001That was awesome. Good evening. It is 6:33 p.m. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Um, this is the call to order to the regular meeting. Could we have a roll call, please? Mr. Davis. >> Mrs. Eicholtz >> here. >> Mr. Marks, >> here. >> Mrs. Singh >> here. >> Mrs. Mr. Summerall >> here. >> Mr. Tulles >> here. >> Could I please have a motion to adopt the regular meeting agenda? >> So moved. Second. >> All those in favor? >> I >> uh Mr. Tullus, would you mind making a motion to go into executive session? And when you do, would you please read the statement in its entirety, please? >> I can't make motions. >> Uh, I will make a motion to go into executive session pursuant to Ohio Revised Code 121.22G subsection
0021 to consider the appointment of a public official being the board president. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Roll call, please. M Mr. Tullus. >> Yes. >> Mr. Marks. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Singh. >> Yes. >> Mr. Summer. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Eicholtz. >> Yes. [Music] Hello. Heat. Heat. [Music] You're feel it. [Music] Oh, [Music] it feel Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Baby, [Music] baby. [Music] Hey [Music] Hey [Music] hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey [Music] Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I hey hey hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey
003high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey high hey Hey [Music] hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. That's our password. Okay, it is 7 o'clock. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Sorry, it's already been called to order. We are returning from executive session and we are recessing the regular meeting. Um, now I'd like to call to order the organizational meeting. Can I have a roll call, please? Mr. Davis, >> Mrs. Zikols >> here. >> Mr. Marks >> here. >> Mrs. Sing >> here. >> Mr. Summer >> here. >> Mr. Tullus >> here. Can I have a motion to adopt the organizational meeting agenda? Move to adopt the organizational meeting.
004>> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I. >> Now we are moving on to the election of officers for 2022, the president and vice president. Um, is there a nomination for the role of president? >> Uh, Bear Tis for the president. Sorry. >> Okay. Are there other nominations hearing? None. Mr. Davis, roll call. >> Mrs. Ittollis. >> Mr. Marks. >> Bear Talis. >> Mrs. Singh. >> Bear Talis. >> Mr. Solar Talis. Mr. Tullus. >> Uh, myself, I guess. >> Yes. Is there a nomination for the role of vice president? >> Yes. I move to nominate Miss Ikez for the role of vice president. >> Are there any other nominations? >> Hearing none, Mr. Davis. Could we have a roll call? >> Mrs. Iicults. >> I vote for Mrs. Iikolds.
005>> Mr. Marks. >> Mrs. Eicults. >> Mrs. Sing. >> Mrs. Eicult. >> Mr. Summer. >> Mrs. Iicults. Mr. Tuls. >> Mrs. Ikez. >> Okay. Um, at this point, I will turn the meeting over to our new president, Mr. Bear Talis. Um, if you could start with item 10, please. >> Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, everyone. Um, if we could entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Uh, Mr. Talis, we'll do that at the end. I will read the uh the items under the consent agenda and then at the end we'll do a roll call to uh have to put to make a motion and then second that motion and then there'll be any discussion or questions. >> Firewood. >> So every year we are required by Ohio Revised Code to have an organiza
006organizational meeting before January 15th of each year. Uh we we do several things each year during this organizational meeting that sets the uh tone for the upcoming year. uh these items are are pretty much operational in nature. So to begin, we'll have a resolution to establish position bonds for the board president, superintendent, and treasurer for 2022. Resolution to establish dates, times, and places of board meetings during 2022. Regular meetings will be held at 6:30 in the high school auditorium at Indian Hill High School, 6865 Drake Road, Indian Hill, Ohio 42 45243. The board may, in the event it is necessary, schedule a possible executive session to begin promptly at 6:30. The business portion of the regular board meeting will not begin until at the earliest 700 p.m. In the event the board does not require
007an executive session, the board will open the meeting at 6:30 and recess the meeting until 7. In such instances, the business port of port portion of the meeting will begin at 7 p.m. The public will be notified of the starting time of any such session upon release of the agenda in the event a modification of the start time is required. In no circumstance will the business portion of the meeting begin until 7. You see those dates below for the upcoming calendar year and for the January organizational meeting of 2023. Item C is a resolution authorizes authorizing the signing of all checks by treasurer only for 2022. Resolution authorizing the investment of funds for 2022. Resolution authorizing the treasurer superintendent to enter into contracts less than 25,000 subject to appropriations and without further action by the
008board. Resolution to establish a board service fund in the amount of $2,000 for calendar year 2022 to provide for the expenses incurred by board members and board members elect in the performance of their duties. A resolution to approve professional leaves for superintendent and/or treasurer at any or all regional and state professional meetings and provide reimbursement for expenses incurred upon submission of proper documentation in accordance with board policy. Appointment of the treasurer to serve as district representative on the tax incentive review council. Appointment of treasurer to receive public records training on behalf of board members. Appointment of superintendent or his designate as board designate for suspension appeals. The appointment of superintendent to accept employee res resignations upon receipt. And that includes the organizational meeting items A through K for the organizational meeting of January 2022. I
009will entertain any questions or comments at this time. And if there are none, I would like to uh propose that the board make a resolution to accept items A through K of the organizational meeting. >> I move that we accept the consent agenda items A through K. >> Second that motion. >> Mrs. Iicult. >> Hi. >> Mr. Marks. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sing Mrs. Singh. Sorry, getting used to the new names. >> Yes, >> that's an old name. >> Mr. Summerall approve. Mr. Tullis. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Davis. Uh, next item on the list is the board committee appointments. Uh, I believe that is in my camp. Uh, for the 2022 year, this will just be for the calendar year for the instruction and technology committee. Um, we put Nikki, Miss Nikki Singh
010as the chair and Nolan Marks as the uh, I guess vice chair. Second for the operations committee, myself as the chair, and Mrs. Singh as the uh second position for the personnel and professional relations committee. Uh Mr. Marks as the chair, Mr. Summerall as the second for the finance and audit committee. Um Mr. Summerall as a chair, and Mrs. Iikoltz as the second chair. uh for the legislative liaison myself and for the Indian Hill Public School Foundation liaison uh myself with the promise from Mrs. Singh to help when I can't make the meetings. Um when we get into the meetings a little bit further, we're going to have some discussion on the committees uh potential new committees and expanded committees. Uh we will wait for a few minutes to get into that. >> Do you
011need anything further? >> We need to adjourn the organizational meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> And you can do a voice vote for that, Mr. Tuls. >> Okay. Voice votes, please. >> I >> uh at this time, we will call to order the regular meeting. >> Still move. >> No need to call. No need for a motion to call into order. We've already done that as part of the regular meeting to begin the meeting. So if we could uh we would move right to the pledge of allegiance from there. >> Perfect. Thank you to the flag of the United States of America to the standy for all. Uh at this point we will move into our public commentary. Uh Mr. Davis, if you wouldn't mind just do a
012quick rehash of the rules for our public commentary so everyone's familiar. Um and as in past meetings, we'll let you uh kind of call the role and monitor the timelines. >> So I have received the list of public participation for this evening. uh each p or part participant is all allowed up to a five minute interval to speak. At that time I will tell the uh the person to uh that they'll have to end their public commentary. The next person will be called up. The total amount by board policy of public participation is 30 minutes unless a vote is taken by the board to increase that time. So at this time I would like to call Rachel Catz to the podium. [Music] Hello, I'm Rachel Catz. I'm a mother of two children that are in
013Indian health and my son will be joining kindergarten next year. He's very excited. Comes up a little bit later. um wanted to start with heartfelt thanks to the administration for listening to the pleas of experts that have been asking for universal masking since back in December. We're really excited that you've listened to the experts and wish you would have done it sooner, but very happy that you guys have put mask mandates back on the board. The reason is we all want kids in school. Having this many kids out of school, it's not good. My kids have been home since December 17th. Why did I keep my kids home? Well, because my doctor called me and said, "With your son not having a vaccination, even though omocrron could be very mild on your vaccinated daughters, it
014can go through your house very quickly and your son is not protected." So, she wrote, "The patient is out of school on the following dates due to the patient sibling being high- risk and no masks at school. Recommend staying at home and is able to return to school on 112." That's terrible. My kids want to be in school. They are being deprived of a public education. It's not fair. So, thank you for allowing my children to now come back to school. Just imagine if we had put masks on a long time ago, how many kids wouldn't have had to be out of school. Think about all the close contacts and the quarantines. As of today, there are 140 students out of school, represented by the the 10 rows of 14 chairs right over in our
015auditorium. About a third of the bottom of this auditorium. Way too many kids, and we need to be protecting our children. I'd like to close with an email from a parent that wishes she could be here, but because of what happened, >> she can't. Joan Garrett during starting >> Miss Cat, excuse me. You're not allowed to read the testimony of another person during your public participation. You should only be reading your commentary. Thank you. >> Um, she specifically requested that I >> That's not allowed. Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you. What I will do is write it down and I will be submitting it for public record because I would like it in the minutes. Ma'am, >> thank you. That's all I have to say. Next participant, Lee Wong. Could you please come forward? Hi
016everyone. I'm Leewang. I'm a mother of two. My daughter is seven. My son is four and a half. not old enough to get his vaccination. Uh as of this morning, my daughter received a close contact which she was exposed last Friday. As a parent, as a mother, as a person who grew up in China, I was very upset about our contact tracing. Just imagine if she was exposed and she could have been carrying this virus for a long time for as long as four days without us even noticing it. We had her tested this evening and she tested negative which is good which is a relief or I will just be so upset that I am not a responsible mother letting my child car car car car car car car car car car car car
017car car car car car car car car car carrying this virus going on here and there I work at children's I work on the research side yesterday sent out an email saying that they are requesting volunteers from the nonclinical side to help out the staffing at the clinical area. This should not happen. This is sad. Well, I'm happy that I saw lots of people signing up to volunteer, but I sincerely feel as a good hospital, as a good school district, we should have been more responsible to just put the mask mandate on. And I can also say I am very happy to see a short mask mandate putting out this morning. But I will also say one and a half weeks is not going to be longer long enough. So my request for you all
018would be when will the next meeting or if there will even be a meeting held to decide if you will extend this mask mandate. If you are going to decide on what basis would you actually extend this mask mandate as a parent of two, I sincerely hope these two questions could be answered. Thank you. Next on the list is Megan Tullus. Please come forward. >> If that's an error, next on the list is Blair Warren. >> Blair Warren. Next on the list, Trishan Au. >> Hello, my name is Trisha Nule. I have a child in primary school and another child in elementary school. Um, I'm not going to repeat the facts, statistics, other comments about COVID transmission, case counts, hospitalizations. I think that should be obvious to everyone about now. Um, from the experience of
019other countries, I think we probably know there's a huge omocrron spike going on and it's probably likely to fizzle out very quickly and burn itself out. So, I think the new mask policy that was implemented today was a good idea, but is a little too late and it's a little um it's too little too late. I want to ask why and and get some accountability for making decisions in the future. And I'd like to start with what should be indisputable. First, the job of the board and the administration is to provide the best education for our children with the dollars that Indian Hill taxpayers are paying. Second, children learn better in person in a classroom with their teachers and peers. So, we need to keep kids in school. Third, quarantined teachers can't teach. Quarantined students
020can't learn in a classroom. And if there are enough of both of those, everything starts to fall apart. Basically, children, teachers, and staff need to minimize the risk of being infected with COVID for the district to do its job and educate our children. Like to also talk about some facts we knew last year. One, families were going to gather and travel over the holidays. Even before omocrron became dominant, Delta was widespread and all these people gathering would result in significant amounts of people being exposed and infected. All of them were going to be coming back to school in January and spreading COVID. So we should be asking why wait until now to do what should have been obvious long before the holiday. Why was the hospital association guidance from December ignored until now? Why was
021the emerging information that omocrron was a dominant variant was able to evade vaccine induced immunity ignored until now? Why were the daily health check-ins stopped? We knew this would happen. We knew that we could significantly reduce transmission with universal masking. And yet here we are. I'm not sure I don't I don't I'm not asking that we should have had masks forever. In fact, quite frankly, I'm I'm fed up with it and I'd love to not even be in a mask. Uh but we are where we are now and we have to respond to the changing conditions. Many families, including ours, chose to move to the Indian Hill because it was ranked as a number one school district in the state. In fact, I believe the district was a leader in providing safe education during the
022pandemic, and I applaud the board and the district and the administration for being able to do that. But now the district is alasking the area to react. How do we get here? If we're unable to properly gather data, unable to make informed decisions, unable to take in new information and react to changing conditions, what are we doing here? How are we educating our children? How long will the district remain the top ranked district? We need to safely educate our children and make decisions based on the facts in advance. Thank you. Megan Seaman Casmire, please come forward. Uh this is my 11-year-old daughter and when she found out I was coming to the meeting tonight, she said, "Well, I have some opinions about that." And I said, "Well, you can come if you'd like." Um I
023don't know if she wants to speak or not, but Okay. >> Um my name is Nev. Um, I am in sixth grade in Indian Hill. Um, and I'm really glad that you guys put the mask mandate back on because knowing that I'm going to school where people don't mask makes me really worried for my health and my family's health and also my friends health. And knowing that people don't mask makes me worried about going to school every day. And I really like being in person for school and I worry that without masking we will have to go back to remote because of the spread of COVID 19. Thank you for bringing back the mask mandate for all. >> So, I don't know if I'm allowed to say what I'm signed up for, too, or what's
024the rule. >> I think Ver Brave will allow it. Go ahead. >> Okay. I just want to start out by thanking you for correcting course and reinstating masks until January 21st. Experts have continued to recommend masking and they redoubled that plea before school returned in session with omccrron. We all want in-person school from health experts to parents to teachers. And until medical experts say otherwise, masking is our best bet to staying in school. Masking is one of the easiest ways we can take care of our community. By the end of this week, Indian Hill families need to have transparent, publicly posted, specific measurements that Mr. Kcki is using to end or to renew the mandate. For example, it stays in place as long as the Hamilton County R measurement is above one or as long
025as the area ICUs are at more than 90% capacity. Policy needs to be tied to measurable statistics so we don't have to keep having the same debate over and over again around people's anxieties and political agendas. It's just the right thing to do. Let's course correct and continue in this good direction so that we can all stay in school and have a good year. Thanks. James Kong, can you please come forward? James Kong. Hi, my name is James Kong and I'm a parent to a child in the district. Uh my daughter is a high school student and I have a recent graduate. Um that um thank you. Many of some of you here on the board are responsible for part of how you know how he's turned out. So thank you for this opportunity to
026address you and um in considering what I was going to say tonight, I know you've heard all the data, you've heard all the recommendations, so I I don't want to talk about that. I do want to echo the sentiments that have already been put forth, which is to thank you for listening to our please and to taking action and changing course here with this mask mandate. I would also say that what I would like to do is add maybe a little bit of a different perspective than what you might normally hear in your day-to-day operations. You're hearing it in the media, but I want to bring it to you from firsthand experience. When I look out and I see everyone here, everyone here on the board and everyone who might be listening uh online, um
027I know we all have the same thing in mind. We want our kids to be safe and in school. There's no question about that. What I wanted to tell you about is what's happening outside these walls and what's happening in my own world in healthcare. And you've heard this before, but what's happening there is real. We are overwhelmed. We are packed. We cannot do the normal things that we want to do to take care of not those people, but to take care of our community. You, me, you, everyone. If one of us goes home tonight and has an accident, I hope not, has a heart attack or a stroke, I think you're going to get good care at any one of our region's hospitals. But that care is imperiled by the fact that CO is
028out of control. It is out of control. What does that have to do with us? Those people who show up on my procedure table with COVID or in the ICUs, they didn't get it out of nowhere. They got it from the community. They got it from the things that we do, the choices we make every day. This is a unique opportunity. The decisions that we make here for us to make a difference. People want to look at this and say, "This is so big. What can I do?" There are small things that each of us can do every day to make an impact on our entire community. But it takes all of us. The other part of this opportunity that's unique is for us as parents, educators, leaders to model for our students the kind
029of leaders that we want them to become. Listen to the data. Listen to our constituents. being able to change our minds, not making everyone happy because we're not going to. But that's not the role of a leader, being brave enough to make a difference, and perhaps most importantly is to remember that we're all connected. I'm not here just to look out for me or my family, but I go to work every day looking out for all of you. We should look at the person next to us and say, "I'm in this with you. How can I help you? Can I put this mask on, not just for me, but for you?" Yes, I'm going to choose to do that. We have an opportunity to demonstrate to our kids that that's the choice that we're going
030to make and that's the choice that they can make as we go forward. Again, I appreciate the reinitiation of the mask mandate. I do think it's going to be very short. And when you think about re-evaluating whether you're going to continue that mandate beyond those times, please remember what I've said. This is not just about me, my kids. It's about all of us. Sarah Zang, please come forward. Sarah Zang. Thank you. That concludes public commentary for this evening. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Thank you to everyone who spoke uh tonight. I know these are not easy times and it's not easy to uh share your personal story and we certainly appreciate the testimony tonight. We appreciate the emails we've received. Um all that is considered. We've all spent I've spent a lot of time lately trying
031to learn as much as I can about all this. Um and it all is being being considered. Um so thank you for that. Uh next we will move on to recognitions, correspondence, and announcements. Kirk, would you like me to start with you're up first, Mr. Toles? >> Great. Thank you. Um, so one item we've want to look at from the board's perspective is increasing community engagement in how decisions are made. Uh, it includes matters relating to to COVID, to the construction project, to everything. Uh, we have previously tonight announced 1, two, three, four standing committees of the board. Uh we intend over the next uh couple months, we'll see how the timing goes, to really start three new committees and expand the current committees. Uh our our plan initially will be create a committee for
032ongoing dialogue with our school community members for their input and feedback as we explore important student employee employee health, safety, and wellness topics. uh that will include matters relating to building security, to general student wellness, and of course to matters all things COVID. Uh we will be seeking out participants and we will uh the administration will uh push out information as to how to get involved in those committees, but I'm a firm believer that our community has an amazing amazing uh talent out there that can participate and help us make decisions as we move forward. Uh the second committee is going to be to focus and create a dialogue about diversity, equity, and inclusion topics with the school community members. Um we think it's over time that we form this committee and again we will
033be seeking input from from all community stakeholders to making sure the community is truly uh engaging in discussing these difficult topics. Um third committee will be creating a standing STEM committee advisory composed of community stakeholders, professional partners and staff representatives for ongoing academic and experiential development of our STEM culture. Uh for those who have students in the building, our STEM program is fantastic. My 8-year-old uh loves it. It's one of her favorite things. And again, we intend to tap into this community and really make sure we're leveraging the talent that we have uh in our community. Uh so as I said, we will be reaching out through the administration to invite interested stakeholders in these committees and to expand the other committees. So please be on the lookout for information concerning those topics. Thank you,
034Bear. Um next, I'd just like to uh congratulate all of our new members uh for joining the board this evening. And January is the Ohio Schoolboard Association Board of Education Recognition Month. It may not feel like it right at this moment. However, I want to thank all of you for the time and effort and energy put in as volunteers and servant leaders to this school community. Um, as elected uh officials with constituents, we know the time and effort that this takes uh to organize and run our meetings. We appreciate all the work you've done. Our board has been a gold level achievement award recipient for the past two years. Uh we just received that in the mail again for last year. So, congratulations to our returning board members as well. And I just want to
035thank you all and we'd like to recognize you for your volunteerism and service this month. Thank you. Item C, moving on um is our annual nutrition report by air. Mr. Nichols, would you like to kick us off with that or Mr. Davis? >> Actually, Kirk, we uh switched the agenda around a little bit. It would be Dr. Stewart and her strategic plan. Um we decided that uh the nutrition report would work better under doc under Mr. Nichols report. >> Okay. Thank you. Then we'll move on to letter D with a strategic plan update. Um we're just going to talk in general tonight about some next steps. Uh many of you know that we've worked on the IIH promise plan for the last few months and we shared that publicly last month. We're going to be
036working on um rolling out some documents and our state of the schools as we enter into February uh that we'll be sharing with the wider public and we're very excited to kick off and implement the first steps of the IH promise. Anything you'd like to add, Dr. Stewart? >> Well said. >> Okay. Thank you. Then we'll move on to letter E, facilities and operations presentation. Mr. Nichols, >> still came right back to me. >> Um, we do have just a few things to share with you as a a part of our operations report and uh I'll I'll give you a sneak preview. that in February will be uh a larger presentation by the construction team where they'll be coming to share um some information with you about uh the design of the buildings and and
037what things are looking like. We continue to get great feedback from our stakeholders, from our parents, our students um and our community about how those buildings are going to look and uh we're excited about that. So, more to come in February. Um and uh so I would ask everybody to tune in. However, if you're so interested um on January 19th, we're going to have an opportunity for our community, our staff, and um to come in and either from 9 to 11 at the high school or 3:00 to 5:00 later in the day, you'll be able to come in and and look at some renderings of what we're thinking about. Um there'll even be some materials there. I know some people have been excited about paint colors and what the carpet could look like. And so
038those kinds of materials will be there and we need as much feedback as possible. These are buildings we're building for many many years and we want to make sure that we do it right. And so as much feedback as we can get is appreciated. But that'll be coming up on January 19th. We'll be pushing out some more information about that. And then also um kind of some late breaking news, Mr. Kcki, I was able to connect. We have been working with Ethos Lab. That is a a company that is doing some COVID testing here in town. In fact, you may have seen um down in Kentucky and they even are um at sites like Riverbend doing some some testing. They're going to work with us on being able to provide some of those tests here
039on site um to help our families and our community um when they have that need. And so it looks like 4 to 6 on Thursday will be the first opportunity and we'll push again that information out. You'll be able to pre-register for that. Um and again, it'll be um it'll be an opportunity if you need to get a COVID test. it'll be a PCR test um which is helpful and they'll be able to turn those results around pretty quickly. So that helps our our students and our staff and again that's what we're trying to do is to keep everybody healthy. So more information to come on that. Um just as you came in tonight you probably noticed it looked a little bit different. Um the awning was gone that was in front of the auditorium
040and that was some major work that took place and they did a great job of getting that and minimizing the disruption to our operations here. and then they were able to recreate a couple of sidewalks which again you may have utilized to come in the building. Um but those small projects will be occurring over time and we'll give um those impacted as much heads up as possible as we get into the spring. You'll start to see some dirt being moved around and um they'll be redoing some of the parking lots. So we'll communicate all that information if it's okay. I'd like to move on and um talk about Mr. Schlim who's here from AirArk. Um, and uh, Steve, if you would come up to the podium and uh, on your way up, I'll just share
041Steve uh, is our food services director and uh, coordinates our food service program from AirArkar. And Steve came on last year. He most recently came to us from Proctor and Gamble where he was the operations manager and chef at their central building. So, we are thrilled that he has joined our team. um we definitely needed a redesign of our surfaces services and he has been doing that and so I'm going to turn it over to him and he's going to give you a little bit of information as well as talk about the National School Lunch Program which is a requirement for us annually. Stephen, >> excellent. Thank you so much. Um thank you all for allowing me this opportunity to speak with you this evening about uh our dining services program. Um again, as Jim
042mentioned, my name is Steve Schlim. I'm the food service director for Aramark here at Indian Hill. Uh very excited to be here. Um the primary reason I'm here is to speak to our national school lunch program compliance. However, I'd like to use this opportunity to also speak to, you know, a few of the things we've done in the past few months to sort of reinvigorate the program and uh make some enhancements that have really so far led to some to some significant growth. So I don't know if I have the presentation or should I just do you have that shared to me >> go ahead and get started. Um what emailed >> share it to drive >> share drive. Yeah. >> So uh basically um roughly January of last year we really uh I started
043November a year ago and Um by January we were really implementing some significant changes. Um these changes uh have led to quite a bit of growth. Um uh we are significantly up in our daily meals served as well as revenue for the school. Um we have done this through um what we're here to do which is food. Um, we completely revamped uh our menus and how we do our menu planning and production and such every day. That was the first slide I I referenced uh just showing the growth. Top part is January through May of last year. Uh just in the short time uh we initiated uh the changes uh that we had made. Uh we had we saw some significant impact. Um the bottom portion is uh fall of this year compared to fall
044of last year. Um it's broken out differently because uh we broke out uh the middle school and the high school uh to a different model and and contract than the elementary and primary school. So I kind of had to um break the numbers out uh in a different fashion uh to show the results. But if you see on the far right uh the revenue to the school uh this time uh at this time last year versus this time this year has uh increased significantly. Uh yes COVID was involved in those numbers last year but we were also providing uh remote meals to uh those learning at home last year at this time. So even with those numbers included uh we have significantly grown from this time last year. And so this is the slide uh
045about some of the changes we've made in our menu and our food. Um just coming in the door uh really emphasizing uh fresh fresh and producing uh our offerings inhouse from recipes. Um we have a great uh menu tool with Aramark called Prima. It does a lot of things. One of the things it provides is consistency through you know the same recipes uh from school to school. Um so we can uh not only be nutritionally accurate but just you know uh a quality offering uh as you go from primary to elementary to middle and so on. Um you're going to have that same experience no matter what school uh you're at at the time. um needed a lot of influx of fresh fruits and vegetables. Um we felt uh and we have uh done quite
046a bit to bring them into the operations. Uh especially at the primary and elementary schools, we really felt like that was something that was necessary. Um, we use these not only as just straight upside items and and offerings in that regard, but in our recipes uh and in just our daily production. It really makes for a noticeable difference in the in the food that we produce. And excuse me, through the use of the production tools that are also available on our Prima system, we are able to better uh forecast how much we need to produce um on a given day for a given menu item. So that the students, you know, in third lunch bell uh are receiving the same variety and same same quality as the students in the first lunch bell. And this
047also allows us to, you know, reduce the waste, the hard work we put into producing this great food. We don't want it going into the waste bucket. So we're able to better predict that and reduce the waste. on the next slide. Um, these are just I won't go into everything, but we've also introduced a lot of promotions, lot of just fun menu days, partnerships with people uh uh involved with the school to, you know, to add again uh that positive influx, positive spin uh into the dining uh services. Um everything all all the pictures you see on there uh proud to say are you know those aren't stock photos those are the food we are producing every day the promotions we are doing the marketing we are presenting every day um and I just wanted
048to show that off because we are proud of it um one of the things I will mention just happened recently and that is a partnership we're doing with the Indian Hill Global Parent Group and it is our international entree of the month. Uh we just did our first one in December, so it's very young. Um but in essence, we meet with parents from the group. They suggest uh an offering. We work with them to produce that offering. Our our team produces the offering. Uh but the parents come in on that day and serve it and talk to the students about about the food. And it went over very well the first time and we're looking forward to uh continuing this uh into the future. Then on the next slide, this is uh spec similar but
049specific to the high school. Uh the reason we just wanted to touch base on the high school is that's kind of where we kicked things off. Um we we used the high school as our model to kind of move into the other schools. We're really trying to create more of a uh college feel in the high school dining. Um we made significant investment in equipment and small wares team was you know it it besides food it starts with team and we really had to invest in our team um but we've really been able to increase again not only the variety and the quality um but just you know make it fun make it uh more you know of a restaurant feel and we're proud to show off what we do. So that's uh just some
050again pictures of what we actually do. And then finally, the real reason I'm here, the National School Lunch Program. Um the primary and elementary schools are on the National School Lunch Program. Um what is required by the National School Lunch Program is some very specific criteria to make sure that we are in compliance with the program. Um we take the steps necessary to make sure that we are in compliance with the program at these schools. Um, again, not to keep tooting the Prima horn, but uh, our menu uh, planning tool Prima, these recipes are uh, analyzed uh, nutritionally by our corporate dieticians and built into the system. So, it's very easy for us to plan uh, our menus in accordance with the USDA and the National School Lunch Program and meet that criteria by using
051that tool. Um, uh, our on-site team, uh, all of our leads, all of our our cooks and ladies that, you know, are just there greeting the kids and getting them through the line, they all receive training, uh, in regards to both Aramark programs, but more importantly, the USDA criteria, so that they, uh, are always on their game and they know what to produce. Uh, even if I'm not checking up on them, etc., they're they're wellversed in the program. And through this they are also able to help the students um so that the students know what they need to choose for a meal in order for that meal to you know meet the nutritional guidelines of the USDA. And then finally through this program we also uh take part in government commodities. Um we get co
052various sorts of commodities through various programs. Um but they help us remain compliant and you know nutritionally accurate uh on our programs on our menu. And this is all done at no cost to the district as well. And then finally on the next slide or almost finally I should say uh the way we make the service work in the cafes we follow the offer versus serve program. Um what we are required to do as Aramark and as your dining service is make sure the five components of a of a quality what do you of a compliant meal are are available to the students each and every day. Those five components are a fruit component, vegetable component, whole grain component, meat or meat substitute and milk. In order for that student's meal to qualify, they need
053to take three of those five components. Um, with one of their choices being a fruit or a vegetable, they cannot duplicate their choice as well. Uh, so it has to be three different choices. They they are welcome to take up to all five choices. Um, again, they cannot duplicate the their selections. Um, but that is in essence, you know, how the team is trained, how the program works, and how we make sure students are receiving uh a nutritious quality meal that qualifies for the program each and every day. The final slide, um, just some contact information for anybody, uh, interested or in need. Uh, my information is at the top there. Uh, Cassie McGawan is a recent addition to our team. She's our operations manager and she is currently out unfortunately. Uh but her information
054is on there as well. I office out of the high school. She offices out of the primary school. Um but we kind of tag team to make sure uh the needs of the district are taken care of. Um you can always stop by and see us if you're ever in the building as well. So that's really all I have for today. If anybody has any questions or anything, I'd be happy to answer them. If not, one just quick question because I don't know the answer to this. What is the average cost of a lunch for the students? >> Um I if you're primary elementary school it's it's free uh as part of the program. Um at the high school everything is alle cart. So there is not like a the old what I would say
055the traditional back in my day you know you go to the cafeteria and it's meatloaf and mashed potatoes and etc. And it was all for one price. So, because we're trying to make it more of a college feel, we we provide a lot of choices um and give the student the option to make those choices uh as far as uh putting together their own meal component, so to speak. So, you know, a hamburger is $329 or something along those lines. Uh we do an action station every day. Uh now the action station is a in essence what I would say a full meal. Um so it would be like today was like stir fry bar with uh chicken and veggies over rice with spring rolls etc. And that was $4.99. >> So students can get
056in and out of there for lunch for five, six, seven bucks. >> By all means they can. Yes. >> Now we also offer things like big cookies. So that sometimes adds to that five, six, seven. Those are very popular. But thank you. Thank you. >> So can I ask you one quick question? So how many of our like staff members are you seeing enjoying this lunch? >> I'm sorry. >> Do you see our staff coming in and enjoying this lunch? >> We that's one of our one of my goals and our goals is to bring in more staff. Um we have seen an increase. We're still not where we would like to be. Um, we are introducing, just to throw it out there, we're introducing some things like our traveling chef program and stuff, which
057will be a chef who's visiting the school on a regular rotation. I'm also designing an adult menu, uh, so they feel like there's, you know, options there that might not just be, you know, more geared towards the student to hopefully increase that participation. >> Okay. And one last question is that there are some students who uh when they were in primary elementary they were on reduced lunch. How are we dealing with those kids? >> The kids that eat a reduced or free lunch in high school and middle school. >> Yeah. >> So what we do is we have a um they are still able to get a free lunch in essence or a reduced lunch. What we do is we keep track of that separately and I communicate that information uh to to Mick at
058the end of the month with the students that have received that benefit. >> So you do have besides the alakart menu, do you have something basic like you know that they can buy it at a reduced price >> so that they don't have to pay that much? So, so what the students on the reduce and such receive, they they're they can come in and receive a sandwich or a burger and with a side dish and a water or a juice and that's provided to them at no charge. >> Thank you, Steve. Thank you. >> Anything else, Mr. Nichols with the operations report? >> No, Steve did a great job. I will say that that cookie is no joke. if you get a chance, that warm chocolate chip cookie, it's worth it's worth every bit. >>
059Thank you, Mr. Nichols. Uh if we could uh move on to the superintendent report at this time. Uh under uh item 17, letter A, we have some personnel actions, tuition reimburse, and professional meetings to approve. Uh number one is approval of a staff contracts. Um number two is a change of a contract for administrative assistant. Number three is something I'd like to point out and just remark on shortly here is that's the increase in the daily substitute teacher pay rate to $100 a day. Um this is something that's going to help us make uh uh or shore up our staff which is already a strong uh substitute pool but I think also make us more competitive in the region uh as we're concerned about staffing overall. We're all seeing shortages in all industries including education.
060Uh many of you who uh have been on the board and who pay attention to public schools know there has been a crisis prior to the pandemic for some time in people entering the field of education and people wanting to work in the field of public education and we need to address that and fix that not just here locally but regionally and nationally and u sometimes there are connotations associated with substitute teachers. I just want to take a moment to praise and thank and show gratitude for the substitute teachers we have in the Indian Hill schools who come here and are dedicated and committed to working here and many of them have been with us for years. They have done a phenomenal job throughout the pandemic. They show up consistently. They are dedicated. They are
061highly uh intelligent people, mature educators who know their work. and to be able to continue to add to that pool and to also um compensate them fairly is really important. So, I just wanted to make a comment about number three as we move forward. Uh number four is the approval of substitutes. Uh number five is the approval of some retirement resignations we've received. Number six is several tuition reimbursements. I think I need to ask for an approval of one through five separate. Mr. Davis, is that correct? We would want to do letter B separate. >> Oh, item B can be part of your >> Okay. Then uh moving on to letter B, we have another resolution declaring the impractability of transportation and offering a payment to parents in lie of transportation. Um and we receive
062those um uh at intervals throughout the school year. Typically, we'll get more at the start of a school year, but we do receive them uh over time. Um if there are no questions or comments, >> I've got a question. >> Sure. >> Mr. on the on the pay on the increase. What was it? And when was the last time we increased it before today? >> Uh I'm not sure on the history of the last time I believe we were paying $92 per day. >> Do you feel like we're on the front edge of that range? Are we competitive now? Are you happy with where that is? >> I think for a school district of our size in this uh geographic region of uh Yes. And >> I would just add also one one of the
063things that's really helped us is the uh board's willingness to allow us to have board uh building substitutes. And for those folks, they start at 162 a day because they're committing to us every single day. They're really what's allowed us to stay open because they're always there. And that's what I was getting at and just trying to make sure we're ahead of this curve and how can we continue to be at the front end of this so we have the the the back uh the backdrop of being able to have these these substitute teachers and be at the front of the line. So you feel like we're in good shape from this point going forward. >> Yeah. With both of those rates in place. I think so. >> Thank you. >> Well, I just want
064to commend Mr. Mr. Nichols and the team because having those building substitutes is a really smart idea. Knowing that we're going to have multiple people out different times and having people sort of precommitted that we know are really solid people. Such a smart idea. So, it's great you guys have been doing that. >> Well, we'll shout out our administrative assistants in each building because every morning they're up making phone calls and connecting and building relationships with those substitutes and it's why again we're able to operate. >> So, again, a thank you. Um, if there are no other questions, I'd ask you, Mr. Talls, to entertain the approval of number 17 A and B. At this time, >> we need to have a motion. >> Yes. >> Is there a motion to approve? >> So move.
065>> Second. >> Mr. Summerall, vote. Yes or no? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Iicults. >> I. >> Mr. Marks, >> yes. >> Mrs. Singh, >> yes. >> Mr. Pelos, >> yes. Thank you. >> So with that, I'll begin the treasur's report for this evening. Uh my report begins by the approval of the minutes of the December 14th, 2021 regular meeting to approve the financial reports for the month ending December 31st, 2021. Approve the following construction contracts. The first is Wcansa USA, a change order for GMP number two to demolish the canopy. Um, that was the item that Mr. Nichols referenced earlier. Uh, that total was $15,784.68. Uh, we actually went ahead, we were going to do that in the summer of 22. Um, to quote, uh, the Godfather, we got an offer we couldn't refuse and
066we got a great price on that. um and went ahead and had the canopy taken down in December when no students were here for the holiday break. Uh the second item is also a scansa. It's a change order for GMP number two. It's a for the abatement and demolition permit. That's actually a deduct of $10,5561. And the final is with scansa. It's a use of allowance for camera investigations. Uh what use of allowance means is this was in the original GMP contract um as an item that they thought could happen. Um they needed to do some investigations for some of our buildings I think at the primary and elementary level uh to look at some duct work and some plumbing. So they went ahead and asked to use that allowance and that is what this
067change order describes. Item D is to approve the following contracts for the 2021 2022 school year. Uh, we have Griffin sports equipment for high school gymnasium scoreboards. $49,480. Um, I'm proud to admit that the money for both of those, there's going to be two scoreboards that go up in the high school gymnasium. All money was donated by people um outside of the outside of our district and we're able to get those done and put into the gymnasium. Very happy we could do it that way. Item two is school force solutions for a nursing um agent $66 per hour. And finally, a power school for a license and subscription fees $27,377.24. And the final item under my report is the acceptance of donations. Uh the first is with PRACO for the athletic high school gym scoreboard.
068As we discussed earlier, uh PRACO donated 25,000 which was for one scoreboard. Uh, item two is for Alexander Kaine and Jod Yetzer for the high school. They donated $2,000 to our Pow-Wow production. As always, I love thanking the community members for their donations. We really appreciate that and it really helps us do a lot of extra things in the school district that we normally couldn't do. At this time, I would ask if there's any questions regarding my report. >> Just one question because I don't know what is Power School. >> Uh, Dr. Stewart, can you There are several data warehouse systems that we use. So to give you a reference, um when I first started to teach to grab all information that you needed on the child, you used to have to go to the
069cumulative folder that got really thick over time that included all of the back information on students, report cards, transcripts, test scores, everything like that. It's now digitized and this is a company that allows us to keep all of that information. So it's readily available to teachers at all times. >> Thank you. >> If there are no further questions, I would ask that the board approve items A through E of the treasures report. >> Is there a motion to approve? >> I move to approve 18 A through E. >> All right. >> Mr. Marks. >> Yes. >> Mr. Summer. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Iicults. >> I. >> Mrs. Singh. I >> Mr. Tullus. >> Yes. And I echo your thank yous for the donations. >> Then that concludes my report tonight. Thank you. >> Did you
070then talk about the the Are you 19 as well? >> Yes. >> So each year I prepare a uh tax budget that must be submitted to the county auditor prior to January 15th. Um, I'm required by law to post that um that advertisement in the newspaper that that budget is ready and then I have to have a copy ready on our website and for anybody who asked for one this year they were located at the high school building. Um, what I do to prepare this is I take uh my five-year forecast from November and I look at all of our revenue that we're receiving and I reconcile the revenue that we're getting through taxes and other sources in a budget and reconcile that with the 5-year forecast. It then also asks for our bond um
071the the account we used to repay the bonds with. Um then I reconcile that each year. I give the balances of the bonds and how much we need to pay in principal and interest each year and then we send that to the county auditor. They'll send back uh resolutions for us to approve. That usually comes in April and we will approve that we we um accept the budgets and bids or budgets and rates that they give us uh in April. Uh I've I've asked for six years in a row if there's any public commentary for this and have not received any to this point. So, at this time, I will ask if there's any public commentary for the fiscal year 2023 tax budget hearing. Any brave souls willing to come up for the tax budget
072hearing? And for six years in a row, we've we've had a perfect run. Um, nobody is coming to um comment on that. So, with that, I would ask the board to approve our fiscal year 2023 tax budget. Uh, is there a motion to approve the 2023 tax fiscal year tax budget? >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> Mrs. Iicults. >> I. >> Mr. Simall. >> Approve. >> Mr. Marks. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Singh. >> Yes. >> Mr. Tullus. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> And I will say I did read it and it was very well put together. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Uh with that we move on to other business presentation by Mr. Kckki regarding CO 19. Thank you. So we've gone through a similar slide deck in the past and I'll
073just um again review um for all purposes our assumptions that are our priority as a board and a district is inschool learning. We're going to continue to mitigate the likelihood of spread with our daily, weekly cleaning and safety protocols that are in place. We're going to continue to monitor and receive local, regional, state, and national data. I'll talk a little bit about about that later. And input from our area health partners and government officials to make informed decisions. We're only offering in-person learning at this time, and all of our typical annual school calendar activities are planned. Um, just to note with that, we have had to cancel um two basketball games. We uh also are going to be rescheduling a uh concert. Uh these are things that you know last year may have just been
074postponed outright or not held at all. This year we are taking those case by case as we go through. U and basically it's dependent upon illness and and spread within that club team organization group. Um we are not cancelling those things outright. We are trying to reschedule anything we have to. Um and that's just important for people. We have a number of students obviously involved in activities and trying to make sure we can reschedule those events um when people are well is is really important. Some current considerations uh obviously we issued a release today um putting in place a short-term mask mandate uh that was uh issued midday today uh for those who are not aware yet. Um, we're requiring all visitors, staff, and students to wear masks inside all school buildings on campus at
075all times. Uh, beginning tomorrow through the end of the school day on January 21st. Uh, our staffing operations is our priority. And as we have seen over the last week, uh, we have fluctuated, especially the last four work days, greatly uh, with some of our staffing in certain buildings, which I'll talk a little bit more about in just a moment. There is still a federal transportation order in place that requires masks on all public transportation, including school buses, through March of 2022. Um, we should hear some more information about that next month about whether that will be amended, extended, or or will expire. Um, and I'll share when I learn. Currently, we ask all travelers who are following the CDC risk level four for quarantine only. That's the highest risk level. Um and that changes
076weekly as you can imagine by the different countries who um are on that. Um negative test results are now required um to enter into the United States 24 hours before arrival and in most cases with those companies, those countries again after you're home for 3 days. Just something to keep in mind. We know we have a lot of families who travel. Couple of other current considerations. Um, again, we are going to continue to uh proactively offer uh assistance and resources. So, we will be offering some on-site rapid testing as Mr. Nichols uh mentioned uh at the IIH auditorium for the next two weeks with Ethos. There'll be more information shared out to families tomorrow about that. But we're going to try this a couple of times to try to provide a rapid testing option for
077our school community. We'll also be offering a vaccine booster clinic once again on site January 31st from 1 to 6:00 p.m. at the IH auditorium. And again, we're going to continue to promote and offer these opportunities for those who may be interested. I do want to note we've typically offered four clinics in the past. Hamilton County's um public health department has shifted the way they are offering resources through our partnership. So, we were only allowed to request one clinic at this time. That's why we're only offering one. We did um get five hours uh from them though, so we appreciate the the assistance and that partnership. Uh Tri Health, our other uh partners who we work with, um we set this strategic partner up uh partnership up about two years ago. They continue to offer
078resources for both um vaccines and boosters daily as well as testing at a number of their sites. If you go to the trihealth.com coronavirus site, there are three buttons on that web page. you can choose the one that you have an interest in and um you will get information and access to go find out about testing uh uh get a vaccine, get a booster shot. You can do that daily right now through Tri Health. Uh we mentioned the federal transportation order already. Um we have a rationale that we've used in the past and I just want to review this again for the internal review of data. We get a lot of questions about what is it you're looking at and when and how and where do you get it from? So, I just want to
079go over a couple of those things. First of all, um we are always looking at local zip code data now and we we were happy that Hamilton County was able to break that down and start to show us zip code data by age groups. That demographic data is really important. Um we're also looking at state case load trends and regional case load trends. We're using the same websites we've been using for over two years. the Ohio uh Department of Health uh corona virus update uh dashboard uh the Hamilton County health update and dashboard the CCTST report that's issued every Thursday morning as a link um and that that is comprised by area uh regional doctors and health officials from the hospital associations. We continue to hear input from stakeholders. I put an aster asterisk there
080because we got a specific question. As the research evolution goes along, we are in contact with Tri Health's team. Uh Mr. Rob Dunham is my primary point of contact. I talk to Rob all the time. So if there's new information, they just had a staff meeting today. He shares with me what's going on in that staff and team meeting once it's over. Um we also hear from Dr. Fagan, Steven Faggin, uh, who represents the leadership team for Mercy Health and the CCTST group that meets on a conference call every Friday with all superintendents from the Hamilton County area and the region and shares out reports to us from all of the hospital systems, um, including Children's and their leadership team about what's going on and their recommendations. Just so that everybody is aware, we made
081some changes to our district dashboard. Uh for those of you who are checking out that website, we know we have some people that like to look at it daily. We broke out the data so you can see daily student and staff cases in quarantine and then you can also have a cumulative look each Friday. We reset that and we start over each week and then we update that daily as we collect our attendance each day. Um so you can go to the Indian Hill Schools website and find that uh any time and we can share that link with anybody who's interested uh in seeing that. couple of our pieces of data that we want to share some updates about and I think this is a real celebration uh for our school community. Um again our
082teachers have done an amazing job and we knew this coming back from break as well. Over 95% of our teachers are fully vaccinated and of those who we have continued to survey and ask to provide information internally many many are already have already received their booster shots. Um we we know we cannot share publicly, but we know that we have a group of people who for whatever reason may not be able to get a vaccine shot or a booster at a certain time. Um but the overwhelming majority of our staff are protected and that's really important. And coming back from our holiday break, our staffing was really strong. And so kudos to our teachers and all of our support staff um for being prepared. Student data is really good, too. And I just again want
083to thank our students and our families. Our student data for grades 1 through 7 and specifically grades 1 through six is up over 15% overall in one month since the last time we did this report in terms of students getting their vaccines. I think that is um a a wonderful tribute to the dedication of our entire school community to try to stop spread and deal with COVID. I'm really proud of our students and families that have chosen this as an option. And if you think about these numbers and where we were a month ago, um, boy, they've really shot up. Um, and seventh grade just stands out right now as an example. And they are in a standalone building, just as a reminder this year. 733% of those students and most of those families responded
084to us. And we really appreciate them sharing that information when we push out a survey. That's an amazing number in this area. And if you compare that to other zip codes and other school data, we should be really proud of that and really proud of our students and families. grades 8 through 12. We've we've also seen some growth when you again when you look at the percent of people who've responded to our surveys over and over again. Anytime we get over 70% from a parent survey, we're thrilled. We're getting over 90% response rates and high 70s nearing 80% vaccine rates of those who are responding. That is again a tribute to our students and families and and that helps us be safe and make the decisions we make on our campus. case load data uh
085continues to change. Uh I think we all know uh the week returning to school. Uh we saw a spike in case numbers across buildings, specifically the primary and the middle school. Last week our our high school, specifically grades 9 and 10 were hit hard and some of our staffing at our elementary school. Again, we see uh fluctuation across four buildings on campus and across different staffs and different student groups. Uh as we continue to go through here, um the last two weeks, we've had uh much larger case loads. Um, as we all know, when we look at quarantine data, again, I just want to remind people that with the changes to a lot of the language that ODH has put out for inschool uh, use with mask to stay, test to play, we are lessening
086the amount of time students have to isolate or quarantine uh, as well as staff and they are allowed to stay in school, of course, regardless of vaccinating vaccine status, if they mask, if they are considered a close contact. So, our quarantine numbers have dropped and we should continue to see them be lower as we give these reports moving forward. Uh, and again, last week I think represents with our student number the highest number we've had in some time and the highest number of close contacts with cases in some time as our students were returning from the holiday break and travel. Many siblings um uh considered close contacts and having to quarantine uh with one another or stay home as reported to us. So we hope to see that number again. >> Sorry to interrupt. A
087quick question to make sure I'm understanding the data. When we're showing the quarantine data, so we have 37 people. Is that as of January 7th that there were 37 people that day in the end of that week cumulative that week >> total? So we we keep that report through Friday ends at 17 and at the end of the day we had 37 for that week. We were some of those return right on a rolling basis and then the next week we give you another. So if you're quarantined on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you're going to show up both data sets for this week and then the next week. >> Yeah. And you can see that on the dashboard. You could look every day if you want to update it. And then you can also
088look Friday for that cumulative number. >> And then and this doesn't include the students who are out because they're positive with COVID. Correct. >> Correct. Quarantines are not the COVID cases. >> Okay. And this also doesn't include >> So our daughter was a close contact. She could have quarantined. She's, you know, back in school wearing the mask. That number is not reflected in this. of the people who are so you're only you're only have to quarantine if your exposure is out of school >> um or if you refuse to mask or uh there could be another circumstance with the reporting but yes in general this just reflects people who are um ODH sets those quarantine rules right >> yes it's a class A reporting order which has the effect of law from uh ODH that
089Hamilton County enforces >> thank you >> other questions about quarantine before I move That's a good good clarifying uh point and and that's why you're seeing those dates there is every Friday that's when we we kind of create a cumulative uh look. So some general uh co data again uh updated this is as of yesterday uh federal COVID vaccine rates 73.2% of adults 18 and over across the nation are now fully vaccinated. Um 86.4% of adults 18 and over have at least one dose. 71 a.5% of children 12 and over are now fully vaccinated across the country. That's a wonderful number compared to where it was two months ago. Uh 84.4% of children 12 and over have at least one dose. And 39.4% have a booster dose is 18 and over nationally. Uh our number
090is higher here among our staff. We know this. And um among those students who are 16 and over or and adults 16 and up who've been able to get boosters in our zip code area, we're doing really well and higher than the national average. Um the Ohio vaccination rate 63.31% fully vaccinated for those aged 12 and over and in Hamilton County 58.34% fully vaccinated all ages. And again, in our zip code area, we are in the 80s um for those zip codes that serve our school district as compared to Hamilton County as a whole. I think it's important to just distinguish that as we move forward when we're looking at vaccine data. >> Can I ask you a quick question? Yeah. >> So, do we know how many of our high school students are have
091received booster or are they eligible for that? >> Um, anybody uh who's 12 and over is now eligible. We do not know that number uh today. We have not surveyed for that yet. >> So, are we uh going to offer them those clinics where they can get a booster? >> We're going to offer one on January 31st. >> So, that's when they can come and get a booster, >> but they can also go get one tomorrow at Tri Health at any site if they they choose to sign up. >> That's good to know. Thank you. >> Was there another question there, Mr. >> I've got a question. So, you will be adding the booster information as as the year goes forward into the data that >> Yes, we will be pushing out. We will continue
092to push out and ask our parents to share survey information to us at intervals before the monthly meetings. >> Thank you. >> Um, some people have asked the question about, okay, uh, how are you making these decisions right now? And the board actually put in some guard rails and passed a resolution back in December. I just want to remind people of we're not just looking at this dayto day and week to week and saying, "Okay, we don't like this one number." Again, we're looking at a number of factors that work in combination with one another for grade level and decision and building level decision-making. Um, and I will just give you an example. When we were looking at the attendance and looking at masking, we're looking at staffing first and operations. And then we're looking
093also at student cases and overall attendance. And uh the high school, for example, many of you may recall, had very low case numbers, quarantine numbers, and very high vaccination rates all through the fall and even into December. Last week was the worst week the high schools had in over a year. Grade nine and 10 for whatever reason. We had a lot higher case rate. Um we know that we also have high vaccination rates in those grade levels. But we also started to have staffing strain at the high school. And then all of those things taken into consideration. We're looking at grade level decisions about masking and then a building level decision about masking. that happened in combination with a problem at the elementary school with staffing and some cases that grew throughout the week um
094as we came back on the Monday and Tuesday. Um so again we're looking at um these items grade level staff absences total number of student absences COVID case numbers quarantine case percentages and then what we're also getting in concert with those factors from local health the research evolution on omocron what's going on with the estimate of the peak um what's going on with our own staffing and then making a decision and the decision factors are for two week mask mandates and or remote learning options. So, it's it's not about taking a month or taking 6 weeks or taking two days. We're trying to stick with those guard rails of a two week short-term mass mandate because that's what we discussed. Um I just want to make sure that we clarify that because we did have
095a couple of questions about that uh over the last few days. Kirk, Kirk, on those questions and as I've tried to educate myself about this as much as I can, the data is all confusing and it seems to me when I go to look at the data, you you can manipulate it or find somebody to manipulate it for you however you want it to and I find that troubling to to try to understand what the data is. I is are any of these numbers more important than the others as we look through these four items? Is there one that we say, "Okay, this is the the number one a concern or is it just a I mean, are the the folks you're talking to saying it's really a balance of all of these items on
096any given day?" Well, I to answer your question from what I've been told first by health officials over time is what health officials and doctors in the region and the state have focused on has shifted over the last two and a half years and it's also shifted by variant. So right now how they feel and what they look at with omocron may not be the exact same as what they were looking at with delta or originally when co was new to all of us and so hearing that research and hearing what the focus is is really important and I'll give you an example the R number or the reproductive rate for Hamilton County is right now 1.29 I believe uh whereas maybe a few weeks ago it was one one or less is better. Uh
097if it's over one then you know that multiplication rate starts to get higher and higher. Um that's a really important number uh or data piece that is shared with us weekly by Dr. Fagens. Uh also the positivity percentage in the county and in the region. And so if it's over um you may recall two years ago if it was over 5% they didn't want people traveling. If it's over 7% you know you have significant spread. If it's over 9% you have really significant spread in your area. We're over 9% again. and and so we need to really watch that. And so those are some of the things that they share with us weekly. And then of course we've talked about this in the past and we continue to look at these daily and weekly and
098you all get a running report every week. The number of COVID cases we have by grade level, the number of quarantines. Um and we're always looking at the the 0 to 19 age group impacted locally, how many of them enter and stay in a hospital. We've been paying attention to that very closely. Uh we look at our zip code cases overall and how they grow over time for every zip code that feeds into populating our school district and also the vaccination demographics for those zip codes. And and those are the things that we're constantly looking at along with these other guardrail um factors that we've talked about. Um and again, we share this information and um we're willing to share this information. It's transparent. I can show people where we get it from, but the
099dashboard reflects the two keys for us right now, which really are cases and quarantines. And then we survey parents for an incomplete data set to get vac vaccine rates, which may never be a complete data set, but our parents have done a great job of giving us that information as well. There are a couple of other future considerations and just things that we talk about. I just go over quickly and then I'd be glad to take any questions. Uh again, we're going to continue to look at weekly staffing and attendance. Uh overall staffing attendance and overall student attendance. That's how we operate schools, right? And they they are not exclusive of one another. You can imagine a teacher's job when um the numbers start to change and you can imagine the stress on students when
100they're dealing with subs versus teachers o overtime. Um we're we're paying attention to all that. uh those vaccine rates now for our youngest Braves, five and over, and how that continues to change over time, is going to be really important. And those numbers we shared tonight are really something to celebrate and we hope to see them continue to grow if people choose to take advantage of of the vaccines. We know that booster rates are going to increase for those 12 and over. I would urge anybody who has students, and we have over 82% of our students involved in a club or activity or sport here in our district. If we want to continue those things first, to continue in-person learning, we need to protect ourselves. And so, I hope people will consider the opportunities that
101are out there. Uh, we're going to continue to get input daily and weekly from our health officials and governing bodies. And, uh, we know that we can amend our plans if we need to. Um, I just again want to remind people we have partners. Um, we know that there are mental health issues that we need to deal with and address. and if somebody ever wants to talk to one of our counselors, teachers, principles, we do have partners and resources we connect people with. And um you know, we're we're trying to be mindful of that as we move forward as well. Um finally, in terms of our communications, we're going to continue to update our dashboard. We're going to put another release out to families tomorrow with all the information we just shared tonight. And we're
102going to continue to look at this data weekly. We will not issue another change to our plan tomorrow or next week because it's a two-week mandate. We will get back to our parents a week from Wednesday and let them know what's coming that following week so that they have time to plan ahead. Um, and that's where we are today with our our COVID operations update. And if you have any other questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them. So, one question, I haven't watched the news. As it relates to President Biden's mandate of over a hundred that impacts the school, correct? >> Uh, no, not not right now. Legally for our organization, it does not. Um, there's language that it does not impact public school entities. >> Okay, great. Awesome. And then one thing
103I think that might be helpful is on the CO dashboard is just putting some descriptors of, you know, the COVID plus number of students, what does that actually mean under the quarantine? what does it mean? Just so that as a parent getting on there and I'm looking, I'm trying to understand it. I think it'll be helpful for them just to be able to have more of a descriptive. Um, and I know it's a ton of work because you guys are spending hours trying to capture that, but thanks. >> We'll look at some we'll look at and some more details. >> Yeah. Thanks for all you guys are doing. >> Thank you. I think another question that we might um bump into and it would be good to sort of have a perspective and I think
104you've sort of said this already um but I think we're dealing with a couple different issues. We're dealing with um the quarantine aspect because that's one thing when we have kids who are exposed who aren't sick but they have to quarantine and they may or may not want to stay in school. So, we've got that and then you have now the mask mandate and the question of um I know there was some concern about the um efficacy of cloth masks. So, I think maybe sort of talking a little bit about what exactly we're trying to accomplish. I mean, I think we're trying to accomplish two things. Keeping children healthy and keeping them in school. I mean, I get that. But I do think that there might be some confusion about exactly why um the children
105are back in masks. Does that question make sense? >> Um yeah. So number one again the primary driver of the decision-m looking at the guardrail information was staffing absences and staffing impact when it came to COVID over the last week after we returned from the holiday break so that we could maintain in-person learning. Um, and so again, if the priority is inerson learning and operations and the masking as a safety layer can help slow or mitigate, that was really important. That does not mean we're discounting case loads or student rates. We are also then concerned about student cases in quarantine um and student um attendance overall because again, we have students who miss school and it's not for COVID reasons. And so all those numbers grow over time. Um, so we're watching those daily rates
106for both of those groups very closely. Again, assuming we would have more COVID cases than quarantine in general moving forward. Um, last week we had records, you know, for both um, across certain grade levels and other grade levels held. Um, so those are the two main drivers. And then of course because of mask to stay um, and test to play, you know, you can imagine right now we have some confusion. We have people who aren't sure what to do whether they're vaccinated or not. The mask to stay was put in place specifically for schools so that they the notion would be that it would make contact tracing easier. It actually has not. It's it's a huge burden on our administration and staff. And we appreciate all the information that that staff can collect and that
107parents share, but the the amount of time it takes to contact trace, that's a problem. And the timing also creates confusion sometimes if you don't get an answer about a rapid test or you're waiting to see if a friend thought you were a close contact and then parents have questions about that in school activity versus out of school activity is also really confusing right now. So that I'm glad that you brought this up Nancy. One of the things about the masking is we can only control contact tracing for cases that happen in school. If somebody um is a close contact outside of school or they have to mask or quarantine, we may never know. If they report to us, we have to kind of work on the honor system and then we have to decide
108whether we report that or not because if it's not a school activity, we're not required to report it. Over the last two years though, as this thing has evolved, some of our parents has assumed that we would be the only body that would report these things because we're the only ones mandated to by a county. But really our focus is reporting in school activity only and that has caused some con concern and confusion. So then people say well what's why a mask then? Usually it's because of a close contact and it's because of the mask to stay order which ODH issued not our district. Um and those things are still in place. The good news is if you have to isolate you can come back now after 5 days if you if people look at
109it that way. can come back after 5 days if your symptoms are gone or abading. And so we also can lessen the time that people have to be out of work or out of school if they are exposed and and that is going to allow us to operate much better than we could a year ago when we had these types of absences. So hopefully we see omocron peak and hopefully we see better attendance overall because of the new CDC language. One last thing I think is just to mention is mask. Whether we're talking about the efficacy or the type of mask or how a student or adult wears it, we have always taken the approach that our professional staff who I believe are worldclass will take it case by case and try to educate children
110and adults to make sure that they're following the board policy to wear their face covering properly and and I think that's the best we can do. And I think our students and families and staff have tried to do their best. >> What is our current what is the average number of teachers out? Uh over the last week we have had a low day of 19 staff. Not this is not just teachers, 19 staff out and I believe we've had a high day of 28. So we've fluctuated in between. Um just to give you some comparison bear when our elementary school had to go remote last fall we had a day where we made a decision where we had over 34 staff out and six unfilled subs so almost 40 staff and we had high numbers
111of cases among staff and students and it was across four grade levels which was why that building went remote for 5 days. However, there were a couple things that are different now that were not in place then. Back then, those students weren't vaccinated and didn't have boosters. Um, back then, we didn't have the change CDC language on the time out of school. So, your quarantine term was going to be at least 7 days or longer. It could be 14. So, we could lose a staff member for maybe 3 weeks. those things have changed and so we do expect to see better staffing and better numbers moving forward partly because of the way that we're treating the virus now and and when people have to isolate um and also because our vaccine and booster rates have
112have gone up dramatically. >> Kirk, what was the percentage roughly of the staff when you said it got to the boiling point where you had the problem with the spike in the staff? What what percentage of our staff would that be a pro? Well, we were over 25% on that day that we were going to have to look at making that decision. >> So, for you when it gets to that danger zone, is that above 20%, above 15%, how do you >> Well, I I think you know coming back in um we look at an average daily uh attendance issue with staff sometimes fluctuates between let's just say 9 to 12. So, we were double that coming back in. So, we've had a a level of concern um from the day that we returned. However,
113those weren't all teachers. So, again, we're looking at teachers, aids, bus drivers, and you know, trying to keep that in mind as we go ahead. Our teaching numbers were really good the first couple days back. And now we've seen some trending um up in the last few days. That's been concerning, especially at the elementary level and and at the high school level. >> Thank you. as it relates to data, are we able to tell? Is it even possible to figure out where the students and the teachers who are testing positive where they're contracting it? Meaning, are they getting it in the school? Are they getting it at a sport? Are they getting it through their normal course of life? Um, you know, I think Mr. Talis, that's a good question. However, I don't think anybody
114can answer that question. I don't want to try and if somebody would like to assign responsibility or blame for case spread in the community, I would like to talk to them separately. Um if there's one thing I've learned in the last two years, community spread is community spread and it's also a shared community responsibility to stop it. Um when we came back from break, we learned some things about spread. Um and we're dealing with it and I think we have to do that as a community. >> Yeah. Thank you. If there's nothing further, thank you. And um that's that's the COVID report for this evening. And I just want to say for the benefit of all of our parents that that spoke and people who are listening, we are going to continue to monitor this
115and be vigilant daily and weekly and we will communicate out that information tomorrow to families. Um and we'll be in touch again about the the future. Um we're taking it a day at a time. >> And I would just like to to circle back and thank Kirk, you and your team, uh the teachers, the staff, everybody. This is not an easy time to have your job. And I it's we're making health decisions. None of us are doctors and we're we're doing the best that we know how to do. And I know the amount of data. I know the amount of information, the amount of work that you and your team put into making what we believe is the best decision, which is the shared goal of protecting our kids and keeping everybody in school. So,
116thank you for everything you do. Um, our commitment as the board is to continue to learn as much as we can and do everything we can to keep this school open um and move forward in the best possible manner. >> Thank you. >> And I I know the decisions we make times won't please everybody. Um, but we are going to try and and do as best we can. >> So, thank you. Thank you. Make a motion to Sorry, we'll be better at this next time. This is new. Uh with that um is there a motion to adjourn the regular meeting? >> So move >> second. >> I >> so voice >> I thank you. >> Thank you everyone. Good evening. >> Exclusive coverage on the Indian Hill Television Network has been a copyrighted presentation of
117the Indian Hill High School video department. Board members, don't leave the stage area. We have pictures to take.