Canyons Board Meeting

001yes [Music] good evening i'd like to welcome everyone to the meeting the business meeting of the canyons board of education tonight um february 1st 2022 we are meeting in the district office located at 9361 south 300 east in sandy utah the first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting i will ask for a motion i will make a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting thank you is there a second to that motion i'll second him thank you any discussion to the motion no scene none i'll call for the vote all in favor say aye any opposed that motion passes thank you we will now be led in the pledge of allegiance by quail hollow elementary principal chad de mill and then principal demille will give us school highlights

002from quail hollow elementary please stand ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i don't know if i need to put that up there just like to thank the board for this opportunity to share a little bit about quail hollow um we at quail hollow serve about 480 students kindergarten through fifth grade we have one supplemental kindergarten two half day sessions we have two academic behavior classrooms as well as three preschool classrooms 19 general ed classrooms and we have a wonderful staff that supports our students our staff is filled with adults who love their students and really truly put those kids first at quail hollow we have strong academic programs

003that follow the canyons district multi-system support framework and produce results and academic gains we have a community of teachers who implement restorative circles to build positive relationships with students which creates a caring and safe environment for learning these are all great things that our teachers and staff do very well tonight i just like to share a little bit about what makes quail hollow a great place and in order to do this i reached out to our pta and school community council boards our teachers and asked even some of our students that question what is it that makes quahog great so i'd just like to share a few of their responses some of our students said the teachers are nice and kids are nice we have safety patrol and the food is good everyone is nice

004all teachers are nice and it is fun good school supplies the rules are good and people follow them we have quality quails i like my classes i get to do science projects art and field trips some of our parents said quail hollow is a great place because of our community it is the welcoming place where everyone feels accepted and excited to be at school and that is due to our community teachers and all the school staff and our families that attend quail hollow teachers and staff create a sense of community parent volunteers come high expectations and standards are set and fund traditions and programs i know that teachers and administrators always have my child's overall well-being academic social emotional and physical needs in mind whenever they make a decision some teachers some of the comments

005from teachers one indicator that quail hollow is a great school is the fact that the board president still comes to volunteer the school where her children attended we get a lot of out of bounds requests for students to come and teachers tend to stay until they retire why because parents feel heard about their concerns for their children and teachers and staff feel supported one of the cool things about quail hollow about the neighborhood school concept is that many of the students parents went to quahog a couple decades later quail hollow still delivers a quality education where curiosity and love of learning are encouraged and nurtured in the same beige building the teachers and staff are so invested in willing to go the extra mile to see students succeed they believe in what they do they

006believe in what they do and it shows in their care and attention wonderful parents uh who put in countless hours in the classroom and also serve on pta and school community council as well as other committees all of these are pieces that come together and create this well working inviting and fun environment that makes it a joy to be part of now as you can see from these comments from our teachers and students and parents um that what makes quail hollow great um is the people that's there uh it really does take a village to raise a child especially in our world today our quail hollow village includes our parents teachers our staff and most importantly our students and when people come together and set aside differences and work together our school environment is safe

007fun and engaging and when these things are in place learning just kind of takes care of itself there's a lot that goes into gaining an education while reading writing math and science are all very important learning to be a learner learning how to solve problems and learning to be a good citizen and a good friend are all part of the learning process at quail hollow we strive for quality and helping kids achieve academically as well as learn how to be a good person when good people influence others for good a community can thrive so i'd just like to point out a couple of my perspective about our our um school and then i'll be done um one of the things that i've noticed uh is the positivity in the welcoming environment that's there as soon

008as you walk through the front doors our front staff are stellar people and we have top-notch teachers some of the characteristics that i've seen over the years from our teachers and staff include their kindness they're very helpful they're compassionate they're thoughtful and they're friendly and there is an overall feeling of collaboration and togetherness our students are kind they work hard they're respectful and they really do strive to succeed and our parents are very supportive and they're responsive and they care deeply not only about their own children but about our community it's a blessing to be part of quail hollow community and it's all about or it's all the people involved that really makes us a unique and special place so thank you and quail hollow is a special place as all of our schools are

009but please thank you principal demille and and please extend our appreciation to the staff the students and the parents there at the quail hollow community i appreciate you thank you okay next on the agenda we'll turn time over to jeff haney and kirsten stewart from the communications department for some recognitions so president t the last time i was here we talked about a fun run and uh i went back to the foundation and i told denise the foundation director that president had asked me if i was going to wear a tutu on the 2 to 22 run to benefit the foundation and she gave me this so i'm going to give it to dr robbins now actually i promised president thingy that i would wear it and i will do so as we raise money

010for canyon school district isn't that lovely but you know president tini and the board of education we appreciate the time that you grant us every single board meeting to honor those who have excelled in the arts either as advocates on the stage plus a teacher who has gone above and beyond to receive a national certification now those who are honored tonight will receive a letter of commendation from the superintendent and members of the board of education so but before we do start our recognitions tonight i do want to remind everyone to don your tutus much like the one i just showed you for our two two 22 or two 22 22 run with a 2-2 now all of the funds raised at this fun run will benefit canyons district students and schools also it's been

011a banner year for our teacher of the year selection process as of today we have received nearly 1400 nominations for the 2022 teacher of the year we had those nominations from students parents principals and support staff for their favorite teachers and after friday those nominations will then be reviewed by each school selection committee they will select one teacher of the year to represent every school in the canyons district from that field we winnow it down to three finalists a finalist of from elementary middle and high school levels from those three we select an overall teacher of the year we hope our teacher of the year does well and wins the state competition and then heads on to the national competition to take canyon's district to the world the canyons education foundation is a proud sponsor

012of the teacher of the year awards and they will be presenting those cash prizes to our teachers of the year so please don your tutus for the 2 2 22 or 2 22 22 fun run and help support our teacher of the year selection process and ceremony as well as many other very innovative projects that are funded and supported by the canyons education foundation now our first nominee tonight is dr molly hart principal of albion middle school the utah music educators association has named her the outstanding administrator of the year for the state of utah and dr hart will receive this prestigious award the music teacher association's professional development conference at the dixie center in saint george on friday now this recognition is given to a public school administrator who has demonstrated commitment to the

013arts music education in the schools the nomination may be for long-term support of music education or for a one-time contribution or support of some kind of music education program but based on the nominations from music educators in the states the association feels that dr hart truly exemplifies the standards of someone who supports music education in her school so congratulations to dr hart this also carries on a tradition in the canyon school district last year brighton high principal tom sherwood and then jordan high school principal and now federal programs director wendy dao received the award together from the utah music educators association so congratulations to dr hart now our ex-next honorees earned their time in the spotlight with hours and hours and hours of rehearsal congratulations to our student musicians from six canyon schools who were

014named to utah all-state ensembles now the all-state high school and junior high bands orchestras and symphonies wowed the crowds at concerts on january 14th and january 15th at a bravo hall it was not easy to win a chair on that stage the students auditioned in front of judges in order to be named to those performing groups suffice to say that these student musicians are among the best of the best in the state and i know there are a lot of them but these student musicians deserve their time in the spotlight not just on the stage but here at board meeting tonight the utah all-state junior high band is made up of adrian mcgill from draper park tate walker from draper park sierra johnson from draper park and logan kelly from draper park utah allstate junior

015high orchestra maya youngeray from draper park benjamin krantz from draper park magdalena morrison indian hills hannah wixom from albion holly allen from brighton utah high school all state symphonic band tyler randall from corner canyon caden mather from corner canyon darren randall from corner canyon in braydon towns from quarter canyon clark weiler from corner canyon ave winters from brighton christian sorensen from brighton matthew wise from brighton and jade smith from brighton the utah high school all-state win symphony yvonne's son from brighton parker shepard from brighton isaiah mcmullen from hillcrest reed laker from corner canyon from the utah state high school all-state symphonic orchestra hannah rowley from brighton caroline rupper from brighton jade lamont from hillcrest william buckley from brighton and nola ripledger from brighton utah high school all-state filth harmonic orchestra jack jack jensen from alta

016avery perry from brighton lilly elkhart from brighton zoe merkley from brighton marcus morgan from brighton sophia munn from hillcrest jason mann from hillcrest colin carter from hillcrest and ethan newton from corner canyon also the audition results for junior high state band and state orchestra were recently released there are 30 groups accepted into each and canyons as well represented the state band from albion butler draper park in indian hills they all earned passage and the state orchestra albion butler draper hill and indian hills so congratulations to the students the musicians at those schools art education as you can see is strong canyon school district our next honoree is a national board certified teacher karina cora zapata from alta high school she will be honored on friday at the utah state capitol this is a time honor

017tradition for those teachers who have earned the national board certification it's a voluntary program and it's widely regarded as the gold standard in teacher certification requiring years of work for completion now this standard was established by teachers for teachers a task force of policy makers educators teachers associations and business leaders combined to create the national board for professional teaching standards and established five core propositions for teaching that form the basis of national board standards like i said if you tune in or head up to the capitol after 10 o'clock she'll be honored on the floor both the house and the senate so congratulations to carina cora sabata from alta high school for being a national board certified teacher now our next honorees are two women who have contributed so much to canyon school district our

018special education director mr suarez and a human uh hr director and recruiter kim baker now we will miss both of their considerable talents considerably when they retire at the end of this school year now kim as a recruiter has crisscrossed the country in search of the best educational talent to bring back to canyon school district now she hasn't been with us for a long time but her impact especially with the amazing teachers that she has brought to canyons will be felt for years and misty approached the job as the special education director as she does her hundred mile races she braved the tough spots she seemingly ran uphill all of the time but she finished with a smile on her face american author lori borgman got it right especially about misty when she said about

019advocates for children with disabilities they have the strength of a draft horse while holding on to the delicacy of a daffodil we will honor misty and kim and all of the other retirees of canyon school this district this year at our annual retirees banquet on may 12th at garner's village the gathering place please put it on your calendar if it's not there already it's a wonderful event to honor those who have contributed so much and so many years to canyon's district students and schools now best of luck to our drill teams canyons district high school teams four out of five high schools have qualified to compete in the semi-finals tomorrow 5 8 and 6a competitions will be tomorrow at utah valley university we have the bright nickadians the corner canyon sherelles the jordan charlonians and

020hillcrest drill all headed to the semifinals hopefully they will all make it to the final round on saturday hillcrest is ranked number three in the state in 5a fingers crossed for all of our drill teams to head to the finals and hopefully bring back the state championship so president thank you for this time you've given us during board meeting to recognize those in canyon's district who have gone above and beyond thank you thank you mr haney we appreciate hearing all the wonderful things that are happening in the district and the achievements and we we too wish all all of those that were recognized tonight the very best and congratulate them um we've now come to the patron comment portion of our meeting while not required by law the board often designates time in meetings to

021listen to the patrons of the district patron comment time is listen limited to residents and taxpayers of canyon's district students and parents of students and current employees of the district patrons may provide board members with written documents these documents must be emailed to the office of public communications by noon the day following the board meeting or can be turned into this board secretary here at the meeting time allotted for public comment is at the discretion of the board president and tonight the board we have one individual that has signed up to address the boards so um that patron will be given three minutes and comments made during patron comment time are part of the public record it is the board's practice to listen and take notes during patron comments the board of education does not

022discuss matters that are not on the meeting's agenda nor engage in public comment on individual students to protect their privacy or employee issues if a patron wants to comment on a district employee's character professional competence or mental or physical help the board requests that those comments be submitted to the board in writing however if the patron determines to verbally comment on the on personnel issues the comments need to be civil and refrain from personal attacks insults defamatory or slanderous comments about an individual the board of education would like to make it clear that critical race theory is not part of the curriculum being used by canyon school district there are no plans to incorporate it into the curriculum or instruction in canyon schools the board of education values input on all sides of issues to

023maintain decorum and respect we ask that those in attendance refrain from applause or other types of demonstrations during the patron comment time as well as throughout the meeting so um tonight um chad smith has signed up to address the board and um mr smith if you want to come forward thank you um to be honest i didn't prepare a lot of remarks because i thought that there would be more people here and i was going to react to whatever they said so um in lieu of that maybe i'll just remember the time four years ago that my daughter was reminding me of when she was in fourth grade and she walked away from her asleep holding a bottle of gatorade that she was given so we have good memories um it's a super difficult time

024for uh for education in the nation in the world in our district in our schools and i know everyone's quick to complain when that kind of stuff happens and there's a lot of extra work and a lot of extra stress and people don't always point out how they appreciate the extra effort and everything else that you're going under at this time so thank you thank you thank you thank you um it's not just a teacher crisis and staffing crisis in you know it's administrative as well as teachers and uh thanks for for sticking in there and uh and helping out really appreciate that um so um in addition to the hard work and the extra stress i wanted to thank you for your continued transparency accessibility um openness to input solicitation of input i know

025that you've done a lot to be not only anxious for that input but solicitous of it and and anxious to respond to communications i really truly appreciate that and and when i first started complaining to you guys a few years ago i didn't realize how good you were at that and i've i've benefited from it over the years thank you speaking of which you've received a lot of input recently around i think supre you know hoping for increased focus and support of the arts um whether that's through a through more elective choice um also i know there's a continued desire from us certainly from wendy and me about uh later school start times for our kids um very still very very interested in that i sent an email to all of you on that so

026i won't i won't burn up any more time belaboring that point um just suffice to say that we're still very anxious about those issues and and what you'll do with those things um as you work on the strategic plan um and just wanted to say thank you for for doing a strategic plan and putting in this work and trying to make lemonade out of lemons by uh being opportunistic with some of the crazy situation we find ourselves in hopefully we come away with some new opportunities and solutions as well as problems um after living through this harrowing experience of everything you know coveted in otherwise speaking of otherwise i also wanted to say i know there's a lot of other issues with people wanting to split off districts or censorship or proposing their own curricula

027and i'm out of time but but i appreciate um i i just wanted to say that uh it's easy to lump all of the disgruntled parents and citizens together into one group and we don't always divide so evenly um speaking for wendy and me we're very anxious to keep a lot of things steady as she goes and and not have a an overhaul at a time when we're worried about about keeping our teachers employed and keeping you know having enough bus drivers and whatever else so i just wanted to express a degree of trust that you're working on this and you care about this and you're doing you're trying to do the right thing in appreciation for those efforts and uh anxiousness for you to worry about some of those other issues as they come

028in i also wanted to give a quick shout out to chip watts who has been doing a great job and he's been having a hard time too and uh anyway thank you thank you mr smith appreciate that okay that concludes our patron comments this evening and um so next on the agenda are the consent agenda items i will ask for a motion and please in making that motion please list each of the items on the consent agenda okay i would like to make a motion to approve the agenda on the uh february 1st 2022 agenda item a approval of minutes of january 18 2022 b approval of higher and termination reports c approval of purchasing bids d approval of student overnight travel e approval of new members of the canyons education foundation board and f

029approval of tssp and land trust amendments for bellevue oak hollow park lane peruvian park silver mesa midfield middle and mount jordan thank you is there a second to the motion i'll second that thank you any discussion to this motion okay see none we'll i'll ask for a vote all in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that motion passes thank you okay next item 6a 2022 legislative update i will turn the time over to charlie evans director of external relations and susan edwards public engagement coordinator all right so nice to be back with you guys we only we cut our presentation down to an hour and a half should we should we take a break now or that that's my goal month i would just like to know when you're going to be running

030within the 2 22 3 2 2 2 2 2. 9 o'clock is my bedtime charlie we're not gonna make it okay we um we have one two three four five six bills here to talk about and we'll go through them very quickly but uh because we're going through them quickly doesn't mean we we're happy to take any questions that you have about them and discuss them as long as you'd like to um the bill that we uh we're dealing with today you're kind of getting these in the order we've dealt with them this week was senator miller's bill dealing with reading comprehension i can't remember the title of it but it is a bill dealing with k-3 reading and putting some money towards that a new program that would provide reading coaches especially in districts

031that don't have reading coaches early literacy outcomes sorry thank you that bill was in committee today and was substituted and i have not had a chance to read the bill since it was substituted but from hearing senator milner explain the change as it appears to me that many of the things that we found concerning about the original draft have either been taken out or modified we'll have to read that tonight or tomorrow to see if that is the case i don't have any reason to doubt senator milner i just haven't had a chance to read that and so that bill is trending in a positive direction um the next bill i wanted to discuss unless there's questions about that bill are uh the full-day kindergarten bill which is being carried by representative waldrop um with

032the amount of money that the legislature has this year it appears that there is some good momentum behind this bill i would expect it to pass and to be funded and fully funded any questions about that it it provides all-day kindergarten and the option for all-day kindergarten and so any parent can can choose between a half-day or or our full day kindergarten and it's still it's still up to the parent but those parents who do opt in then it would be a normal you know the program we run now the parents pay some tuition and and that wouldn't be required anymore you just answered my question thank you i guess maybe i'm going a little too fast so some more explanation so charlie yes that means more buildings with more rooms which then we don't

033have them so then we have to build them i mean i mean that's on us right but well right i maybe leon would want to speak to that but my understanding is we can accommodate that in our district is that right leon [Music] uh depends on the school if you ask them and the principal we have room at some schools we know other schools were still looking into that it's my understanding we do not correct me if i'm wrong my understanding kicks in two years from now in 2024 that fall of 2024 so yeah we have two years to prepare for this and you don't have to offer it we think we don't have to offer it at every location but uh but we don't know about that or is that we just have to

034offer that i think my understanding is you know there is a three-year what they're calling a three-year ramp up but my understanding is that we would need to offer that everything every school starting in 2024 yeah i think we could do the half day at various locations because the anticipation is that you know most parents will do the well take the full day and that might create a problem more with half days students is the thought of the legislature anyway i don't know how it will play out on the ground superintendent uh i'm just gonna mention the wpu goes from half i think to full to to one right is that point where you understand up to so we do think that being said we're still working oh a dozen schools right now that are

035still looking at that you know we need to get with the principal and we may need to move people and programs bring boosters from one place to another that we have to look at to make sure we have room but we know it's coming and we actually look forward to that coming as well so just we'll take a little logistical work at some of our schools and how many of the elementary schools currently have the supplemental hours program i think we have a give or take eight i think it's actually next year we're going to offer it at 20. there could be a couple that pull out just because we don't have the lack of enrollment i think this year we're at 17 anticipating with peruvian parks bruce wood coming back trying to spruce wood

036again in east sandy keep in mind we still have a full day at uh the five title one schools and we will have it all day at glacier hills as it is right now all day at bellevue so it is quite most of our schools do have a full day kindergarten out there yeah thank you other questions on this one uh mrs neibauer with the conversion where full-day kindergarten would be free and parents wouldn't be paying a tuition as you were saying it makes sense that that will go our our rate of enrollment a full day is going to go quite high so i know that the wpu has been confu converted from .55 to one and then as the surplus at the state level they are going to subsidize the rest of incurred cost

037for this ramp up to 2024 to accommodate you know we've got part-time teachers going to full-time we've got busing situation and we've got building situation is that funding coming from our legislators or do we need to come up with that in other places in our budget and if it is coming from the legislation how long can we expect because i know there's a surplus this year but that's going to go away so how's that going to work well their intention is you know for us to take care of those costs with the increased wpu and that would be added in to the wpu [Music] yeah and this year going forward and there is a three-year ramp up to accommodate the issues that you described to give boards and school districts a chance to figure out

038how they're going to handle those but the expectation would be that you were going to cover it would would handle it with the additional money that would be coming from the wpu and with our with that analysis is that reasonable that just that that increase will cover all of that or will we need to pull that from other i think with the increase in wpu we could handle the staffing part you know that would be converting the teachers from time to full time it will actually help bomb bussing because we want to be doing one last round half day runs uh the buildings the buildings would be the the problem they will not cover the building cost if we have to make modifications to classrooms or add classrooms on remove portables that will have to

039come out of our capital okay so if this passes that's something we'll be looking at for our budget with our capital funds just i would assume there are other districts i think that are really up against it with regard to facilities and i guess we'll have somewhat problem with that too but we won't have as big as problem with many others because our fifth graders you know several years ago we put our sixth graders into middle school so that alleviates a lot of space there so we've you know we feel like our principals will have to learn to get a little creative in some schools and i think they know that's coming well a lot of states already offer this i'm not opposed to it i'm in favor of it just thinking about upcoming choices

040with budget so thanks i think you'll have some follow-up questions sounds like it uh mr miller leon you said that would actually help with busing so i might understand from that that uh parents that opt for continuing with half day kindergarten will not be uh bust no it's our office it's our understanding that once if we go if we go half day then we'll still bust them but if we go a full day then it will be full day for everybody everybody yeah yeah they won't have a half day option i think the bill says the parents still have the option parents still will have the option so if they have the option then they would get bust and then you won't have that saving for business we'll have to obviously we'll have to look

041at that do we offer half day at certain schools does that make sense and not at all and that's one that's one item we've been working with the education community and the sponsor to try to see if that's allowable is to not offer it because you may end up with an enrollment either for a full day or half day of you know five kids instead of a full class and can we converge that in other places that's one thing we're still working on what we're doing is we're trying to solve issues that we don't know if we have yet right i like that we're trying to anticipate all the potential problems of course we can't but that will be one because i suspect that in every school there will be some parents who want to

042continue with the half day and that's going to create a problem and that's why you guys were elected to these posts to figure those out and i'll leave it to you i don't know the answer to it though mine but i i do i do know that parents will have the option and i can see that there's going to be some parents in every school that want to continue with a half day and kindergarten itself stays optional right nothing about that change whether it's half day or full day yeah right should i move on okay there are one two three four or three five well there are three public bills dealing with curriculum and curriculum adoption there's another two more uh that are currently boxed cars that we're not 100 sure that could deal with

043this issue it's been a big issue here in the first couple weeks of the legislative session one of those bills is already um i don't want to say it's dead but the sponsor has said that he's dropping it it was um representative tusher's bill i was just trying to think of the right way to characterize it in a public meeting it was pretty egregious i felt like and a lot of people agreed with me and i believe that's why representative tester has dropped it senator johnson's bill has just dropped this afternoon at five was numbered i haven't had a chance to read it i have heard from many of senator and so has susan uh heard from many of senator uh johnson's uh colleagues in the senate who have been concerned about what they understood

044the content of that bill is gonna be and so i i don't suspect it's going to be one that we will love and then there is the bill that senator fillmore is running which i think is much more reasonable certainly than the other two bills that we're dealing with um but there is quite a bit of pushback on that as well i and susan and i have been dealing talking with him and pointing out the problems that we see in and problems that have come from several of you that concerns that you guys have raised with us we've raised those with him um he has seen um willing and interested in dealing with us and we just trying to decide what the best approach is whether um this bill is going to pass and if

045so we would engage more fully with him on that if we got the sense that it wasn't going to pass then we would probably just stand to the side and and let it go away i think that's fair to say and based on our conversations there any questions about these i'd be happy to go over them in a little more detail but i think we all understand what they do okay then there is a bill which i move to the next bill any questions on those then there's a bill dealing with school fees it has a fiscal note on it basically the the general goal of the bill is to eliminate all curricular fees and to replace it with money with a line item that would eventually be folded into the wpu but we continue

046as a line item here for a number of years there are a couple of problems with that bill i'm not sure that the fiscal note is large enough but perhaps it is it you know leon as leon mentioned we have our sixth graders in um in middle school and this bill uh it has some language in there expressly prohibiting us charging any fees to a sixth grader and i have been trying to get with representative roberts for a number of days uh to ask him if it's if it is his intention that sixth graders would not be able to participate in any extracurricular or co-curricular activities i don't think that that's his intention but when you look at the wording of that language i'm not sure i mean it just expressly says you cannot charge

047them any fees period in the story and then there is another language in there about elementary students where currently we the the statute stays states and i want to make sure i get the wording right that we can't charge fees to elementary students during the school day and that during the school day is what allows us to carry on our orchestra programs and others but that language in the school day is deleted by this bill and so i don't think it's his intention although it might be i don't think it's his intention to interfere with that kind of extracurricular activity i'm hoping to work this out with representative roberts but i have not been able to talk to him about it yet and so i'm not sure of his intentions and whether or not he

048is going to be open to these suggestions if there are no questions about that i'm going to let susan talk about that i think mr wrigley a couple of questions on i've i heard on ksl they're all excited about all this question is does the fees they're going to be offering it's cover our cost how do they define fees is it the state says this is how much we pay and if our our our cheer team is higher than that then we eat the difference well yeah how this got figured and again it's as charlie mentioned it's curricular fees so all the extracurricular fees the cheerleading the drill the football baseball still stay in place you can't you can't charge those so those would stay it's just those dudes i think his intent overall arching

049intent is in during the school day from 7 30 to 2 30 it's free outside of that you can charge so what would and so what would happen that then which which wouldn't mean could buy curriculum fees because we don't really charge that would be any class fees for our ceramic supplies or these [Music] compasses and whatever things they use in the math class and so we would because i think they're sort of portrayed at least in the radio there was almost an extracurricular fee it would cover everything and parents wouldn't have anything it's just i think it's just these curricular fees we had a every all districts had to submit how much they collected in curricular fees last year our scandals was about two million dollars statewide it was about 55 million dollars so

050they have tried to set aside money for that we are understanding instead of ongoing they're looking at a three year one time of 180 million so roughly 60 million each year and then to see if it continues after that or if we just got to learn to phase out and live without them so it's a it's going to be a challenge i'm not sure how they're going to fund this coin for that looks like they are going to base maybe the funding on just high school junior middle and high school students coming to us and they're not allocated out to the schools but uh and it worries me three years out if it's just one time how we can which is sort of bad it gets people used to not paying it is this being

051taken from any other part that would have been allocated to the school so the school really is not getting anything more it's just getting a different line item well you know anything any amount of money they get could be given to schools and so on that and yeah that's just yeah that is the case another area that we actually may need it that may not get it because it goes to this or something okay i think dr robin said it oh okay um mrs oaks and then superintendent this will be quick so it's worthwhile to note that this is actually one of the legislative priorities for usda is asking for the state legislature to allocate money for the school fee since it's been such a large burden so i actually think it's a clever way

052to do it if they can figure out the math it'll be really helpful in the long run all of the districts were behind it i think if they ever fund this once they will i was about to say have to continue it but they will almost have to continue if they ever fund it once they're gonna you know we'll continue to get it i think superintendent what's the discussion around projects like shop where there's levels of projects students can pick well this bill hasn't been run yet been in a committee yet so i have not heard an explanation that i don't i just wonder how that remember we used to have that discussion around just the basic projects were you know were funded but i'm wondering especially in shop classes or where they're picking projects

053i mean some of those projects are very very expensive and so are we on the hook for that or i'm just yeah just something i don't think so or i do think so under the way that bill's currently drafted and i think what's happening and um like i want to emphasize again i have not spoken with representative roberts uh but i'm sure if he's getting education on all this stuff um that these things issues are much more complicated than people realize when they're coming at it from the outside and um i think that's probably one of those bills it's not stalled but i think that's probably why this bill hasn't started running yet are those types of issues mrs schill so kind of along with that would that include c-tech anything at ctec because that's

054during the day and curricular good question i don't know the answer to that yeah i would just in looking at the bill it says what for workshops looks like it's included as an instructional supply meaning you can charge a fee for it yes but we would have to verify it goes wood there's one thing but you get into other types of robotics and other things and see tech is amber mentioned yes um i have a question about this one too when you do get to talk to them so a couple of years ago when when they redid the school fee expectations and and responsibilities they um we're now as a local board required to approve this fee schedule as and turn it into the state by april 1st and we're required to have two opportunities

055for the public to weigh in on it like so they can review the draft fee schedule and then weigh in on it and i just see that as a timing issue for this upcoming year because i believe in the bill it says it's effective the 22 23 school year right so you've mentioned that i'm just saying before yeah i have a question about that because i had forgotten but i will talk to representative roberts about that as well okay thank you anything else on this one okay and then i'm going to have susan talk to us about the hope scholarship bill and that'll be all we have for the evening thank you very much hope is maybe a misnomer this is bill's previously known as voucher bills which now we call hope scholarship bills it

056sounds better that has not been released publicly yet uh it will come in the house from uh representative perucci and then we'll move to the senate under senator callimore's name we've talked to him quite a bit it's about 38-page bill and some thousand lines of code that we are working on processing still the protected draft but we are looking at that and processing that and it should be out public we he thought it would be out before today but it still is not public yet but it's a it's a behemoth any questions on that yes okay so that would be a credit off of the state income tax which would reduce the pool available for public head i don't believe it's listed as a credit i don't think this one is a credit bill this

057one is just taking budget taxpayer dollars and adding not coming out of the income tax fund coming out of income tax fund but not as a credit if you remember one last year was ran as an income tax credit that businesses could apply into could do a scholarship if you will and get a credit that's this is not structured that way this is so if it doesn't come out of the credit is it a deduction instead well i i should say that differently so this one is just giving budget um to uh it's just giving a budget it doesn't hit the tax return at all then right okay it's just taking funds from the uh from the income tax pool and giving it to uh private schools and it's somewhat dependent upon income level of

058the family um based on your income level no one is excluded but if um the level that your poverty line is at depends on how much you get up to i believe is about 2.5 wpu if i remember correctly to go with the student and it's not limited to tuition it is has you can spend the money on transportation to and from school or before after school activities some other things yeah so so it's the lower the income the more the more you can pull out of the fund correct and the higher the income it's a set up as a scholarship and so the more that you would earn in scholarship funds and and again it's still protected so we only know i think he's disclosed this to usba and to uea into a few

059entities so we've we've discussed it but we haven't seen all of the language yet and the state legislature is considering it appears seriously from just listening to the news and overall either rate reduction or putting in a whole bunch of cockamamie me uh credits such as they were looking at a state earned income currency what do those bills look like because those also reduce the pool of money available for public education i think what they're going to choose is the is the income rate reduction and i don't look for that to happen i i would suspect that would happen at the same time that they do the bill or excuse me the budget which i would assume would be around march 2nd so that week before that i would just expect them to make a

060decision what if any tax cut they're going to give and do it then so we're about a month away from you know and that'll be one of those bills that they'll drop one night and then they'll run it through in a few days a couple days with a little bit of kentucky windage out there say it again give me a give me a feeling for you know the kentucky windage you've got out there how much is that going to impact funds that are available for public education well it'll definitely affect that but the thing you have to think we should bear in mind is they have a huge surplus again this year but if there's a rate reduction that comes and they draw from that huge surplus that huge surplus just becomes a big surplus

061and they do it again it becomes just a surplus right and and this is i'm looking for sustainability on that as well right and i i don't want to be put in position of defending what they're doing [Laughter] but i think from their perspective they think they can make a modest cut and and still not really overly affect the revenue stream that um they the other thing we should bear in mind too about the way they're doing the budgeting this year because they feel like that the federal money that has gone out during covet has really amped up the tax revenues a lot of these revenues this year which would normally be considered ongoing revenues they're treating as one-time revenues and so if if they're wrong and these and does continue on in the coming

062years in the next budget year then they will they will start treating them as ongoing revenues and so um all of that has to be they are considering all that when they were there trying to decide whether or not to do a rate cut but i do think there will be a rate cut how much it will be i don't know but there there does seem everybody i talk to seems to be on board with that at least on the republican side okay thank you and and i heard in discussion back to the school fees that someone said in a sense that's like a tax cut to a 60 million dollar tax cut to the public so i mean it's not but it's like that it's it's returning funds into homes and households mr wrigley

063so just one question on the who is it private schools religious schools any school that you could have hope with not have eyes on it right now i believe so interesting yeah i don't think there's any restrictions but i don't know the version that we've discussed i haven't seen this but we again have not seen the full bill yet okay uh mrs nybauer and then mrs oakes i'm gonna have to go back to senator senator fillmore sorry it's action-packed there's so much in there so a couple of questions in that bill it talks about a local school board shall administer and implement federal education federal educational programs in accordance with title 53e how is that different than what we're doing now with the federal programs that we're expected to run is there a difference [Music]

064with which bill senator fillmore there's so many obligations for the school board in his bill packed at the bottom are we are we talking about reducing those and simplifying some of those well the basic concept of his bill the way he described it so i'm going to tell you the way he tells it to me is that there'll be cr instructional materials to be dealt with in one of two ways if it is a curriculum that the board adopts and there's a process that the board will use to adopt that for all other instructional materials that would be used in a classroom the board would adopt a policy that school administrators and teachers use and so if a teacher wouldn't bring in something outside then that teacher would have to resort to the policy that

065this board passed they're not any uh definitions or any requirements in in this bill the way it currently reads the board is free to adopt whatever policy it wants to adopt but it would be required to adopt the policy so everything that would be taught in a classroom in in every let me just say it this way all instructional materials that come into a classroom would come one of two ways through the board adoption of a curriculum are under the board's policy dealing with instructional materials does that answer your question yes thank you for that uh partially i was i was hoping that was the case because it does go into videos and everything um can can we find out a little bit more about his ideas with the minimum school program funds we find

066i think as you scroll to the bottom of his bill there's just so many things packed in there and is this is supposed to be implemented for 2022 2023 also if it passes for the coming school year yes okay and i can email you separately but i have like 10 questions of not the primary purpose but all the stuff that's packed in towards the bottom emails will be happy to get you all those answers great thank you mrs oakes so i just want to clarify with the hope scholarship conceivably um parents could choose to put their children and or their student in a private school that has no state oversight is that correct as i understand it they are asking the state board to come up with an accountability process okay where any school or

067entity that this would go to administered by a third party entity yet to be named or hired and they would be responsible for the state board would be responsible for coming up with accountability there is absolutely no definition that i'm aware of yet again not having read the bill um that i'm aware of yet that defines what the accountability would look like so it sounds as though we could have additional administrative staff at the state board level assigned to that um i think the state board level would need to come up with that i don't know that that would require additional staff but they would be hiring a third party vendor to it would be yeah they would be um hiring a third-party vendor and i think that was spelled out in there because i

068have major concerns as a parent with a child with disabilities where i have been at schools where there wasn't much oversight and compared to the hoops and the transparency that the public school system goes through it's deplorable and so i really hope that whoever's listening or thinking about a bill like this that they're really thinking through those pieces um public schools have so much oversight in so many different areas and allowing public funds to go ostensibly to private institutions where that's not in place it concerns me thank you okay thank you any anything else all right thank you so much for all you're doing i know it's just incredibly difficult and things happen fast and and we just appreciate your representation of us up there and our our priorities and our values so thank you

069okay next on the agenda is a covet 19 update i will turn time over to superintendent robbins you presenting um i'd just first like to thank charlie and susan for their work at the legislature and uh keeping us updated of everything that's going on and also amber's leadership with usba and jlc this year it's been great to collaborate with other board members and superintendents and just want to tell chad smith thank you for the positive comments tonight that's very well received um so yay more culved you've all been patiently waiting for this i know this is just like groundhog day you know over and over again but um to chad's comment earlier i earlier tonight just so the public's aware we had a workshop focusing on our strategic vision planning and i mentioned just how

070refreshing it was just from a personal and professional perspective that since i've been superintendent in the two years that um at least every board meeting that i can remember we've had a covid update since i've been here and so it was refreshing to have a work session that was focused on teaching and learning and what we're all in this for so i thought that was great so i just want to tell the board and our cabinet members and leaders that were there tonight just how much i appreciate their input and all the thoughts and work that's going into the strategic vision and it does as mentioned it as hard and perilous as this time has been it has opened up some opportunities to think about the future and where the district's headed so that's great

071um okay so thinking about um culvert tonight actually is as positive and i i say that with a lot of optimism thinking about where we've been as you can see in the slide deck we still have this commitment uh that we've had from the beginning to keep our schools open for in-person instruction at the same time balancing uh everybody's safety and well-being the best that we can as we know we've been in some changes and some some ongoing disruptions with omicron and how this has affected the economy our schools families all the above and recently in the legislature house bill 183 passed through the senate and the house it has not been signed by the governor yet but it also has an impact on how we address covid going forward so you can see just

072a couple of things there mentioned in the bill that it suspends test to stay we know that with omicron and it's spread that test to stay has not been as effective as a mitigation strategy and we've also seen the supply chain run low at the same time also the county has changed its incubation period to seven days that actually went into effect today on the county website so for those watching in the public uh that those um those days have been changed to seven so you'll see that those case counts come off every seven days instead of every 14. i think it's important to clarify too though that if there is a positive test that still remains at five days of isolation and recommended five additional days with a mask and this is a little

073problematic we've talked about this before as the public knows our parents know we've moved from our own dashboard to referencing the county dashboard that that's a little bit complicated by the fact that the recommendation has been that if you're symptomatic to not test and so you've seen in the slide deck those numbers have dramatically decreased in our test in our own protocols so it's really hard to gauge exactly you know how many cases are present in the in the school and so we'll talk a little bit about moving to a different uh metric system as we go forward and i think you know the the positive in that is the it's moving us more away more in an exit strategy from case counts to more looking at it holistically like we normally would around any

074type of virus or illness right and more of a focus on absenteeism and staff capacity more than case counts so the exciting news is is that we're stabilizing so this is terrific considering where we were just a few weeks ago um and you can see that represented in the number of tests there uh peaking at over 600 in our own protocol and so we're down in the low 50s i i believe our plan is too is to move back to two days per week in offering testing to employees and students here at the district so that continues to be just an amazing service and i i don't say this enough but i think we all know how important our school nurses have been in this process um and just their leadership and willingness to continue

075to serve in those circumstances is is much appreciated um so you can also see uh in our courtesy covet test just a representation of positivity and that trend line down so that's that's very positive as well and you can see this curve in our zip codes as those numbers have continued to decline so very positive on that end so looking at absenteeism i think this is also a metric that you know we want to move forward with and looking at you can see the trend line there i just want to comment to you saw some of the data around our increased attendance so it's exciting our kids are coming back to school and i think this is probably a clear more true picture of what's happening in the schools because obviously if a student is

076sick it's most likely mom and dad or guardian is going to keep them home instead of sending them to school so this would indicate to me that you know we may have hit a crest knock on wood and were were on the decline on the other side of that and that has that does follow a national uh trend uh in just how cases have risen and spiked and crested and then and then declined but you can see also i mentioned in an email earlier uh in the week from going back to our attendance rates we've increased over the last five days uh up to district-wide 87 87 88 and as of yesterday 88 attendance and that's up almost 10 percent from the week that we spiked uh in colwood we were around 78 at that

077point so a 10 increase in attendance and so it's great to see that our students are coming back to school employee absences have also decreased so this is good um really appreciate everett perry and and steve diamond and hr i hope you each morning take a look at those numbers remember at the peak in fact it was in that board meeting i believe we reported 209 employees out on that day and today i believe we were at 32. so and as you see that it's it's still in that report it's still it looks pretty uh equally and evenly distributed across schools there's a few cases here and there but very few and i think today we are down to 11 teachers that were out so that's another key metric that we want to look at

078um i i ran this by our county health department jeff actually deserves the credit and kind of suggests spitballing these numbers but we were kind of trying to think about what what's critical mass when it comes to the number of employees and students being out right and so as we talked about it we were thinking you know if you get between five and ten percent of your staff being out and not just for covet but out of the building that day you're running into a quality assurance issue where you know we may not be able to provide quality instruction to our students and so that would trigger this conversation that we'll talk about here just a second but it's great to see those those numbers declining as well substitute teacher coverage sally samson in hr

079has been sharing this with uh this information with me daily uh we're hovering right in the 70 to 70 percent 70 to 75 percent fill rate so um that's also up at the um highest point uh in cases and people being out we were right in the mid late uh high 50s and so our coverage rate is much higher and i just i want to really express deep gratitude to our district office staff so over the last you know month or so our district office staff has gone out and subbed themselves and i hope we get to recognize individuals here at the district that have gone out multiple times to cover uh for classes so you know this has been an all hands on deck effort and i'm just very grateful that people are willing

080right to they have all this on their plate and i know that and they're still willing to sign up to go out and sub for our teachers so you can see those numbers are you can see how that's demonstrated in that in the end of the graph there our our sub fill rate much higher and and teachers and employees covering for each other has decreased so that's that's a positive sign um again we want to stay with our our plan of precision monitoring and being more surgical in our response this has been this has been our approach from the start um and i'll say it again dr webb has always uh helped to really foster this idea of disruption suppression and restore right and i i think the five-day break as hard as that was

081um was that disruption that stopped the cycle and really got us back on on on a downhill uh trend and i think other districts chose to go out for up to 10 days and we only picked up the one tuesday and then came back to school the rest of the week so i just you know commend everybody all of our employees our parents our students again as a school community uh stepping up to ensure that our kids have in-person instruction so going forward uh with this new legislation and just thinking about kind of this new approach and the environment that we're in and that doesn't mean that you know this can't change but we would really be focused on a couple of things so looking at uh staff capacity or or operational capacity once we

082get to five percent uh in operational capacity or staff being out and we also hit that two percent threshold of cases or 30 in an individual school that would then trigger a monitoring space of five days and the reason that we would do that there's a couple of fold here one is in the new law that's likely to be passed the board would have to submit an application to move a school uh to online so it there's it's it's a letter it's more than just you know me uh getting permission from state superintendent it requires state superintendent the governor the speaker and the senate president to approve so i don't know how i feel about that but that's what it is so in doing so the board obviously we would need to notice up a

083meeting and potentially an emergency meeting but hopefully within that five days we can either see a downward trend or if we see that trend going up and we know we have kind of tip of the iceberg effect again you would have time to notice up that meeting get the letter of application to those four people and get approval to make that to make that decision if necessary in between those five days of monitoring then we would also look at the increase from five percent to ten percent so that would be one metric the two percent cases or 30 depending on the size of the school and then we would also look at absenteeism in the building if it fell to 70 attendance rate then a combination of those would trigger consideration to move to the

084school move the school to online but short of that we would continue to maintain uh in-person instruction but hopefully this gives some clarity i know a lot of people have had questions about going forward what this looks like and so we're trying to use the best information that we have available to to make that to make that call let me back up any questions on all of that and then we'll talk remote friday any questions ford uh mr wrigley so um at this point in the very beginning we closed down the whole school district at this point we'd be just looking strategically school by school if that that specific school was that we would go for online for that specific school for maybe a week or whatever so in the in the plan we would

085recommend that we if we do pivot we would only go three or a five day window of time and and that's based on dr webb's recommendation that he believes that shorter interval cycles with omicron is more effective than long 10-day you know windows of time and and we know to right the whiplash effect that those longer windows of time have had on our students in the past so i think the shorter that we can narrow that window and still gain the benefit of disrupting the cycle of the virus the better so the other question is the governor authorized yesterday or so that the state employees can volunteer for up to hours in a year i suspect it'd be like jury duty where we would have to pay them and they will make the difference in

086their salary i'm not sure how that would be and what would be the ramifications at this point we could have to clear them go through employment and our our substitute teachers program or what what would happen uh first of all they they would still get their checks from the state so okay so it's not like jury duty where we would pay mail they still get paid they're just asked to leave their job up to 30 hours and come here but they would still get their pay from the state so we they would not do that we would bring them in and give them a quick over as we do with all our subs we have a training it's i think it's can do can do online too where they can quickly do that also with

087their food they can also work in our cafeterias as well where we're greatly understaffed as well so we you know we'd encourage we hope that's we'd probably have to have the bcis on some of them i would guess not all state employees are bci would have to check that out yeah okay and the last one i know uh there has been some concern about us having some fridays off however our total number fridays is far less than the schools that just let everybody out for 10 days so i mean we've been really trying to cut them out of time that that our parents have to pick up this burden but it got to a point that we logistically didn't have enough staff to keep the doors open or the kids in the school buses which

088resulted in that that one extra day we gave off and then the the fridays the last couple fridays that we've done um we'll addre yeah we'll we'll address that okay i think i i also just to back up to to point out just the the decline uh in our in our case counts as well um on the county website currently all of our schools are in green i don't know that like we said that that necessarily is an accurate display of how many cases are in this in the school but just to give you some context in the public context of that uh our fate our five-day count um on january the ninth when we were at our peak in the district five-day account was 505 cases so so it has declined rapidly so that's

089that gives you some context and i would recommend uh we'll talk about this more as well but we've been in tier three uh response up to this point from that from that time until now and i think we're in a in a position to move back to tier two uh restrictions um as soon as we complete the presentation and going forward so to your point uh steve i mentioned last time i would come back with the report on remote learning fridays and let me just point out um i think at this point from where i'm at and the board can weigh in on this but i think with our trend line and the current position that we're in we've always really applied the principle of prudence when it comes to this decision in responding to

090the environment and the situation we're in and i think considering the environment that we're now in and the direction that our trend line's going obviously that can change and we we know that but um the value of those those days in person in march april may i i feel very good about moving those back to in person um you know considering our trend line and you know that's i think that i know that may feel different to different people but i think you know applying our our approach with using prudence in all of these decisions in recognition of not just our teachers but our parents and everybody's sacrifice to make this work that that would be the prudent thing to do now that doesn't mean that you know there won't be another variant that pops

091up that can cause us grief like this last one did but we can evaluate that i would recommend if we if we do uh since the board took action to change the calendar that in that february 15th by that time we'll have more data to look at that if we move those days back to in person that i would ask the board for action on the calendar on on the march april and may uh remote fridays so a little bit about remote learning fridays right i think it's it has been to mont's point in our last meeting uh it has been a little bit ambiguous about what that actually looks like i think you know in the middle of the the pandemic from what i've learned and i know you've received lots of emails as

092i have from teachers and parents and staff and i i submitted it to you some some input from our students as well that you know it's everybody feels a little bit different about what that looks like i i don't think with remote learning fridays that it's something that um when there's issues it's very difficult to use a blanket flock shot approach it's probably at least more that i'm learning about it the best way to deal with the issues that come with remote learning fridays is to to deal with those on an individual basis but i just wanted to present the remote learning expectations because i know there's been questions about that first off of what you know we expect for our teachers to to do on those days and you saw we'll show some of

093the data some of the engagement data that gives you a snapshot into looking at what is happening but i i want to express my deep appreciation to our teachers and our staff for their their work i i know um you know there's a lot to that the mental health side of this and people being able to just stay on top of life and function and still be able to deliver uh instruction as you mentioned steve we've we've been committed to in person probably more than any district in the state and i'm very proud of that but at the same time trying to balance you know these needs so you can see there what some of the highlights and our expectations are for that but secondly i think it's important that we highlight expectations for our

094students we really need them to log in and it doesn't necessarily have to be at the same time but we also need them to engage and and if it's not on their chromebook you know through email or whatever it is that they can that they can do we still i think are plagued a bit by the digital divide that's something that we have not completely solved we have many many students that still lack high-speed internet access at home and that's not just a canyons issue but you know that's a state issue and we we need to really figure that out going forward but um i think it's important that you know our students uh know and and we have that expectation that they engage this and you can see that in some of the canvas

095data that's there and i think it's important to know that that's just one snapshot of data that does not tell the whole narrative of what's going on i know in our elementary schools you know they're engaging students in different ways with packets or other you know hands-on materials and that's also part of it but but there's expectations for for both to to engage as much as possible on that day so you can see some of the canvas data i sent that to you in a more detailed view so you can see it by school that just highlights across the district average page views by student and by level so it gives you a little bit of a snapshot into you know how that looks canvas submissions average per student per level so you can see

096what they're at least through canvas what they're turning in average number of active chromebooks so this is per school per day you know i have some concerns with this when you're thinking about the size of an entire school and the number of active chromebooks you know on that given day obviously i'd like to see that number much higher but um you know it does indicate that many students aren't engaging it also i think a caveat with that too is remember many of our students have their own devices that we would not be able to tell if you know they're active that way so if they're using their own device or from another computer that would not register in this data set but but obviously if we're providing the chromebooks we want to see higher levels

097of engagement and then you can also see minutes of chromebook use average minutes of chromebook use so um okay that's a lot to absorb any any questions on that part or on the covid response part mrs nybaur i just have two brief comments first thank you for the suggestion of using prudence and looking at removing the other virtual days for later in the calendar i'm grateful that you suggested that that was something i was going to suggest tonight and i'm grateful for that i've had a lot of feedback from a lot of parents regarding the concern for the virtual fridays and i do know that it was prudent for us to do that at this time when we had the surge but it's also nice to be able to take away those at the back

098of the calendar because of the extras we put in um i wanted to uh you thanked the teachers and staff which i i think is so important because i know that we've gone through so much of sort of sure and i just also wanted to express my thanks to parents i know that on fridays for the parents to make sure the kids get it done especially at the elementary school level is a task you said something that i was really interested in you said with the elementary school that packets are being sent home which i think is is pretty much the standard um which is great for younger children less screen time and then you mentioned hands-on activities and i i i haven't had that experience yet and i was wondering if that's something that

099we could maybe encourage because i think that would bring some excitement to that friday day for these elementary school kids that just have these packets to get through if we could maybe have a push for that even just you're speaking i'm thinking more like math manipulatives i'm just thinking like in the in the two virtual friday obviously not the one this week but the next one coming up if we could even send out a message to the elementary school teachers i've gotten so much feedback from parents regarding the elementary if we could ask for some sort of little hands-on activity that's a learning experience that the parents could help them do it might spread up spread out the monotony of the packets and i think parents would be thrilled with that option if it wouldn't

100create too much work just a thought i no i appreciate that suggestion holly and i i to i mean for me most of the i and you guys that you receive most of the emails from our elementary that very high engagement with our elementary teachers and students at least from what i can i can gather but i you know i like there's always room for improvement with this for sure and i i think trying to make that is engaging and it's fun right as as we can as we can always do better so thank you mr millberg dr robbins uh in our last meeting i asked for some of this stuff to come back and i appreciate you digging that out uh one of the main concerns i had was accountability uh i'm kind of

101seeing what's expected but i'm missing the accountability part of it um and i'm i'm i'm just guessing or assuming that i hate that word assume because we know where that gets you but um that the building administration would be somewhat monitoring what's going on with the teachers um is there anything such as even uh teacher attendance on a virtual day that uh is being tracked or you know you talk about collaborating with other teachers there is there a record being made of who's in attendance for collaboration meetings so the expectation other than the five-day when you know i felt like just to get maximum benefit of people not being in the building that we said we don't want you in the building if you don't have to be right but on these fridays going since

102then we've the expectation has been that you're in the building but i'll i will do you have any feel for if that is happening i i get the sense that they are in the building it'd be my i mean i you guys can so okay i mean i don't know because i don't see it and you know the my heart tells me these are professionals and they're like a salaried person working at any other business yeah and you trust them and that's what happens yes but there's also accountability for the end product educating the kids that we have a right to expect that to happen yeah absolutely thank you any other questions mrs oaks i do think that part of the confusion has come that between the snow days the virtual days you know there's

103been some differences in the different days a little bit and expectations and parents are having a difficult time being able to follow the moving target i think what we could improve a little bit and how we're communicating with parents about what the expectations are like for them to even see that list in an email so they have an understanding of whether or not they have a you know one of their kids teachers is or isn't fulfilling that obligation or they have a point of reference that they can reach out to the teacher send an email and say hey you know my students tried to reach you to be able to come in and meet with you but and i understand that's the expectation that part of the feedback i've gotten particularly at the high school

104level is that a lot of parents have just assumed that it's just a teacher often because they're overwhelmed not realizing and and these are parents set in good faith like they're not being critical they just didn't realize that there was an expectation of learning going on that day so i'm just wondering i don't know if it needs to be on a school website so parents can get on there or if we just send something out and say we understand there's been some confusion we want to clarify what's expected what you know what your child at this you know elementary middle and high school ought to be doing does that make sense yeah no and i i we can do that from the district level and i think at this site level i some of the

105emails i've seen our principals send out does we'll go through this is what i'm thinking of one of the middle school i can't remember which principal email i saw that had exactly that but being more uniform and consistent with that i think would be positive so well i know there were some emails that cut that went out at the beginning of the year when we initially instituted the virtual fridays but a lot has changed since then and decisions we've made as a board and i think the public it's a little bit of a whiplash right of things that we've done oh by the way we're taking this day off i mean it's not something that we've ever wanted or wanted to call up that's for sure but in order to keep parents on top of

106it and engaged in the way that we'd like them to be i think that they need to be aware of where their current expectation is yeah i and just to comment to that amanda i want our parents to know like i and i i think i've said this before and and our staff that you know it's so important not just because obviously our job is to educate kids and provide a high quality experience every day that we can but but you know this idea that this doesn't impact the economy is a very real thing and so for those parents that i've got emails from expressing you know anger and frustration about missing work or the impact that this has had on families that's a very real thing too and we we fill that need i

107mean that's the economy works because we're all in concert in that and it's all congruent in how we function right and so i think recognizing on those fridays i mean it impacts everybody right daycare jobs you know lost time i mean i so i i give a lot of credence to that and i i want those parents to understand that i recognize that you know the heavy burden that that also causes on that side and we have been committed to in-person learning you know from the start and trying to be prudent in how we balance all of that so well and i actually had one principal who spoke with me a couple weeks ago about her distress you know it's a really hard working elementary principle that has really tried to make sure that that

108virtual fridays are a positive learning experience for the kids as much as they can one point was we're asking a lot of the teachers how much are we reminding parents please open your kids backpack please please check out with them you know they said we can do everything that we can on our end but if we don't have engaged parents on the other end then there's only so much that's learning of the learning that happens and the other was a little bit akin to it was if there is a problem those principles actually want to know about it they want to know about it and please reach out to your principal and say i'm not getting anything from this teacher or and so that they can go and address that rather than allow that frustration

109to continue yeah yeah and it you know like i said i think the more that we can address the situation at the moment you know at that level the better you know versus trying to trying to blanket you know cover all of these issues because it is different in different places and there's a lot of different factors you know going into that i mean i i feel we still have many students like i said that don't have high-speed internet at home i mean how are they how are they engaging us that's that's tough and we got to continue to close that gap as well so yeah i mean it has to be a joint effort right for sure and and i just want to give a shout out to the middle schools i don't know

110what you guys are doing but you're killing it in terms of getting your kids on and engaged that's i'm so impressed to see that mrs schill okay a couple things um i do want to point out that at least for high school kids i think a lot of times the high school kids use their own devices at home like i know my son does that he doesn't bring his chromebook home anyway so those numbers actually may be a little higher than what's on there um the second point is i mean i agree with what everyone's saying with maybe getting rid of that the virtual days but then the other thing is didn't we do the virtual days because teachers are burned out was it only about covid i thought it was multiple reasons okay so

111the really the root of the issue is absenteeism and students you know moving in and out of classrooms and so our teachers are having to really ramp up their canvas page so they're in dual modality right and that i think i mean like i said it's hard to predict right and we'll just keep monitoring the situation but i i think looking at our trend line and where this is all headed you know it's not going to require as much work on the canvas side as it has but that really was the route i think that was the root cause of the stress is that we just we had such a high spike remember in that slide on that at that board meeting in january we had a 95 increase in secondary absenteeism so we so

112we're we're back knock on wood cross our fingers but i think we're back to rate more regular attendance than we had so that's why i would think it would be prudent you know if things stay the same that we can get back to in person and i agree that with that i just want to make sure kind of remind the board of why we did that because teachers are still burned out and exhausted and overwhelmed this is neighbor i just wanted to comment to that uh just today i was speaking to a single mother who takes a penalty when she takes time off work to be with her children and you know we did add tuesday january 18th friday january 28th friday february 4th and friday february 11th so we added four and you know

113and my recommendation would be to take away two friday march 25th and then friday april 22nd all schools accept brighton high and then friday april 29th bright and high only i would be interested as a board in making that decision tonight because parents need to plan ahead and and these these working situations we do need to recognize that there are plenty of parents that do don't have as much flexibility with their work schedules and it would unload a lot of stress and provide a lot of relief for them to be able to tell their employers tomorrow hey i don't have to take off those two days so i'd be very interested in doing that since the trend lines are down and since we have gained five just to take away two i'd be really interested

114in that and i've gotten so many emails too about parents concerned about the level of education for their kids with the virtual days so i'd i'd be really interested in in moving that forward one clarification february 11th was already that was scheduled oh that's true okay so that's true we did four not five added four or added three added three so yeah yeah three were added to the original yes right so so i guess we added three and i'm proposing to take away two so we still had one two in the other comments mr miller bird no i much rather wait to see if the trend line continues then make a decision now and not know where the trend line is going uh i think by virtue of discussing this now parents uh could be

115should be uh knowledgeable that we're considering it but i just really think we need to at least give it a couple of weeks and watch the trend line mr wrigley yeah i just guess i i i do want to get this done and get it off as soon as possible because the parents but i have concern if we tell them no and then the trend goes back again we get another wave then we tell them yes it makes us look sort of crazy uh because they'll tell their employer no and they go oh no the board changed their mind now they've done this it might just be easy oh i have all answers to cole winston i know you have so you can tell me when the next trend line is going up but um

116yeah i think we might we probably need to wait off to our next meeting just to see if another wave comes through in some rate something happens um otherwise we may be telling people something they have to crow any other comments um and you said the march day was march 18th or it's friday march 25th so so by february 15th i mean that's five six weeks notice i would think most employers employers would work with employees on that okay that's great all right so if the board's okay we can bring that particular item back on the 15th with action re requested okay okay anything else on this topic nope thank you superintendent we really appreciate you and and the staff here at the district for all they do to keep track and and i just

117i'm going to just say and i i i think everyone might feel the same way how much we appreciate how conscientious you are to to just track every little detail and not and and make such a prudent i think is a good word you make prudent decisions because there's no perfect formula out there and we just appreciate how you've led us through this this last two years it's been incredible well i i don't deserve all the credit i i mean our staff you know to pull all this data is not easy and it's it's pretty laborious and they're just you know school performance isd it uh you know i send out a text hey i need this this this and this and they get right on it and they you know they update our slides

118work with communications i mean it's a team effort and i'm just the face of it and can present and talk to it but really you know there there's so many people that are pulling this data and watching it and making sure that we're on top of it so i appreciate all of them so thank you thank you and i think we all know a whole lot more now about these type of situations than we did even a few months ago so we appreciate that okay that concludes our items um on the agenda for new business and we will now have staff comments superintendent do you have other things to report and then mr wilcox just again thank you to the board and for all of your efforts and our our leadership team tonight with workshop

119and it's exciting to see that go forward and over the next month or so to see that plan kind of come to fruition so appreciate everything so thank you thank you mr wilcox yes thank you uh last meeting you approved our bond resolution to refund some bonds we just met with the rating agencies and they came back today in fact with renewing our aaa aid ratings uh one of them said that they rate about 3 500 school districts nationwide and only 90 of them get a a like us and of those those over uh 20 000 students there's only about 15 nationwide that have that so you know we feel very proud of that unfortunately if you follow the national economy the fed signaled some big rate increases last week that's going to really impact

120the savings we get it's going to you know we were looking quite higher but it's going to be probably in the 7 million range which is still substantial we're excited about that we was hoping to go a little bit higher as they're looking at raising rates you know two to five times this upcoming year uh and with that also a big uh thank you as dr robin said for the work work session today uh kiersten told me you know she being a former reporter everybody needs an editor and i feel like that's what i was doing on my team but again i thought that was very very productive thank you thank you mrs nybauer thank you i wanted to first comment how i enjoyed the usba conference uh our patron chad smith got up and

121spoke about start times at that usba conference i was able to connect with washington county school district superintendent larry bergerson and in washington county school district they were able to take that legislative priority to start school middle school and high school at a later start time and be very successful with it and it was really we had a great invigorating conversation their student population is similar to ours i do hope that is something that comes out of our strategic planning i wanted to begin my comments with this quote because as we went through that strategic planning workshop i thought my fire is lit so william butler yates said education is not the filling of a pill but the lighting of a fire and that's what i feel like we did today i feel like as

122we came together and worked with all of our wonderful expert opinions here at the district and as board members our fire was lit we're excited and invigorated with this opportunity to make a difference and a positive change that will be very impactful i wanted to draw attention to something that the my community and representatives are really going through right now and i know many of you received emails and i have asked permission to share this email with you and the reason why i want to share this email is because i think there's perspective in here about what we would like our strategic planning to accomplish so in this email from mr mike nyman he talks about in the beginning how appreciative he is of the school board and canyon school district how he's watched so

123closely and feels that we have all done such a tremendous job he he shared with us his shock and sadness at the sudden resignation of mr giddings at draper park middle school he is the fourth uh abandoned orchestra teacher to quit in the last few years uh he shared he's extremely concerned about the future not only of the music program at draper park but also at corner canyon um he states he had four children go to that school and he currently has a son in seventh grade who plays the saxophone and the oboe now this is what i wanted to share with you if you can listen here and indulge me for a minute he said much has been said about the importance of core curriculum among the teaching staff the students have excelled in

124recent years on standardized tests for which the school and staff should be very proud of however a recent experience from my 20 year old son tj who was an 8th grader the year the school opened confirmed to me the importance of the arts in a well-rounded education i tell this story with his permission now this story is fascinating as he applied for nasa he he graduated from corner canyon with a 4.0 he had many ap credits and a 35 on the act test as well as he was math sterling scholar he was also a four-year trump player of the jazz band and win symphony he has long had an interest in space and is studying mechanical and aerospace engineering now at brigham young university while minoring in music and playing in the jazz band now

125last fall this tj applied for several summer internships one being the nasa pathways program there were over 9 000 applicants to the program with only a few dozen hired he prepared well for his interview ready to talk about his involvement in math and engineering clubs and his scholastic achievements and the rocketry club at byu but to his surprise the hiring manager was not interested in any of that he wanted to learn about tj's involvement in music and how it has shaped his life every applicant to the nasa program had the necessary minimum skills but the hiring manager talked about the importance of creativity and improvisation when it comes to sending people to space he emphasized the importance of a well-rounded rounded education tj was hired in the program and is now working in the propulsion

126lab in huntsville alabama before taking that position he was also interviewed and had offers extended by both mag and northrop grum also in the aerospace technology industry interviews with these companies also were more focused on the lessons and creativity he has learned as a musician the very first question at one of the other interviews was please tell me about that music minor he states i fear that sometimes in our efforts to teach and emphasize core classes we lose sight of the critical lessons we learn and parts of our brain that are developed by participating in the arts as demonstrated by tj's experiences those out in industry see how critical it is to have this well-rounded education then he goes on to ask us to please look at how to better support that tonight earlier i

127there was a success criteria in high quality learning experiences that had been omitted that i put back in with our group in agreement csd will create schedules that allow for multiple learning opportunities in every building i know we have so many learners out there and we want to engage them all and i feel uh very very passionate about engaging them through cross-curriculum arts integration and these different topics and i know that that his experience is not unique i have in my family similar experiences with a music major going into aerospace so i would just like to leave my comments with that and thank you so much for your patience as i've read that and i look forward to the strategic planning process to continue thank you mr wrigley thank you for the opportunity you know

128when kovitz started we were all told this could be a sprint this could be over about two weeks and we'd be able to get back to our jobs it extended then the entire rest of the year then extended after that and now it's going on three years it's become a coveted marathon i am so proud of our staff uh we have some real good marathon runners out there it's gone on and on and on and then with this latest wave i mean it was bad enough on the the first two versions this latest wave with this huge spike um it was interesting on how we find this fine blue line or whatever line we're walking here this fine line to be able to keep the schools open because we have parents who want them open

129and we also have parents that are very concerned when we do have them open they don't send the kids there so how do we keep it safe enough to get the kids not just being absent and we've been able to walk that line um i'm really uh proud of our staff uh and you know everybody's just pitched in teachers have pitched in and have not had any prep times even though the times we've been saying we talk about friday's off a lot of that's because the teachers have not had any time during the week to get anything done because they're substituting for other teachers in the classes and we haven't had substitutes we haven't had any uh available uh hopefully we've got through this latest thing in this marathon and we'll be able to move

130forward and who knows what the future may bring in regards to to that but it just um i appreciative of our parents i know parents say well we've got a friday off i'm going i know we really don't want you to have friday off but our schools are concaving we gotta do something you know we gotta save the goose that lays the golden egg and we have to be able to serve your kids uh so our patience with our parents and thank you in that process we've been really trying to do that um the strategic plan i was really excited to see this and moving forward with the plan i've had several parents most of the time they think of strategic planning as the the what and the how so they keep on saying okay

131well i'm suspecting this how this thing i want to see this this project and this project in this project i keep on telling buddy this is stage one we're looking at the y we're looking at our north star trying to figure out where we're going as a district which will guide our future what's in house so that as the board and funding and everything else comes up we could say no this project doesn't meet our why or this project whatever so as we release this it's not going to answer all your what's in house it should have it somewhat embedded within that all the stuff you've been talking about but it'll be that's the next two or three processes we'll actually get into the what it's going to happen and then our our district will

132tell us how it's going to happen so we're in that process but have patience with this and that uh i freaked too far for the last 10 years 11 years i've been on the board we've been doing a lot of what's in house without having a real strong y which means we could have been doing a lot of stuff with the ladder on the wrong roof or the wrong building so hopefully we're going to get the ladder on the right ability we'll be doing stuff that's in line with that so i'm grateful to be able to do that it's a long process sort of a marathon sort of like we've been running with covet thank you thank you mrs oakes thank you i um appreciate everything that's been said i wanted to point out um

133a document that all of you received um this evening that we didn't have a chance to really explain so these two um documents essentially they come from work that we've done on the arts consortium um where we've talked at length about wanting to understand more about um student involvement in the arts throughout the district at the secondary level and also you know not just the arts but other electives and so as you're all aware we had a survey that went out i think was the beginning of december is that or right before december and um we asked a lot of questions and it's taken a long time to get the data back and what you have here represents um what we've received for the middle school so far and it's taken a long time for

134isd and laura tuesday heathfield to help us put together this data and we're still awaiting um the data from the high school but it provides some really great information and i want to just highlight in particular a couple things one is a question on the second to last page that asks the question of the students of the importance of electives to them and i thought that their answer from the perspective of what we've been discussing um for the strategic plan is very interesting um when they asked about the arts electives it says that 73.2 percent of them said very that those are very or somewhat important to them that's nearly three-quarters of our middle school population said that as far as other electives nearly 83 percent of them said it was very or somewhat important

135to them which i think is significant that's our those are our students talking and we had a very like quite a high number of students for as far as the survey goes i think it was over the middle schools in general and of course that varied across middle schools but that's a very decent amount to give us some excellent data i also thought it was interesting when we look at what contributed to them not taking arts electives or other elective classes you'll see it broken out by school but both butler and draper middle school had over 30 percent and and nearly 30 percent in a couple of a few of the other middle schools it was because they didn't have enough room in their schedule so i think it's important data for us to consider

136moving forward as a board and obviously we're talking more about the strategic plan but i want us to keep those things in mind as we move forward the second thing it's also related to that you know i've mentioned from here not only do i have a love and appreciation for the arts but i have a very deep appreciation for stem education and one of the things i've been looking at for my two daughters is making sure that they have more experiences with coding and with computer programming um i they didn't my older daughter who's a freshman in high school didn't really have opportunities for that in middle school and my other daughter is a sixth grader and she likewise in part because of the schedule and other things of what's available the school hasn't had

137those opportunities so we've been looking at programs like coach's success which everyone ought to be aware of um actually takes place or is hosted at jordan high school i believe and is an incredible program that has been funded by a non-profit that is trying to close the gap of um technology learning particularly for kids in middle and high school and trying to help them to move forward so that more of them can take computer science ap computer science in high school and really move into tech careers in doing that i also came across another program called women who succeed where um girls are assigned female mentors that um have have done well in stem fields and and trying to help them move along because when i listen to a podcast from this group they recognize

138that there is a large gap in the education system that they are seeing more and more and more girls that they have some level exposure sometimes even in elementary school but they get to middle school there's not much and then they trying to catch their interest in high school is very difficult and so increasingly i am seeing more nonprofits that are trying to fill this gap that exists and i cannot help but feel very strongly that as a school system we need to do a better job at making sure that those kids are receiving that within our school system um along with that in my work on on the point committee um some of you may be aware that that now they're in the stage in looking out at that land where the current prison

139sits and it that's actually going to be demo demoed this coming summer and they're starting to move in and make all sorts of changes they're looking at potential investors and developers that are coming into the area and i can tell you unequivocally every single one of them when it comes to education from our school district are expecting innovation and if we don't deliver it and if we don't represent that or reflect that in our strategic plan in my mind we will have failed it's critically important for what's coming some of which is very exciting and um we have to be able to adapt to that and we have to be able to back plan where do we want our students when they graduate and how do we plan for it back you know starting from

140kindergarten and where are we moving them forward um i want to congratulate you know in in light of that dr molly hart and all the work that she's done over albion um molly has has been a champion of the arts of making sure that those students are exposed to so many different kinds of things and experiences and i i want to congratulate her on that she's been absolutely dogmatic about it and i i know it's made a difference i've talked to people in that community who are incredibly grateful for it i um also received mike nyman's email today and was impressed by tj's experience but not even remotely surprised and i'll tell you why um four or five years ago you know when i stood in this boardroom as a parent with my kids and

141prior to that i i didn't write an email to the school board that i wish i had written and the email that i would have written would have explained to you and those who sat on the board at the time all of the individuals i have known throughout the years as a musician personally you know i was previously professional musician and that's what i studied in college all of the individuals who went on into professional advanced degrees or professions that are very competitive and very difficult where every single one of them had experiences in myself included where those graduate schools looked at them and said oh we love music majors and we'll tell you why because we know you can work really hard we know that you can go absolutely micro level and macro level

142but you know how to collaborate with people that are different than you and all sorts of different voices and they went on and on and on i can i've lost track of how many of these friends are now surgeons judges scientists they have gone on to do incredible things where those arts that they incorporated in their education were a means to a very powerful end i didn't write that email i wish i had i didn't know whether or not it would make a difference but in reading through tj's experience today it made me think about that and i think um i also i know that reading and math and all of those things are important it's it's critically important that a child knows how to if effectively read but it's also there to be able

143to help them launch and to help them have a place where they can launch or explore and become somewhere someone with greater dimension and the ability to problem solve and to face challenges that are coming it's not just about jumping through the hoop of a test and so i also am very excited about the strategic planning process that we're in i i see wonderful things that are coming from it i felt very deeply that it's important that we reflect very strongly and foremost very much in the forefront creativity innovation critical thinking problem solving um i'm deeply passionate about those things because i know that's what our kids have to have moving forward for them to be successful so thank you for everything and the work that you guys have done it was really wonderful to

144be part of that with you today thank you mr millerberg thank you start out with i would challenge the rest of the board to sign up just because it's got a bunch of twos in it doesn't mean you have to do it tomorrow and i would also invite everybody as they sign up for the two two two two two two however many there are in there and you're due to that you pay the extra 10 bucks and get your tutu and i would challenge you to do that our education foundation is a great organization and you look at the things they do they provide scholarships uh they were very much instrumental in the canyons connect program uh to work on getting high speed internet uh better for our students that during remote learning times they

145could actually connect and actually transmit papers to the school it's a great organization so i would invite you to participate in that and if anybody's interested i'll get a tutu and i'll run with you okay i would probably look like the pig that they've got on the flyer [Music] um tonight we've heard quite a bit of talk about uh strategic planning and the whys and the what's in the house and i'm sure that my inbox has not been a whole lot different than anybody else's inbox for the last couple of weeks and it seems like i don't know how many years ago we kind of had the issue of how many periods a day would should take place at draper park middle and that was a very very tumultuous uh discussion we had at that

146point in time and i think that as i stop and think about it i've kind of got the why figured out on that and the why is because the parents that we've heard from uh and admittedly we've heard from a minority of parents and i am not inviting more to send me more emails to read even though i do appreciate them i don't need 800 emails to me but the why is to provide more opportunities and a better education for our students and the what and the how is you know they're talking about right now they've got six they're talking about eight uh you know maybe seven is a happy medium in there i don't know but i will tell you that i from my personal experience remember what it was like when i was

147in at good old midvale junior high school home of the trojans we loved that mascot [Music] i had a fourth grade teacher howard johnson [Music] and in fourth grade this will come to middle school i promise you okay howard johnson uh figured out that uh k-u-e-d television station from the university of utah was broadcasting a couple of times a week a gentleman his name was andrea anastasian he was a russian and he was teaching russian over television and mr johnson latched on to that and he took his class and another fourth grade class and we would study russian for an hour or two hours a day my mother was thrilled because she knew i would save the family from the roosties when they invaded as we moved from fourth grade to fifth grade howard johnson

148moved to fifth grade to teach as we moved to sixth grade howard went with us as we moved to uh midwell junior high howard went with us i was very much involved in band i was one heck of a good drummer i really was in all humility i was good and so i hit i hit middle school which was junior high at the time and i had one period of the day taken up with studying russian i had another period of the day taken up with band i had nowhere to go to take any electives that i wanted to take um as a result of that if any of you ever watch me with the keyboard i couldn't even take type in junior high those four fingers work really well on a keyboard now the

149rest of them they're worthless and so i can understand not having the opportunities and i often think that if i had had 10 minutes less in a class period i don't know how much difference that would have made to me and been able to select another elective that my life would have been enriched i would have been if nothing else i would have been able to handle a uh a keyboard and i don't know what the right answer is there and i know that uh some parents are passionate a lot of parents probably don't care but i just would suggest that we take a look at that again not specifically for draper park medal but i would suggest we look at that for all of our middle schools and if best practice is to have

150more periods in a day we follow best practice if best practice is to have six periods a day we have six periods and i've probably talked about all things fully on this one but at a high school level if a trimester is better than a semester we should follow the best practice for the entire district and say this is a better program so you know i look at that and i think my gosh rather than just choose up teams and have a war why don't we find out what best practices and discuss it and see if we can be more responsive to what would be best for our students the other one and honest to goodness i have washington county school district on mine on my notes that i wrote down at the beginning of

151the meeting if best practice tells us that we are better off with our teenage kids to have them start later and somehow washington county school district has figured out how to make that happen can we do a field trip and drive 300 miles and go see uh washington county and talk about what they had to do and see if that works yeah if you do that in the summer i'll open the pool okay i'll leave i'll even smoke up a brisket for you okay but uh you know i think we need to seriously look at some of these options and be responsive if it is truly best practice i think as we've looked at things in the past i don't know how well defined best practice has been but we've got a few years history

152on us and we can see what's happening on on a national level and see what kind of difference that's making and make an informed decision so uh president i would like to have those couple with items on a future agenda that we could discuss and and see if we could be responsive you know no is a response okay i'm not saying we have to do those i just want to evaluate those and figure out what is best so i think with that i'm done thank you and i've noted your request so thank you um i yeah i know it's late um i just wanted to circle back with superintendent quickly about on the covid response we um the district district-wide has been in tier three with kind of a case-by-case evaluation of various activities and

153now um you're saying that the district district-wide is tier two with the idea that um if numbers change um and go up it would decisions would then be made at a local school level to go back to yes and yes i mean right so yeah so tier two moves us back into a place where um we're not restricting activities right so instead of approving case by case uh those would go forward um and then pending any of those schools meeting that that three-prong threshold with cases uh absenteeism uh or not absenteeism cases to begin with absenteeism or sorry cases and staff shortage and then in that window we would evaluate absenteeism at that point we would move that individual school to tier three back to the restrictions that we've been under district-wide i think you

154know we'll just take it day at a time if we see another i just noticed on the news that now there's a stealth variant that's out there no idea what that means but it is in utah it is in utah and it's saying right now indications are it's not as prevalent as omicron but who knows right so so i think we still reserve that we keep that kind of in our back pocket district wide if necessary but i think moving back to two it would also i think just for the public's information so volunteers would be back allowed back in our buildings we would we would go back to regular classroom practices and then evaluate case by case with schools to potentially move to tier three if necessary great thank you very much for for

155that i'm clarifying that and um i i just agree with everything that's been said and excited about the strategic planning and um look forward to what what can come from of that in the near and the far distant future for canyons so with that i'll if there's anything else nothing else okay um i will declare the meeting adjourned and wish everyone a great rest of the evening if