001this evening i will call this meeting to order roll call nordic olsen here d peterson here jay peterson boss ward all present please rise and join me for the pledge of 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 okay so at this time in our agenda we have visitors to be heard uh we have a couple of visitors and then as with some past meetings we will take public comment on specific agenda items when we reach those agenda items but first on our visitors to be heard we have joe delvo step up with me today and maybe shannon is going to be here but so we represent the uh the social studies department at
002the high school and um as you may know we um we wrote a grant to the state to take advantage of the history civics pilots grant program and that grant was accepted for a little over 17 000 for us to develop and implement a south dakota and native american history class so i did put a few copies of the grant proposal as it was put together we're really excited about it because we've talked about this for a few years and it kind of all came together really quickly the grant notice came out mr elvi emailed me on a monday we talked about it a little bit i'd never written a grant before it was due on friday so it was really a school i think in community effort everybody kind of got involved it bounced
003around our school and got looked over and proofread by the english department and mr frye added a few comments and we got it in carol helped us she actually wrote a letter supporting it and gave us some insight on just how to put this kind of a grant together and we got it so we're just in the initial kind of planning stages right now for the course ordering materials laying out like the sequence it's a semester course we'll be able to operate in the fall and the spring so we're really excited about it we think it's something that we need on the state level and the community level and um yeah we're just really happy to have it and thanks for all you guys support and carol making it happen and everybody else so can
004i ask what level or like what grade level would students be that would be taking this course ideally the the it would be sophomores through seniors okay so it's open to a wide range of students it is yeah and it's an elective we already have a really great i think selection of electives in our department anyway um so right now it's kind of figuring out where does it fit in there does something have to go um in order to fit this in but we'll kind of work all that out down the road but sophomores through seniors but we're kind of probably targeting juniors and seniors with it but junior year gets pretty hectic anyway so i wouldn't be surprised if we see it fill up with sophomores and seniors but we'll see okay but i
005bet it's really popular we've got if you see and we've worked in um guest speakers drum groups field trips um all kinds of stuff to really put this in you know in into some real life experiences for our kids that's fantastic and i think the other really great thing about it is we're team teaching it um and so we can each kind of draw upon our backgrounds in in education and where we grew up um because we're calling it great plains history and so we can talk about so many of the things that you think our kids know but they don't and um it's it will be really wonderful to be able to mesh the three of our knowledges together i think we haven't totally decided on a name yet so great planes history we're
006working on other questions for lenny and joe i think it's awesome thank you so much for putting in the initiative to apply for it and i think it's a much needed content area and i i'm excited to recommend for my kid to take it good well we're excited to teach you so thank you thank you very much [Applause] next is uh tim sweats insurance good to have you back with us again tim it's a whole different view from out here i'm tim schweizinger i am a for former board member and helped run the campaign to pass the school bond election this past week i wanted to just come tonight say thank you to the community to the district patrons everybody who came out and voted i thought it was a great voter turnout for a
007special election uh takes extra effort for everybody to get out there when there's only one thing on the ballot and the community came through with flying colors they they told us for sure that's that's what they wanted and which we believed but we appreciate that support very much so i want to thank thank the community again that that was wonderful and appreciate their support and confidence one of the other i guess things that i keep thinking about is 40 years ago on 50 years ago former administrators and school board members who laid some really great foundation for us to have land to move forward on such a project as this just a lot of for foresight and we appreciate their foresight that many years ago so you never know where everything leads us and everything
008happens with the purpose it's just difficult to find what that is at the time that it's happening sometimes so a couple things i want to leave the board with things that these are not the only things that came up during public meetings that we had and everything but some of the things that rose to the top for me that i don't want us to forget as we continue planning for that project and we begin construction next spring we heard uh build big vermillion luckily we're expanding the district is expanding in number of students uh vermillion's got a really exciting future with many things going on and we heard that from several community members to build big plan for expansion if you look at all the programs and and our needs today compared to when those
009buildings were built in the 1950s we've added on a couple times and and now we find ourselves where we are today so we need to build with that in mind for our good neighbors that live along dartmouth street there their request is that as we begin construction we be mindful of the noise and the hours that we're constructing and we will we have education going on at the middle school at the same time that we're going through construction so we need to be mindful of that i know they would appreciate all the construction materials staging equipment all that stuff being on the north side of the new building leaving their street open and available to their company and and visitors and that type of thing so that's a another thing just my two cents worth
010you guys know i'm not bashful we've never named the middle school or the high school when we had two elementary buildings there was a reason for each one to have a name and then there's a lot of history that goes along with those names i am of the opinion that maybe we don't need to name the elementary school because it's only one building but we name parts of that school giving us more opportunity something to think about because you guys will be faced with that discussion and then the last piece of advice for what it's worth is as we move through construction and completion of that building and we come to a determination of what we can do with the two existing buildings and and that land be very transparent to the public bring us
011along explain it all to us seven times so that we can remember and uh lead us along with you as as you grapple with that that's another decision point and i think i i saw an advertisement you know if anybody's interested in those buildings you know they are available give mr alby a call any questions for me i appreciate you trusting me with the drive to to get that voted on and a successful conclusion no just our thanks again to the community and to you for not only your leadership when you were on the board but continuing and seeing that through to the end my pleasure thank you thanks thank you thank you tim okay at this time if anyone wishes to address the board on items that are not on the agenda this would
012be the appropriate time to do so if you have that i do ask that you keep your remarks to five minutes that you do not name personnel or students by name and know that no formal action on anything you bring up at this time that is not on the agenda would not happen this evening so anyone who wishes to address the board on any item that's not on the agenda okay we will continue on to approval of the agenda agenda changes mr aldi yes we do have one edition which will be school assessment data which will move to new business a the administrators will be sharing some of the evaluation data okay anything else agenda changes if not i need a motion to approve the amended agenda motion to approve the mended agenda by rachel
013seconded by tim all in favor of jim sorry yeah got him in the mind here rachel and tim all in favor of approving just did it again ah yes justin exactly um approving the agenda as amended please signify by saying aye aye opposed nay abstentions agenda is approved uh declaration of conflicts of interest i have no conflicts of interest rachel i have none jim i have none carol i have none shane i have none okay that brings us to our consent agenda under the consent agenda we will be approving the minutes open enrollments new hires resignations and bills i will read the new hires and resignations but all of is there any questions or anything that you would like to remove from the consent agenda okay so in the consent agenda and again all of
014these items will appear in the minutes of the all meetings uh we have new hires caslin schultz's noon duty aide katie vanderveer part-time special ed kevin hout special ed aide mary griffin executive director of the foundation mackenzie briggs part-time special ed aide mary howard part-time special ed aide madeleine hauser part-time special at aid riley hedberg part-time special ed aide carly kasper bauer part-time special ed aide mckenna pearson for noon duty mackenzie sedlachek noon duty and one resignation chuck rydstrom so we can have a single motion to approve items on the consent agenda so moved by shane second by carol all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed nay motion passes okay that brings us to unfinished business where we have three items we'll begin with the facilities review mr alvey yes uh basically
015um tm had already reported uh the the good news for the facilities review we have uh the successful bond election uh passage last week which we're grateful for uh the details of that will be canvassed here shortly we are continuing to move forward with our our new elementary building project and we are we formed a building committee which will be helpful to work on the internal attributes of the building as well as talk about any of the outside things such as the driveways the parking lots playground equipment additions all the things that would naturally fall in line with the building of this building so that committee has been formed we'll be doing some site visits and and we're working with our architect uh with our weekly meetings now sean irvin from tsp uh who the
016board has worked with the previous projects will be the lead architect for the project and he will begin coming to our monthly school board meetings with updates along with those things we have we'll be working with our bond company to get the financing in order we'll talk about that again under new business but all in all just a a great day for the district to move forward and we're excited that we've got an opportunity to build a 21st century learning environment for our kids and now the the fun work begins with the details of this new project so we will have an established timeline which i'll be able to send to the building committee uh by the end of the week which will outline the drawing phase the bid phase and the construction phase so
017the board will be seeing that by the end of the week so that's it very good any questions on facilities okay second uh item item b our code update happy to report last week that we managed our cases of covet again successfully in the district our patrons our teachers and especially our kids have been doing an outstanding job of staying home when they're ill reporting any illnesses when they have them and more importantly just taking care of hygiene and other needs that their family feels are important with that we had three positive cases last week we do have four cases this week in the district as of today so we we the connection we found is we do have some siblings that that are in different buildings that have uh some of those connections there
018so we're very pleased so far with the results of of the things that are going on there one of the discussion items that we sent to the board was a discussion on close contact quarantines the the numbers of students that we've been missing each week would be anywhere between two and four or five kids that are positive within the district so we're at 1350 kids and we're having four positive cases on average for the start of the school year between our students and our staff which we think is pretty remarkable but what we are seeing is when we see a close contact we could be sending home anywhere between five to twenty kids based on close contacts and that's really showing its detriment to our healthy students so with the help of amy and i'll
019have amy give a talk here if she needs to in a second we're talking with our staff about how can we manage the close contacts instead of sending healthy kids home for seven days or eight days can we find a way to combat that learning loss that potentially we're sending kids home to empty houses and burdening parents to have to find babysitting or staying home themselves so with that in mind we're asking the board to consider some data that we received last week which was we had a student that came to school that was wearing a mask and has always worn masks and that student was covered positive but they unintentionally had exposures to other classmates in their class inadvertently eight students were sent home as close contacts of those eight we had done testing
020on i believe amy six of those eight uh yesterday to make sure if there was any close contacts that turned into exposures and we're happy to report of those eight kids the six that we were able to identify and get testing on none of those six uh became symptomatic nor covet positive and may return to school so that led us to the belief that those masks are working and as intended so the student that is wearing the mask did not have a negative impact on their classmates so we're asking the board to discuss and consider would we allow that if the close contacts of a mask wearing symptomatic student could just come back to school the next day and follow the same protocols we did last year which is that they wear a mask upon
021returning to school and they have to basically they have to be asymptomatic and stay symptom-free so just like we did last year if if there was a symptomatic excuse me a student that was exposed in school and they were wearing masks they were wearing masks last year then we let those students that were close contacts remain in school and we just did health screenings on them and we did their basically wellness checks and then tested them we're asking for that same um leniency this year with students that are close contacts if i'm the masked person in the school that that's ill that none of you as close contacts would have to leave school tomorrow because we'd be able to test you and we'd be able to ask you to come return to school to wear
022a mask the benefit of that of course is if all of you decide to wear masks to school remain symptomatic and we test you then you have not had to go home and miss any school and your parents had not had to take off work to take care of you while you're home the other upside to that would be of course is that if there was anybody who was symptomatic or did not want to return wearing masks then they would go through the normal protocols of close contacts which means they leave school they could test on day five six or seven and return on day eight so it was probably a rather confusing explanation but what we're looking for is basically altering the close contacts that if the close contacts were exposed to someone wearing
023a mask they get to return to school immediately be tested and therefore eliminate the idea that they're going to have to spend seven days at home okay thoughts or questions on that let's remember back in august when we were talking about our threshold right and kind of that magic number we kind of came up with was that really it's like that five to six per building because we were talking back and the analogy was the flu season right like well we're use of having these kids out for flu well part of the understanding is those five positives now really are affecting 20 to 100 kids being exposed and that's exactly what we talked about and it was understood that that is the risk that's happening but we can encourage them to wear mass or get
024vaccinated so that's what we agreed on day one is that that is the risk we have there are going to be 30 guaranteed i don't know if you have the close contact numbers but if you just theoretically say there's five kids you're probably averaging six to eight potentially up to 20 in the class right that could be out and it could it could be higher at the high school or middle school hopefully they're vaccinated so it's less but those elementaries i mean your that was the risk we took is that there are going to be 30 to 100 some kids out in each building due to exposures if they're not mass i think what i acknowledge and i absolutely get are some of those little ones without our teachers helping encourage those students who are
025choosing to wear a mask because a teacher might not be able to say yep andrew he probably wore his mask you know what he did not ride it or on the bus today when they went to fun run but 95 of the time andrew wears a mask and that's where we need those teachers to help encourage a little bit it's easy at the elementary level to say there's 20 kids there's three kids that wear their mask every single day i don't know if anybody around your offices have signs that say don't forget to put your mask back on we do it all day long we help encourage everybody you know grab your mask because we forgot it if you can help encourage those kids to wear their masks the ones that are choosing to the
026choice is the parents they know what it is they know they should wear their mask and to reduce those exposures but if we are having somebody who is that 85 to 95 not wearing a mask how can we increase that rate a little bit to decrease but as far i'm kind of content where we're at i want to encourage people to wear a mask and i'm really happy to hear that that person who was positive had a mask on and it worked as you know as much as we know for now right but and again that's with all your other mitigations cleaning and social dissensing and all that is obviously a part of the factor but i guess i'm kind of content right now but i can lean that direction but i just want to
027point out that is exactly why we went this way knowing that there would be that many kids that are at home and we didn't want that at home and that was our big thing what can we do to to keep those kids in school because we know they're doing exactly that mr alby they're staying home probably and their parents are having to rearrange their jobs and we're already short staffed for 90 of the community and and how we keep our i mean especially if they're one of our one of our employees let's just say one of our own teachers kids i mean that's really going to affect and we know we have sub shortages and yeah but that's just my two cents for the moment yeah i think that my biggest concern is you know
028a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about having having differential policies for students in order to encourage vaccination at mass rates it was very clear that like we can't it's unrealistic to expect our teachers or expect our building administrators to figure out who's supposed to have a mask on and who's not supposed to have a mask on and to enforce that throughout the day especially in the junior high in high school so my my concern would be in these cases where and i think if i've understood you you're saying this would only come into play if the person who was introducing the exposure was masked so it's only going to come into play i think in a minority of our cases because so few of the students are masking at the moment but
029if that were the case we're still having to keep track of those six to 20 students and i'm i don't have the confidence that we have the ability to do that because in previous meetings we've been told like we don't have the ability to track these students and make sure they have their mask on if we don't have everybody having their masks on so that would be my only concern other thoughts it does seem like it's a very small segment and you know while i want to do what we can i think i agree with rachel that it makes sense to stay the course at this point it's been i think success pretty successful um so yeah i'm still very happy with our threshold i think it's been a good number so far we've only
030had to trigger it once and there was really no question once it happened everybody i think complied nicely and the public had our faith that that's the policy we've set and yeah and we're getting really close to five to 11 year olds potentially here i think the first second week of november so that's an option then that becomes available for families we were just updating of course and like every month we were bringing the latest uh information from the buildings for your considerations thank you that's what we want you to do okay now we move to item c and i do have six people who have signed in to address the board on this issue if you sign if you didn't sign in that doesn't preclude you from addressing the board so as in past
031i will ask you to keep your remarks brief i'll ask rachel to keep a five-minute timer don't feel like you have to use all five minutes but you certainly are entitled to do so we have our school attorney uh brent matter on speakerphone yes would you like to be added to the list or you have a question go ahead um if there's feedback and there need to be changes can those changes be made tonight and still the reading happening or how will can you help us understand how that will work absolutely yes in fact that's part of the reason for the the two reading process is that there's a first reading and then there would be discussion amongst the board um the you know feedback from the community and the formal final policy isn't done
032until the second one now if there are amendments based on tonight they don't need two subsequent readings they can be made changes tonight and then they would be into they would go into the second reading and approved at that point does that answer your question sort of so and is that how there's going to be a change is through an amendment that's the only way a change would happen at this point yes i mean any policy once it's in place so if you know policy assuming is approved it can go under we undergo a regular review of that policy but at any point it could be triggered by a board member saying you know i'd like to review policy and then state the letter and i don't know that we have a formal mechanism for
033the public to trigger that kind of policy review but i would encourage any member you know you can contact a board member contact the district office and request that so the way it's set up there could be changes made today and this would still be the first reading yes and then the second reading would then approve it or not yes yes this is the working draft yes yep this is the working draft so yes yes thank you for your question okay i will uh and you certainly we can address questions there i will call people up in the order in which they signed in so our first speaker this evening our person to address the board is tiffany stewart and even though i've called your name would you please just restate it when you get
034to the microphone hi oh that was loud okay i apologize in advance i'm very nervous i will either sound like a robot or i will cry um hi my name is tiffany my husband and i live and work in vermillion and volunteer as youth directors at a church here i want to start off by saying i am a follower of jesus and as such i believe every single person was created from birth is exactly what they are supposed to be i know that darkness is running rampant in the world and persuades us subtly into soul numbing changes and compromises i am and always will be concerned for the spiritual emotional physical and mental safety and health of the middle and high school students i have the honor of teaching it is my job and the
035job of every parent or guardian to guard our children to guard the children in our lives from things that would harm them and the darkness that could negatively affect them and lead them away from a full and beautiful relationship with the creator of the universe i know the issue of transgender is one of those things it is darkness infiltrating who god has created us to be i think that full inclusivity in bathrooms and lockers is an idea that leans into that darkness it leads us into a seemingly small compromise that etches away at our beings i know that jesus died for and loves beyond comprehension every single student at this school and i know that we are called to love everyone despite our differences in opinion or moral views but i know that the transgender
036students continuing to use a single stall bathroom that is shared by every other person in the school does not make those students feel loved so what about a compromise what if we simply expand on what is already the bathroom situation three bathrooms all with multiple stalls girls bathroom boys bathroom and a gender neutral bathroom that way the transtrindue students and other students on the side of inclusivity can use the gender-neutral bathroom but there will still be a separate gendered bathrooms available as well i know this is not a perfect plan and does not solve everything but it could be a great option to get everything moving forward it requires compromise on both sides the transgender students will have to be okay with still not using their completely preferred gendered bathroom and decide against they will
037have to be okay with there being a neutral option that their student might use it is a big step in the direction of inclusivity without jumping all the way into the deep end and let me reiterate there is still a lot to be figured out in regards to everyone's safety in this case it is imperative that the questions that have been raised and that will continue to be raised be addressed i know there will still be feelings to navigate through and pressures on the students and parents from both sides to join whichever other side but that's up to the individual students and their families to figure out there has been peer pressure and there will always be peer pressure but i encourage the parents in this room and across the school and the ones watching
038to have those difficult conversations with their kids i encourage everyone regardless of opinion to speak and act with patience and love and to promote peace thank you hi my name is nancy foster 27 years ago when i visited school board where we sat around wooden tables eight foot long nothing so pretentious as this as you can lord over us my high school class had over a thousand students i attended a college in maine with pot smoking hippies in new york city i had gay classmates in college i visited the largest gay church in boston in 1974. that's almost 50 years ago and was assaulted by an older woman i've seen the slow systemic societal rot of an ideology where we can be god safe places we all want safe places there's no such thing teach
039that to your students and give them skills to step up and help everybody legally teach truth and facts leave emotions out of the equation teach virus particles are smaller than the holes in your mask how about teaching critical thinking maybe educate yourself on the 1996 telecommunications act that bill clinton put into power that allowed corporations to own more than five tv and radio stations allowing now at this time since 1996 for only six people to control what you hear i quit watching the national news then and then 9 11 came and more rights were taken away under the guise of safety learn about propaganda which is a book written by edward bernays in 1928 about psychological manipulation and how he worked with u.s companies and the government to sway the masses he was also a
040nephew of sigmund freud and a victim of incest as was his uncle sigmund can you see it yet fake news tyrants use for your safety to control the frontline critical care alliance reports that around 200 members of congress and their staff and family members have received ivermectin and the covid protocol for the last 15 months none were hospitalized and they've kept silent about their treatment the fda and the cdc are providing new testing in december since the covet test can't really differentiate between the flu and covid and we had one president in an african country in the early months of the pandemic that sent in a fruit sample and an animal sample that were positive i believe he's dead now suspiciously do you know that there's no executive order mandating companies with over 100 employees
041to get the jab there's no one suing because it doesn't exist look on the department of labor and the osha website nothing exists about an executive order the commander and thief's puppeteers know it's illegal so they just depend on the controlled media and the back door deals with complicit corporations to continue the lies and remember the telecommunications act of 1996. marxists are very patient and their game plan has been long in coming only six people control your media input can you see it yet oregon senators now have filed grand jury petitions into the cdc's willful misconduct to hyper inflate the coveted data following the federal law violations has that been reported did you know that there's not a test for the delta variant go ahead call sanford nurse they don't have one i'm almost done
042yes like i said i've witnessed the systemic rot of destroying our country and freedoms under the guise of your safety the tyrant mussolini said culture was the best vehicle to inculcate the people with the fascist ideology we're now now starting in preschool reading books to our toddlers about the transgender life the battlefield used to be college now it's preschool can you see it yet you're not a board of education you're a board of indoctrination and you can all be replaced attorney general merrick gardner garland wants the fbi and the doj investigate parents attending school board meetings he has a conflict of interest with his son-in-law selling the crt around the nation what happens when the government is scared of the people they sick the ss on you we are awake to the critical race theory
043agenda that you think you have to push since the commander in thief biden says so catering to someone who doesn't really feel like they fit in is not new it's a marxist tactic to not think rationally but just to operate on emotions who cater to you in high school to help you fit in no one fits in i don't come here in righteous piousness i once was deceived i once believed it was a choice until you're open to the facts presented and that that baby is part of the mother and does that mother really want to destroy part of herself same eyes open you can see the lie and the deception and the same thing when you want to change your gender you want your gender gone and you want it changed the suicide rate
044of the trans is 43 percent do those statistics get taught in school is that on any test with biden and the puppeteers supporting crt you are mistaken if you think that they care for you and your children they don't like you if the enemy can't kill your child in the womb they will be patient they will open the borders and increase the drug and the human trafficking and study the statistics of suicide with the trans people which is 43 progressives and marxists will continue to lie to you and wait for those results that's their job they don't care if you commit suicide mrs foster that's or miss foster excuse me if it's eight minutes do you have anything specific on the policy the policy is safe places do not exist for anywhere there's no safe
045place except in the loving arms of the lord jesus christ as he looks upon you with love and grace as you make the biggest mistake of your life as you promote a lifestyle of victimhood to the children you say you care for remember the words of jesus in matthew 18. if anyone would cause any of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better to have a millstone around your neck and thrown into the depths of the sea repent ask for the eyes and ears of your heart to be open and seek truth jacob skelton hello thanks for taking the time to hear from the public really appreciate it um so uh speaking in reference to the creation of a policy for the locker room and bathroom of course uh last
046meeting i had a number of questions about the proposed policy regarding safety issues that i had for my two daughters and son i have not received any answers to any of the safety concerns that were expressed at that previous meeting the proposed policy also doesn't address the concerns that i had so at this point now i'm actually more concerned about the policy than it was prior i'm sure that you may have heard from the recent news item surrounding lung county virginia and you may have heard about the father who was arrested at a school board meeting i won't be that father so don't worry but he became very i i raped today it was actually reported that he was upset because in may a boy who allegedly was wearing a skirt entered a girl's bathroom
047where he sexually assaulted the father's ninth grade daughter the boy was charged with two accounts of forcible sodomy one count of anal sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio the father was upset because the school board was trying to cover up this crime stating that there were no records of any assault occurring in the school bathroom not only did the school board cover up this assault they and local prosecutors tried to cover up another assault that appears to be the same person that was involved with the previous incident the convicted person was 15 years old exactly the area that we're talking about today so it's not accurate to say that there are no issues regarding this type of a safety concern these crimes do happen and our goal should be to address them prior to
048any such incident you may also say that sexual abuse and rape are minority of cases but you should also remember that those types of crimes are among the least reported amongst the different crimes so the concerns that i have regarding the policy relate also relates to how the adults fit into it that was not addressed either in the proposed policy that i saw as someone who has brought this up at the previous meeting the vermillion school district now actually has a history of sexual incidents of adults with children as a former person said at a previous meeting former high school teacher was accused of sexual exploitation of a minor who was 16 years old had happened just a few months ago my concern primarily is that age group the middle school and the high school
049age group because that seems to be where those incidents happen i know a number of parents have expressed concern about the policy change to me privately and also i've talked to a number of students in that age group that are also concerned about their safety as well i'm curious if there's any intent to ask any of the students about about this in an anonymous way such as like a survey monkey or something that way to see if there's any concerns they might have because they're the ones that are directly affected by it i also spoke with a former teacher that about this and their concern was regarding the additional burden that we're putting on our teachers to police this type of policy so who who do you in the policy who would you have supervised
050the bathroom anytime someone goes would it be the teacher in that classroom or a separate person and are you planning to have someone in the locker rooms also at all times throughout a number of different times during the day and then it comes into the financial thing of are you staffing an additional person are you pulling somebody away from other things such as education to fit those categories unfortunately it doesn't appear that the policy has anything to say about those and it appears that the policy cares only for one group of students don't forget that we have to care for all of our students and they need to be protected and now you have a new group of students that are going to feel uncomfortable in those bathrooms and restrooms and locker rooms in regards
051to students i'm curious on how the communication will happen to let's say this does go through what does that communication look like as a parent i have concerns about what that communication will be and i would like to have that in writing of what that communication is and should be something that's sent home for the parents to also discuss with their students if the communication doesn't happen to the students why not and how do you expect them to accept it or interpret it difficult things and obviously age appropriate as you go along but these are things that cause issues for example if it's not uh not presented that this is a change of policy if my daughter sees a 15 year old boy going into a locker room that's for girls her worldview would say
052that that's an issue a safety concern and that that's not right if everything's confidential i don't see how anyone is able to accept that that how are you going to know who's allowed into the the restroom that they look different from it's just just a confusing situation so i hope i i hope you see the nightmare you're creating i've also spoken with two mothers in the last months and they've specifically said they chose to not go to vermilion schools because of policies like this if this type of policy is uh goes through as presented then you'll have many other parents still choose to protect their children by going to different school districts and we don't want that obviously with the new building and we want our community to grow we want to protect our children
053so i know these are hard topics and again i appreciate you taking the time to consider them and i hope you're still trying to do what's best for our students and community and thank you again for your time thank you jason schmitz my name is jason schmitz can i ask can i ask questions or do i just have to give a comment you may ask questions okay we can answer them at this moment but we'll do ourselves okay yeah so i i i have to confess i didn't read the prior policy and i know the discussion has been primarily around restroom and locker room mainly restroom i think but i noticed overnight accommodations transgender students shall be assigned to rooms based on their consistent asserted gender identity and then sports are those new or are
054those also policy changes again no that's a that's a very fair question um the the i'll start with the sports one because the sports are primarily regulated by the south dakota high school activities association and they've already they've had a policy in place that allowed transgender students that meet the criteria for their participation so that that's simply reiterating as the policy does that we're confirming and subjecting ourselves to their regulation as well that we would not do anything to prevent that student from participating overnight accommodations is an addition as we began looking at everything we would need to do and so you see it in this it hasn't been discussed widely it hasn't come up in public meetings but as we continue to identify everything that we would need to put in place to have
055the best possible mechanisms and policies so it's a newer addition so those are those are additional changes this is what you're well the whole policy is is brand new i mean well the whole thing the whole thing is great okay you got it all right thanks i didn't know yeah but you are accurate in characterizing we haven't discussed those to the same degree we've discussed restrooms okay because i remember and your clarification was good in the first one that today you have a practice right this is a new policy this is a new policy got it okay thank you for asking a question i'm sure you're not the only one who wondered that okay great um all right so i was in the first meeting couldn't make it to the last one and so that's
056just the context of my comments i did watch the second one and this isn't my comments and i think typically the comments to stick with the practice and not create a new policy have been largely not to address gender identity and the things that families deal with and such it they're strictly contained to school policy in relation to the impact on the broader student body that that seems to be the context and and so i think everybody's been fairly i think um conscientious in that respect and i'll reiterate this is my first comment the current practice seems to do that now why the policy and in listening and kind of hearing things out there were three characteristics that i heard in the first meeting number one the fear of potential while it doesn't appear to
057be imminent legal recourse okay there's been it it seems that because this policy had to be drafted and the current practice wasn't deemed sufficient and the concerns about such a policy it seems like moving forward is a disregard for the concerns in having such a policy and what that could lead to so fear disregard and the third thing is this urgency to address an issue and implement something quickly though there doesn't seem to be a threat pending and that sort of thing so um those are those are my observations the analogy i gave and i wasn't signed up last time was your husband downtown your wife goes in and something happens and i think the comment at the end was well that's not going to happen here or kids aren't just going to be allowed
058to go back and forth and i think the example that was given in virginia so what i wanted to do was understand are there samples and there are there are a number of samples and examples where kids have been typically young women have been violated and so as much as you might want to say that it's not going to happen and the policy doesn't open the door it does and it has okay and there's evidence to indicate that um okay so the question seemed to surround the circumstance with the student who is facing this having to go to a restroom specifically designated are there other things that can be done again hey i've got to leave class early or just other accommodations to to make appropriate measures for the student what's happening it seems otherwise
059is that 97.3 percent of the students and let's say it's even a fairly significant percentage of them that are concerned about such a policy and what that could expose and their parents and their families it seems to not coincide with the policy statement that all students should have access to a locker room bathroom or shower that facilities that are safe comfortable and convenient it seems like it might accommodate the .07 but a large percentage of the 97.3 are then not uh accommodated by the policy as far as the legal concern that seemed to just take up a lot there are legal cases okay so there's there's the one in uh grimm and the aclu filed in 2015 it's a big one and i'm sure that when people do research this is the one that they
060run across well the way it stands today is the school board is appealing the ruling could go back to the supreme court any reference to the ruling about the vulnerability to the majority of students was dismissive so these cases this policy isn't doesn't appear given other legal and school board and school district circumstances going to be some iron curtain against legal recourse additionally this policy could open up addition other legal recourse on the other side so it's a it's a tough deal and i sympathize with your circumstances um but my primary concern is for these kids and my neighbor because i don't have kids in the vermillion school district but i've got a lot of neighbor kids and i love these kids i love these kids and this would break my heart to see the
061little kid riding his big wheel what he's headed into in the little girl that's getting wheeled down the street in the wagon the circumstances that she might potentially have to face that are just entirely not necessary so i would say don't proceed with this policy continue with the practice make any additional accommodations that are necessary for the kids that are facing these circumstances love them too so thanks for your time thank you davida russell hello so my name is davida russell last name legal last name madison my pronouns are she her and i would like to go suggest a few friendly amendments to the policy so going down the policy the first amendment i would like to suggest is under procedure where it says communication with the school student and the student's parents is key
062i would suggest changing the word for key to encouraged the reason behind that is key has the crucial connotation to it and if we are providing a policy that is going to be safe for the student not all students have parents that it would be safe to have that key component be the communication with the parent as well um yes the other proposed amendment in this section is to remove where it says these arrangements should be made should be based on the students or parents wishes be minimally burdensome i would recommend having be minimally burdensome just removed completely because how that sentence is worded and stated it doesn't i feel that it is undermining the policy because i would assume that the intent is minimally burdensome to the student so instead of adding words because
063we're you know with burdensome meaning or synonym for oppressive just have that removed completely so that way it doesn't leave it open to interpretation mentally and burdensome to whom just have that removed i would also like to recommend adding under confidentiality after a student has a right to keep their status as a transgender student private at school have something along the lines of and only released to essential personnel so that way only essential personnel has access to the student's information and i believe that goes along with the next sentence so it's just not everyone and all the staff members have access to this personal information that way just the essential people have access to that information next proposed friendly amendment would be under communication and publications this sentence so right after pronoun and name change
064the sentence as written states the preference for the use pronouns should be the choice of the student um i would recommend to it's just i don't know kind of wordy um just to cross out the preference for the use pronouns and just do after pronoun and name changes pronouns used should be the choice of the student because i believe that's the intent of that sentence is that the pronouns used and it gets rid of the preference preference is an old term it's not someone's preference it is their pronouns just like it's not someone's preferred bathroom it is their bathroom chew um yes the next friendly proposed amendment would be to eliminate the wording for consistently persistently and consistently for under restroom locker room overnight accommodations and sports i believe that the above goes ahead and
065states we are allowing the children to use um the pronoun the pronouns locker rooms of their gender i just think that that's not necessary and i think that it out some of the students that this particular policy is trying to protect um okay so lastly this has two two parts so i would either recommend changing the name of the um the policy itself to equity for students um like in regard to restroom locker room and communication policy and then not having the next thing i'm about to say or if the policy is to remain as written or changed to so if the word transgender is included in the policy title the issue i have with the word transgender appears in the policy title with the next issue i'm going to raise is just the policy
066we aren't we community we um for our policy it's not a transgender policy right it is not a gay policy it is a policy that is providing an equitable environment for our students so if we have transgender in the title then all the safety the additional safety concerns that are in absent for safety concerns for restroom under restroom and locker room the under sports and any compelling safety concerns that pairing is equivalent to a dog whistle because we are having transgender in the title and then we are including all this extra safety measures or including all this extra safety wording that doesn't does doesn't pair well so because it implies that the students that would be needing this policy are using this policy to have an equitable environment for them to learn in we need
067to add extra safety measures that are already included in the large book of policies how am i doing attacking my overtime you're actually about 30 about a minute or so over can you wrap up quickly yeah no that was it okay thank you very much thank you theodore hall hi ted hall um first i want to congratulate you on the grant uh earlier for the folks who did get the grant that's great new school is nice and coach nice win friday so those are all good things we'll lighten it up a little bit um very happy to hear about the coven mitigation i know that's off target but looks like it's working nice compromise maybe a good example for for folks and that's that's a nice positive as i look at the the policy i
068really went back to safe comfortable and convenient for everyone okay we go back and everyone does mean everyone okay and you have to be careful about creating a situation that we know folks that may be transgender don't want to be outed don't want to be put in a situation but we also have to understand you will have a situation where you may put a kid who's not mentally ready for what's potentially going to happen in that locker room if we go back to our junior high and high school days we did not all make good decisions we're not ready to make good decisions okay and if you put those kids in those situations that could affect their whole life where they make a very poor decision in that in that environment you are setting up
069those children for failure as well and something they'll have to live with their whole life not just one side okay now i think everyone needs to be treated fairly i think you have an extremely difficult challenge on your hands on how you handle that but let's say we go in we talk about it's going to affect learning right somebody goes in what about a child who is 14 years old goes in the locker room goes to take a shower and sees something that they aren't ready for bothers them they're not and they go take a test and all they are concerned about is what just happened and the student fails the test let's say this is a semester test a very important test and now again we're setting a student back the same way we
070would be sending the other student back by having them use a separate restroom those exact same things can happen so it's very difficult but you have to look at it as a whole you cannot just look at it as we're going to protect this group in lieu of protecting another group whatever group that may be and whatever decisions you're going to make in general you need to look as a board for every student not and if you're gonna make an accommodation for one group and one student you open the door for the accommodations to be for everyone because if we're all equal we all have special rights we all have them so if there's an individual bathroom and i say you know what i'm going to talk about my daughter i would like her to
071use the individual bathroom and 90 other kids parents say that same thing and we have a line out the door for the individual bathroom you can't count them as tardy because they have the right to use the individual bathroom because i will let you discriminate against my child as my choice once you do it you got to do it for everybody you've set the standard and once the standard set if you don't want to follow it the gentleman was very smart litigation goes both ways okay i can then come in and go my child's being treated unfairly because they don't want to be a part of this situation and guess what you can't tell me if someone is in their pe class you can't tell me if they're sharing a hotel room with someone else
072because that's not legal and that's okay i don't want to know i don't have to know it's that student's right to know but it's a very slippery slope that you're going to walk as you open the door for special accommodation every single student i don't know how many kids are in school but there's about 100 class you got 1200 kids and it may not be this subject but the next one's going to be a different accommodation maybe my kid doesn't sleep well so i want you to start school at 9. there may be a scientific study saying hey he's he does better in school and starts at 9. just think about it i don't have an answer for you i just want you to take your time you don't have current litigation if you did
073and you think you're wrong with your current policy the litigation would require you to put in the policy that you're trying to put into place today so if you had that time to get it right and really dig into it it's a shame that the administration won't give you the guidance you're asking for it's funny you can put something out there and then they go well figure it out yourself sorry okay that's too bad and that's that's just a problem in its own right that's difficult for you guys but just take your time think through it i don't know if two i don't know the right answer just saying once you open the accommodation door you better be willing to keep it wide open because you now have 1200 individual students looking for accommodation so
074thank you appreciate what you do thank you so that concludes the people who've signed up is there anyone else who'd wish to address the board on this topic please come forward state your name when you reach the podium uh todd nelson um i just have a few little things i've heard prior meeting using iowa as a standard and i again we use comparison but we are a different state states have rights to do things that they want to do there's a lot of states and cities i don't want vermillion to be anything like comfortable i don't have a copy of the policy i've read it my kids it says something about keeping kids comfortable my kids aren't comfortable with this idea so it fails them immediately like was mentioned first off tonight um this board
075has not answered any questions like was mentioned there was going to be a frequently asked question on the website nothing i would think legal counsel would say that looks bad or reflects poorly um and maybe future legal issues this policy has gone from a paragraph to a page already and hasn't even been voted on um i mentioned last time i'm very concerned where is this going when do adults get included when do visiting students get included when do we just have wide open no policy because everyone's included um again i know this is challenging but uh like i said we are south dakota we are not iowa every state has those things differently i hope that everybody can respect that thank you thank you anyone else come on my name's mark daniels good to see
076you all again and um i'm really grateful for the policy that's been drafted i think it's really remarkable and i would be all right with it as it is right now i think there's a couple things that might enhance it and some of them uh some of them are just some ideas i want to throw out so they're probably less focused on whether this passes or not um first i agree with uh about the title uh i think the title is a bit of a setup for um for problem and i think it would be important to i don't know if you said this is on your draft i couldn't hear you but to include the communications policy because it doesn't go outside it includes other policies are or maybe there's a more general statement
077for this because it talks about sports and um some other things too so uh thinking of a title that is is uh a title for all students i mean really the intention is to make it a general concept and i share this as i think i've mentioned before i'm a health care professional and this is really an area i work with a lot and the gender identity is nice as it would be that it is consistently persistently and insistently uh portrayed it isn't always that way and so that's going to be you know an issue to that's going to need to be thought about i think down the road because for some people it's it's a process and a person might i think i shared with you before my son dylan is a transgender man
078dylan initially identified as a non-binary trans masculine person and used they them pronouns and then after about a year year and a half he identified as a transgender man using he him or they them pronouns so um just know that for some people there's a final destination and there is some fluidity in figuring out what that destination is and for some people it's not even a set point so it might shift in their lifetime and for some people it's very set you know so i just that's just a concern i think we'll need to keep in our mind as we go down the road a little bit um and the other one is i'm concerned about um it seems to be a pretty binary setup the system does and i'm concerned about kids who identify
079as non-binary or who don't who feel like their legitimate identity doesn't fit in either one of those categories really well and how we might accommodate them too so that's just a concern and those are the words i have but i just want to hats off to you for really putting together something that i think is is going to lead our state and play a real critical role for our trans our trans students thank you thank you anyone else okay i will open the floor for board discussion on [Music] absolutely mr holland i'll begin with first of all i had oh jacob an apology he did send me an email of pairs that got lost in the abyss of my emails at school so i'll answer those questions jacob that you had to ask at the
080previous meeting i've got them i know i can answer them here tonight so first the question that jacob asked at the previous meeting that we were going to try to find answers for for this meeting was the current privacy measures that are in place for students needing to change clothes in all of our locker rooms or restrooms every student now currently has the ability to either use the coach's office which is adjacent to that or step into the shower room which is of course connected to the locker rooms or basically if you can imagine probably the locker room that you used was as a young man basically you find a spot in that current setting so they've really got they use their own devices to try to find a place that they can change they
081can ask the coach to use their office which is in the locker room but private or they can go into the shower stall area which has depending on which grade level you're in single stall units that you could change behind a curtain the second question you asked was what's the current privacy measures for students who shower in the locker rooms at the high school level we have all individualized showers so it's not traditional common shower areas those were remodeled a number of years back the middle school in the female locker room offers three of those options and in the mail locker room they don't have that option that that is not complete at the middle school at this point but there is no showering at the middle school level there's no elementary showering at the
082at the pe level so the changing of clothes does happen at the elementary and middle school for pe but uh it does not involve showering at all the victim who's the victim if someone's daughter is uncomfortable showering someone clearly of another anatomy it's not really the case and based on the scenario i just had without allowing showering but also the fact that if if it's a high school student they can go into a private shower at what point does a person with male anatomy uh looking at other kids who do not have the male anatomy at what point does that become abuse for the girls that might be in that locker room or vice versa that would be like any really situation that our administrators would be asked to deal with now if there's anybody
083in the locker room setting that feels uncomfortable for whatever reason whether it's staring pointing teasing bullying a variety of behaviors that kids will exhibit then we we hope that that would be reported to an adult and addressed obviously it's much higher level if it happens to be nude students and anatomy and all those things but we would hope that if they were behind those private curtains and individual style stalls that that wouldn't happen i'm sorry i'll just move scroll down here the fifth question you had asked was in regards to concerns you know if if you have a son or in the in the district and would it be harmful for obviously a boy to see a girl's female anatomy or vice versa would anybody be required to cover up differently from the males i
084guess we don't address that in our policy that would be something that would have to be worked out is there an expectation of privacy in locker rooms is there an expectation while you're traveling to from your locker to the bathroom that you're tiled up those are things that coaches probably deal with but it isn't addressed in the policy and i'll try to scroll down to some more that you had here from your last meeting specifically how often can a student change their status if they determine their feelings have changed in a previous example of this policy we stated that this would be annually reviewed so for example the principal in the building would have to have a meeting with these these folks annually to review the status of the student because the status could change
085although i think people would say it's highly unlikely that that occurs that would be something that the board would have to determine if an annual review is necessary but if we're following the south dakota high school activities rules once they've established that identity the rule follows them through the entire high school procedure so if we were following suit the high school activities association as a policy we could follow how do we plan to screen this and enforce this and personnel to ensure that people don't exploit the policy that would be basically just hopefully cooperative parents of the student that was involved the current policy asks for documentation from a health care professional or someone involved in the student's life i think that's an important attribute to this because students in my view and the schools
086that i've researched that have policies on this students don't make this up and go through the documentation process and go through all the legwork only to go into another stall or another bathroom to exploit that not saying it can't happen your examples that you shared show a student did do that but he apparently did not go through the process of even identifying himself at the school he just dressed up as a female and entered a locker room if i understood your your example correct so we would put as much into our policy as we could to ensure protections and exploitation of kids just like we try to do on a day-to-day basis where people aren't manipulating our kids or or things now to get you know some sort of exploited uh you know behavior out
087of them and then finally if you do not have a policy uh currently under this policy adults by your definition wouldn't that be discrimination i believe it was bostick's case that that dealt with employment issues if we were to encounter a transgender adult working in our district we'd have to accommodate those by law now by current employment practices so you are correct this policy would be designed for our students in our building but it would keep us from enforcing an adult coming into a volleyball game and going into the common restroom as a female but we also have the south dakota activities association that has their rules and regulations in place to protect athletes which is part of our policy and this policy would regulate the authority of our principles during the school day we
088don't have adults in our building using our bathrooms not to say that once in a while there's not a mom or dad visiting that could go in and use a restroom but it's highly unlikely that we have any adults coming off the street that are there for any professional reason that are using the bathrooms but occasionally at a parent-teacher conference or an iep meeting somebody has to use the restroom they get to use that and probably most importantly um you know by the definition of the the policy that you're listening to this evening it's really about trying to find some common ground on a topic that at this point uh is is there is no current litigation against the vermilion school district in this matter but we quite honestly are trying to avoid that my
089job as superintendent board of education's job is to try to keep the school district out of litigation namely if we find that that the litigation is probably going to be costly and or maybe not winnable so that's what's led us to this discussion tonight and we certainly have taken a lot of input and appreciate the sides of this we've learned a great deal during this time but it is something that the elementary school and the uh middle school and the high school will all look slightly different because of the kids they serve but ultimately my opinion on this is locker rooms right now need to be a second stage of this the restroom policy is something that we can deal with tonight uh the locker rooms seem to have more issues because we don't have
090single stall locker room availability for every student at the middle school currently so those are things that need to be discussed and i know that's on the board's agenda for tonight so i apologize for not getting that to you in an email uh it wasn't intentional but quite honestly it just really literally got married so i'm thankful that you reminded me this evening thank you i'm also going to pass around we have some cards i'll pass those um while we're discussing this rachel can i just add mr lv i'm guessing you wanted to maybe just help clarify that the current policy and form says that the district may request documentation correct i just wanted to clarify that i think that's not quite right that is permissible it may be required just wanted to state that
091i had i had sent out a comment previously that in previous iterations of this including the one that was presented last time we had had language that any student regardless of their their gender whether their transgender cisgender any student could request a sort of private single stall facility or could would be given access to a private single stall facility if that was what best met their needs and we we took that language out i think it was guidance of the attorney who suggested that you know there was more than we had to do that because that would really allow any student who wanted to use the nurse's bathroom to be able to use it for whatever reason i don't think i'm opposed to that i think if students need a private facility to to feel
092comfortable regardless of the reason that they need that private facility i don't think there's going to be a giant rush on mass for that but i think it is an important way for students who might feel uncomfortable with this policy or sort of wanting additional privacy for any reason to have that so i would encourage us to to bring that back in that section um we had the language there if it's available and i think that we keep that language in there because that you know provides us the cover that if it's not available in a situation it's not available but i think in general being able to provide that separate facility for students who want it not requiring it for any students is an important part of that i agree that the policy has
093expanded beyond its existing name and so i'm not sure what the right language is there i sort of thought maybe equity and facilities communications and accommodation or something along those lines but something that allows us to kind of represent what's actually in this policy not just that specific piece of it but that might be important too so with all the comments tonight is it our intent as a board to work through this and make the changes and do a first reading or is it to get more input with what we heard send it back to policy keep moving it forward because there were a lot of comments in the group tonight if you i mean if our intent is to change the title or do i'm just what is the next steps from where we
094are tonight what is is the goal to push through it come up with something or is it to hey let's go to the title let's encourage because i have some legal questions for our attorney that i just want to learn and i think brent is still on the phone i don't know if he can hear us yeah i think you've got a delay you still there brent i'm still here correct okay we'll call on you if we need you okay um so i believe we all want the premise as it was said in the audience we want to include everybody have everybody safe and i went with damon yesterday and looked at all the restrooms we at well i didn't go to jail i went to austin middle school i went through all the locker
095rooms showers we didn't check what doors locked and have some can we i don't believe we're ready to do any policy could be implemented tomorrow on locker rooms showers i have some concerns from just general safety that was written public to ask principals or work through some safety things even as low as the middle schools on the restrooms for safety just clarify but i don't know if we're going to do all that tonight and then say yep let's make these changes and here's a policy so well and even uh you know a first reading would simply there's not a vote on my first reading and i know how it appears on our agenda is a bit uh i mean it's it's not titled first reading this is the first time it has been given a
096policy item designator and i think there are certainly some minor modifications i personally am comfortable with this as a first reading um but that i mean that's where we're at i where my opinion on that i i agree there are um you know there's it has grown but it has grown as we learn more well that's what i'm saying i think we keep learning more we're on the journey i know some may rather read tonight but there's just questions and we keep improving and getting there so it's not like i'm i'm more some of these things that i saw observe are more of a execution stage but there are still some questions i have as i've learned more and read things that may need to be or i i am the opinion may need to
097be addressed or included now i don't know if we do that tonight or we send it to policy they have a list what we heard from the public some other ones and keep working it through so the policy committee has reviewed this and is for recommending it right is that okay so um i guess i'd be curious to know what some of the things we need to add are i think that's what is appropriate um so so a question i have and i don't know i heard tonight we want to use encourage first a word encourage versus the key but you know and i do realize you have a student maybe not all parents are encourage support if if somebody is under 18 and whatever age and came to a this is where we say
098may be determined in collaboration or are we saying it must be is it maybe so legally if somebody's under 18 and came to a counselor and said i want to be this versus that can we because do we as a legal obligation as the school do we have to inform the parent or not that's a good question brent did you catch that on your uh live feed yes i'm just finishing up his sentence at the moment okay he's a he's got a delay in his viewing so so the question is is if the um if a student declares to a counselor that they're having some of these discussions or concerns but maybe haven't told their parents what are the responsibilities legally of our counseling department to share any of this with um with the family
099or does the student enjoy privacy rights in ferpa if they're a minor that's child between the student and their doctor and or counselor subject to any outlying safety concerns which probably wouldn't come into play under the presented scenario okay all right next thing jim i wonder if it's possible to i mean i think what that sentence is trying to communicate that communication with the school is key that what's really important about that section is that in order for the the school to be able to protect and advocate for that student and to understand the needs of that student that it's important that there's communication to the school so i wonder if we can just change that sentence to be communication with the school is key so that it's not just encouraged but we we are
100requiring we are really suggesting communication with the school we are requiring communication with the school because that that puts us in the best place to be able to meet the needs of that student because i think that's what that sentence is trying to communicate not necessarily the student's parents so that may fix it as opposed to the key versus encouraged but it doesn't answer your separate question that way i'm just saying lee i mean i get it where some parents may not be supportive you want to encourage students but then are we as a district level because we didn't tell the student and then a parent didn't tell the parent we didn't tell the parents then the parent comes back to us legally so we didn't hear the student but i'm the parent and i'm
101upset at the district now so what's a better way because we say may and i don't know if you've talked to your counselors are they comfortable making it because it's not the medical thing we even said parent guardian counselor billing administrator and physician you know we're not and and i i just don't know i'm trying to say okay do we as a district want the counselor or a principal i don't know if you've talked to the principals or administrators would make that determination we haven't told the parent we haven't asked the physician i don't know i don't know the answer i'm trying to learn what's what is our intent and what do we want so we want everybody safe [Music] so what is our intent with that so am i correct that if the student
102is communicating with the counselor then they have that confidentiality so that would be a situation where that student would be served with the counselor but if the if the parent is involved then the the building administrator rather than the counselor might be part of the communication with the school i mean so but ultimately how are we looping in that parent we're not looking in the parent we're saying so we're knowingly not sharing information with parents i think if a student has identified to the counselor that they have safety concerns with sharing that information with the parent that that confidentiality with that counselor has to be respected i think that we would be putting ourselves in a dangerous place to out a student to an unsupported family situation if the student has identified that that's not
103a safe place and we i think if we had any policy other than that you are preventing the student from talking to the counselor to begin with and i can say they can talk to a counselor but now they say i want to go do this we haven't told a parent now that knows and i'll send someday the parent learns and i think we're set up for a different litigation if they're under 18. yeah i think we need legal right my understanding of ferpa is that if we document this in any way and a parent of a child under 18 requests for that documentation we must provide it it provides it is it that the right of that privacy doesn't transfer to this child to the student until they're turned 18. it's the parent it
104protects the parents rights for k-12 education to have access to all educational records so if restroom preference or if gender identity is an educational record item then the parent can ask for it and we would have to my understanding i'm not an attorney i'm not i don't even watch law shows but uh i think that's we would have to ask that but my reading of ferpa it doesn't we we couldn't keep it from a parent hipaa is different pip is at age 14. did you catch that brent yes so i guess i'll start with doug and kind of move down the row um i agree with doug however you know that doesn't include a situation where it's a counselor outside of the school district correct that would only be a school counselor correct right and
105then moving to gym i don't see a situation which the school would be liable unless a situation like doug laid out where the school counselor has had these discussions with the student and then you know we fail to do our job and don't provide the records to the students parents but again that's a unrelated situation to the underlying issue and shane is also correct where you know a counselor as a mandatory reporter you know if there's some sort of safety concern where you know i'm afraid to tell my parents because you know my parent or legal guardian is either going to beat me or you know fill on the blank it's just you gotta keep the issues separate okay good thank you question i have i think it was brought up by mark daniels tonight
106said if you have a a lot of these terms are new to me could get a wrong binary person non-binary or you have a divorce family situation one's a guard they're both guardians what do we do if one wants a and one wants b because he kind of touched on it or surfaced like what and i apologize to get the words wrong i don't understand learned a lot what do we do in this policy how would you address it you're correct this this policy doesn't address binary um and i think that probably goes to jacob and some of the concerns that were mentioned earlier about um students having the ability to change the the decision and and or don't identify in either case what do we do in that situation that it's clearly not identified
107in this policy as it's written should it be i mean and i'm not trying to i'm trying to understand so we have the opportunity to do it right we kind of look at it's not just elementary it's not middle school it's not high schools at all it could be one today it could be 10 you do a policy whatever it is we want to protect everybody to 98 percent or the two percent so i'm just trying to understand so i would say i would say we're very close to including non-binary students in our current policy and they're i think with a couple of i think with the change of any student can request a private facility that helps to speak to those non-binary students i think it's important to clarify that non-binary doesn't mean goes
108back and forth non-binary students don't identify with either gender typically though not always the there's there's less of a concern of outing those students through these discriminatory policies because they're already outing themselves and their choice of pronouns and their choice to be by non-binary they're sort of a recognition that like if they're using are they them pronoun and they have chosen that people know they're non-binary or they're they're choosing that particular language versus a passing trans male who's using he him nobody knows if that's a transgender kid or a cisgender kid and vice versa right so like the dynamics here are a little bit different and so typically i think your non-binary student would probably be most comfortable using the bathroom that they were assigned at birth or a separate facility and so having that
109option for that separate facility i think addresses that issue and so in some ways it's a little bit easier or we're less concerned about our policies being responsible for outing that student to the peers because the dynamics are a little different but it does not mean that a student just gets to choose day to day and go back to fourth right like that that's still like these accommodations are still something that's a part of that communication plan with the school that have been established and we still require consistent identification at school and so i think that even in the case where a student hasn't told their parents and they're like i think it's just going to be a very rare case where you have a student assistantly consistently asserting their gender at school and their
110parents being in the dark about that consistent sort of you know assertion at school i just think that's a very rare case that we're going to come up with in your case of your divorce issue right then i think that that's where it's the may sort of work out right so if the student has a preference if the student is saying clearly this is what i need to be comfortable and one of their parents is supporting them i don't know that we would i i think that would end up sort of being a deciding factor in the conversation that the building administrators are going to have with that student and with that parent in that situation i mean i don't think the school would be liable for the other parent because we made accommodating you
111know practices for their student on the request of the other parent hypothetically if people are getting divorce this child whatever age would have to say i'm either a or b yes can't be i may i can't be on b or a parent can't say you're a or you're b somewhere you have to get it consistently one parent might require them to present one one parent might require them to present that way in their household but that doesn't change what their gender identity is that's just the way that that parent is sort of forcing them to present within their household so then at school though you have to be right let's see the same it's that consistently asserted so what we're saying though that might not work for this policy then for that situation right i
112mean there's always can be exceptions but what we're saying is they don't need to go to an ex external counselor or physician are you comfortable with that in the school district or have you talked with your principals yeah i'll just kind of give you the scenarios of our art discussions at school and print admin can jump in wherever i'm personally most comfortable with an outside source because these these situations are typically not students that have come in today and made a decision that i'm going to um change my gender and and these are things that they've felt and dealt with for probably months if not years and they've gone to places to to to talk that through or they found support systems so to me in the side of the folks that we're hearing from
113some of those folks tonight that have concerns i think it alleviates some concern that that we have a willy-nilly that the kids are going to have this back and forth and be able to make decisions based on the day and having an outside person tell the principal for example that i've worked with damon for two years and damon asserts himself as a female then that principal can line up and protect that student and work with that student in the building and be an advocate for for that student or all students in fact in that situation if it happens to be just something that the student tries to identify or just the parent it doesn't give us me personally as much level of confidence or maybe the folks that are are feeling this policy is is
114hard to to swallow this is a way to help win over some of the folks that say you know i trust the administration has has looked into this and i trust that the the proper procedures have been followed so and to quite honest um nobody in the public would know that this is happening it would be a public or it should be a a private conversation between potentially that parent or that student and an administrator in the building so the rest of us that would be wondering if it's happening would really never know that it's happening and i want to give as much comfort to both sides of this issue as i can if we're moving towards this inclusive bathroom policy and making those amends which i think are important i think it's important to
115bring along the people that feel differently some of which are here tonight so that we can try to assure them that every protection is in place whether it's the facilities are upgraded it's the uh the staging of the kids and we have more adults around if it's the fact that somebody in the building knows that this identity is is a confirmed identity every little piece of this i think helps that situation so to answer jim your question i feel the documentation is an essential part and in most of these cases these p these students have outside resources that would be supportive of them shane had mentioned though that not in every case there's there are cases where kids have not talked to this with their parents and maybe not even a counselor and we'd have
116to deal with that so so your recommendation what i heard would be to say it must be an outside physician or counselor that would be my recommendation right is that with your principles here is that what they would want to start with or i don't want to drag them all in you're speaking on behalf of them and what you want if anybody wishes to address that or feels like i've misspoken admin team um you're welcome to but if you felt that that was our discussion then so then just my comments from what i observed walking through the buildings yesterday um if we just take restroom and i think they're fairly good you know if i only went to austin middle school high school so if we take austin the question i had a damon um
117i think between the urinals there should be some more dividers they weren't there and then i asked you know on the privacy stalls or separate ones is the height length to the floors are they comfortable principles of people what's there or do we have to upgrade and that was a similar comment when we went to the middle school um the you know you have to make if you go just the again urinals should have things in between if there's a couple other for privacy we can do when you go into the it's called restroom stalls again let's assume everyone has the door that locks we've got to make sure they work again is length of floor doors so then we can look over or down are we comfortable and i defer that to you we're
118principals and that would be the same at the high school when you go to locker rooms you should have the same dividers heights on the stalls when you go to the showers in the middle school those have to be upgraded we could not you know if we have showers today they're not appropriate to me the individual showers to me personally not reported sides they have i think there was one missing but other ones have curtains to me they should be a door locking eliminates just some horseplay that's just my opinion but in the middle school we do have work to do on the boys showers and even additional girl showers before i'd say you would you would entertain that high school they're individual there again it just put doors not curtains and some other little
119things for privacy that we talked about i don't know if you talk to your folks further because then i said damon i'd defer to your principal counselors resource officers what they'd like to see i think i would ask double check if they're going to use the coaches office restroom office or those other ones just make sure all the locks are good but that was kind of my observation was going to see firsthand so if anybody had questions i saw it and you know if we talk safety is the gentleman to back others we all want everybody safe i think there's some things i learned we probably should have had a place today but that would be my so i'm more comfortable talking bathrooms if we go forward tonight or in 60 days 90 days but
120there's work to be done in locker rooms i think then that gets into your contractors and cost and timing and if we have to get some new partition that gets into that supply chain time well while maybe there's some questions brewing i'll just fill in a couple of the blanks that jim mentioned we have done that physical review of our facilities he's he's spot on our bathrooms are in pretty good shape there uh our principals uh monitor the bathrooms i mean in their teachers for horseplay uh constantly it's it is a thing that happens but in reviewing and talking with schools in other states that have dealt with these issues the horse play doesn't stop that happens in every school but the the privacy issues that all of us shared the concern with well will
121somebody be crawling under looking under outing my child in a in that setting can't say it won't happen but it's it's very rare the principles that i talk to in other places in iowa particularly that i asked them about their policy they've been three and four years into this do they see the concerns that we have and their verbatim answer from each of the schools was we had the exact same concerns we don't have the issues that we thought we might not saying we won't have one tomorrow but quite literally the kids are not crawling under there and suddenly seeing something they shouldn't see so that was reassuring it's anecdotal it doesn't mean anything statistically but anecdotal from people in the field does give me some comfort the second thing that we talked about with
122those schools as well as our own sros was should we reestablish and do all the stalls over in all of our buildings which would be considerably considerable expense as much as work that would require to do that other concerns were rising as a result of floor to ceiling stalls because now you've got kids in a closed environment and you don't know who's in there sros particularly mention the fact that if they have to go into a bathroom and extricate somebody or find out if there's something going on in there and they can't see the feet or what's going on in the stalls or how many feet are in there that causes some alarm they're going into a situation without complete control or knowledge so um initially i was on board to think that we should
123go floor to ceiling stalls to help alleviate some of the privacy concerns but in talking with our folks i'm less worried about the privacy issues and more concerned about this the stuff that can happen inadvertently as a result for example the people that are vandalizing bathrooms from tick tock right now would have the cover of darkness in that room to do so so not to say we couldn't or wouldn't do that but it's just other considerations that we learned through this process that there's not generally a one-size-fits-all answer it seems reasonable but all of a sudden somebody throws another what if to it and then finally i wanted to kind of clarify in our view restrooms and locker rooms are different this policy does address locker rooms and overnight stays it might be a little
124premature to have the discussion on that tonight because i don't think we're fully there based on the fact that our locker rooms don't have the quite the facility upgrades we need but more importantly is our locker rooms at the high school for example i'm not sure at the middle school mr boyle or not but they don't serve as restrooms during the day they are locker rooms they're for athletes and athletes go in there at the end of the day or for pe class to change for classes or at the end of the day so just average citizen doesn't show up and walk into one of our locker rooms to use it as a restroom we've got restrooms for you to use for that so locker rooms in my opinion are another discussion item because we
125can't guarantee the same things policy wise that we can with restrooms tonight i can look at our administrators and get the assurance that they if the board decides tonight to move forward this group will make it happen and we'll be successful and we'll be safe because they've committed themselves to it and their staff's ready to do it the locker rooms is a little different i would urge you not to go with locker rooms tonight for two reasons one we're not ready and two we don't have any transgender athletes that have requested a participation in our activities as i stated earlier the south dakota activities association asks them they have to go through a process to get approved at the state level before they can even play for vermilion schools so that has not happened we
126have not had that uh uh incident in our school yet in fact i think there was one trans transgender athlete in the entire state last year so i don't think we have to rush a restroom or locker room policy this evening so i would urge you not to do that for those two reasons um and then finally um you know the folks that um have given us feedback whether it's on one side of this or another it's really offered us a lot of things to ponder jim and i were just talking about this yesterday and i've had this conversation with other board members this process has opened our eyes to a lot of new things and and ideas and laws and and ways to be inclusive and being cognizant of everybody's rights so i just
127want everybody to realize this is regardless of the board's direction it's it's been a very heartfelt and thoughtful process and i hope that you'll appreciate the fact what the board is trying to do through this process even though it's sometimes it's painstakingly slow i understand there's frustration with that but it we're trying to do the right thing for all concerned but we're trying to take it slow so we do it right so sorry i interrupted you earlier rachel i think you were going to say something just one of the questions to follow up on how we would communicate to the students once um and if the policy is kind of approved maybe just want to talk a little bit about that and then there's another question about that student survey yeah um basically our way
128of communicating this would be this is different than some of our other uh playground rules policy or bus rules policy we generally just post that we've changed this through the board approval process at a board meeting goes into policy into practice and then it just it just gets absorbed into our daily our daily existence this one we'd have to make a much more concerted effort to communicate it out to parents in other words through school messenger perhaps that people that that want a in-person meeting to discuss its its merits we would have these types of discussions with them but we would have to have discussions with students and parents about this um how it happens and looks at the lower elementary level would be something we'd have to really think through that process it's much
129more sensitive at the level when we're talking our littles versus our big kids and sorry what was your survey question i think we asked or somebody asked a question about are we going to survey the students i think is that is that what i was asked yeah that was i i did not have a i wasn't prepared for that if we needed to do a survey we can certainly do that our admin team does a lot of surveys but we did not include that as part of the policy process here other thoughts comments discussion points i think i don't see a i don't see a need for the survey when i mean we're talking about sort of establishing equal rights in this case and respecting the rights of those students that's not something that we
130would survey students on in other cases i don't think we would i don't think anything we would change our minds in those cases it might change our communication strategies it might give us some information about some education that we would need to do or other types of things but i think we could probably move forward on those without that information and so that would make me feel uncomfortable i think i understand the concerns about the the locker rooms my perception or from what i've heard right is that students really aren't using other than athletes students aren't using the middle school showers or locker right like that's just i mean they change out for pe in the locker rooms and there's some ability for privacy in in those locker rooms they don't have private showers but
131only athletes are using those showers at the middle school right so that's something that can be covered by the the process that we have in place that you that you would have to notify to go through the high school association rules we don't have any students yet so we can work on getting those in place because we know we don't currently have any students doing that at this point in the high school we have some options for privacy right we have some curtains we have some in in all of those spaces the showers are separate facilities so we still feel comfortable in that so in those respects i feel that i'm comfortable moving forward with the locker room discussion only because the one building where we really need to ramp up privacy and i think
132we should move forward on doing that we there's not a required usage of that no students are having to use that during pe and no students are having to shower at that location so it gives us some more options for how we negotiate with this now in the communication plan and in the documents that we have there still is this ability sort of absent a you know specific documented safety concern if we are in a building where there is a specific documented safety concern because there's not facilities quite yet right that's a definitely a conversation that we could have with that student and parent and say we are working on this right and we know this is important but we don't have it quite yet so here's how what we're going to do in this
133case for this moment like there's still the ability to make appropriate arrangements for all of these situations within the policy that we've created and so for that reason i think it's important that we continue to move forward on this i think that we've had students and parents waiting on this not just since august but they've communicated these concerns over multiple years and so we've had lots of time to work through these questions and to work through some of these changes and i'm not sure that i mean i think we should respect the policy committee's work that they have put into this and what they have created make some of the minor changes but continue to have our first reading this evening is the board comfortable down at the high school where they do use showers
134or somebody does to have curtains versus within the shower i think there was one that even didn't have a curtain that's a mute point but are we comfortable curtains no doors if it gets into that and i would step back and say over time before you're on the board our accommodation when things surface was to use the practice that's in place today so i think we did accommodate from the past to the current i think we are refining and moving that probably to some people in the room too slow other people in the room too fast so i'm not worried about if it takes tonight or me personally can't speak for the board another 30 60 90 days i don't care we're gonna get it let's get it right that we're comfortable with what's here
135and i agree with you we defer it to the policy committee that they're comfortable with changes from the public and is it safe that that's tonight or later i come back to what i heard damon who has to execute this would prefer to say it must be an outside person versus a maid to me that's when i think we need to talk through to give direction wherever it goes or we give it to the policy committee came up with the may and maybe they're comfortable with that versus if we now heard damon speak it should be sunday i think we've had guidance that easily satisfiable documentation is the recommendation for um any documentation that we require for this so the key words to me being easily satisfiable and i think that that can be mean
136different things to different students and different families so certainly some some students may have the you know the support and the financial means to travel to a health care provider out of state you know to to get the a certain type of documentation but i don't think we want to keep our policy from benefiting those who can't as easily secure that same type of document documentation or do not have the means to secure it so i keep coming back to that easily satisfiable um phrases that was part of one of the legal recommendations that i think we've had from nebraska yeah so i'm yeah i like i like the wording that we have the district may request documentation from the student or the parents if if a family or if a student wants to supply
137extra documentation that's fine but i like the wording that we have i think one of the questions in there is do we consider parental documentation sufficient does it do we require anything beyond the parent okay but i thought we even talked tonight we don't require i'm still waiting to figure out how we can do that and i don't know i know i heard what brent said or i would say we let's if you've talked like nebraska asked nebraska through brent so we really hear that because right i i think we do i mean right now we don't allow a student to go on a field trip without a parental consent form i don't i don't think and i'm not i'm not trying to push for that i am completely sympathetic to the students for whom
138they don't have that support and i hope what we can provide is a mechanism to help them connect to that support network i'm talking about what legally we can do without parental notification or parental consent i don't think i know i think we need to do a little further research on that to ensure because what i hear is saying yeah what's reasonably minimally burdensome but we're also said tonight you don't have to parent and i get it they may not encourage so i want to protect the child but i don't know we can do that because we're saying is students go to a counselor and now we go this way without parents knowing that's what i hear are saying in this policy i think that i think we need to figure out the parent communication
139issue and we need to know what that's going to look like one way or another i think that i mean that's something i think we can do between this first and second reading to make sure that that we have that clarified i i do think that the documentation from a parent assuming that parents are a part of that process i think that that's sufficient and part of the reason why i think requiring documentation from a physician is it could potentially be burdensome is that providers are still not ubiquitous in the state dealing with these particular issues many of our health insurances don't cover those issues so i think i'm okay with that i'm more okay i'm a student i go to a counselor i go to one of our principals i want to do this
140and what i heard us say tonight we're not going to tell the parent the other one if parents and became parents come in and say this okay you know i'm so i'll get them execution stage i'm not okay on that one right now without further guidance or more research from counseling something better coming back sure so the parents with the student to the school yeah and and i think we need clarification on that to be honest that what we must do doesn't affect my thinking about what we should do in terms of policy i mean if we have to notify i'm still in support of starting to make these changes if we don't have to notify them support in the chain i mean so what we have to do to comply with our own policy
141is is obviously important i do think it would help us write it correctly to know that so that's an issue i also in terms of things i know we need to work i agree that i think the title needs to be worked on no offense to whomever but i would feel bad like somebody really likes this title um but i i agree with one of the comments that um davita made that i don't think transgender is necessary in the title i think that's the easier fix i think parental disclosure is something we have to address the the other element that i am wondering about in terms of wording is right now and i'm looking at where it says uh it so this is in restroom and locker use absolute concern for safety the district shall
142permit a student to use the restroom or locker room for their gender with which they consistently persistently and insistently identify the wording shall permit it's almost as if we're saying we haven't been allowing that and the fact is i'm a cis male i do all of these things for male and i don't need permission to be permitted to do that in fact some of the things to protect i am mulling over in my head whether it should be you shall use the restroom that aligns with how you identify um so that you don't have a trans man just deciding to go into the female the women's restroom which could then cause someone to question why are they here because i really think in majority of these cases it's never going to be an issue you're
143not going to know who is coming in and leaving the restroom that they don't belong there i mean they are the same as you and i think that's the case almost in many of the cases so that that one wording i think just needs to be tweaked um last thing that i will say on this and um i i really i i like where it's going i think we're making the right progress i don't want to jeopardize the policy because we botch the way it appears on our agenda and that's my one concern i've been trying to look things up like does this count as a first reading does my saying i consider it a first reading make it a first reading does it need to appear publicly as a first reading i don't want
144to get challenged if we say yes this is a first reading next meeting we say a second reading we vote on it and someone says no it was not under new business and so in that sense as much as i don't like the delay i think for the and maybe brent can comment on this or someone else but i think we need to make sure that part is right and get it listed the way it is and i i believe we absolutely should have i mean it should be a first reading at the very next meeting brent can you hear doug's question yes i'll follow up i agree with doug to the extent that procedurally you want to do everything correct on the front end as opposed to doubling back and picking the pieces up
145after the fact i think the statutory procedure is friendly enough to where you could have a first reading however i agree with doug where this is a important enough issue where you want to make sure everything is absolutely in order and there's nobody that can question anything in the future okay thank you that could we then if if that's the case could we schedule some special meetings so that this isn't waiting until november given the amount of time we've taken on this issue so far that we could have a first reading in a week a second reading and another week my understanding is that it's not the practice has not been changed across the across the district that it's changed in some places but not in others or at least no change has been communicated
146in some places and so i think there are still students waiting on this policy change um i agree with your in addition to your concerns about the the safety comment and the sort of will be permitted i you know one of the things i think we need to to modify that absent a concern for safety is that it should be a specific documented concern for safety a general ambiguous concern for safety has been the reason that students have been denied this under our current practice for the last several years and so i think having you know just a general well i have concerns i think it needs to be a specific documented concern for safety in that individual case as opposed to just a general concern for safety so that might be language that we
147want to change in that section too and this is my opinion as a board member not not making a ruling as board president i i think a collet official call it publicized first reading appearing at a special meeting is okay i would prefer the final vote occur at a regular scheduled meeting so that there is no public perception that we're trying to do this behind closed doors i mean i would none of our business meetings are behind closed doors but if it is that the one if we are making the final vote when we are in this meeting chambers that i would be more comfortable with that and again that's my board member opinion not my president ruling and we reach a bit of a pause that seems reasonable and i'm supportive of having a
148first reading prior to our next regular scheduled meeting so that we could do a second reading on that date and it is the second reading that which we would be vote and we making a formal vote that is november 8th i recall right i believe so and since a first reading does not require any formal board action i mean that could be something like i mean we could have a community we could have the first reading in front of the board we would all have to be there well a majority of us would have to be there but then we could also have i mean the public could come it could be an informational meeting of sorts as well how many days you wait between the first reading and the second meeting or is it
149just meetings it's just meetings so you could do it within two or three days so would you then send this document back with make all the adjustments or changes get it out to the public give them due time [Music] then we have either a separate meeting which i hear you want i'd rather just do it on the 8th so we have one meeting everybody knows read it there then finish in december instead i have another and i get it just time but then we may have mortals so if you do it on the eighth first reading then the next meeting december it's it goes forward or vote versus have you say it takes you a week to get the policy committee or someone together to wordsmith this takes all the good comments and safety things
150tonight i think we can get a better product people know we have the meaning they come again thought if everybody wants fashion meeting do that too i'd be i'd be strongly i am uncomfortable waiting till november 8th for the second reading i i prefer to have us move more quickly than that for the second reading you would like i would like us to have the first reading before november 8th and be comfortable as having a second reading and the vote on november 8th i would feel very uncomfortable waiting until december to have to have to have a first reading on november 8th and then a second reading later i think we have kids in our district who've been waiting very patiently for us to work through this process and i think that it's but it's
151being worked through so i can i can respect your opinion but i respect the district i'd rather just take time this is just me respectfully disagreeing with what you've decided so it's up to the board to decide what we do it's just i mean we're all busy we do this to help the district we travel make amends here all of us the public you know has set time so it's whatever the board wants to do we are moving forward with many of the items we're just trying to be make it better the first time and know what we've learned as damon said what we can accommodate or not and there's some work to be done so policy committee your thoughts [Music] and just looking at the calendar i mean we'd be looking at potentially you
152could set a meeting in the week of october 24th if we were to do an evening meeting if that's kind of what is better for the public i would guess um and then that would allow basically two weeks into the november eighth meeting again that doesn't mean first reading has to go to a second reading either it could be again that first reading on the 26th isn't where we need it yet to even make it to a second reading correct you know what i mean there could we could still find jim that that first reading they're still based on public comments there's still more work to do which would mean november 8th would probably be an additional well i think that depends on you know because we have a whole week we could in theory
153have a first reading november one and then have a full week between first and second some of it depends on i don't know how quickly we could get turnaround on some of the the questions that require legal input i would think that we would be on this tomorrow obviously starting to work on that the schedules of getting people together is the hard part that's that's usually the biggest challenge is getting everybody that needs to be at a specific meeting at a meeting so i guess i would be in favor of trying to squeeze in a meeting it was still appropriate enough time to communicate between a first reading what that looks like in a second reading schedule pending i'm supportive of that as well [Music] so that looks like now the task falls to finding
154that meeting time but we want to make sure we have i'd say a week between the two okay and and i mean we're going to try to get the hopefully policy can go back and and get some of the things we've talked about tonight and address some of those things and i you know there may be some things um exactly how we handle the fully non-binary you know as we continue to improve facilities i think that will improve too um so good okay now we move on to new business item a is the new item a this is the data assessment data i don't know who wants to go first kim doesn't have assessment data such as the smarter balance or any of that she just has maybe some updates about what's been going on
155at austin's um pre-k through one building so would you like a five minute time limit also i can do that i can do that typically in our data retreat time even in austin we look at the district report card and then how we are impacted by that how we feed into those goals but this year we did it very differently we just looked at our on-site student data we really prioritized to look at those critical foundational building blocks to becoming proficient readers and looking at multiple data sources so that we could better identify those gaps we certainly have found a learning loss due to covid it's been impacted by extended absences by remote learning by disengagement for other other stressors so we've seen that not only is it those foundational building blocks those critical pre-reading
156and reading skills but also just good learner behaviors and productive you know positive learner behaviors so we've had to just find fine tune how we use our data and get a deeper analysis to identify what those specific gaps are and then thankfully with the esser dollars we're able to hire that extra title teacher who has a completely full schedule as well so i think of all those students that are able to get some intervention support thanks to that additional staff person summer school did help some as well because it gave us more data to feed into our sat teams as we're monitoring that progress so um our gap group has increased in size but the margin of the gap itself also has so we're really working as a team to help fill those gaps so
157thank you okay i'll try to keep this brief uh you're not required to say so this is for our current fourth graders but they took this test last year as third graders um something that we've known here for the last i guess since i've been here for four years is that our math scores have struggled and there's different factors that come into play with that currently we're trying to figure out ways to address that we did have our summer school program which i do feel was successful i hope we can do that again next year or next summer and we did hire a title math teacher with that said though that title math teacher that we had filled some of our reading gaps that we had as well because we tried to fill our reading
158needs first and then move on to math it's just kind of the way that the educational world works like we want to make sure kids are able to fluently and read and comprehend at a high level or they're not going to be able to comprehend math problems and story problems and such so with that said our math scores compared to the state for our uh current fourth graders with this test last year our state percentage of proficient advanced students was 52 our district was at 44 um for english language arts the state was at 48 and we were at 43 moving into our current fifth graders who took the assessment last year the state average in math was 47 and as a district we were at 46 percent for those fourth grade students when it
159came to english language arts the state was at 49 and our district was at 51 our current sixth graders we took this assessment in fifth grade uh the state assess our the state percent uh proficient advance was 38 and our district is at 40 and for our english language arts the state was at 51 and our district was at 54 so as you can see we have some that are above the state average some are below um you know i always preference this too is vermilion is a very unique community it is we do as i stated in other uh board meetings we do have at jolly a 10 mobility rate which means we have kids constantly moving in and out that come from very unstable homes so there are you know i try not
160to use that as excuses because we are what we are and that's the students that come through our door every day so we have to figure out what we're going to do to meet them and try to one make sure that our kids are getting to school on a consistent basis and on time and with the addition of our social worker i know that has helped and right now we do have a title teacher that is being advertised to add more manpower at jolly if you know anybody that is available for that position we would like to fill that as soon as possible to get those kids the additional help that they need any questions okay thank you is this the article that was in the argus paper today yeah these are our scores oh
161god last time our kids tested 2019 to where they are today and sam touched on a couple of those and you know i think we're all dealing with the uh the gap when we went out for covet and and it's reflected in the uh you'll see that the district and the state scores all dipped but uh and yet vermillion still holds its own and and does very well uh sam sam talked about our current sixth graders who last year scored at 40 when the state was at 38. uh that was down 11 from the uh 2019. so if you'll flip to the next our current seventh graders [Music] we're at 49 percent in 2019 and 2021 in math we're at 45 in ela they were 53 in ela in 2019 but last year were 64
162so that's quite an amazing score seventh grade math uh in 2019 they're 43 percent last year 48 so we so we're seeing them bounce back the older kids the ela for the current eighth graders the district was at 59 2019 and last year scored a 67 percent so certainly a great job that the staff is doing with the kids and then our ninth graders who are now with john at the high school uh were at 39 percent or excuse me yeah 39 and then last year went to or the the numbers dipped at 18 went from 39 down to 18 so that's that's quite amazing but we found out today and and i uh received it in a text that the vermilion middle school was named by the u.s news and world report as the
163fourth best middle school in our state according to our scores so uh certainly a shout out to the staff and the community and and the school boards of support and our families and kids at home but what a great job our teachers do at the middle school and all the support staff as well as a middle school which is makes you feel very very very good the debater in me really wants to point out that i think that the u.s news and world report study is flawed but i'm going to let i think kudos to the middle school that's the first report that u.s news and world report has done for elementary and middle school scores so for us to land on that chart i think that's great with regard to high school data i
164guess what i'll share with you up front is the smarter balance assessment that we took in the spring basically confirmed that we're right about where we were the last time we collected data two years prior um except for the fact that um two years ago the high school score was lagging somewhat behind the state uh average and now we're a percentage point above in my mind we're essentially the same but nice to see some movement in the right direction there of course with regard to math as far as ela english language arts we're we're showing proficiency in the 74 range which i think is outstanding the state numbers are right at 66. i want to go back to math again for a second though we don't have science data right now because the state throws
165a new science assessment at us every single year so there's no baseline there's nothing to really look at on science as far as math goes i mentioned this concern once before to this body and i'll mention it again and that is we don't really know what we have with this math assessment we're currently supposed to trust an assessment that shows that vermillion high school students scored in the 40 percent proficiency range and the state as a whole at 39 percent proficient and i question any assessment in which the entire state of south dakota's uh junior age students in math perform at 40 or below to me that that doesn't register that's there's there's something that's got to uh got to happen there but i'm also not content with where we're at by just looking at
166this number and saying well the problem is the test i don't know that the problem is the test as much as i'd love to to our horn and say hey 74 proficient in ela is great there might be a problem with the english test and the math test might be dead on so i i really don't i'm not wild about either assessment and to that end that's why we're doing a data plunge for the next two years into our curriculum and really what it comes down to is the smarter balance assessment is based on how effectively we are teaching our students to the standards that are established in the core areas that are being assessed but we're looking at the standards in all content areas across the board we're going to do our very best
167to align every single course to identify the key concepts of those course and to identify where every standard is assessed in those in that curriculum throughout that process my hope is is that we will have a better handle as an instructional staff on what it is our students are being assessed on these assessments and then we will conversely see an overall performance gain when it comes time for the students to do that assessment our ect scores are stellar we've had a number of kids score in the 30 32 33 34 range on the act and for us to see performance like that for us to have kids uh doing well in in national merit scholar applications and such for us to have students perform at a high level and those students by the way when
168we look up their individual scores they're scoring at a high level on the math assessment too so the question becomes where where are we missing it is it is it in is it in the median students is it our lower performing students we're still trying to get a handle on that but i i do think that there's there's something unusual about our math numbers and we want to get a better handle on that and i think it really starts with getting a better handle on our curriculum as a whole questions do you have data about the and i don't know if this is available about the average act score and how that compares to the rest of the state or to other states as an alternative measure to that math to kind of get an
169idea of what's happening there i do the the one thing we have to understand though is and and i'm certain you do is is that the act score is only going to evaluate a very specific segment of our population and it doesn't speak to the breadth of our our our student body um but yeah we can we can draw a comparison there i i don't have that available to share with you tonight but it could be done okay and maybe just to add to their assessment data of course i want to thank the administrators and the the teachers and the classified staff that are working very very hard last year this board granted dollars to have an extended school year program and we want to see that continue into the future but this last year
170we got a lot of kiddos into our buildings and helped make an impact for some of those kids uh we'd like to see that continue because we feel like we still have some more gaps to fill there we probably won't fully understand the breadth of that gap for some time but our staff is working really diligently to try to work with those those those kiddos where they are and then of course take take them from that point forward so we'll hopefully have continued good news to share with you at each meeting about our updates on that so thank you to our staff very well we'll move on to item b uh approval of the canvas for the bond election so i'm going to turn the floor over to kevin as he hands out the materials
171these are the poll books that have been distributed from each of the voting precincts from the october 5th bond issuance election they were sealed up that night and if we can start down there i believe shane do you have the north west precinct if you can flip to the back of that it should have an official vote count and if you can read that vote count okay and carol with the southeast [Laughter] i see 544 names okay and that would match the total number the total as well yes and i see they filled out yes so the tally marks were done from that precinct and then the additional official sheet with the tally marks that was unsealed uh reported the 414 yes and the 130 no from there jim from the central and northeast i
172have 179 yes and 46 no okay that is what was reported that night and rachel with the rural union county voters 139 yes 53 no okay those all match what was in the unofficial results that had been reported that night uh shane can you tell me the le if you look towards the front of that where all the names are written in what is the last number of the final voter 245 245 is a match to the number of votes there carol we are already covered that years was 544 is that correct and jim can you tell me what the final number was there 225 okay and that is a match to the total number of voters and rachel with rural union county 194. and that is off by two and the reason for that
173is we had two provisional ballots that were filled out and those ultimately did not they were not registered voters they will be notified of that but that would be the difference in those two so if you are satisfied with those results based on these unsealed poll books now uh since it does say we doug if you could read at the very bottom of the uh canvas sheet there what we would have to officially approve yes so it would it reads we shane nordike rachel olson doug peterson jim peterson carol vos ward appointed as the board of canvassers because of our positions on the governing board in the jurisdiction of the vermillion school district for the school bond election held on the fifth day of october 2021 hereby certified that the foregoing is a true abstract
174of the votes cast in the jurisdiction of the bermudian school district at the election as shown by the results certified to the person in charge of the election and that would then be we would sign if you can have a motion that uh is approved there then we would take the signatures we need we do need a motion a second and a vote on this item make a motion motion by jim second second by carol all in favor of uh approving this official canvas signify by saying aye aye aye oppose nay okay so that passes now do you have a yes and if we can get three of these signed and we can just send them down the row and we will distribute these to the county auditors and keep one official copy excellent okay
175while those are going around can i move on okay item c approval of resolution authorizes levy just sign on the top line kevin yeah yes okay correct so while i'm doing this damon do you can you fill us in on this item yes well okay i'll let kevin go ahead um this one was placed on here because we wanted to double check and have it as a placeholder just in case we determined that it was needed uh the more that we looked into it if you recall back in july we we had a one uh one million three hundred thousand dollar levy that had been approved along with our budget that was contingent on the election results we have spoken to the individuals that we need that were satisfied with that and so we actually
176do not need any official action on this one tonight oh okay thank you uh next item approval of a delegate for the assembly um and carol is unable to attend what's the date on that uh november 19th one o'clock in beautiful downtown city pier so if you're available uh let me know and we could we could get that put into place and if you can't we'll i mean i i go to a delegate assembly i can bring back the things i don't go to the same one that the school board members go to but we'll be able to get you the information okay and of course doug i believe you're our land representative as in the past so he'll get the updates as legislative session opens i believe they do not do it electronic right
177right item e library book selection process yes we are basically wanting to get a chance to if you could put that up i don't know if you can hear us back there don there you go very good thank you after our last school board meeting we had some questions about book selection in our libraries the types of items that potentially being taught in our our curriculums in our school and so we had questions about how do we have a process and how does a parent that has concerns uh get in touch with someone about their concerns and so what you see before you is just a synopsis of the discussion that we had between the administrators and the librarian media specialist within our districts uh in our district in all of our buildings and really
178this is just a synopsis of some of the things we talked about so i won't read them all to you but really you know the library serves an important focus and a role in our community for the selection evaluation of materials that help support our school curriculum to help promote lifelong learning for our students the library has to be inclusive in offering different viewpoints and access to materials they have to have presentation of accurate materials our library should materials and all of our titles should reflect our pluralistic society they should provide appropriate formats to effectively teach the curriculum to kids whether it's print or electronic formats it should be cost effective for taxpayers and have a good shelf life and durability and at the end of the time provide consideration from the students and the
179faculty about the things that are important to have curriculum related so the next few statements just talks a little bit about what we talked about in our meeting with our lead library media specialist in that you know the process is is that we get books from a variety of sources but typically we get them from distributors such as fallit or national library guild and it's typically books that are newberry or caldecott winners high basically selected items across the nation maybe there's topics those topics can have controversial themes but those are not things that we shy away from from our libraries in fact we have a library full of topics that might be a variety of interests of different people but when any time you have a variety of interests you also have an opportunity for
180a variety of controversial topics and so we wanted to have the discussion with our our librarians and our teachers uh administrators about how do we introduce topics without um getting into parents rights about um teaching controversial you know basically sensitive issues that are the rights of parents so basically during a typical library time at our elementaries or middle schools kids are offered an opportunity to get a lesson and during that lesson they might be on etiquette or uh in my days it was the old dewey decimal systems and in today's world it's how to figure out uh you know the software that kids can look up the materials on our system to find a book that might be of interest of them we have discussions with kids about their the things that they like and
181we try to get books that correlate with their likes uh if i'm a sports guy we try to incorporate sports books if i'm a novelist uh maybe like mysteries our librarians are receptive to that and trying to work with trying to find materials for that they also get in feedback from our teaching staff as well as our principals in terms of curriculum-related materials so if it's going along with something on native american history we want our media specialist to be ordering materials that represent that that being said we end up getting hundreds of books during the course of a year we ask our media specialist to look through those topics and to be versed in those uh to the best of their abilities and to present those materials to kids so all of our books
182are displayed when they're new topics out on shelves in our library uh they might be showcased as a theme for something in the month and maybe it's a holiday it could be last month it was inclusivity in our one of our school dish district buildings but at that time we had parents that were concerned with some of the materials they saw in our library so it gave us a chance to educate ourselves about our processes and talk with our caretakers of our library about how that process works as well as take concerns from parents about being sensitive to their needs and desires not to have school staff really teaching these subjects it's more about introducing the books and so we we we gained some great knowledge from some folks and we heard from some of
183our patrons that they they prefer to make sure that we're not we as in school district are not promoting an agenda promoting a specific book that might be contrary to their personal values and we respect that and what we'll do is based on our discussion with our librarians and media specialists and principals is we will do our very best every day to continue to bring diverse books into our library but be very sensitive that some of these topics are not going to be age appropriate for certain kids and or appropriate to certain families value systems and that it's not our jobs to take a particular title and endorse it and ask all of our kids to read it it's more of a representation that we have these books and our as our resources in our
184library so um to help compensate for that we do have a complaint policy and some of you probably have seen it in our policy manual some of you being rather new to the board maybe didn't know that we had this procedure in place but for folks that are concerned about the materials in our library they can um offer a complaint to the library media specialist about their concern with the material that request for reconsideration is paperwork that they ask to fill out and it's turned into the media specialist who then is forwarded to the principal and myself for their review and we reform a committee that looks over the parents concerns or the maybe the objections to that particular book or that material that's in the library and there's a 60-day window during which time
185that this committee meets but then at that time a decision has to be rendered and it's it could be the fact that this book is offensive to the standards of our school district and to the to the the folks that brought it forward and that the committee has recommended it be removed from the shelves or it could be likely that that the committee has said that we we respect the parents views on this but we're not going to remove this material from our shelves and finally if unresolved then the complainant can also move that forward to this this body the school board who has the final authority on the materials that are in the library what we're really trying to achieve is uh we have to earn the trust of our patrons and we do
186that by our actions and not necessarily by our words so we have to provide an environment where kids coming into our school district doesn't matter if it's the library it doesn't matter if it's the coach it doesn't matter if it's a history teacher parents are trusting that our our professionals are are basically apolitical they they don't let their personal uh judgments and their personal values trigger into the kids instructional time and that's the same with the materials that we have in our library we offer a diverse curriculum it needs to be because we have diverse readers and diverse members of our society but at the same time we have to demonstrate to our folks in our in our district that we respect their request as parents to be the ones who share and discuss sensitive
187topics but we won't be removing items from the library without due process but we will listen to parents concerns and complaints and and discuss those concerns with them so that we can best serve all of our kids uh yet honor and the values of the families that serve our kids so our our principals are well versed on this now we've had a few meetings on this i want to thank our lee library media specialist for uh talking through the policies sharing with us how class works talking about this book selection process our principals will be a little more engaged in that process as something we've learned through this but ultimately it's about just being a a school that offers diverse curriculum yet honoring parents by not overstepping our bounds and trying to persuade or push
188an agenda item so i can give my word to our parents that that doesn't happen in our district if it has happened in the past we apologize we'll get it corrected but moving forward our staff is committed to just making sure the environment is welcoming to our kids and that they give them the best experience whether it's in activities library or in the classroom so i just wanted to kind of get that out because there's been some talk with myself as well some of our principals about our processes so i wanted to just kind of get that out to the public and offer discussion if there was any so if there's any questions i can answer it out of the board at this time questions so if if a book has not been challenged or
189has been unsuccessfully challenged so that it's in it's been considered appropriate for the library's material are there any additional limitations on what can be put on those displays or what can be discussed or so in guidance to the librarians to not discuss sensitive topics or promote sensitive talk like how is that determined what's what's sensitive right what's not and what sort of because in the past we sort of trusted them as educators to make those decisions are we are there additional limitations now are we still trusting their discretion as educators to make those decisions right now we've got complete faith in our in our our staff and our buildings to make good decisions what does complicate that is is is everybody's judgment is slightly different and so our guidance that that's something that our principals
190and i are talking through and working with the media specialist on is is there a certain set of criteria that we want to just sort of avoid that topic whether it would be on uh sexual sexuality issues would it be on uh uh basically race relations is there something that's a hot button issue that we want to try to educate but not get into the weeds too deep because that's really where we find ourselves maybe in a gray area because i could be talking about it from my perspective and find it completely offensive to some families because they'll say mr elvis your your view on this is skewed you're talking from your perspective our perspective is different so i guess just good old common sense would prevail in this if it's a topic that's causing
191a national stir or a stir locally you might want to avoid that i don't have to promote the specific book by holding it up and everything and saying you need to read this in fact i shouldn't do that but the fact that all of our books are put on display and encouraged to be read that's completely appropriate because they do that with every title what we're asking parents to do though is if you've got titles that you're concerned with that you know that you don't want your kids to read you should be informing our our library media specialist and principals about that because we'll do our best to try to keep those books out of their hands so if we have a selection of new books and the librarians introducing those books by reading the
192book jackets or presenting them to like hey these are the new books that come in are are we suggesting that they should should leave out some of those books that might hit more sensitive topics because there's a difference between advocating like you should read this book right this is the best book on this topic right versus just saying like hey look here's one of our other new books and here's another new book right another number right and it seems i mean it seems a really a tricky place we're getting into if we're like well you can promote these new books but not these new books but there's going to be a moving target on what we're going to consider to be sensitive and what we're going to do to be there yeah and you're absolutely
193right and that changes that'll change tomorrow because what might be sensitive today may not be sensitive tomorrow or a topic that we're all very comfortable with in this room tonight uh based on the news tomorrow we might not be so comfortable with it and so that you're right it's going to put our media specialist a little bit of a moving target for that uh discussion uh i mean i think that they would i would my advice to them would be if it's a hot button item i would personally stay away from it the fact that it's in the library parents are introduced to it the kids know it's a new topic i'm not forcing them to read or not read the the jackets of those books but if they're reading some of these issues these
194books out the jackets to the kids will they get will they get called the task that they're promoting that that'll be something that we'll have to wait and see i guess this body might be involved in that later on if that becomes an issue with uh some of these things if if that gets to be to this level so i don't know the good answer to that is is do we just let it be where it is what we what we found is that was offensive to some of the people in our community the fact that they felt by us introducing the book reading the jacket cover violated their personal standards on they didn't want their kids to hear that first experience from a teacher at school they wanted to have that experience with their
195kids and so that is remains unanswered tonight but as an adult as an educator they know what hot topics are and the fact that the books are still there for kids but we're not endorsing them or maybe promoting them by reading them seems like a reasonable accommodation to me at this point you guys might feel different i'd be interested in your opinions on it because ultimately it would rise to your occasion if we find that there was a violation of some kind and it worked its way up the system you would be hearing this at some point i just think we have to be very we have to be very careful about you know again difference between advocacy this is the definitive book you should read on this topic versus here's an interesting sort of
196book that's out there right like and how we think about that because i think that what what families will find offensive is is highly variable right and we could end up with an empty library if we're sort of not willing to introduce anything that families might find offensive for example my husband and i are vegan we find that it's sort of you know it's against our sort of ethical values to consume animals our children read and listen to stories about eating animals including thanksgiving and hunting and ranching pretty much every year since they've been in school but we have never considered it sort of a place that we would complain about that or that our children should be protected from viewpoints opposed to ours we just consider it our our job at home to be
197able to have those conversations with them at home about what they've consumed at school and so i just feel that we have to be very careful that we're not going to say like anytime there's something that sort of touches a nerve it's not something that shouldn't be talked about we have a long history within our middle school i know talking about banned books week right like in all these books that have been banned over time and now we consider it to be classic wonderful books and so it's i just think we have to be so careful and tread lightly and respect the the discretion and the education and the experience of our librarians and making those choices versus putting additional rails on which books can be discussed or highlighted right i think we just have
198to tread very carefully no i would agree and and again we've talked about this with our live library media specialist you know we're not in the business of banning books and censorship and stuff because uh which one of us wants to be the curator of that you know which moral fabric are we going to be looking at deciding that and so you're absolutely right our actions will be what determines the success of this if we find that basically by reading the book and explaining these are all new books and this is a book on this topic that will probably serve us well versus a position and i'm not saying this has happened but the position of that there were advocating for something but you're right it's a great area that causes our library media specialist
199probably some gray hair because it's going to be difficult to manage but overall our libraries have been very successful in all the years that i've been here in years prior because that we have great professionals there we do get literature that's of high quality and some which is thought provoking and that's good and i hope i know everybody appreciates that and we're going to do the best we can to balance that so that people don't feel like we're some sort of uh promotional product here and i know our people will work very hard to to combat that so but i did want to have this out front with the board because i'm not sure how much you've heard about it but it has been something that's been brought to our attention of our staff and
200we wanted to get out in front of it and let you guys know so that we could have a good discussion about it so i appreciate your feedback okay our last item for new business is the approval of brent matter as our school attorney do we officially need to dissolve the previous or is that we still have some bills to pay for for uh jim mccullough law for those that that are tuned again of course we lost our school attorney a few weeks back jim mccullough who spent 30 plus years with the school district serving this this district in his capacity unfortunately passed away um rather unexpectedly a few weeks ago so we want to wish our condolences out to his family he was he was a great asset in the meantime he's obviously worked
201with brent uh matter who is on the phone with us tonight and has been serving in our capacity as school attorney for the last couple months uh previous to that he had been working with jim for several years so brent's not new to us but he is new to the the fact that now we have to count on him as the school attorney so we have some outstanding bills and things that that brent has been working through so we have sort of a we have to pay for jim mccullough law services as that is ceasing and we're adding brent in as our new school attorney so we can continue with his services as as we move forward ultimately the board will have to have a discussion with brent and do a proposal where we'll look
202at if we want to have his services long term if it's going to be in combination with something but that comes for another day we just want to make sure that he's under contract and that he's being paid for the services he's performed the last couple months for us so anything to add to that brent i have a duty to inform the school that uh after jim's passing the file is your file and you may come and pick up the file at any time however i would be honored to continue representing the school district and continue jim's legacy serving the school district all right very good thank you okay questions yes we choose we need to get an attorney so we appoint brent if that's the recommendation is that a through the school year or
203he's just our attorney until such time because normally it's put in business we'd have discussion no offense to brent we would you know write hey this is maybe the criteria we look at in a lawyer for the school district brent and we put it out and brent applies or others and we get a board to interview i think that's something prudent to the district right no offense to you brent and then we he'd be considered among others but is that down the road two months a year you know that that's a good discussion uh if we want to put a timeline on that for for us to have that discussion we can tonight was to make sure we had the previous bills paid and that we had his services under contract to move forward that
204doesn't stop the district from getting services from anybody else or opening the door for for a proposal if you said by the first of the year we want to have proposals to have that discussion we can absolutely get that done thanks for clarification okay my i'm thinking and it's totally the board's decision is at a minimum i intended on honoring jim's contract through july i believe okay perfect there's nod their heads thanks sorry we sometimes forget you can't see it right okay so the only uh additional motion required under new business is for item new item f the approval of brent matter as the school attorney until such time as the board uh chooses to take another direction and not to exceed the exit contract until july so moved second by shane and rachel all
205in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed nay abstain motion passes uh reports five minutes each yes just the usual thank yous again to the fire departments and the police departments and all the first responders for last month's fire response everything's is moving into great direction there and cleanup is moving forward very nicely also the other contractors and volunteers who helped out with that situation thank you to walmart they donated several boxes of school supplies to the school which in turn goes to the teachers for classroom use but it goes to our tanger take out it goes to kids in need of the district so thank you to walmart for all those great school supplies thank you for all the people who promoted the school bond election the school personnel who helped guide the
206process and run the election the school board for your leadership and of course the voters for your support we've already talked a little bit about our library book process that was there a parent-teacher conference is well attended i'll have some numbers for that next meeting for you there but good parent-teacher conferences and staff in service last week our our numbers are up at this year right now we're sitting at about 229 they fluctuate a little bit every week but about 229 in austin uh 389 students in jolly about 324 in the middle school and a high school sitting at about 402 which is about 1345 kids about a little over up 80 kids almost 85 kids from last year so outstanding uh growth and we're excited to have those kids in the district so looking
207forward to that staff flu shots will be run with the sanford uh cooperation of the sanford drive-through clinic coming up on october 22nd at 3 30 to 4 30. and also a little special recognition for the school board the associated school board does board recognition for leadership activities trainings that the board attends opportunities for professional development the all the gavel trainings things that the boards have done delegate assembly convention attendance our board has a cured enough points to be recognized for a bronze star this year so great job to the school board for the extra efforts in terms of going to extra school board meetings extra associated school board meetings and delegate assembly all the things that are associated with that so kudos to the board for your extra efforts and that's it you can
208each take that home for a week if you'd like traveling trophies no i'm sure we'll find a place to uh hang that at the district office yep we'll get it hung up proudly and and continue to go to those things and we'll move our way up that our chain there so okay are there other board committees [Applause] i would just like to congratulate the vermillion public schools foundation on the hiring of an executive director so that is a great step forward for that organization and again we greatly appreciate their support of our district i know shane and i were both there today but just want to thank the pto organization and all the volunteers for helping with a great fun run today what beautiful weather and i only applied three band-aids which was great but
209a lot of a lot of marks on those kids t-shirts so hopefully they're nicely sleeping and bed already so thank you for the pto okay seeing none we'll move on to our financial reports the uh financial report was in the back of the packet this month the only thing that i really wanted to highlight on this is if you took a look at it and compared the general fund numbers if you looked at last month we were up considerably from the previous year and now this this year month com comparing to last year same month we are down about 166 000 the reason for that was this was the month uh last year that we received the crf funds and so that was about 350 000 that was just received at that time and then
210it was spent over the course of the the rest of the year so that will even out it's just one of those that i wanted to explain why suddenly we had a swing of approximately 300 thousand dollars when you compare year to year from from one month to the next um the only other thing there is that we over the next couple months we'll be working on receiving the the proceeds from the bond that had passed so we will be working to create a fund 31 that will be placed in here for debt service fund and fund 41 which will be our project account that we will actually receive the money in there to pay down over the course of the project okay any questions for kevin on that okay and we don't we've approved
211everything else in the i'm still adjusting the consent agenda right don't want to miss anything okay uh future agenda items sorry we do need still need approval for just this financial okay sorry it's a motion to accept the financials second by rachel and carol it's been moved and seconded to accept the financial reports signify all in favor signify by saying aye aye all right oppose nay motion passes okay future agenda items i was wondering perhaps mr alvey if we could have our sro officers come in and just give a recap on how the year is going and maybe particularly also um just the information about vaping and kind of where we're sitting in the district it's always a good time to thank them so yes might as well absolutely any other requests okay seeing none
212then move toward yeah motion to adjourn second it's been moved by rachel seconded by carol to adjourn all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye we are adjourned you all for attending tonight and thank