one is individually administered students do this even if they're face to face in a school they're by themselves at a computer and they're
116taking the assessment on their own and then it gives them a pathway of work that they do based on that assessment um so this is all computerized and so this was they could do this at home then individually take the same assessments when you look across reading and math it's pretty consistent data from september 2019 to october of this year we don't see big increases we don't see drops so the consistency now the administration was a little bit different sitting in a classroom versus sitting at home independently doing it but this is more promising data to say that's good for this assessment we're not seeing any kind of drop-offs based on this grades k through five and then for middle school we do a similar assessment in math which is individually students do at their
117computer this is for grades six through eight same thing these are this isn't percentage of students on level this is percentiles so we're looking at a little bit different data but the the story with this chart is again we're not seeing a big drop-off from where students were last fall in 2019 to this fall in 2020 the last data piece is our interim progress reports now these are not our final marking period grades for the first nine weeks those just closed um and we won't have the data for another week to be able to share with you but this is interim so midway through this first nine week period uh teachers gave parents an interim progress report saying here's where we are midway through this first marking period on the left hand side is 2019
118and 20 showing the number of grades and the percentage of grades so for example in 2019 20 during the same interim progress marking period we had 24 a's administered at that point and given or earned at that point and then on the flip side we had 7.8 of f's during that first interim progress report and then when you look at where we are now we're seeing a drop in the a's 17.9 for the a's and 12 percent an increase in the number of f's um so again we're not going to panic with this but it was a concern that we needed to look at to say how can we provide support this fall was a shorter time period which certainly plays into the comparison between last fall or 19 2019 first interim compared to now
119it was a much shorter time period but we still want to make sure that this this pattern doesn't continue going into this end of the marking period and into the second marking period so that's just sort of the data overview so you can see there's good news on the engagement there's some some concerns for reading but some data that's showing that the students are doing okay and consistent with years in the past and then our our grades we want to make sure that we address any of those students who are struggling so that they can get back on track just as a reminder the survey results we want to share both the family survey results again just so you rem remember where they were and then we're going to share the staff results so we
120shared this last time that we had of our families say that they would like to have the blended option and forty percent a hundred percent uh remote so forty percent said they'd like to stay remote as we are now and then looking at grade level for families there were more in the younger grades wanting a return it was 71 was the highest in kindergarten and then you can see just visually how it sort of drops down to high school it wasn't as high percentage wanting the blended option versus the remote now i'm going to turn it over to ms scheidt to talk about the staff survey results uh good evening everybody so we did the staff survey aea conducted a survey and we had over 1500 uh returns on that so just some of the
121highlights of that survey um educators were asked just of the three models presented at the time of the survey that would be 100 remote the blended model and the bring everybody back model going into the second nine weeks where would they like to land and uh 69 percent are almost 70 percent of our educators believe that they'd like to stay with a 100 percent remote model they do want to have some way of delivering some interventions and some enrichments to our students and i think we'll get into that a bit later um but uh over in the blended model uh side of that chart uh 31 were not the total blended we had um 18 that wish to stay blended or go with a blended model and then 12 percent that wanted to bring everybody
122back that were willing to do that i will say that one of the the biggest issues with our educators wanting to stay 100 remote was their concern that the blended model decreased direct instructional time from five days a week with 100 remote model to two days a week with a blended model um in addition to that they really felt that our level of rigor from march when we had to shut down overnight to what we're doing as a remote model now was head and shoulders above what we've done and that that includes a summer full of professional development and training and additional and and they were very appreciative of delaying the start of students this school year for two weeks while they continued to have planning time collaboration time and professional development time and dr
123mick williams woods if you'd like to do the principles and support staff you're you're muted ellen there we go at the same time we present we surveyed our principals and deans so that we could see their results as well and get their feedback which was vital and it was obviously very similar 69 percent wanting the 100 remote 31 we just asked do you want the 100 remote or the blended um we didn't talk about the five days site base the whole uh five days a week at that point um so it's very similar we also surveyed our support staff our school-based support staff which is our custodians our secretaries child nutrition folks that work in the school but support the teachers and you know not too far different 72 percent said uh stay hundred percent
124remote 29 blended um the the major themes um just to piggyback what uh misship said about the educators the teacher feedback the major themes were the concern going to blended and to the blended model that we proposed last time was that loss of instruction from five days of instruction to two days of direct instruction plus two days self-directed remote and one-day facilitated remote the concern was that thing that everyone had just gotten into all of this rhythm and the schedule and things were moving along well they were seeing the students obviously you saw the engagement data and to all of a sudden go back from five days to two days direct instruction was a huge concern the second was not wanting to disrupt instruction and the relationships that were formed because to go to the
125blended model as we proposed last time we were going to have to change teachers and students and reshuffle class lists primarily because if you think that 40 percent of our families were going to stay remote we were going to have to dedicate uh teachers to those 100 remote families and move those teachers to remote and then 60 percent of our families were going to come blended and we'd have to dedicate teachers just for blended and because of that reshuffling we were going to have to redo class lists and teacher assignments to make that work that was a huge concern um you know the the best thing about our educators and this we also saw this in the family survey for those who didn't choose the uh blended model was that they want anything to just
126make sure they have the same teacher you know they didn't want to change the teachers same thing from our teachers and our principals their big concern was making that change because once they've established that relationship it's hard to make that change um even you know eight weeks and nine weeks into school i could just unders and i had not talked about the second point but even the um concern also was just with the blended model the requirement to go to cohorts because of social distancing would even separate classes within a building on site and you know our educators and families are very protective of those relationships that they've built so that was a huge concern and then the the last item uh talked about um was the increasing covid19 data that we all have talked
127about in the board meetings so that's our progress data and our survey data we'd like to uh just turn it over to the superintendent to talk about his formal proposal to you to the board and then we'll come back to actually talk about the this reopening right so you know we've gone through a lot of information and we've been through a journey over almost nearly the last nine weeks as we approached uh you know our return to school fully remote we do know that many more of our counties in ohio are in uh level three or the red level we there's some concerns uh from the governor that uh some counties may actually go to purple uh this week potentially including high holder county so as i look at you know all of the particulars
128what concerns me is some of the retrenchment that some of our students have made and then many of the emails and comments that parents have sent and so my approach and recommendation is that we really try to target moving forward our kids that are struggling it does not mean um you know a return to uh a blended model as we propose in the past but it's kind of looking at a remote you know a plan with maybe a couple of targeted interventions so looking at students who are actually struggling who may be failing looking at some of our high needs students who have special needs and then looking at our high school seniors particularly you know that we need to make sure we can keep them on track to graduate and also those high school
129seniors who are trying to earn their credentials as a which is a path to graduation to make sure they can have some time in the building so that's one of the reasons we wanted to show some of the procedures that we've developed in terms of bringing students into school because what we're going to propose is that let our teachers determine which of their students through their teacher teams that we have at every building determine you know the high need students and getting those students some face time at the building but it won't be you know the entire district going to this blended model i would say this is more of a first step moving towards something that's going to change by the time we get through our second nine week period but we want to
130really focus on um i think our students who are really struggling so um i know it's been caught a lot of different names or acronyms uh the one that you know stuck with me was like kind of remote plus but um i liked uh you know dr mc williams to continue and just dive deep into that concept of you know keeping our students remote but for small groups of students that we've identified need some kind of extra and in-person help uh to be able to provide that and do it in a safe manner because listen in our district we have had and we've been remote all right so we've had approximately 19 cases of covet uh confirmed and suspected nine are active and we had actually 17 staff members total and 10 are currently active
131and that is not even with school being in session and we are actually um we should have posted this i got a letter today i think all the districts in summit county from summit county public health that we're going to be getting out to each of our families but we put it on our website or it should be there shortly you know talking about some of the things that we need to do um just as summit county citizens and it doesn't matter whether you're a school age citizen or you know a a post high school you know whether you're in college or you're a parent or other adult in the community um you know in order to beat this thing we have to make sure that we're doing the appropriate thing like wearing mass in
132public making sure we're having our mass on in the store limiting our interactions with other people and i know it's difficult you know with um you know we have holidays coming up and things like that um we have to really do i think a better job and some of the issues that have happened in school while they may have happened with athletics in our from the information we have those initial infections that cause the problem with some of our teams or some of our schools have actually been related to activities that have been outside of school but when that person came in close contact with someone in the school and that person got you know an infection then of course we have to shut down certain activities whether it's a whole team or whether we
133have to send staff home from a whole entire building um you know to isolate until we get the contact tracing done and a clean bill of health from summit county public health those are things that i think are going to cause a lot of disruptions um to our school if we were in person and so i'll turn it over to dr mc williams was to walk us through uh the reopening and this second nine-week period uh so we wanted to make sure you knew that this was the same teams that have been working diligently since uh the end of last year we actually started convening right towards the end of last year and then all through the summer and we've shown this slide but this doesn't at some point when we get to the other
134side of all this we're going to have to have the team members come and join a board meeting because the work that they've done and the thousands of hours that they've spent through the different reopening models that we've done has been absolutely incredible mishap uh i want to underscore that i know that the board members have heard from many many many teachers and administrators um but both dr mcwilliams woods and i we really want to say that these the hundreds of teachers and administrators that participated in these committees with thousands of man-hours um two things i have not attended a meeting yet that they have not been putting the best interests of students and families first and how can we make this work uh and secondly working tirelessly that's the first thing that comes up
135what what what about my students what can we do um so i really want to uh publicly recognize these teams uh who will continue the work as we go um they're very aware and continually talk about those students that are not where they would like them to be um we just went to a number of meetings uh this past week and they all had stories about i'm really happy how this remote is going uh most of my students are doing really well and thriving but i do have one or two that i really would like to find a way uh to to give them some support uh so that's what this t these teams have been charged with coming up with some kind of remote model and that's what uh the superintendent just talked about
136um i i also seem to be referring to it as a remote plus where it's a remote model but uh providing site-based uh supports uh interventions or enrichments for those students that are the most at risk or that are struggling the most so uh we've added the one model now tonight to to uh the other models that we've already presented and that is that second model listed there the 100 remote with site-based supports model uh dr mcwilliams woods did you want to add to that yeah i think as we start to talk about uh the charge that you all gave us and the superintendent about looking at how can we provide that support um the teams dove right in to look at what that support would look like and how would we do that within
137the schedule that we currently have so so the way this would work is five days we would keep our 100 percent remote as our foundational delivery of our instruction but then built in within the schedule and the team's uh mishap was straight on when she said yes these teams are not done their work is not done i don't think they'll ever be done because the next thing they'll do the next two weeks is finalize building in this support component into the schedules that we have so we're looking at small groups of students coming in and that could be the three types of students that we were were targeting our students who were struggling you saw some of the data that we're concerned about for students who are failing they may be the english learners who
138are having some of the language barriers around because they just arrived to this country it could be students with some mental health needs that need to come in and see counselors so it could be academic but it also could be some of that social emotional support as well it could be accelerated students who are in higher level courses but because of the remote environment they just need to come in and get some additional support if you think of our advanced placement our ap classes at the high school level students oftentimes need some extra boost to be able to handle that level of rigor or to prepare for the ap tests so that would be you know absolutely okay for the students to come in in a small group to get that support and then just
139as dr hall earlier talked about the graduation those seniors who need support towards finishing up an industry credential that they're using for graduation all those critical skills and competencies and time needed to make sure that we keep our high graduation rate continuing to move forward especially the trajectory that we've been increasing each year we don't want to see any kind of slide back from the progress that we've made i'm going to click on here and actually open up that document that we sent to you earlier the superintendent sent on friday that outlines more of the details of how this will work so this framework for the hundred percent remote plus the site based support there's four key components the first one is maintaining um this five days of 100 remote and then moving into this
140site-based small group support that i was just describing with the the types of students that we're looking at providing support um some of the stories that we heard in our reopening teams from teachers were sometimes it's students that are in environments that are not conducive to the remote learning and if they could just have a designated time each week to come in and get that support and be able to finish assignments or just get removed from sometimes some chaotic environments either at daycare or at home to be able to get that support and then that this support system would be able to help with that the way that students would be identified is through our teacher teams uh in collaboration with the principals in the building that we would look at our k-8 professional learning
141communities we call them our plc's or at the high school it might be the high school academy teams that will excuse me work a collaborative process to identify across the grade level or across the academy which students need support um the educators would as that grade level team or as the academy they would volunteer to come in to provide that support to the students so it's a grade level team or it's a an academy team at the high school that collaboratively looks at which students are struggling or need this extra support or need to come in for that industry credential or the lab time that they need and then they would talk amongst themselves in terms of who would volunteer to come in to provide that support during the designated um support kind of block
142of time um so it would all be interesting um i didn't mean to interrupt you i'm sorry so on the on the staff survey that aea sent out to the educators we did ask the question if we would utilize some type of support model with our remote model how many teachers would be willing to come in to be a site-based support teacher and we did get a good portion of them and we believe it's across we'll be able to break it down in the next week or so into actual grade levels but we do believe it's across the district and across the grade bands the teachers and the teams that have been putting these models together did have some concerns that they want to work out one of those being that they would be the
143voluntary site-based teachers but also they're concerned that this enrichment and and uh intervention time did not take away too much of the actual direct instruction time as our blended model we felt did um they feel the teams feel that there's a way to develop a schedule that can alleviate that concern they also were very adamant that they that we and i believe that this can happen that the teacher teams in the buildings at the grade levels the academy teams the plc's the collaborative teams were the ones that would talk about which of their students would need this kind of support because the teachers are on the ground there they they know their students better than any of us and they and and like dr mick williams would said some of those students are just struggling
144because um they have a technology issues or they they have siblings that are sitting at the dining room table with them and they can't concentrate so in addition to us our students that need academic supports they'd also be looking at those individual circumstances and most importantly they really believe that an intervention enrichment model has to be delivered to small group sizes to make an impact so on those site-based uh days or day during the week whatever the teams come up with as far as a schedule they want to maintain small class sizes if you're talking you know six to eight students at the most to really be able to make an impact not bringing in a whole room full of students because that's what intervention is small group work with with the students so the
145way we would move forward with this in terms of the legit logistics is our reopening teams would meet the next couple weeks to map out exactly for each grade band where this support time will be built into the schedule and then based on that obviously transportation will follow right now we any student who normally would be eligible for transportation would be afforded that during based on this plan we do know from the family survey that there are quite a few parents who normally get their students normally get transportation that they said they wouldn't participate but i want to make sure and reassure all the families that that survey was just getting a pulse of where families were that each if your child is identified by the teacher teams to come in we'll be working with
146you individually to see if transportation is something that you want us to schedule we anticipate that students like this first you know we're looking at a target date of november 30th to get started with this and we would anticipate that the students identified they would be consistent over that time period you know maybe through um the rest of this nine week time period or it might be you know a good part of that time we're not we don't anticipate different kids every single you know week we see that that would be some students who need it if a student comes in for three weeks gets all their assignments done and is doing well then certainly uh the teacher team could say okay that student doesn't need to come back and continue but otherwise it's most
147likely students who need that level of intensive type support for the time period through the next nine weeks potentially but again i want to reinforce what misshape said that that there's this is no cookie cutter approach this isn't where the district is going to say here's the criteria and the exact reading score or the exact math score that warrants kids coming in because we have kids who are the the lowest performing students who are thriving on remote and then we have some students that are typically very high performing who are struggling in the remote environment and so this has to be left to the teachers to say who needs that site-based personal approach um during this time period given how they're performing in this remote environment the other thing that we wanted to kind of
148keep included in this is our ability also to to look at our extended day services some of the board members were talking about earlier are two extended day which is our akron after school program and then we also do other after school programming through some of our school improvement funds that we can do some after school programming we want to over this next month take a look at that as well to see if we'd like to pair some of the extended day services that are being offered remotely right now whether we'd like to pair some of that with this support time that we're building into the calendars so that students could get even a double dose of support potentially so we have just that we'll continue to explore that um over over this next uh
149two to four weeks before that november 30th i would anticipate that extended day may not happen until that second semester in the middle of january but we want to at least explore that opportunity so that is the remote plus this site based support approach the big picture is keeping the five days of instruction that is so important for both our families and our uh our faculty and keeping the level of um kind of the routine and the rituals and the rigor that's happening right now that is played out with the the particularly some of the data that we i shared tonight but then adding that site-based support for students who need it for various reasons but who need it and giving the superintendent flexibility to be able to tonight we're asking for bless the plan
150of remote plus plus site-based support and then the superintendent you know can kind of i said this is the perfect way to to enable weekly kinds of changes if we go purple uh obviously the level four the superintendent is going to want to not have site-based support and that would be something quickly he could do similar to how he's had to make adjustments with some of our sports teams that this is something that isn't having 21 000 students come back and having to all of a sudden go remote again but these are smaller groups of students that we can easily make adjustments on how we're bringing them in or the number of students or not at all if we end up the the data ends up getting worse however i will add to that if
151i may ellen what we didn't mention was during that uh intervention enrichment support time say for instance if it was one day or if it was during block schedule of time during the site support based time will also have intervention and enrichment remotely so those students that the teachers that are remote will not revert to their regular schedules everybody across the district will be doing intervention or enrichment either site based or remotely so those students that don't necessarily the families do not want to send them in for site-based support can keep them remote and we will have staff working on interventions during that time also remotely right that was a great point to add so that is our presentation at this point uh we're happy to answer questions great thank you for that presentation uh
152appreciated uh to our board i left a comment to you uh in the chat if you could check that and please let me know if you'd like to jump in line just a couple of questions that i've received [Music] probably multiple times i would say in the emails phone calls social media contacts that i've had over the last couple of weeks we had mentioned um you know when when we did the original blended model it was it was sort of two days of instruction in two days two days of importance of remote um so that there were four total days of instruction and the possibility of sort of that friday being more flexible uh enrichment intervention specials those sorts of things and so the question is um would the staff survey do we think the
153staff surveys would have been different if the blended model would have been different because there seemed to be a big concern both from parents and teachers around losing those additional days of instruction each week dropping from five to two and recognizing that some people might not agree but for the sixty percent of parents that wanted their students to return uh to the classroom that could have been the possible trade off is that we may not be able to guarantee if we do that you'll keep the same teachers and so i know it's disruptive and i you know i'm not suggesting that we do that but were there were there other issues with keeping those two days of remote instruction as well so that we still had at least a total of four days of direct
154instruction we did our teams and this was really early in the summer time our school model teams looked at many different models of how to do blended from what we presented to you with that cohort type model to some districts across the country don't do any separate teachers for remote they do even the remote students who are at home 100 they pipe in to the school and some districts put cameras in all the classrooms to enable that to happen some districts did for a remote they didn't use their regular teachers at all but they had them go to more of an asynchronous which means you're not piping into a live video conference like we do that it's more independent type remote so some districts put their remote students over here in a contract similar to
155aps online although we do have some live instruction that happens with that but there are some providers for remote that are all just content online and you have a teacher that you can go help or ask for help but they're not doing regular instruction so that that is a different model that some districts it enabled them to use all their staff then to split the classrooms into smaller class sizes so so that is another you know option that we looked at we we believe that having students remotely it was real critical and important to be connected with live instruction and we have the technology and the training to enable our teachers to do that and so we and we felt as though our families wanted that the all the questions that i got over the
156summer time were from families saying is this remote going to be um is it going to be live with my teachers like it was in the spring or is it going to be like you know some of the companies that you're just doing completely on your own and that was really important for the families to have live connection with their teachers uh via the google meets the video conferencing um so we looked at all those models the the other model that some districts have done that our teams talked about is having um the teachers even if you do the blended where half of the kids come in that you have the teacher the students still get to watch the live instruction happening on the remote days we talked about that the biggest struggle is the
157classroom management of that and having your lessons go two ways a digital way and a site-based uh face-to-face way so and to do the classroom management of trying to manage you know 12 to 14 kids online and then to try to manage 12 kids site based or it might even be more more remote and 12 kids site-based at the same time we talked to the teachers talked to a number of teachers in other districts and found that to be a very difficult model to pull off um and you know the and so the the teams went with the model that we chose which was the the two um site-based days and then the self-directed remote and planning those lessons um that way it's almost like a combination of the the remote instruction that i was
158explaining that a lot of districts have contracted and uh site-based it's almost combining those two models um i could add also you know if i've heard once i've heard a hundred times and i'm sure many of you have also that our our teachers really want to make a distinction between uh lesson delivery and rigor from march a week or two after we started this to what they're doing this fall and and what they started the year with it doesn't compare they they utilized their entire summer the first two weeks of school they've really gone above and beyond across this district to deliver very rigorous instruction and i think it's showing and i think it's only going to improve in the types of instruction like dr hall said earlier we have to make a mind shift
159about what on-site instruction would look like and i think that shift is that it's not going to look what we believe it will look like in times it's going to be different and our educators really believe that the benefits of this type of model staying remote having that direct instruction with their students with their families that they built relationships with and then having some kind of supports put in place in addition to that remote instruction is really what is in the best interest of not only our students but our staff they really believe they're making great strides with that model so i want to acknowledge that and i will tell you that all of the models that we charted out at the beginning of the year you know every single model um comes with lots
160of pros and lots of cons you know the the perfect model is there's no covet 19 and we're all back in school together and we still would have remote options through aps online for families who would like to continue with that um so i think every model you know comes with pros and cons we went with the best model that we felt as though especially uh this summer coming into the blended that we proposed back on june 29th we can look at all those other models as we go through you know the rest of the second nine weeks but we feel as though right now the best thing because of the increase in covid that's happening right now we'd like to just start getting students in in the site-based support and then we can continue
161to look at models for the second semester thank you and my second question before we head to mrs mansfield and then dr hall um is this i think that we need to provide as much flexibility to the superintendent and our staff as possible if if this is the model to be chosen particularly when it comes around identifying students who may need that those extra interventions and that enrichment i also agree that our teachers certainly know better than we do which students those are and i like the flexibility that you've built in i do have a question i i don't know it's if it's necessarily a concern but you know 60 of our parents said that they wanted a blended model and i'm assuming that there are a portion of those um who know their children
162even better than any of the rest of us do and the data that you showed show that at least for across the district largely there are some areas of concern to be watched and to be monitored and make sure that we don't slide as you suggested but all of that being said there are parents who you know 60 of whom said they would prefer to go to a blended model and of that set of parents there are some who feel their students are are struggling when how can a parent be sure or what if there is a parent who has a child that they feel is really struggling but is maybe not necessarily identified by the teacher or what if there is a disagreement between whether or not a child should qualify for those additional
163interventions or enrichments how is a parent to navigate that or how do we prevent them from maybe having to reach out to say hey my child kind of is getting left behind here sure i think you know we deal with that every single day in brick and mortar days as well that there are our core services that happen and then there's uh decisions made by teacher teams um and by the the uh the supports that are provided at each of our buildings on which students need the additional tutoring supports which students need that extra small group reading time with the the core classroom teacher which students need additional math support which students do we need in our after school programming to get even additional reading or math support so i think those decisions are happening
164all the time so we're used to working collaboratively in that way and listening to families who have concerns trying to figure out which intervention is the best um or which support is the best some you know we're doing we're intervening with students every single day right now remotely and we're doing it during the office hours we're doing it in small groups during instruction by having tutors come in and support and take students it's happening all the time now what what this layer is which students would need that site based versus the remote intervention and enrichment type support so i think the process will be very similar to what we're already doing every single day previously in brick and mortar days and i would add to that not only are we intervening every day with students
165we're intervening with families every day and we have the connectors in place we have the teacher teams in place we have the administrators i believe that there there were always concerns by parents but i think most of the time those concerns were addressed and i have every reason to believe that will continue to happen even in this model while that is a concern mr bravo i understand that i do believe that our teams will come up with a model that will not only address that type of thing but improve any families that feel that they're being left behind thank you both ms mansfield wow patrick we're like on the same wavelength here both of my questions i'm going to just piggyback off a few because i think you you kind of um i had them
166in the reverse order but you kind of uh got right in there where i was going i think that to support this and all of the hard work i don't want anyone to think that i don't appreciate all the hard work that's gone into this for months and months and hours and hours i'm willing to support where we are right now i really think that i would like to as a board member see us get to a place that is what patrick talked about first so by january i would love to see us in a place where we're in a blended model where that relationship with teacher is maintained so if it's two days in two days out those same two days are with their teacher with their class that they've established a relationship with
167and my willingness would be let's find that classroom support that those teachers are going to need for that classroom management let's get those people into the classroom that we need to have whether that means cares act money if that means connectors if that means pulling staff from somewhere else something so that we can get parents our educators and our parents on the same maybe percentage or a little closer um i i really want to see that happen i know that it's difficult because it means taking that giant leap to come in and a lot of our teachers are teaching in the classroom and a lot are not i would also say that we have staff who's been in since march we have staff that is there every day that are of and often cases these
168are lower paid um the ones who are going to be most exposed to things and i want to make sure that we acknowledge that they are there and they are working and they're with they um they're there i i guess i can't think of what else to say so um i would really like to see us get there um by january i i think i go back to that um that june model i i think i have this kind of model that i've heard a lot of our counterparts are doing not just in the suburban districts but also in the um in some of our our urban counterparts that have gone blended so i'm sorry that was more commentary than anything else and a begging for us as a board to please help you to
169get those classroom managements handled so that we can get more time in the classroom my other question was again piggybacking off patrick and how students are identified and how they qualify i've got a list right here that are the ones that are people who are contacting me who cell phone too because i was so heartbroken and so thank me um i have a grandmother of a special ed student who i'm not going to go into any details at risk of exposing who the kiddo is this isn't working for him a kindergarten teacher who is begging us for greater access high school students who are in mental health crisis younger students who this isn't working for we heard from two parents today um that that spoke to us sped teachers who are begging to be in
170front of their students um we talk about how it's working for some but some of those families took leaves of absence from work there's some statistics that show that women in gen and in particular have left their jobs in order in a huge number to try to help take care of kids and do handle their schooling so i think that i i'm what i'm i'm asking is how do we hear that voice how do we acknowledge the fact that sixty percent of our parents although some have come back and said i would take that back if i knew what this blended model was going to look like right they wanted to exchange their voter for all intensive purposes how how can we better hear those voices in this as well um and i'll stop talking
171um i i love uh everything that you said in terms of elevating the voices of the students that are struggling and the families who've had to alter their entire lives to accommodate um this remote learning plan that we have in place and it is gut-wrenching um to hear those stories as we've said you know we'll also hear the stories of things that are going well but especially from my background with special ed background miss shipe has the special ed background as well we always tend to lean in to hear the stories and make sure that we're putting those supports in for students who are not being successful even if it's a smaller percentage or a middle percentage of students we've got to keep working to make sure that we're meeting students needs and not letting
172them struggle on a daily basis so so what i think our commitment to you is that we will continue the plan right now is to start some support and that is a big step uh you know right now to say let's start bringing students in for the support we will learn from the process of bringing students in to see how that works i trust our teacher teams beyond imagine to be able to figure it out and to make it work and then right away mishap already said that our reopening teams will never be done or they they they probably thought they were done but they're not done that we'll continue to work over this next month because i really would like to bring you a proposal it will have to be before winter break to
173say here's the proposal for the the next nine weeks or for second semester if we decide to go with the whole semester i think we'll see a lot and learn a lot about this new surge and going into the winter and see what happens through this time period in terms of our summit county data but i think we will continue to look at other options we have a sense that the blended the way that we designed it would be very disruptive if we did that second semester you know if we don't do it now it becomes more and more disruptive the way that we designed it so we'll we will keep meeting and keep talking about other options that we may be able to present to you before that winter break and i absolutely agree
174with everything that dr mcwilliams woods just said and mrs mansfield i i to acknowledge the the struggling that uh everybody is doing quite frankly through these times where where the stakes are so high for everybody um i will say though i i will continue to support those committees those teacher and administrative committees they are listening to families to students to other teachers and i believe that this remote plus model with the supports are actually listening to the are our own educators the portion of them who'd like to come back in and work on site with students those special educators those core teachers we are developing this model to try to enable some of them to start back with their students on site as long as the science supports it thank you so much dr hall
175yeah um i'm glad we're doing around around rob and i've got more than two questions so you can put me back so you can put me back in thecube mr president so um so my my first question was um we were using november 30th as as the date um you know i just want to sort of and this may be a really sort of overly simplified question but is that enough time uh you know i just want to make sure you know i don't i mean as we're thinking through this you know uh dr williams was you guys both sort of talked about all the all the moving pieces here right that have to be um accounted for so i just you know i don't want to set you know us up for failure from
176the start because we chose a timeline that wasn't in fact realistic um so i just so my so my first question is is november 30th a realistic timeline i know they think thanksgiving is right around there i know christmas is like four weeks later and then there's new year's so you know again you know i just i feel like i feel compelled to ask that question is is november 30th or you know are you both in agreement and as well as dr james around that being enough time to get this up and running i think that's our target uh goal and misshapen i can always you know slow it down if we need to if we find that we need more time but frankly we have been preparing for this moment since uh june 1st
177you know every single day since june 1st i've been spending and all of our teacher teams and our my administrative team and miss shype and her all of her team we've been working you know probably three-fourths of our schedule has been focused on reopening um and each model that we've brought to you we've talked about how we're gonna do transportation all the safety protocols how we're gonna do all the logistics each model we're just tweaking it and we're you know shifting a little bit but the fundamental plans are the same so we've been ready since june 29th i guess i should say when we actually presented the model we've been ready since then this we'll map out the planning we'll look at the schedules the next couple weeks and then we'll work with families to
178make it happen so i have lots of confidence that we'll be able to get something started before that winter break and we won't you know the academic side of me dr hull when i'm seeing students with increased f's and uh decreased a's and i've got high school students where that equates to they're not graduating which is a life-altering pathway and if i've got young students who are not reading on grade level all of the data says we have a short window of time to be able to make those changes for me to say that i can't get this together before winter break and we have to wait till second semester i'm making life-altering decisions for the students and i can't do that we've got to find a way to start bringing students in before the
179semester where those are huge uh marking period grades at the end of that semester especially for our high school students and i just can't wait and i will say that that's the we have tossed that question around with frequency lately [Music] i agree that as long as dr michael williams would and i have the ability to slow it down if needed our teachers i i had said earlier um our aea leadership myself included are concerned that and we have been preparing since june there are there are questions that we need answer before then can we do that in the next four weeks probably um we will certainly report back to you if we think we need to slow it down uh there are three full weeks between returning from thanksgiving break and starting winter break
180uh that's a lot of instructional time uh so i think it's a kind of stay tuned type of thing but i believe that our committees have risen to every task that we've asked of them and they'll do the same great thank you i appreciate it um because i think i think you know the community you know needs to understand you know how closely you are working together i think that's i think that's i think that's an integral ingredient to uh to moving all of us forward so thank you both i appreciate it my second um uh it's actually a question comment combo um is um you know in all seriousness we we we've been talking for probably six four months now uh about the need to have um some transparency with respect to the sort
181of metrics that we're going to utilize to make a decision about when we do go back um you know in a more um concerted way um you know i the one thing i i would want to put out to to everyone on this call is that if we're committing to november 30th this being the time that we would start this new model um i think that we also have to set that as a deadline to have a community dashboard um available for um you know for folks to be able to look at that is it where it's fleshed out where it contains it might be four or five metrics it might be eight or nine or ten metrics but just kind of key indicators or you know in disha that we're going to utilize you
182know that that the community can can tune into that they can look at to see sort of what we're relying upon in making our decisions i think that's still the point the key part that's not that's still missing um and um i'm not pointing a finger on anybody i think it's on all of us together collectively myself included um you know just sort of make sure that we prioritize whether that's getting what miss skoda over at summit county public health um or you know or other sort of infectious disease experts to sort of talk through and by the way you know we're not reinventing the wheel here right i mean like these metrics already exist these dashboards already exist just as an organization we haven't chosen to adopt any one dashboard or sort of metrics
183yet but i but i would strongly encourage this group i think we have to seriously sort of move forward with um with pulling together you know that dashboard something that this group and team kind of agree on makes sense to kind of use is that that guy not not a definitive you know but but as a but it's sort of a list of sort of guiding principles or guiding metrics that that we're going to be signatory to um as we move forward i think that that's still so i i love that i i love and appreciate all the work that's gone into this um you know i definitely uh you know you know continue to to sympathize with parents that that want their kids back in school um you know as i said at the
184outset we were never gonna come up with something that was gonna make everybody happy but i do think that you know as we move this forward i think that if the more transparency we can provide um with respect to sort of this collective body's uh thought process and how and how we get to um eventually getting back you know you know getting back to school kids at school i think i think that's super important so the question that's embedded in there is is you know really um to to dr james and and you document williams was as well and that is you know um what are your thoughts around sort of helping to energize the conversation and ensure that by by the time we launch this model that we have that dashboard in place um
185i'll i'll go first here just to say and i i know dr james has um has lots of thoughts about this as well but i think that's i think we absolutely need to do that i think you all have named the criteria and have talked about it um and just like you said dr hall it exists it's just adopting what you want to use and so i don't think it will be that difficult but i think it's really important for our families and our faculty to be able to know what those benchmarks are that you're looking for to trigger coming you know back to a blended model or to the five-day site based and dr james if i could just jump in here before you so i don't interrupt you what are teachers and i
186believe what our families do not want however they want stability what they don't want is jumping back and forth between models i think that that would be a huge disservice and detriment to any one particular model we have to be able to plan the the students need to know uh where they're going to be every day and how they're going to be there and by jumping back and forth i just think it's it would be um like i said a huge death detriment to any one particular model thank you no i totally agree and i i agree with you dr all the data's there but the issue is on who you're going to listen to i am much more interested in listening and looking at the data that we get out of our own local
187health department because they're the ones who usually get data about infections in our community first because they're the ones who call us and say you need to do contact tracing we see a discrepancy sometimes between the number of cases that we have and what's reported out from columbus because there is a lag so i'm more comfortable with looking at our local data if we happen to be in category 4 purple i don't think we should have any in-person um you know uh meetings with our students more of our staff should be working remotely but then we're when we're in red or level three i think we can we've shown some of the safety uh things that we're doing some of the technology that we're using and i feel comfortable with some of those small groups
188if we're in orange and yellow particularly for a sustained period of time and we're going in the right direction and a much more comfortable with some kind of blended model or even uh in person model as long as the trends are going in the right direction but that is the rub we can't really predict with i think um any confidence because it's all base our virus spread is based on a lot of human behavior and i think that's the situation that we're in and that's the problem we can control to a certain extent what happens in our schools you know a combination of working with our parents our student our teachers and other staff but what happens outside of school is a big driver of where we're going uh in this uh community so in
189terms of um you know the guidelines and the metrics that we would use it just probably comes from most likely and that's what we've been listening to is our local data and the trajectory of where it's going but i i agree with uh pat that we can't flip-flop you know going you know like we're gonna do this today and then next week when there's a change it'll be something else part of me thinks that whenever we decide we're gonna go with um some kind of more of a blended model where more kids come in we might have to say that's the path we're on and if we depending on how we implement that we may have to you know just kind of continue down that pathway and keep our fingers crossed that our covet rates
190are going to kind of follow where we don't have to move away from it um you know uh and jump back to something that's a little bit more restrictive but again all of that is gonna be completely up in the air until you know we get a little bit further down the path particularly as we approach our holidays and you know it's we we've had a we have so here's the difficulty a parent sent their kid for a practice kid had a runny nose oh i thought it was a cold well it wasn't that kid tested positive for kovit put out you know a whole team a whole sport team of people and coaches that had to isolate those are the types of things that you know it's not that you know we aren't even
191sure how many of if anyone was infected at this you know on the team but the problem is the guidelines are people have to self-isolate and that's the problem when people don't consider one where a person said well i don't have any contacts well what about the people you live with oh you know it's like we have to think about those things a context isn't just someone you run into at work or at school or past buying the grocery stores also the people you live with and so those are the that's those are just the difficult reality that we face you know with this whole thing thank you miss audrey thank you mr president and i have more just of a comment not a question and i just wanted to share uh my appreciation for
192the the committees the team um and what i really appreciate about all of this um it's just seeing the relationships uh between the teachers and the families uh strengthening throughout this whole process from day one um that's what this pandemic has allowed us and i think if we just continue on that path uh being open uh and the teachers continue listening to the families i know i've had questions as well about um you know if folks feel like their student needs the enrichment and can't get it i feel like as long as we stay on the path of being open and listening uh to families and continuing to build the relationships that we will be okay in that sense um and then just speaking from the nursing field one thing that translates is having that
193continuity that's so important uh when i think about my patients having the same nurse um and knowing what to expect so i think that translates as well into education and that's what i really appreciate about this remote plus uh option uh that you've uh presented to us so i just wanted to share that and thank the committee thank you miss autry i appreciate that thank you mr miss mckittrick and then dr uh akbar thank you president bravo first of all i want to thank everyone for the feedback from families faculty staff in the community i want you to know that i'm listening to everything that you have to say i also want to thank everybody who's worked on this plan i appreciate your service and your dedication to our children and i know we would
194all like to go have our children go back to school five days a week like we did pre-covered um but the reality is we're not even postcoded in fact this worldwide pandemic is is getting worse and worse right we've seen the numbers in europe going up in the country going up in our state going up so while i know this isn't the ideal situation i think it's the best given where we are with this virus and so i i like that this plan will help us to continue reaching students five days a week with the instruction and the rapport they've set up with their teachers and so the other thing i'd like to comment on and then i'll and i'll stop is that the teachers who are going to volunteer to come in to do
195those individualized group supports um please let's remember that they are volunteering to do that that we aren't forcing anyone back and that the students and the teachers who take part in that we are absolutely not using them as guinea pigs because that is some of the information that i've gotten that we're sending these kids and faculty members and staff members up as guinea pigs and we're going to sort of throw them in there and see what happens and then decide on a different model later based on how those kids and adults do and so i want to make very clear that those teachers are volunteering for that and that if parents don't even if parents children are identified that they absolutely don't have to be a part of that plan either because we are not
196forcing anyone into any of these situations so i appreciate all the hard work that's gone into this and um thank you all very much thank you and i agree with you miss mckittrick i do want to make that point that that it is a volunteer basis for for both teachers and students but i also want to make the point that uh at all times the superintendent would have the ability to pull back from that should the data show that even that volunteer situation would put people at risk right and it reinforces what we talked about before that this this model is a model that's easier to do that that the superintendent can be monitoring and working with the summit county public health like he does and deborah folk does every single day to be able
197to monitor that and i think that's that's critical that it's voluntary on both sides and i want to also reinforce and that's why we wanted to have deborah mrs folk have her presentation first to show and i talked to my colleagues in summit county and ohio eight schools and actually some across the country regularly we all have a club trying to work through all these tough decisions that every district is having to make and i will tell you that what that and this is based on your direction as a board our health protocols are stricter than nearly all other districts that i have come into contact with the districts in summit county you know 70 schools and districts are back five days a week and that primarily is not with six feet social distance we're
198not asking for that we're saying six feet social distance we're talking about small groups of students coming back our protocols are much stricter than the typical ones that exist in schools across ohio and frankly in quite a few districts across the country so i want to make sure that families feel comfortable and the faculty who volunteer feel very comfortable coming back thank you and thank you miss mckittrick dr akbar yes um thank you uh miss mckittrick for mentioning that and uh dr mcwilliams woods and miss scheidt for the comments you just made um that's really you know some of my concerns have been around um you know making sure that we stay safe knowing that um whatever we whether we do anything differently than what we're doing now or we continue to do what we're
199doing now there are risk involved all around there's no uh non-risk option um i wish there was um and so um my two comments uh has to do with um you know social determinants of health knowing that the highest covet cases in summit county are within akron public school district um and we talked about building a dashboard um and having that dashboard be the guiding post for us as we move forward and making the decisions uh of what to do i think that that is going to be critically important um i'm definitely in support of that and i think that as we build that dash war what summer county public health doesn't do is give you the overlay of social determinants of health and as we have um the two highest disproportionate rates in our
200district as well as the most diverse uh population in the county uh we need to overlay that with whatever numbers we get knowing that those things uh can spiral even faster than um you know if you don't have those uh characteristics we do know that so that was my one question and then i mean my comment and i just want to go also on the record to say that uh the plan that you presented today was basically what i the way i imagined uh we should have had like a month ago or two months ago whatever it was it was the basically you presented me to us today um what i had in my head caught face to blend it so thank you for presenting that um i i think that if i would give
201you one thing about the plan that you have um i think that it's really good and we folk we're focusing on the right populations um i would find a way um for the students who are in um the highest need special needs um areas um to to maybe um try again if they volunteer to come in to try to get them in as much as possible um and also um what am i trying to say build that routine um because as i was saying before i think that if we can build the routine and get students with the most special needs and most severe um needs for us to get in a routine within the schools we can do that uh with other groups of students and i think that that will allow us to
202spread this out um and and get to a blended uh model that will work i believe so thank you for presenting that and i look forward to hearing um all the feedback that you received from it thank you i appreciate that i'm glad you brought up uh specifically the students with the most significant disabilities because the the teams we do have a separate team of faculty or that serve students with our most severe disabilities and they will be able to have the flexibility to meet and talk about what would be the best way to build this into their schedule this support time as you know we also had already proposed the after school program that you had approved for students with more severe disabilities to come in after school and so that team will look
203at whether the support time is in addition to that after school time and that continues or whether it'll be somehow combined and we'll have this week will be important because we were we were about ready to start the after school program within the next week or two so we're going to have that team come together to figure out whether it's both or whether it's a kind of a combination of that after school program idea and the support team and we've got great uh faculty that are working on that good thank you dr akbar uh anyone else would like to speak before we head around the zoo room again mr alexander anything you'd like to add okay uh dr holden you had additional questions you're up next again yeah thank you mr president i appreciate it
204um yeah my my so i was trying to wrap my head around um in this model uh sort of hypothetically and again this may be a question that you don't have an answer yet and that's fine um but are there limits to how many kids could be selected for uh this additional sort of intervention um are we talking i mean you know and then also um so hey question one so that's my question is are there any um what are what are sort of the what's the capacity if you will um to sort of address uh students that are in need so we talked about that and i while we don't have a firm number again i'll say in general our educators were concerned that intervention models and this is i'm an intervention specialist also
205and it always been you're you're talking about when you're administering interventions or enrichments you're talking about small group work so while it may not look about like the numbers we were talking about in the former blended model the 12 to a classroom or six feet it may look more like uh six maybe eight but it would depend on the building and what the the educators came up with um the number of students first that that would need those interventions and they would go from there some some classrooms may look smaller than other classrooms depending on the grade level it is but i do know that they would be looking at maximizing the number of students that they would have in a classroom while keeping it still a small group intervention but the committees will be
206looking at that and i anticipate that we would feel comfortable like i said before when we get some more of those details let me know the number of uh teacher volunteering for on-site interventions the number of students interested where those teachers and students are spread out across the district by grade levels and by buildings and we'll be able to get a little bit more of an idea about the details of that in the next next few weeks okay so hypothetically let's say i'm in third grade and i've and i've been identified as um you know as a student that needs some additional intervention hypothetically how many times could i be at school per week getting that additional help would it be once a week twice a week three times a week is that is that
207kind of set or that still kind of being worked on worked out as well right that's being talked about it it could be a day it could be blocks of time during the week that's up to the committees to to refine that over the next few few weeks going back to one of the most important things that our educators are talking about is not losing that direct instruction time so while we want to reach as many students with enrichments and with interventions um as you multiply those times you're losing the direct instruction and we don't want to return to the the original blended model where we we cut in more than half cut into that direct instruction time okay thank you um i've got another question or comment or two but i but but there
208are other questions i'm going to see before as we go round and round one more time thank you both thank you miss mansfield i know we've touched on this just a little bit but i would i'm trying to keep this real higher level and and and board level requests here i would really like to see also on our website in our published documents what the board can give in a 30-second elevator speech what our criteria are going to be going forward i know ms scheif said we're going to follow the science i know dr james said that we're going to look to local totally get that [Music] did a lot of research in the last couple weeks one of the sites i was on was was toledo's and theirs is explicitly uh spelled out for
209right on their website um what their criteria are for being in although i think they're breaking it this week actually if they're headed toward red and purple and they just went back in but you know that's that's the risk you're going to run is the timing of of of our schooling isn't the timing of the virus unfortunately um but i i would really love to have us be able to to recite that to say it to no so when somebody emails us and says um great uh we're going back to blended easily explain um what that what that's going to look like so that's just a request more than a question so i apologize it's not a question but it's okay dr uh akbar sorry for some reason my mouth likes to jump around um
210so i i guess i have a question more so about how this will all work um and i'm going to ask it because i don't exactly know how to say it and just figure out um how it's done so um one of the biggest concerns that we've received about the blended model that was originally submitted was that the students wouldn't have the teachers that they currently have and parents really want their students to stay with the teachers that they have so i want to honor that and think about this model so the teacher that the student has selects a student that needs additional support can you give us an idea of how much of the time would they be with their teacher that they have that the parents love plus going into the school building
211with what i'm assuming is a different teacher um to receive the enrichments um so would that be determined by the teacher and the parent or would that just be determined by the teacher so i know that there's a lot of people out here watching and that might be a question that they have yeah it's important for us to you know say that the teams are working on how to embed it in the schedule um so we always have to be really careful that as soon as we give an example then that's what everybody thinks it's going to be and we had the teams meet come together look at this remote plus site-based support they all through around lots of different ways that they could do it whether it's at the end of the day there's
212an intervention time whether it's a friday whether it's half a day a full day they threw out a number of ideas but we didn't ask them to finalize it because we wanted to get through this point of approving the framework first and then go ahead and now let's finalize for each grade band so k3 this is what it would look like for that four or five middle school and high school and it could look different depending on those grade bands that would be absolutely fine with us as long as whenever i say things like that that's when mrs folk just about falls over on her chair because i always think everything is possible until you get to the timing of transportation and things like that um so we'll have to work through those logistics but
213but whatever that time is so if it's a friday or if it's a half a day on friday where the students are coming in then in a grade level team for example if it's a third grade team and there's three third grade teachers that team is going to talk about which students need that support if one of those teachers volunteers to come in those other two teachers then are supporting that teacher's students during that intervention block or the tutors are supporting during that time or the intervention specialists are also supporting we operate in teams all the time so this isn't that unusual a number of our grade level teams work collaboratively and share students anyway you know you take the the students that are struggling and reading um and that happens all the time i
214don't want to interrupt you but patrick just fell off so i just want to glad you caught that yeah sorry i wasn't trying to be rude oh that's okay was having some connection issues so hold on one minute okay thank you right thanks just for those who are watching we typically um actually take a pause if one of our board members uh fall off and it happened to be our president looks like he's back on all right thank you patrick can you hear yes i can hear you if you can hear me thanks for waiting what dr williams woods said in that the challenge for our committees and and i believe that they will rise to it is to find that sweet spot of giving and not dedicating enough time to the interventions for our
215at needs students and not give up a lot of that direct instructional time so when the when they come up with their plans over the next few weeks they're going to be looking over and over and over at that is how many different ways and what would the best way be to deliver those interventions and enrichments but not give up their their teacher direct instruction time i think it answered all of it uh and in fact the reason why i brought it up is i was sitting here thinking um about what was the biggest concern about blended uh from the past and it just came to me like that's what i heard more than anything but it's like don't tread on my tires or on my lawn or whatever that phrase is uh they you
216know we have some sense of consistency with the teachers we we're we've built a rhythm now and don't don't mess that up um and so i just wanted uh all of the different parents um and family members probably close to 30 or 40 by now um who shared that type of message i wanted to follow up with that question because i was unsure and i knew know that they probably at some point would come back and ask so thank you for that i think that answered all of those questions and mr bravo i'm not trying to do your job but i saw a question there about clarifying volunteering volunteering just means volunteering to be an on-site teacher they will still be doing that during their work day just as the teachers that remain remote it's
217during their work day so that will be within their their contractual time yes thank you for that i appreciate that question miss mansfield would anyone else like to go as we head around the room hearing and seeing none dr hall i know you had additional questions please go ahead yeah thank you i appreciate it um so last two here um uh so i'd be remiss if i didn't ask this question because i've gotten up multiple emails about this topic and that's that's the akron early college and how they're accounted for um you know so i know that and again you know this may be an answer that i should know the answer to already so i apologize but if i don't um but i know that the question that i've been getting is you know
218with the university of akron's on a different schedule in yada yada yada so i just so again i i didn't have a great answer when i got asked that question about how we're accounting for acronym college i know one of some of the parents have said you know that you know that they really sort of pressed on or pushed back on this idea of acronym college following the same rules uh as the rest of the district um you know for what they thought were some obvious reasons that they're these kids are on campus and u of a kind of governs the online versus in class component so that's my that's my first question if you could weigh in on that yeah acronym college it is an a unique situation because the students especially the students
219as they get older the juniors and seniors can be on campus the entire time taking their courses at the university of akron and the university of akron depending on the particular courses that they take some of those could be blended some site based some you know exclusively site-based it's that combination like most of the universities have done so certainly the university courses are unique uh for the students but they also have some of the courses that are uh taught by our own faculty that um on that are right now they're following the same remote type of process that everybody is and they would also have the opportunity to work as a team the faculty to look at students who would need that site-based support and the site-based support could be which students are struggling and
220need site-based support for their high school courses taught by their their high school faculty or it could be students who need the support for their university courses as well so the same model would fit well i think at that in that environment okay great thank you um and then the other question um uh so was sort of revisiting this idea of um of the dashboard and whatnot um i i just want to be wary of you know of of you know and i and i've done this before myself and just kind of say oh well in january when we go back to school i mean i think they think we'd have to be wary of just sort of arbitrarily sort of using a uh saying january for example right and i mean it could be
221february it could be march i mean you know before things sort of level out um you know and so uh and i know we talked a lot about stability i think dr dr milwaukee's woods and ship dr james and others have sort of echoed this need for stability um you know and and i know that there were some districts early on um that were following an approach where you had to be maybe it was columbus i don't know um they had they had kind of proposed this idea if you had to be four weeks um kind of decreases in cases for four weeks or before you would start back um you know so i don't know if that's something that we sort of resurrect or or dust off and give some thought to but but
222as we move forward i do think that um that could earlier convey sentiments that um that balancing gets back and forth every week because i mean it was every thursday you know we we get the update on what your county is going to be right um and i think bouncing people back you know bouncing folks back and forth on a week to week basis is just absurd to be honest um you know and so um so so i think that as we kind of think through um kind of next steps you know once we get into the next nine weeks and and what we're considering doing i think hey that dashboard we have to have that dashboard up and in place um and then again there may be some amount of time that we have
223to be below a certain you know benchmarks if you go from from a performance standpoint before we would bring kids back um you know so there's just so again i just want to comment on that you know that so that way people weren't thinking that oh well we're going back in january because it may not be january you know so um so oh anyway so those are my my comments um and uh i believe that is it for me so i appreciate this group indulging my um my multiple questions thank you and i don't see anyone else in line is there anyone else that would like to say anything before we wrap up this discussion okay hearing and seeing none um i have just one or two final thoughts here um in regard to the
224the dashboard and kind of picking up on that conversation just from my perspective i i agree someone had said you know the dashboards are out there already they do exist to a degree right um what i think would be most important in my opinion for this board would be using those dashboards and i love uh and i know dr hall has mentioned it i think dr james mentioned it uh for sure is using the metrics that are there and the dashboards are there but setting that bar which we've talked about before where our community can expect that we would look at returning to a blended model or even to a full uh in-person model of instruction i would like to see us set that bar at some point now that being said uh and and
225i will support the plan that's in front of me tonight because that's the plan that's in front of me and i wasn't tasked with developing the plan uh but this is the plan in front of me i wish that we were looking at a blended model and maybe adopting uh the metrics now that would put us back in into that blended model when when the circumstance is warranted i love the idea of maybe following the color-coded chart that's used by the state and saying what we would do at the red and purple levels and what we would do at the yellow and orange levels all of that being said even if we were choosing a blended model now i would prefer probably in the red and purple levels to be at a limited sort of
226what's being presented tonight at best um and certainly for the purple or remote instruction and and maybe some more relaxed blended options at the yellow and orange that's just my opinion but i also like those sustained uh decreases being part of that metrics because as everyone said here and i fully agree we can't be moving between those levels and sort of flip-flopping back and forth that's too disruptive for our parents our students and and certainly our staff i do hope that we are have not passed a window already or aren't passing a window now um and certainly we need to be ready for that window uh when the second semester rolls around because as i said during the last meeting my my concern now is that if we choose to stay remote now there's no
227guarantee that the conditions are going to be any better six to seven to eight weeks from now when we're sort of prepping that decision for the january time frame and if without setting that bar without those metrics without that in place first we're going to be looking at things are no better now than they were when we made this decision tonight and there's a good chance that we'll end up remote in in january in my opinion and that concerns me a little bit because certainly that puts us in a bad position for the the fourth quarter so i have those concerns along with you know reconciling the decisions that we make tonight with the decisions that we make on sports and i'm not suggesting that sports doesn't move forward but again without all of those
228metrics in place um it's hard to reconcile those decisions and even since we've been sitting in this board meeting i've gotten those questions as i'm sure you all have as well um so i think i think everyone on this board that has said it is correct that i would really like to see us set those metrics or set those guideposts so that our our public and our students know by the way uh dr akbar mentioned the folks that are watching tonight at any time i clicked on the stream we had over 700 folks watching and many of them were students and some of them were teachers and it was fun to watch the students and the teachers interact a little bit on the side as we were going through this discussion and see what the
229students had to say as well so shout out to all of the students and teachers that are watching tonight and thank you for keeping it classy those are my thoughts mr superintendent you need some action on this item you're muted dr james there we go so yeah we'd like to have um you know a uh board concurrence that this is the uh route that we should go um right now so i'd ask if there is one uh i would entertain a motion for approval of the blended plot or the uh sorry the remote plus option that was presented this evening so moved second thank you we have a motion from dr hall a second from miss autry are there any final comments questions or discussion hearing and seeing none vocal please mr bravo yes dr
230hall aye mrs mansfield yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes massager yes thank you thank you and again as everyone else uh so eloquently put it to misshape to dr ellen williams woods to dr james uh and mr pendleton all of your teams thank you so much please pass along our and express our thanks for all of the work that they're putting into this and as uh dr mick williams woods said the work isn't over yet so i'm sure we'll be hearing from the teams again but thank you very much thank you appreciate it thank you thank you thank you we still have other items on the agenda there's no report from me mr pendleton treasurer's report no report thank you committee reports legal contracts and board policy no report thank you
231finance and capital management yes just briefly um i will share the finance committee met on the 19th um and i'll just be sharing a few legislative updates um we did discuss the house bill 305 which is the fair school funding act um which has been taking a lot of twists and turns since covert of course um and i believe this past wednesday i was to be introduced as a senate bill um so we were just waiting on the next steps after that which would include some simulations hopefully by election time um also senate bill 350 we briefly discussed uh which has heard testimony from our akron public schools and other districts and that is the bill regarding uh us having to depend solely on yellow buses for transportation and then we discussed as well at
232choice vouchers um which right now there's no action being uh taken on that and if that continues uh we will potentially uh explode from 500 schools over 1200 buildings in ohio if no work takes place on that so we're kind of standing by and keeping our eyes on that particular thing right now so that's all that i have as far as legislative updates from the finance committee yeah and then i'll pick it up from there thanks autry um so we also i mean i mean really the main thing that i want to focus on is that we set a date for our state our state of the state school finances if you will right uh for december 7th 2020 um and there are sort of the overarching theme of that of that state of the
233school finances sort of committee meeting um is really around uh financial clarity um which would include discussion uh of the levy as what as well as some of our other financial needs um and also using this this summit to really kind of talk about you know for example a couple different items one would be to utilize that form to ensure that the public is informed um and that we are able to sort of address what i would term at times erroneous assumptions that the public may have one of which you know being that you know part of our rationale and not returning kids to school was to save money for the district which could not be further from the truth right and so um you know so i think part of that too is also
234sort of outlining um you know because we are stewards of of the district's money sort of outlining not just that but also outlining what the cost of returning to school in person you know dude over 19 would look like when we eventually go back right sort of walking through those variables um you know i know that um you know from a from from a savings standpoint you know uh our balloons haven't been in use so things like utilities i think it's misogyny pointed out um you know have been much reduced you know and so of course those things will in return full steam once once our kids return to school um i know we've also talked about um the fact that there are some kids falling behind and it's part reason why we had that
235like the conversation tonight about this intervention model um and so but so at some point there's gonna have to be a conversation about how whether it's a possible summer sort of third term if you will um you know and kind of address the the cost of um you know of remedial tutoring for our students that may have fallen behind um you know and then sort of have conversations around sort of uh what a possible summer school model might look like uh in an expanded version and sort of what those costs would be um you know and how do we resource that appropriately uh we also i think mr also brought up um you know about the uh i think she asked whether the the district would continue to maintain the wi-fi and the hot spots
236for the families once students return um i think our understanding was that the grants have been supporting that will no longer be available and so um i know that i think dr james has said that there have been some discussion amongst the city in the chamber regarding uh wi-fi um we also along with mr pendleton reviewed uh the draft racial equity policy and we talked about how that policy interacts with existing aps policies so i know senior staff is currently reviewing uh all of the policies and is going to provide feedback through the legal legal and policy um committee uh and then kind of the last bucket of items that we talked about was uh sort of more broadly described as equity and transparency um in in spending and so we've talked about doing that
237sort of unit level analysis and so so specifically we we talked a lot about the i promise school funding um now i uh now obviously i promise school is a public school and while it receives the same funding as other schools um the lebron james family foundation does provide additional services um substantial services um that allow for uh class reductions and the providing of wrap-around services um and so i think so so you know one of the questions that i know that i'd asked was trying to dial down and figure out what does the per people spend look like at the i promise school as compared to other schools right because we talk a lot about you know equity and and and what kinds of resources are necessary to um to really uh provide for
238students that are you know challenged performers right so kids that would fall in the sort of bottom 25 you know from maybe a language arts or mathematics standpoint you know and so so so so what what are the real cost you know to provide the kind of services that we want to provide to our needy as students um you know and so and kind of using the eye of promise school is kind of a a model if you will that we can kind of learn from and think about what kinds of services you know can we um sort of you know extrapolate out and apply to the rest of the district and sort of and thinking through how that gets paid for um you know so um anyway so so those were kind of so
239that's kind of a kind of what i i hoped was a brief interview um you know and and kind of talked again through how through the forecast five to one how that could assist with answering some of those questions in the future but but there's but there's a candidate there's a lot of work yet to be done um but we're fortunate ms autry and and i and mr president we have a a good group of people that that are that are engaged and and passionate about doing that work so that's that's the finance update thank you so much instructional policy and student achievement thank you mr president i have a quick but important update on the middle school college and career academy master planning work as the board knows we had 100 staff students families
240and community members working for six months last year to design the five-year master plan that would transform our middle schools to support our college and career academies originally we were going to present this plan to the board last spring but of course the coronavirus sort of blew that up and so now we're coming to you with that plan so we have a timeline to share with you you got an email about a special board meeting where we will devote that time slowly to the college and career academy master plan for the middle school and uh then the budget will be reviewed by the finance committee at their scheduled meeting on monday november 23rd and finally will bring the master plan for final consideration to the board on november 30th so make sure that you have
241a look at the board docs for the um updates for the uh family resource centers the i promise school and the college and career academies and that's all we have thank you thank you so much under unfinished business we need to continue our discussion around the superintendent search and uh if the board will recall and also for the benefit of the public um as as many of you already know our superintendent has tendered his letter of retirement effective june or june 1st 2021 with his last day being june 30 2021 to that end this board is is looking at making one of the most significant decisions that we'll make uh this year believe it or not um in selecting a new superintendent uh this school year uh we've got a lot going on uh and
242this certainly adds to the mix of difficult decisions that we must make in speaking to the superintendent assistant superintendent the treasurer some former board members and presidents uh we collected the names of a few search firms in particular that are known throughout the state of ohio for their ability to to conduct those types of searches and for their experience and expertise in doing so we narrowed those down one firm opted not to submit a proposal we heard presentations from the other two firms and we forwarded those proposals to the board prior to those presentations so that our board had an opportunity to review those we heard from both of those search firms at our last meeting we gave the board an opportunity to forward me any questions or comments or thoughts that they had around
243the proposals and tonight uh under our new business section uh we do have um the form that the decision will come in as a business affairs supplemental item number one and if you'll notice under that section which uh is section 30.1 in under new business on your agenda you will find the information and what we're looking at now is uh the two uh search firms that we heard presentations from uh and and in the interest of full disclosure and for the public uh the board had no additional questions or comments that were sent to me and so therefore i didn't send anything additional to those search firms these two options in front of you tonight one of them would be to hire the ohio school boards association in an amount not to exceed 15 000
244the other would be to hire k-12 business consulting inc in an amount not to exceed 22 500. those amounts were based on the amounts uh in their proposal and adding some additional five thousand dollars additional each uh to take care of the things that that were supplemental to those proposals that would be necessary at some point but were included in the base price and for example that would be advertising costs and travel for any of the final candidates um so at this time i'd like to open it up for comments questions discussion on the superintendent search itself um and then when we as we wrap up this discussion will be entertaining a motion for either option one which is osb8 or option two which is k-12 business consulting inc so at this point if anyone
245would like to start with any comments questions or discussion i'd be open to that and then if everyone else would line up in the chat if you have some dr hall yeah i just had one question um are we making a decision i mean so let's i was i think through the cost proposals i know that i asked a question maybe others had as well last time around their ability to do a national search as well if we so desired we aren't making that decision tonight right we're just making a decision as to which vendor we choose correct they both have the capability to do a national search um uh and both of those would be an additional charge so at some point if we decided we wanted to expand that for example one of
246them was an additional charge of of about 4 500 so at that point between that and any additional advertising costs and travel we would have to come back and increase that not to exceed amount uh if we chose to go that way okay thank you for that question anyone can miss mansfield i just want to thank both um groups for coming out you know it's hard enough to give a pitch to a board um in person and and and try to make a good stand but man doing it on zoom and and trying to um handle all of us it's has got to be a a yeoman's job there so they they really held all their own um you know when when we did the search for mr pendleton we um we went with um
247the k-12 essentially and um i really enjoyed their presentation but um just to to lay cars on the table i felt like uh this time around i think i'd kind of like to um throw my support on behalf of osba i thought that their presentation was very thoughtful and sounded like a direction that we would like to go um i i also want to make sure that when we're considering this that we don't forget as a board what strong um folks we have here in our district so i want to make sure that they are given full opportunity to be considered and um it would be my hope that whoever we do bring in um to do this search understands very strongly how committed we are to um our senior staff and to our um
248to those folks that have been with us for a very long time i know that in some cases superintendents like to bring in their own people and things like that i i think that there's there's a reason people come to akron and stay in akron for their careers and so um just want to put that out there and um and go from there thanks so much thank you miss mansfield mr alexander yes uh i think both firms do they did a very good job of presenting their information to us uh i like the first group to a certain extent because they brought us mr pendleton and that was a big plus for us uh here in akron public schools because we could have lost him and he could have been doing his great work somewhere
249else and uh i i like that they brought him in and and we got to keep him here um and saying that too but i i do like ohio school board association um the the difference between the two for me um it seemed like uh uh osba has done more searches when they deal with more uh bigger school districts uh whereas uh k-12 did one they did more smaller school districts um we talked about urban versus suburban they did more osba did more urban school districts and they have done more to me searches outside of uh just the state of ohio and so we if we're talking about um doing a a nationwide search or national search then they seem to have the experience of doing doing that and so um i am kind of
250with lisa i'm i'm uh leaning towards osba uh because of their uh experience and in the history that they have as well uh long-standing history of working with schools and getting superintendents so i i like but again i like both presentations and both were really good but those are a couple things that stood out to me the larger school districts uh in dealing with urban school districts and i think they were k12 were looking more at to me they were helping more school districts that were smaller and we're a bigger school district and we need somebody who understands this a larger school district so i'm going with uh osba thank you thank you mr alexander uh anyone else before i come back around miss autry yes thank you so i i appreciated both presentations as
251well and i will be leaning more towards of the ohio school board association um i just really like the fact that they are experiencing working with urban districts that are similar to ours um i also like the uh the optional communication workshop that he uh discussed and that um also the board members would have a portal uh throughout this process uh to you know help keep us up to speed on things so i appreciated that as a new uh school board member um so i think he mentioned mount healthy which is a district in cincinnati and i know that they are uh similar in makeup to us so um i think that's important to have for one uh that is familiar with the districts such as ours or similar demographics thank you thank you ms
252autry anyone else dr hall go ahead yeah i just had two quick questions one was from miss mansfield um obviously i wasn't here when we used cape 12 to find mr pendleton um and while i you know maybe moving towards osba um i do think i have i do think it it needs to be asked you know if we had a good experience in the last time and we liked the person they got that person still with us i have to ask what may be the obvious question which is why wouldn't we choose him again before the superintendent search that's that's my question then i have a comment um and then my comment um is uh sort of related to what ms mansfield was getting at earlier about you know about wanting to make sure
253that we give um folks that are here ample opportunity to to apply or and or be considered i think that's what she was trying to say or saying or said um and you know i i would i would welcome that i think you know i know i'm not quite a year on this board but in my time there probably there are probably multiple people you know um that will be qualified to apply for that position and i hope that they and i hope that they all do you know so um so because you know want to make sure that we give proper deference and respect to the to the in-house qualified candidates as well so um so anyway so that was my comment um but but just would like to hear you know and mr
254problems right mr alexander you know you guys can weigh in on this as well but i just would like to hear an answer might be really simple but just kind of like to hear if we're so content with how they did the first time i would be chance going with someone that we don't have any experience working with um regards to how good their presentation was we don't have any experience working with osba to my knowledge and getting treasurer and or some independent candidates so full disclosure i kind of pushed mr bravo to take a look at um bringing in k12 because i was like hey same reason you just said really liked what they did with ryan wouldn't trade ryan for anything um can we maybe have them come in and present too and
255so um i'm kind of rooting for them so i just to me it just came down to that day and because we have a relationship with osba through our association and you know over the years do you get to know um the reputation from other board members across the district or across the state i believe so i think that um that's beyond just the presentation on one given night or whatever or their p even paperwork or things like that some of it's word of mouth from other board members over the course of 12 years and um honestly i i don't remember at this point what tip details in in favor of the other organization the last time i just i know that it was unanimous with the board and and um we liked the result
256so yeah yeah and then uh dr hall we have actually worked with osba before um in fact they were that's who conducted the search when um when dr james was hired so the board throughout its history has used different folks at different times and certain osba uh the ohio school boards association is at the top of that list similarly osb or o asbo the ohio association of school business officials was actually who we worked with and contracted with when we did the treasurer search because that is the official trade association with the treasurers too and so there was there was something to be said for that organization with that organization when that is who works with the treasurers and certainly with the school boards association uh it intuitively it seems a little more like they
257would be in tune to boards who are searching more for superintendents the buckeye association of school administrators does not do uh superintendent or treasurer search and in fact what we found out this time when we actually reached out and uh to osbo the ohio association of school business officials is i kind of learned and and things were cleared up for us a little bit that's who we worked with last time but they subcontracted 2k12 so when we reached out we reached out to k-12 this time and went straight to k-12 because o asbo as an organization doesn't do superintendent searches they do treasurer searches but they also subcontract that work to a few different groups um so anyway uh you know they as lisa said for me last time they certainly tipped the scales uh
258in terms of their presentation and it could be just the day and the time and the and the way the presentation was done they also had the added benefit of being at what what i thought at the time and what we were going for was folks that work more with treasurers this time for me if we're putting the cards on the table i was a little more compelled by the osba search i was also a little more compelled by um the technology that's in place um for osba the cost is a little bit more effective on in terms of the ten thousand ten thousand five hundred dollar cost versus five hundred dollar base cost um when they both for the most part are going to do the same thing in my opinion and i'll wrap
259up there i don't think we could necessarily i don't think we would go wrong with either of them when we talk to the staff here within our district folks from uh elsewhere former board members um a few names kept popping up on the list and these were two of them so i don't think you're going to go wrong with either yeah i don't think we'll go wrong yeah i don't think we'll go wrong with either either of them either uh but i i i when we talked as patrick said when we talk about uh treasure then oh asbo was the one who actually came and did the most of the talking to us nna contracted out they were the ones who came to akron to talk to us to say hey here's what we're doing
260so they got k-12 to look for and they did more of a treasure search now we're looking for superintendent search which is uh totally different so for me i went with osba because i know their history i've been involved uh with osba uh currently as a treasurer but also even beforehand uh working with some some individuals from there and so i know what they they can bring and i like patrick said too i mean we're gonna get a probably a good bang for our buck and probably even we add that little extra money we're still gonna come out on a good end uh and and i do uh that mr horton who um um i know him and i know he would do a good job for us so that's why i lean towards them
261because of their they have the the um the the the the background in doing superintendent searches and not just superintendent searches for just a particular group but a number and their history the years if we listen to what the the years of service they've been involved in doing superintendent searches there's a long history of doing superintendent searches across the board so that's why i kind of leaned towards osba great thank you anyone else yes so um first i want to thank both uh companies for presenting to us as well as taking the time to meet with mr bravo and myself prior to coming to the board and those conversations i think really gave us a good idea of what they can do with that being said i think that sounds like most people have stated
262that the efficiency that will be provided by osba as well as their experience might outweigh um k-12 right now um considering them i'll also just go ahead and say one of the things that i noticed um that we didn't really talk about but mr bravo mentioned was the technology i think that that's going to be critical for um the land that we are navigating today um as well as the landscape the last thing i'll say is it'll allow us all to be able to review all candidates um throughout the entire process instead of being told um who to select so i think that that will allow us the fla the most flexibility um with technology with experience with the size of our district as well as what we requested from each of those organizations thank
263you thank you dr akbar anyone else if not as we look to entertain a motion i just want to echo the sentiments of our board and thank both organizations k-12 business consulting inc and osva the ohio school boards association for coming out and presenting to us as ms mansfield said it's difficult to do in in the best of times and we certainly appreciate them making accommodations and joining us virtually uh to do that presentation uh we think very highly of both organizations and again having uh worked with both in the past um we we know that we're going to get a good result either way so hats off to both organizations and and thank you for again for participating we'll entertain a motion for either option 1 osba or option 2 k12 and both options
264are in your board packet i'll make a motion that we approve ohio school board's association to do our superintendent search second thank you we have a motion from mckittrick a second from mr alexander for option one on business affairs recommendation supplement number one are there any comments final comments questions or discussion hearing and seeing none well call please dr hall aye mrs mansfield yes mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes ms autry yes mr bravo yes thank you thank you uh to the board for that uh appreciate it we uh dr akbar and i will get together and and we'll start uh working with osba and we'll get a calendar and an update to you on uh timeline and next steps with that uh mr pendleton you have item 30.2 teacher supply allowance
265yes thankfully thank you um let me walk through this briefly and see if there's any questions before i ask for your approval during negotiations last year one of the items that we were trying to clean up for the teacher supply allowance for elementary teachers is very lengthy and cumbersome reimbursement process and it is a reimbursement process so lots of receipts were collected buildings would take um receipts and there would be a long lead time to a reimbursement and that led to the district of hundreds and hundreds of transactions and a lot of different individuals so during negotiations we went back and forth and said that we wanted to settle somewhere where the teachers would land around 150 for this uh teacher reimbursement um well intentioned the execution of it didn't go as i would have
266liked we did just issue it we received guidance from state teachers recite retirement system that this was pensionable so it took an additional 30 plus percent out of the stipend after a series of back and forth with strs they did change their perspective on that unfortunately the teacher stipend allowance was already issued and so we're going to be issuing some corrections and unfortunately it's gonna you know teachers don't have to do anything as it relates to this we're just gonna have to issue some corrections in the next pay but i would like permission to honor the intent of this and make up the difference um on average each teacher was short to the net of 150 by about 30 so i'd like to honor the intent of that language issue this and then meet with
267the teachers union for next year to work on a mechanism possibly through accounts payable that will still get reported as income but at 170 dollars with uh an average income tax rate of between 20 and 30 percent that should come out much closer to it and then again back to our intent of making it a lot easier for teachers to receive this supply allowance and also if we do it through accounts payable next year if that's the best means we can we can have the turnaround time sooner in the school year than in october october is when we can get it through the payroll system once the three-week shuffle and teachers are in their final assignments so with that i'd like to recommend uh resolution 20-149 thank you and board members you have resolution 20-149
268under item 30.2 in your board packet uh we'll open it up for any questions or comments if anybody has any mr bravo i'll just make a quick comment i want to thank mr pendleton for his quick action on this i got started getting messages um really quick as soon as teachers got the um got notice of what their pay was and um no sooner did i have him on the phone then he was had drafted an email and was going to send it out to all the staff because um there was a lot of upset so big thanks to him for that and uh for his quick action and you know it was nothing intentional like he said it was with all of the best intentions so um just big thanks for straightening that out
269so quickly thanks for the heads up thank you anyone else hearing and seeing none will entertain a motion for approval of resolution 20-149 to pay a portion of the teacher allowance through accounts payable so i moved second i think you have a motion from miss mansfield a second for miss autry any final comments questions or discussion hearing none roll call please mrs mansfield yes mrs mckendrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes miss autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall aye thank you and pursuant to section 121.22 g1 of the ohio revised code to consider the compensation and or employment of personnel or public officials of the district we do have a need to enter into executive session so at this time i'll entertain a motion for a recess into executive session second thank you
270we have a motion by ms mckittrick a second by mr alexander roll call please mrs mckittrick yes dr akbar yes mr alexander yes miss audrey yes mr bravo yes dr hall hi this is mansfield yes thank you so we are going to all exit out of this meeting we'll see you in executive session and for the public we will be returning in just a few moments and we do have two items for consideration upon our return thank you thank you good evening and welcome back to the regular meeting of the akron public schools board of education for monday october 26 2020. we've just returned from executive session we do have two items for consideration they're both in your board packet items 32.1 uh a resolution 20-150 approving a memorandum of understanding between the akron board
271of education and the akron education association regarding otez 2.0 contract language and walkthrough form and item 32.2 which is resolution 20-151 a resolution to approve a memorandum of understanding between the akron board of education and the akron education association regarding the exemption of student growth measures for the 2020 2021 educator evaluations on item 32.1 will entertain a motion thank you have a motion from miss mckittrick a second from dr akbar any comments questions or discussion hearing none roll call please mr alexander mr alexander can you hear us yes thank you miss autry yes mr bravo yes dr hall i hear you i can hear you can you hear me can you hear me this is mckendree yes dr akbar yes you know with the exception of me being dropped from the meeting at some point
272we almost made it through this whole night item 32.2 will entertain a motion so moved in thank you a motion from miss mansfield for mrs mckittrick any comments questions or discussion second we got a little bit of a delay for alexander roll call please all right miss audrey mr bravo yes dr hall hi mrs mansfield yes did you hear me yes dr rockbar yes mr alexander wave your hand or something okay all right motion passes resolution is approved is there any other yes [Music] is there any other business yeah yeah oh boy we are adjourned thank you and have a good evening